Smelling by quantum vibration.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/01/controversial-molecular-vibration-theory-smell-olfaction

I can see ultraviolet..

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/may/30/medicalscience.research

And now, some of it makes sense..

The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951

FAS | Secrecy | Invention Secrecy || Index | Search | Join FAS

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35 US CODE CHAPTER 17SECRECY OF CERTAIN INVENTIONS
AND FILING APPLICATIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRY

§ 181. Secrecy of certain inventions and withholding of patent.
§ 182. Abandonment of invention for unauthorized disclosure.
§ 183. Right of compensation.
§ 184. Filing of application in foreign country.
§ 185. Patent barred for filing without license.
§ 186. Penalty.
§ 187. Nonapplicability to certain persons.
§ 188. Rules and regulations, delegation of power.

Sec. 181. Secrecy of certain inventions and withholding of patent

Whenever publication or disclosure by the grant of a patent on an invention in which the Government has a property interest might, in the opinion of the head of the interested Government agency, be detrimental to the national security, the Commissioner upon being so notified shall order that the invention be kept secret and shall withhold the grant of a patent therefor under the conditions set forth hereinafter.

Whenever the publication or disclosure of an invention by the granting of a patent, in which the Government does not have a property interest, might, in the opinion of the Commissioner, be detrimental to the national security, he shall make the application for patent in which such invention is disclosed available for inspection to the Atomic Energy Commission, the Secretary of Defense, and the chief officer of any other department or agency of the Government designated by the President as a defense agency of the United States. Each individual to whom the application is disclosed shall sign a dated acknowledgment thereof, which acknowledgment shall be entered in the file of the application.

If, in the opinion of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Secretary of a Defense Department, or the chief officer of another department or agency so designated, the publication or disclosure of the invention by the granting of a patent therefor would be detrimental to the national security, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Secretary of a Defense Department, or such other chief officer shall notify the Commissioner and the Commissioner shall order that the invention be kept secret and shall withhold the grant of a patent for such period as the national interest requires, and notify the applicant thereof. Upon proper showing by the head of the department or agency who caused the secrecy order to be issued that the examination of the application might jeopardize the national interest, the Commissioner shall thereupon maintain the application in a sealed condition and notify the applicant thereof. The owner of an application which has been placed under a secrecy order shall have a right to appeal from the order to the Secretary of Commerce under rules prescribed by him.

An invention shall not be ordered kept secret and the grant of a patent withheld for a period of more than one year. The Commissioner shall renew the order at the end thereof, or at the end of any renewal period, for additional periods of one year upon notification by the head of the department or the chief officer of the agency who caused the order to be issued that an affirmative determination has been made that the national interest continues so to require. An order in effect, or issued, during a time when the United States is at war, shall remain in effect for the duration of hostilities and one year following cessation of hostilities. An order in effect, or issued, during a national emergency declared by the President shall remain in effect for the duration of the national emergency and six months thereafter. The Commissioner may rescind any order upon notification by the heads of the departments and the chief officers of the agencies who caused the order to be issued that the publication or disclosure of the invention is no longer deemed detrimental to the national security.

Sec. 182. Abandonment of invention for unauthorized disclosure

The invention disclosed in an application for patent subject to an order made pursuant to section 181 of this title may be held abandoned upon its being established by the Commissioner that in violation of said order the invention has been published or disclosed or that an application for a patent therefor has been filed in a foreign country by the inventor, his successors, assigns, or legal representatives, or anyone in privity with him or them, without the consent of the Commissioner. The abandonment shall be held to have occurred as of the time of violation. The consent of the Commissioner shall not be given without the concurrence of the heads of the departments and the chief officers of the agencies who caused the order to be issued. A holding of abandonment shall constitute forfeiture by the applicant, his successors, assigns, or legal representatives, or anyone in privity with him or them, of all claims against the United States based upon such invention.

Sec. 183. Right to compensation

An applicant, his successors, assigns, or legal representatives, whose patent is withheld as herein provided, shall have the right, beginning at the date the applicant is notified that, except for such order, his application is otherwise in condition for allowance, or February 1, 1952, whichever is later, and ending six years after a patent is issued thereon, to apply to the head of any department or agency who caused the order to be issued for compensation for the damage caused by the order of secrecy and/or for the use of the invention by the Government, resulting from his disclosure.

The right to compensation for use shall begin on the date of the first use of the invention by the Government. The head of the department or agency is authorized, upon the presentation of a claim, to enter into an agreement with the applicant, his successors, assigns, or legal representatives, in full settlement for the damage and/or use. This settlement agreement shall be conclusive for all purposes notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary. If full settlement of the claim cannot be effected, the head of the department or agency may award and pay to such applicant, his successors, assigns, or legal representatives, a sum not exceeding 75 per centum of the sum which the head of the department or agency considers just compensation for the damage and/or use. A claimant may bring suit against the United States in the United States Court of Federal Claims or in the District Court of the United States for the district in which such claimant is a resident for an amount which when added to the award shall constitute just compensation for the damage and/or use of the invention by the Government.

The owner of any patent issued upon an application that was subject to a secrecy order issued pursuant to section 181 of this title, who did not apply for compensation as above provided, shall have the right, after the date of issuance of such patent, to bring suit in the United States Court of Federal Claims for just compensation for the damage caused by reason of the order of secrecy and/or use by the Government of the invention resulting from his disclosure. The right to compensation for use shall begin on the date of the first use of the invention by the Government. In a suit under the provisions of this section the United States may avail itself of all defenses it may plead in an action under section 1498 of title 28. This section shall not confer a right of action on anyone or his successors, assigns, or legal representatives who, while in the full-time employment or service of the United States, discovered, invented, or developed the invention on which the claim is based.

Sec. 184. Filing of application in foreign country

Except when authorized by a license obtained from the Commissioner a person shall not file or cause or authorize to be filed in any foreign country prior to six months after filing in the United States an application for patent or for the registration of a utility model, industrial design, or model in respect of an invention made in this country.

A license shall not be granted with respect to an invention subject to an order issued by the Commissioner pursuant to section 181 of this title without the concurrence of the head of the departments and the chief officers of the agencies who caused the order to be issued. The license may be granted retroactively where an application has been filed abroad through error and without deceptive intent and the application does not disclose an invention within the scope of section 181 of this title.

The term ''application'' when used in this chapter includes applications and any modifications, amendments, or supplements thereto, or divisions thereof. The scope of a license shall permit subsequent modifications, amendments, and supplements containing additional subject matter if the application upon which the request for the license is based is not, or was not, required to be made available for inspection under section 181 of this title and if such modifications, amendments, and supplements do not change the general nature of the invention in a manner which would require such application to be made available for inspection under such section 181.

In any case in which a license is not, or was not, required in order to file an application in any foreign country, such subsequent modifications, amendments, and supplements may be made, without a license, to the application filed in the foreign country if the United States application was not required to be made available for inspection under section 181 and if such modifications, amendments, and supplements do not, or did not, change the general nature of the invention in a manner which would require the United States application to have been made available for inspection under such section 181.

Sec. 185. Patent barred for filing without license

Notwithstanding any other provisions of law any person, and his successors, assigns, or legal representatives, shall not receive a United States patent for an invention if that person, or his successors, assigns, or legal representatives shall, without procuring the license prescribed in section 184 of this title, have made, or consented to or assisted another's making, application in a foreign country for a patent or for the registration of a utility model, industrial design, or model in respect of the invention. A United States patent issued to such person, his successors, assigns, or legal representatives shall be invalid, unless the failure to procure such license was through error and without deceptive intent, and the patent does not disclose subject matter within the scope of section 181 of this title.

Sec. 186. Penalty

Whoever, during the period or periods of time an invention has been ordered to be kept secret and the grant of a patent thereon withheld pursuant to section 181 of this title, shall, with knowledge of such order and without due authorization, willfully publish or disclose or authorize or cause to be published or disclosed the invention, or material information with respect thereto, or whoever willfully, in violation of the provisions of section 184 of this title, shall file or cause or authorize to be filed in any foreign country an application for patent or for the registration of a utility model, industrial design, or model in respect of any invention made in the United States, shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.

Sec. 187. Nonapplicability to certain persons

The prohibitions and penalties of this chapter shall not apply to any officer or agent of the United States acting within the scope of his authority, nor to any person acting upon his written instructions or permission.

Sec. 188. Rules and regulations, delegation of power

The Atomic Energy Commission, the Secretary of a defense department, the chief officer of any other department or agency of the Government designated by the President as a defense agency of the United States, and the Secretary of Commerce, may separately issue rules and regulations to enable the respective department or agency to carry out the provisions of this chapter, and may delegate any power conferred by this chapter.

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FAS | Secrecy | Invention Secrecy || Index | Search | Join FAS

What is This?

Candy Crush Is Harder Than It Sounds - NP Hard

Candy Crush Is Harder Than It Sounds - NP Hard:



Wow. That 'article' lacks more information than this post..

jroth005 comments on What is the biggest misconception that people still today believe?

jroth005

I'm gonna go all newspaper article-y and explain it with this wall of text:

If I were to play pin-the-effect-on-the-cause, I'd pin the 90's era crime wave firmly as a result of at least 4 major factors. (1)The mid-to-late 20^th Century "tough on Crime" policies, particularly the ones that were enacted during the Nixon-Reagan-Clinton years, which lead to (2) the constriction and individuation of neighborhoods within slums and ghettos. Those two happening during (3) the rise of information technologies, like the cellphone, laptop, and pager, created a crazy new place for (4) people to begin creating echo-chambers, far from the general population. This lead criminals to commit all new crimes, and lawmakers to invent all new punishments, before anyone even knew the full extent and effect of the crimes and their punishments.

Or how this new informed system even worked.

Starting with the "Tough on Crime" policies in the mid-20^th century, we see America making ever smaller infractions life-altering in scale. In 1920, a shoplifting charge was typically settled with the shoplifter paying restitution and being made to perform some community service. Often the offenders would settle out of court, just doing some task for the shop owner so as to make restitution. No matter how many times you got caught, you usually only had to pay fines, unless it was a large-ticket item.

In 1985, if you were convicted of misdemeanor shoplifting three times in California, it was a life sentence.

Couple harsher punishments with new anti-fugitive laws, were people with felony convictions can't leave the country, even after their time is served, many states making it impossible to get drivers licenses, sign up for welfare, or take part in public services roles, not to mention the near impossibility of getting a leas for an apartment or a decent mortgage, and you have people getting desperate after just one conviction. Corporations, in keeping with the times, followed suit, and stopped hiring people with convictions, even if they had been reformed.

The only places they had to turn to for jobs or housing were the ever filling slums, were landlords didn't care, and knew you wound't try to sew.

One felony conviction was a life sentence to mediocrity. Three strikes, even misdemeanors, and you're out in many states across the nation. Off to serve life in a minimum security facility were you are forced to work for the state. Often times with meager to no pay.

In the 1960's, the counter-culture movements, and the civil liberties protests, forced many people of color who participated in protests, to have essentially no prospects for college, jobs, or housing. Many people of color were forced to live lives of mediocrity. Even after they had gained new rights and more legal equality, they still had criminal records from their time protesting. That meant they weren't ever getting out of the lower classes in which they were born.

With this situation, it's no wonder many neighborhoods that were once culturally flourishing, Harlem being one of the most notable, were eroded into smaller, ever tighter, hoods. Each with it's own gang signs, gang colors, and an increase in violence and crime.

While Harlem was being slowly eroded by "tough on crime" policy, Silicon Valley was booming. The Late 70's and early 80's brought about the new, very expensive cellular phones; and with it, the laptop and pager. This was a new era in high-speed communications. People could manage large groups and easily gather information all with a phone call or a page. The shadow fell on this bold new world in the form of a new market for easily stolen and fenced, high-dollar, seemingly-legitimate products; ones that could be sold to everyone- not just party-goers and junkies.

Drug traffickers in Mexico, Ecuador, and Guatemala were quick to buy up and use new pagers and cellular devices to manage one of the largest South-Western drug trafficking decades in the United States history: the 1980's. With a single phone call the largest drug dealers in South America could be tipped off, and divert millions of kilo's of heroine, cocaine, and the new kid on the block: crack cocaine, into the US. Cocaine could be bought cheap and sold high. Everyone from celebrities to Junkies were jittering from the 80's crack explosion.

And everyone knew about it, because of the now massive, omnipresent mass-media. Everything from Cable, to Satellite TV, and in the 90's early internet, meant that people where now able to live 24/7 in an echo-chamber of self-assuring opinion. Fox News, MSNBC, CSPAN, MTV, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Nat Geo, Tech TV, G4, even the PlayBoy channel; TV was now almost entirely personalized for you. If you liked it, their was a TV station for it. You never had to listen to a dissenting opinion again.

The 1980's was a huge decade economically, technologically, and criminally for the US; the 1990's, however, was the decade when all those new technologies were finally being used by everyone from teenagers to law-enforcement and other government agencies to effectively know even the smallest events. However, with many states remaining tough on crime, and a general haze about how technology even worked, people who were were being slowly backed into tighter and tighter boxes.

Then Rodney King was brutally beaten on air for the nightly viewers of nightly news. The mid-to-late 20^th century was an exhibition on new types of crime and punishment, but the LA Riot was the Grand Finale. One last massive boom, where the pent up aggression towards the man finally boiled into the streets. African Americans everywhere saw a black man getting beaten ruthlessly by police, over and over again, as 24 hour news railed on the police's behavior; and yet, the police involved walked free. To many, it was the man reinforcing that he was the law, andthey were just second class citizens.

After the fires were put out and the insurance companies had settled with the last robbed Korean grocer, US policy makers had to take a good hard look at their tough on crime policies. Since then, almost every state has been relaxing their punishment standards, many outlawing the death penalty, and adding restrictions to their 3 strikes policies. A misdemeanor no longer ruins your life, at least, not always.

The decade ended with one of the nations great tragedies: Columbine. Bullied teenagers walked into a school, drew their weapons, and ended the lives of their classmates, and then themselves. In the wake of this tragedy, America saw a couple of kids who were bullied, and who wanted revenge. They lived their lives in an echo-chamber of self-righteous indignation, and solipsism. They killed others because they hated their classmates, and they killed themselves, because they knew there was no possible end where they weren't dead. They were twisted people in a broken system.

The 90's era crime wave was a conglomeration of many different forces; some trying to make the world better, others deliberately trying to profit of the heart-break, addiction, and sorrow of others. But without the 90's crime wave, I don't think America would be where it is today, with people being aware of flaws in the system, and many actively protesting injustice where it happens. Some may go too far, but if it weren't for that one decade of shit-fan contact, we'd still be the America that thinks police can do no wrong, and that teenagers are just silly kids who needed to suck it up and "be adults" when they face serious psychological trauma in their schools.

Sorry, I had the strangest urge to right all that out.... Hope you enjoyed.

Random Evolution

http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/evolve/

Porshe or Van?

http://i.imgur.com/NKAxYZD.jpg

Perspective

http://i.imgur.com/ai7mxNB.jpg

Really?

http://shobia.com/careers.php?id=z1b2m0

Meet the man building an AI that mimics our neocortex – and could kill off neural networks • The Register

Meet the man building an AI that mimics our neocortex – and could kill off neural networks • The Register:



'via Blog this'

Double Rhymed Meme

Knowing Adults Meme

Lol! Pregnant father meme

This is NASA's new concept spaceship for warp drive interstellar travel

This is NASA's new concept spaceship for warp drive interstellar travel:



'via Blog this'

Cyber cyber cubet! Wei!

http://ww2.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2014/06/10/proposed-cyberbullying-law-would-let-police-remotely-hack-into-computers-mobile-devices-or-cars

Anastik comments on Cheaters of reddit, why you are currently cheating on your SO?

Anastik 

This is a story from my past that I'm not proud of. My then girlfriend, we’ll call her Cee, and I had been together for about 4 years in 2009. We had lived together for 3 years but had no plans to get married. Cee is the most loving and caring person I’ve ever met in my life. She isn’t the life of the party but she possesses the highest moral character of anyone I’ve ever met. This makes her the most beautiful person in the world to me. But like I said she isn’t the crazy party girl and I wasn’t sure what kind of woman I was looking for.

Things weren't going well for Cee and I because I started hanging out with the wrong type of people. I was drinking all the time and I began to strike up a friendship with a young girl I worked with. We will call the new girl Vee. Vee was the life of the party, wild and beautiful. But this was balanced with the fact that she was immature and crazy.

I started going out to have a few drinks with Vee. We would smoke cigarettes and flirt with one another. But the moment it escalated was when we went to the movies together. It was an afternoon movie, I can’t remember the name, and there was nobody in the theatre but us. We had a moment where our knees brushed against each other. From this time on we engaged in that teenage cat and mouse game of touching each other by accident. The tension was so high at the end of the movie that we just starred at each other but didn’t do anything. I remember we smoked a cigarette afterwards and felt like we had just had sex—we were that attracted to each other.

Vee and I continued this charade for a few days and tried to act like we didn’t have feelings for each other. I’m not proud of this, but during this time, we did fool around quite a bit. Cheaters sex is like the crack cocaine of making love. It feels fantastic while you're doing it, but once the rush wears off you are lower than you've ever been and require more and more of it to keep the high going. It's an unsustainable thing that will consume you if you let it. Cee started to figure out what was going on with my all my deleted text messages and call records. It really sucks writing this because I’m not proud of these moments in my life.

It finally came to the point where I was going to leave the faithful Cee for the wild Vee. Cee came home from her job one evening and we started talking. I’m terrible at breakups so I kept beating around the bush. She finally asked, “Do you want to break up with me? If you aren’t happy just tell me but you can’t keep putting me through this.” She was crying and I felt fucking awful with myself. Cee had taken me from dark places—depression, alcoholism, family issues—and always stuck by me. She saw me for the man I could become; not for the man I was. In the back of my mind I knew something was wrong with the decision I was making. I was choosing the party girl who would be fun for a little while but who I would eventually break up with. I had relationships like this before and I knew I was making the same mistake if I broke up with Cee. My love for Cee is best captured in this Bruce Lee quote:

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

Cee and I had always been best friends and the best relationship advice I ever got from my Uncle—who was married for 45 years—was, “Marry your best friend. The sex and looks will eventually go away, but your friendship will last a lifetime.”

Even with all this knowledge I wanted to be with Vee so bad that I broke up with Cee. She left the house crying and went to stay in a hotel that night. I called Vee and she was super excited at this development. We made plans to spend the night together and finally consummate our relationship. She wasn’t getting off work till midnight so I decided to go to the gym.

But while I was there I heard the Dan Auerbach song, Whispered Words[1]   come through my headphones (listen to this song, it's great); this song changed my life. You have to listen to this song if you never have. There was something about it that drove me into a frenzy. I kept listening to it on repeat again, again, and again as I ran on the treadmill. I knew the decision I was making was wrong. I realized in the words of GOB from Arrested Development, “I think I made a huge mistake.”

I rushed out of the gym to Jared’s jewelry store. I walked in there reeking of stink and sweat and told the lady at the counter what had happened. After telling me, “I was an idiot” she helped me pick out a beautiful diamond ring for Cee. I told Vee everything I was feeling and she surprisingly told me to be with Cee if that’s what I wanted.

I called Cee and found out the hotel where she was staying. I arrived at her room, knocked on the door, and when she opened it I was on one knee with the ring in my hand. I wept as I told her, “I’m such a fucking idiot. Please forgive me this one last time. Marry me.”

I remember her saying, “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re serious. I can’t take this if you aren’t serious.” And I was. We both cried and I profusely apologized for all the terrible things I’d done throughout our relationship.

We’ve now been happily married for four years with no infidelity issues on my part. And I know every day that I made the right decision.

RE: Recording the Police

http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-police-officers-and-public-officials

On 6/5, 65 Things We Know About NSA Surveillance That We Didn’t Know a Year Ago | Electronic Frontier Foundation

JUNE 5, 2014 | BY NADIA KAYYALI AND KATITZA RODRIGUEZ

On 6/5, 65 Things We Know About NSA Surveillance That We Didn’t Know a Year Ago

It’s been one year since the Guardian first published the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order, leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, that demonstrated that the NSA was conducting dragnet surveillance on millions of innocent people. Since then, the onslaught of disturbing revelations, from disclosures, admissions from government officials, Freedom of Information Act requests, and lawsuits, has been nonstop. On the anniversary of that first leak, here are 65 things we know about NSA spying that we did not know a year ago:

1. We saw an example of the court orders that authorize the NSA to collect virtually every phone call record in the United States—that’s who you call, who calls you, when, for how long, and sometimes where.

2. We saw NSA Powerpoint slides documenting how the NSA conducts “upstream” collection, gathering intelligence information directly from the infrastructure of telecommunications providers.

3. The NSA has created a “content dragnet” by asserting that it can intercept not only communications where a target is a party to a communication but also communications “about a target, even if the target isn’t a party to the communication.”

4. The NSA has confirmed that it is searching data collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to access American’s communications without a warrant, in what Senator Ron Wyden called the "back door search loophole."

5. Although the NSA has repeatedly stated it does not target Americans, its own documents show that searches of data collected under Section 702 are designed simply to determine with51 percent confidence a target’s “foreignness.’”

 6. If the NSA does not determine a target’s foreignness, it will not stop spying on that target. Instead the NSA will presume that target to be foreign unless they “can be positively identified as a United States person.”

7. A leaked internal NSA audit detailed 2,776 violations of rules or court orders in just a one-year period.

8. Hackers at the NSA target sysadmins, regardless of the fact that these sysadmins themselves may be completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

9. The NSA and CIA infiltrated games and online communities like World of Warcraft and Second Life to gather data and conduct surveillance.

10. The government has destroyed evidence in EFF’s cases against NSA spying. This is incredibly ironic, considering that the government has also claimed EFF’s clients need this evidence to prove standing.  

11. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress when asked directly by Sen. Ron Wyden whether the NSA was gathering any sort of data on millions of Americans.

12. Microsoft, like other companies, has cooperated closely with the FBI to allow the NSA to “circumvent its encryption and gain access to users’ data.”

13. The intelligence budget in 2013 alone was $52.6 billion— this number was revealed by a leaked document, not by the government. Of that budget, $10.8 billion went to the NSA. That’s approximately $167 per person in the United States.

14. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has issued orders that allow the NSA to share raw data—without personally identifying information stripped out— with the FBI, CIA, and the National Counterterrorism Center.

15. Pursuant to a memorandum of understanding, the NSA regularly shares raw data with Israel without stripping out personally identifying information about U.S. persons.

16. The Snowden disclosures have made it clear the Obama administration misled the Supreme Court about key issues in ACLU’s case against NSA spying, Clapper v. Amnesty International, leading to the dismissal of the case for lack of standing.

17. The NSA “hacked into Al Jazeera's internal communications system.” NSA documents stated that “selected targets had ‘high potential as sources of intelligence.’”

18. The NSA used supposedly anonymous Google cookies as beacons for surveillance, helping them to track individual users.  

19. The NSA “intercepts ‘millions of images per day’ — including about 55,000 ‘facial recognition quality images’” and processes them with powerful facial recognition software.

20. The NSA facial recognition program “can now compare spy satellite photographs with intercepted personal photographs taken outdoors to determine the location.”

21. Although most NSA reform has focused on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, and most advocates have also pushed for reform of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, some of the worst NSA spying happens under the authority of Executive Order 12333, which President Obama could repeal or modify today.

22. The NSA collected Americans’ cell phone location information for two years as part of a pilot project to see how it could use such information in its massive databases.

23. In one month, March 2013, the NSA collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide, including 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks.

24. The NSA has targeted Tor, a set of tools that allow Internet users to browse the net anonymously.

25. The NSA program MUSCULAR infiltrates links between the global data centers of technology companies such as Google and Yahoo. Many companies have responded to MUSCULAR by encrypting traffic over their internal networks.

26. The XKEYSCORE program analyzes emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals anywhere in the world.

27. NSA undermines the encryption tools relied upon by ordinary users, companies, financial institutions, targets, and non-targets as part of BULLRUN, an unparalleled effort to weaken the security of all Internet users, including you.

28. The NSA’s Dishfire operation has collected 200 million text messages daily from users around the globe, which can be used to extract valuable information such as location data, contact retrievals, credit card details, missed call alerts, roaming alerts (which indicate border crossings), electronic business cards, credit card payment notifications, travel itinerary alerts, and meeting information.  

29. Under the CO-TRAVELER operation, the US collects location information from global cell towers, Wi-Fi, and GPS hubs, which is then information analyzed over time, in part in order to determine a target’s traveling companions.

30. A 2004 memo entitled “DEA- The ‘Other’ Warfighter”, states that the DEA and NSA “enjoy a vibrant two-way information-sharing relationship.”

31. When the DEA acts on information its Special Operations Division receives from the NSA, it cloaks the source of the information through “parallel construction,” going through the charade of recreating an imaginary investigation to hide the source of the tip, not only from the defendant, but from the court. This was intended to ensure that no court rules on the legality or scope of how NSA data is used in ordinary investigations.    

32. The fruits of NSA surveillance routinely end up in the hands of the IRS. Like the DEA, the IRS uses parallel construction to cloak the source of the tip.

33. Even the President’s handpicked Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board recommended that the government end Section 215 mass telephone records collection, because that collection is ineffective, illegal, and likely unconstitutional.

34. The NSA has plans to infect potentially millions of computers with malware implants as part of its Tailored Access Operations.

35. The NSA had a secret $10 million contract with security firm RSA to create a “back door” in the company’s widely used encryption products.

36. The NSA tracked access to porn and gathered other sexually explicit information “as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches.”

37. The NSA and its partners exploited mobile apps, such as the popular Angry Birds game, to access users’ private information such as location, home address, gender, and more.

38. The Washington Post revealed that the NSA harvests “hundreds of millions of contact listsfrom personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans.”

Many of the Snowden revelations have concerned the NSA’s activities overseas, as well as the activities of some of the NSA’s closest allies, such as the its UK counterpart GCHQ. Some of these have been cooperative ventures. In particular, the “Five Eyes”— The United States, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada— share citizen data amongst themselves - providing loopholes that might undermine national legislation.

 39. The NSA paid its British counterpart GCHQ $155 million over the last three years “to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.”

40. The Guardian reported: “In one six-month period in 2008 alone, [GCHQ] collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8-million Yahoo user accounts globally.”

41. GCHQ used malware to compromise networks belonging to the Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom.

42. Major telecommunications companies including BT, Vodafone, and Verizon business have given GCHQ unlimited access to their fiberoptic cables 

43. GCHQ used DDoS attacks and other methods to interrupt Anonymous and LulzSec communications, including communications of people not charged with any crime.

44. GCHQ’s Bude station monitored leaders from the EU, Germany, and Israel. It also targeted non-governmental organizations such as Doctors of the World.

45. The NSA’s partners Down Under, the Australian Signals Directorate, has been implicated in breaches of attorney-client privileged communications, undermining a foundational principleof our shared criminal justice system.

46. Australian intelligence officials spied on the cell phones of Indonesian cabinet ministersand President Susilo Bambang.

47. In 2008, Australia offered to share its citizens’ raw information with intelligence partners.

48. CSEC helped the NSA spy on political officials during the G20 meeting in Canada.

49. CSEC and CSIS were recently rebuked by a federal court judge for misleading him in a warrant application five years ago with respect to their use of Five Eyes resources in order to track Canadians abroad.

Ironically, some of the NSA’s operations have been targeted at countries that have worked directly with the agency in other instances. And some simply seemed unnecessary and disproportionate.  

50. NSA documents show that not all governments are clear about their own level of cooperation with the NSA. As the Intercept reports, “Few, if any, elected leaders have any knowledge of the surveillance.”

51. The NSA is intercepting, recording, and archiving every single cell phone call in the Bahamas.

52. The NSA monitored phone calls of at least 35 world leaders.

53. The NSA spied on French diplomats in Washington and at the UN.

54. The NSA hacked in to Chinese company Huawei's networks and stole its source code.   

55. The NSA bugged EU embassies in both New York and Washington. It copied hard drives from the New York office of the EU, and tapped the internal computer network from the Washington embassies.

56. The NSA collected the metadata of more than 45-million Italian phone calls over a 30 day period. It also maintained monitoring sites in Rome and Milan.

57. The NSA stored data from approximately 500-million German communicationsconnections per month.

58. The NSA collected data from over-60 million Spanish telephone calls over a 30-day period in late 2012 and early 2013 and spied on members of the Spanish government.

59. The NSA collected data from over 70-million French telephone calls over a 30-day period in late 2012 and early 2013.

60. The Hindu reported that, based on NSA documents: “In the overall list of countries spied on by NSA programs, India stands at fifth place.”

61. The NSA hacked into former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s official email account.

62. The Guardian reported: “The NSA has, for years, systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunication network and indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the email and telephone records of millions of Brazilians.”

63. The NSA monitored emails (link in Portuguese), telephone calls, and text messages ofBrazilian President Dilma Roussef and her top aides.

64. Germany’s intelligence agencies cooperated with the NSA and implemented the NSA’s XKeyscore program, while NSA was in turn spying on German leaders.

65. Norwegian daily Dagbladet reported (Link in Norwegian) that the NSA acquired data on 33 million Norwegian cell phone calls in one 30-day period.”

There’s no question that the international relationships Obama pledged to repair, as well as the confidence of the American people in their privacy and constitutional rights, have been damaged by the NSAs dragnet surveillance. But one year later, both the United States and international governments have not taken the steps necessary to ensure that this surveillance ends. That’s why everyone must take action— contact your elected representative, join Reset the Net, and learn about how international law applies to U.S. surveillance today. 

Peaceful Aliens

there is actually a book about this fallacy. It's only SLIGHTLY more likely that a traveling alien race would have non-ballistic weapons than not having it in the grand scheme of things. The primary requirement for space travel is resource dedication, and a pacified world wouldn't need to continue advancing weapon tech. Therefore it's plausible that a civilization stopped building weapon tech because it united early on, and without war to drive it it fell greatly behind other tech. Then, as they invade other worlds, whose species either don't exist at all or are so primitive they can barely be called intelligent they never need to advance their mil tech. So when they 'invade' earth they do it with essentially futuristic cold war tech (in the middle of world war 2) so they have hover fighter jets, but still use basic radar chemical weapons.

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/27f6m5/til_moon_dust_cuts_through_kevlarlike_material/ci0i05q