Security First
This week saw the infamous mass surveillance law, the Patriot Act, run into trouble when it's provisions expired. An alternative was put in place called the USA Freedom Act limiting the NSA's powers, however, it too has been criticized for barely scratching the surface of the NSA's powers. The original whistle blower that exposed the extent of the surveillance, Edward Snowden, expressed how happy he was with the Patriot Act failing saying "balance of power is beginning to shift". Staying with terrorism the FBI have accused Apple and Google of helping terrorists by providing strong encryption in their products.
Outside of the world of terrorism the US believes Chinese Hackers are behind a massive hack that stole American Corporate and Military Trade secrets. In software news a new Skype bug was discovered that causes Skype to crash with just a sequence of characters and lastly there are warnings that pictures on the internet could leave you open to hackers.
Up in the Sky
Looking towards the heavens we saw NASA and Verizon teaming up to help create a network that can keep an eye on drones in the sky and speaking of drones, someone has finally built a drone that looks like a Star Wars X-wing. Back to NASA who revealed it had created self cleaning wings that gets rid of bug guts which cause drag on aircraft but one aircraft that won't have to worry about drag is the Solar Impulse, the solar plane attempting to fly around the world without a drop of fuel, which had to land in Japan due to bad weather.
Going further into space NASA awarded Boeing with the first order for a commercial crew change flight to the International Space Station. NASA also announced that the flying saucer for taking humans to Mars is ready for testing and since we're heading to Mars scientists have said that earth organisms could survive under low pressure Martian conditions. Finally with all our travels around space the European Space Agency (ESA) is planning on cleaning up space by removing space debris and removing derelict satellites from orbit.
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