Technology

The FBI have joined forces with the National Science Foundation and invested $1 million dollars into a project aimed at gathering information on people who share anti-governemnt internet meme’s online. The goals of the project, according to the FBI, are: “The project is aimed at modeling the diffusion of information online and empirically discriminating among models of mechanisms driving the spread of memes. We explore why some ideas cause viral explosions while others are quickly forgotten.

Kanye West has been caught illegally downloading music from popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay this week, just days after rumors circulated that the rapper was suing the torrent website for enabling users to download his album  The Life Of Pablo.  Kanye posted a screenshot of his computer screen on Twitter, intending to publicise his watching of a Sufjan Stevens music video on YouTube.

The battle between the FBI and Apple over encryption took a turn in Apple’s favor this week, with a similar court ruling coming down on the side of privacy. Congress is eager to get in the game. What might we expect if they do?

A crowdfunding project in Russia hopes to launch an artificial star into space in order to illuminate parts of the Earth via a fake Sun.  If the ‘Mayak’ (or ‘Beacon’) project goes ahead later this year, scientists will be able to create 24 hour long days in some parts of the world, via a satellite that will become the brightest object in our sky (apart from the Sun). Dailymail.co.uk reports: The launch is scheduled for the summer and is expected to be taken up in a Soyuz 2 rocket, with help from Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

The most valuable company on the planet is set to square off against the FBI on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee in a highly publicized dispute regarding the iPhone that belonged to Syed Farook who, along with his wife, murdered more than a dozen people in December at a San Bernardino county holiday party.

The director of the FBI will appear, as will Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, who will argue that “technology companies should not be able to dictate who can access key evidence in criminal investigations.”