Did you know that as much as 96 percent of all oil produced in the United States by fracking is condensate – a so-called “light oil” or “ultralight oil” which U.S. refineries are incapable of processing? Let’s say that again: as much as 96% of all fracking product is unusable in the U.S. So why the big push for fracking? Here’s what the United States, and the oil producers in the U.S. want to do with it: they want to export it! That’s right, they are taking it out of your back yard, and selling it on the global market.

You’re going on a trip and you’ve arranged for a pet sitter, but what about your poor, lonely plants? Now you can not only water them from anywhere in the world, but you can FaceTime with your plants, too! That is part of the idea behind a new app and indoor “microfarming” plant care system, Sprouts.io

Yesterday we told you about how Microsoft is one of several companies who are encrypting their services and hardening their systems against the prying of nosy agencies like the NSA. Now Microsoft is fighting a Federal court order that they turn over the data for a user’s email account whose email data resides on a server outside of the U.S. (in Ireland, to be specific).

Coincident with the Reset the Net effort, in which they are taking part, Google and Yahoo, along with Microsoft and Facebook, and others, are moving at speed to block the NSA’s snooping, and to tighten up their systems to make it more difficult for the NSA, and others, to eavesdrop on their data.

The FBI and Department of Justice have jointly announced that over 90 people around the world have been arrested in a gigantic global takedown of those responsible for the Blackshades RAT (Remote Acccess Tool) malware – also known as “creepware”. In addition to arresting the Blackshades creator Alex Yucel (“Yücel” in his native Sweden), Yücel’s employees, including his marketing person, were arrested, as were customers who had purchased Blackshades and then used it against their own victims. Yücel’s partner and Blackshade co-creator Michael Hogue was arrested in a sting known as “Operation Cardshop” in 2012; Hogue’s arrest lead to the arrest of Yücel.

China and the United States have been hacking each other for years. But the U.S. distinguishes between military espionage and “economic espionage”, the official U.S. position being that military espionage (which the U.S. does) is acceptable, while economic espionage (which China does along with military espionage) is not acceptable. Now the U.S. has indicted 5 Chinese military officials – members of the People’s Liberation Army elusive “Unit 61398” – with economic espionage for hacking into Westinghouse, Alcoa, U.S. Steel, SolarWorld, United Steel Workers Union, and Allegheny Technologies. (Full text of first 20 pages of indictment below.)

This week the European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that individuals have a “right to be forgotten” by search engines. While it was a Google listing which complainant M of Spain sought to have removed, and on which the EU Court of Justice ruling turned, the holding applies across a broad spectrum of search engines and other aggregators of personal data about individuals.

A British judge has ordered a father to stop using ALL CAPS when writing email to his children, because it is “the equivalent of shouting.”

You can follow all sorts of celebrities on Facebook, and, of course, your friends. Even companies and other organizations. But here are seven individuals that you can follow on Facebook that it may never have occurred to you to follow, or that they would even be on Facebook.

While countries on both sides of the Atlantic mourn the passing of actor Bob Hoskins, daughter Rosa Hoskins has posted a moving online tribute to her father, the “11 Lessons from My Dad”.

Both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the UK analog are warning users around the world not to use Internet Explorer. The pointed warning to not use IE (any version of Internet Explorer) follows the discovery of “active exploitation of a use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer,” and comes from both US CERT (Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team), and the UK’s CERT.

As preposterous as it may sound, it seems that the Apple Maps satellite may have captured an image of the fabled Loch Ness monster, Nessie. Described as looking like the wake of a boat, but with no boat around, the image distinctly shows something that seems to be underwater, and appears to have fin-like appendages on either side.

There has been a lot of urgent information circulating about the Heartbleed security bug (which some are mistakenly calling the “Heartbeat bug”) this week. But then you hear that the Heartbleed bug has been around for two years, and suddenly find yourself wondering why all the hype? Here are the three things that you need to know about the Heartbleed bug, and what you need to do about it.

The web is evolving at astonishing speed. Our 25 year history of the Internet World Wide Web timeline infographic shows just how far we’ve come, and also how long ago certain milestones seem.

The Zello Walkie Talkie app is quickly becoming the one to one, and one to many, secure communications app for protestors around the world. That’s because Zello (not to be confused with Zillow) is secure, light weight, available in many languages, works over 3G, GPRS, Edge, and wifi, and it’s free. There are versions for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and PC. It’s available in Chinese, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese and Swedish.