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LOTD for September 24

NASA's Curiosity rover found that the Martian atmosphere doesn't have nearly the level of methane that had been thought, decreasing the chance that Mars has life now:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/09/nasa-curiosity-rover-detects-no-methane.html


The NSA pays AT&T, Verizon and Sprint several hundred million dollars a year for access to 81% of all international phone calls into the US. Consumers pay the large telecom companies for their communication services and the NSA pays the large telecom companies ~$300 mil/year to find out who we talk with, how long, and when and where the communications occurred:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attverizonsprint-are-paid-cash-by-nsa-for-your-private-communications/


The FAA is meeting this week to finalize their decision that could allow airline passengers to use their tablets and e-readers even on takeoff and landing.  Since I flew to DC again today and have traveled to DC 3 times in 4 weeks, this type of rule change is of great interest to me:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/report-faa-set-relax-restrictions-passenger-access-mobile-devices/2013-09-24


I forgot to include this yesterday--BlackBerry reached an initial deal with a group led by one of their biggest investors to have that group buy BlackBerry for $4.7 bil and take the company private.  The deal allows for BlackBerry to try to find other bidders that will pay more...which would benefit BlackBerry's investment group since they own a sizable portion of BlackBerry:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/blackberry-strikes-47b-deal-go-private-fairfax-bid/2013-09-23


Android users have been waiting for Plants vs. Zombies 2 for years and have been wondering why it has been exclusively on iOS for the past few months.  The reason for the Android delay has been revealed--EA says that Apple paid EA a "truckload of money" to make Plants vs. Zombies 2 an exclusive on iOS for a period of time:
http://www.droid-life.com/2013/09/24/apple-reportedly-paid-ea-a-truckload-of-money-to-keep-plants-vs-zombies-2-a-temporary-ios-exclusive/
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