Blog Heap of Links for the day 3 July 2012

“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them…”

Two Iranians who led authorities to a cache of explosives after their arrest planned to attack Israeli, U.S., British or Saudi targets inside Kenya, officials said on Monday. The two are believed to be members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, an elite and secretive unit that acts against foreign interests, one of the officials said. The foiled attack appeared to fit into a global pattern of alleged plots by Iranian agents. [Emphasis added.]

"The developed economies and their stock markets have plodded along and investors haven’t made or lost much money in spite of the challenges. At a certain point, however, the temporary measures that the policy makers put in place to avoid financial catastrophe prove insufficient and that’s where we are now. I’m not saying that it will happen tomorrow but events are falling into place that will take the smile off your face. … A Romney victory will create a rally, but once he gets into office he will find there is not much he can do to make things better.” I left The Smartest Man’s office somewhat dazed.

Google’s “search by image” feature just got a little bit smarter. The search engine can now better detect image subjects and give you lots of new related content. Search by image allows you to upload a photo to Google and use it as a “search term,” as opposed to regular keywords. In the past, Google has been able to detect what is in many photos, but only on a very base level. For instance, if you uploaded a picture of a flower, it would return search results for flowers. But now Google is integrating its Knowledge Graph into “search by image.” Now when you upload that same image, Google will see not just a flower, but a Birds of Paradise flower, and will give you information about its origins.

A group of SOPA/PIPA’s greatest opponents has come together to create the Declaration of Internet Freedom, a move to protect the Internet from censorship.