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For the first time ever, astronomers from NASA and the University of Tübingen in Germany have detected rare noble gases krypton and xenon in the spectrum of a hot white dwarf.

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The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal, who has estimated how long it would take to read every privacy policy you encounter highlights an interesting bit from the “Linking Policy” in the Terms of Use for the London 2012 website:

“a. Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner.”

I have a simple solution: I will totally ignore the 2012 Olympic website. Fuck them. The Olympic Committee looks like the satanic offspring of the FIFA and RIAA/MPAA.

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Credit card companies Visa and MasterCard have agreed to pay more than $6bn to US retailers in a negotiated settlement to resolve a seven-year-old case.

Visa agreed to pay $4.03bn to settle the class-action lawsuit while MasterCard and banks that issue cards and were also part of the suit will pay $2.02bn, according to documents filed in federal court in New York on Friday.

The two will also have to cut their so-called “swipe” fees for eight months that could give the merchants another $1.2bn in relief. And they will have to allow merchants to impose a surcharge on credit card transactions, subject to a cap.

And the retailers will certainly pass the money on to the credit card users, won’t they?

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NSA whistleblower William Binney was interviewed by internet journalist Geoff Shively at the HOPE Number 9 hackers conference in New York on Friday.

Binney, who resigned from the NSA in 2001 over its domestic surveillance program, had just delivered a keynote speech in which he revealed what Shively called “evidence which we have not seen until this point.”

“They’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country … and assembling that information,” Binney explained. “So government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that something like 1.6 billion logs have been processed since 2001.

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First of all, we’ve complied with the law. The law requires us to put out a full financial disclosure. That I’ve done. And then, in addition to that, I’ve already put out one year of tax returns. We’ll put out the next year of tax returns as soon as the accountants have that ready. And that’s what we’re going to put out.

I know there will always be calls for more. People always want to get more. And, you know, we’re putting out what is required plus more that is not required. And those are the two years that people are going to have. And that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances. And, look, if people believe this should be a campaign about attacking one another on a personal basis and go back to the kinds of attacks that were suggested in some campaigns in the past, I don’t want to go there.

Perhaps we should start asking for his long-form tax returns?

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JPMorgan Chase has admitted that losses from botched derivatives trades had soared to $4.4bn, but still earned an overall profit of $4.96bn.

“This has shaken our company to the core,” CEO Jamie Dimon said on Friday. Dimon said he believed the loss was mostly contained.

“Mostly contained” means “we have no idea.”