The New York Times

“He's always been a divisive figure, going back to his years in Egypt,” said Brian Fishman, an expert on Al Qaeda at the New America Foundation in Washington. “He's just personally disliked by many in Al Qaeda. His personality always gets in the way. ...

“This is the classic California get-out-of-town budget,” said Joe Mathews, a co-author of “California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It” (University of California Press, 2010). “It has all kinds of things that are ...

... “We’re going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil,” said Sascha Meinrath, who is leading the “Internet in a suitcase” project as director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. ...

Original article

“Just Google it!” has become a common cyber-snobbish response to questions that seem too trivial to merit a human conversation. But is it really an answer? Now that more and more Internet sites are tailoring their services to the idiosyncrasies of individual users, queries for “climate change,” “stem cells” and even “pizza” may yield different outcomes for different people. This may be an era when we are increasingly entitled to our own facts — but should we also be entitled to our own search results?

In “The Bin Ladens,” Steve Coll writes that he “mocked his Western adversaries for misunderstanding him as a premodern fanatic, a bearded loner in a faraway cave; he saw himself, instead, as a master of global technology and change. ...

As reports mount of defections in the Syrian military and the government staggers from the killing of soldiers and police officers in a northern city this week, President Bashar al-Assad may turn increasingly to his brother, Maher, whose elite units in a demoralized army could prove decisive to his government's survival, activists and analysts say.

KARBEYAZ, Turkey — Hundreds more Syrians fled into Turkey on Thursday, anticipating a widening crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in the country's northwest, which has become the new focus of weeks of protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The new influx across their border prompted Turkish authorities to set up a second refugee camp, while they reassured frightened Syrians that they would keep the border open and called once again on the Syrian government to allow peaceful demonstrations and to carry out reforms.

As reports mount of defections in the Syrian military and the government staggers from the killing of soldiers and police officers in a northern city this week, President Bashar al-Assad may turn increasingly to his brother, Maher, whose elite units in a demoralized army could prove decisive to his government's survival, activists and analysts say.

Much of the book, in fact, is a parade of talking heads, as Gladstone quotes a long line of dudes who've written big-idea books: Robert Wright, Ray Kurzweil, Clay Shirky. There's little dramatic or incisive about these panels, no matter how much ...

Syrians poured into the streets on Friday in some of the largest antigovernment protests yet despite the shutdown of much of Syria's Internet network, which has been crucial to demonstrators' ability to mobilize and a major source of information for those outside the country.