• This is us. We admit to being very heavy users. But, even then, we’ve only modestly crossed over the 2-gigabyte threshold AT&T has given us. This isn’t hard to find, either. Log into your AT&T Wireless account, head to the “My Current Usage” screen, click “View Past Data Usage,” and run one of the reports. It’s pretty surprising. We’d end up spending $5 more than we do currently under this plan for most of the months. source

• Youtube just got the avant-garde treatment. MIA has pretty much always been the most out-there pop star in the best way possible, and the cover for her new album “/\/\ /\ Y /\” (that’s “Maya,” for the non-hipsters) looks like it’s going to keep up that trend, putting her behind a wall of Youtube players. See the symbolism? source

• 30% raise to help limit workers’ suicidal thoughts source

• If the FTC truly wanted to reinvent journalism, the agency would instead align itself with journalism’s disruptors. But there’s none of that here.
• Journo-expert Jeff Jarvis • Regarding a recent Federal Trade Commission report on how to save journalism. He notes as sort of a  key fact that the entire document only mentions the word “blog” once, despite the fact that many blogs are as “real content” as you’re going to get. And the document, overall, seems skewed in favor of establishment journalism, with suggestions that could seriously damage innovation in the industry. “Here, the internet is not the salvation of news, journalism, and democracy. It’s the other side,” he writes. source

• 7.6
  million the number of people who died of cancer in 2008
• 13.2
  million the number of people projected to die of cancer in 2030 source

• Americans have more; the U.K., Canada and Australia have less. Ah, nothing like a story about cigarettes to make you feel more alive. Researchers did a test of cigarette butts to see what sort of chemicals and toxins the cigarettes have. Apparently, different countries use different formulas and as a result, different countries have more dangerous smokes. And by different countries, we really mean “the U.S.” (Scary, right?) source

• good AT&T will FINALLY allow data tethering via the iPhone, after blocking it for years.
• bad AT&T will no longer offer unlimited data plans, but instead two tiered data plans.
• okay Old customers won’t be forced to switch, but new customers will have no choice.

The new charges

• $15the cost per month for the 200-megabyte “DataPlus” plan; it’s $15 for each additional 200 megs
• $25 the cost per month for the 2-gigabyte “DataPro” plan; it’s $10 for each additional gigabyte

The bullet points

• » Why do this, anyway? Because AT&T found in its research that most customers only used a certain amount of data, and a small number of users accounted for most of the bandwidth-sucking data usage. Take that as you will, kids. On the plus side, AT&T is at least trying to make the new charges somewhat friendly to consumers, allowing for retroactive changes between the two plans.
• » The wildcard, of course? AT&T is the first company to do this. Which means that Verizon, Sprint, all those other companies? They still have unlimited data plans. And if Verizon gets the iPhone like is being predicted, it seriously puts them at an advantage. source

• FAST but no more specific than that source

• We became famous. We are very thankful to the Israeli authorities.
• Insani Yardim Vakfi board member Omar Faruk • In an immediate reaction to the incident that killed nine and left hundreds stuck in the country for a day. Faruk’s Turkey-tied group, better known as the IHH, has been helping fund the Free Gaza Movement. The group’s goal with the flotilla seemed not to get the flotilla to Gaza but the draw a reaction from Israel. It worked. Israel, for its part, says that the IHH has terrorist ties and seem to have the ultimate goal of destroying the Israeli state. They deny it, of course. source