Of Course AT&T's New International Messaging Plans Would Be Ass Expensive [Blip]

AT&T just announced their new international SMS plans and they're ridonkulous: 200 messages for $30 and 500 messages for $50. Hah! 50 bucks! Just for sending texts! Who in the half brain hell would sign up for that?

Okay, it's a better deal than what AT&T previously offered, which was $0.50 per text (50 texts for $10) but still, for $30-$50 I can probably land myself a local pre-paid plan that could link me up with data. And when I have data, I can avoid the rip off known as text messages entirely with Google Voice or e-mails or the bazillion other options that are much cheaper and nearly as good.

Don't be fooled people, it might be really easy to sign up for this "Global Messaging" plan but so is flushing money down the toilet, and you wouldn't do that, right? One silver lining: the 200/500 messages only count the texts you send OUT not the text you receive abroad. [AT&T via Engadget]

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Facebook Is Getting a Translate Button for Your International Friends [Facebook]

According to Inside Facebook, Facebook is currently testing a translate button for international users to getting around the language barrier. Facebook will provide a button to translate users' comments on the fly.

Inside Facebook reports that only a few languages, including Spanish, French, Hebrew, and Chinese, are currently supported, but that's just the start. The benefit of such a feature is pretty obvious; the people you couldn't talk to because the spoke another language can now be brought into the conversation. Cool. You potentially have the opportunity to broaden your circle of friends. But what about the privacy issue? Supposing you don't want people to translate the conversation you have with family members in your mother tongue? No word on that just yet. Hopefully Facebook gets it right. [Inside Facebook]

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International Tech Companies Helped Gaddafi Spy on Libyans [Libya]

Muammar Gaddafi was a desperate man even before the civil war, and it shows more since the recent fall of Tripoli. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gaddafi had the Libyan people systematically spied upon online for years. And international tech companies helped.

Implicated in the report are tech companies from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Africa, and all had a hand in Gaddafi's obsession with security by providing phone tapping, internet filtering, and email monitoring technologies. Those companies include Boeing's own Narus, which reportedly looked into adding their own internet filtering products to Libya's established monitoring operation, and Amesys, a French security company that provided Libya with Deep Packet Inspection software back in 2009, and intercepted messages from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, MSN Messenger, and AIM.

The messages were tracked all the way up to February of this year, shortly before the uprising and when Gaddafi shut down the internet entirely. It's a shame the revolution did happen then. They could have kept on making their money. [WSJ]

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Rich Schultz

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NASA Might Have to Control the International Space Station by Remote Control [Space]

Space.com reports that, with last week's resupply failure putting NASA behind schedule, Russia needs to get its Soyuz craft back up to speed. If they don't, the ISS will be an empty vessel after the last of the current crew leaves in November.

This wouldn't be the end of the world, as NASA is capable of controlling the ISS from Earth. However, it does put pressure on Russia to see that their Soyuz rockets function so we can continue research there. The Soyuz-U spacecraft that fell back to Earth is similar in design to the craft that will carry the next batch of astronauts to the station. Russian scientists are racing to test their rockets and give them the green light for lift off, but they may not have enough time to meet their deadlines. The current crews scheduled to return mid-September and mid-November. NASA may have no choice but to go it alone thereafter. [Space.com via NPR]

Image: NASA

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