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In this week’s episode, Adrian and James discuss the takedown of Megaupload and the raid of Kim Dotcom’s “lair”. Anonymous shows what they think of the Megaupload takedown. As if you hadn’t heard enough about SOPA, over 7000 sites participated in an Internet Blackout on Wednesday Jan 18th. The repercussions of Wikipedia’s blackout were felt all across Twitter.

In the back half of the show, the Russian space program discusses a joined moon base with NASA and the ESA. In the past we’ve seen manufacturiing jobs move from the US to Asia, now we’re seeing a trend of R&D jobs moving in the same direction. Google has some detractors in India: this week they vandalize the OpenStreetMap project and have also been linked to the Mocality scandal we discussed last week. New York City takes an innovative approach to college prep: Software Engineering High School. Adrian and James both agree that they would have tried to go there if they were still in high school.

This week, Japan is so crazy! A store selling women’s clothing and accessories has decided to use an interesting ploy to draw in customers… We’ll call it “colorful language.”

Announcements

 * BasementCast 3 will be held at 4pm EST on 11-Feb-2012 in the basement of 1201 College Ave, Houghton, MI (Link to Facebook Event)
 * Submit and vote for link at http://whatstherumpus.reddit.com/

Links

 * Internet's Dr Evil sprang electronic locks in his 'Bond villain lair' and retreated to safe room as police swooped
 * Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever
 * Internet Blackout: 7,000 Sites Join Wikipedia
 * Star Wars: Uncut
 * https://twitter.com/herpderpedia
 * Russia in talks to build permanent base on Moon
 * U.S. losing high-tech jobs, R&D dominance to Asia
 * Troubling Google Contractor Allegedly Caught Vandalizing Open Street Map (Updated)
 * New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

Oh Asia, You So Crazy!
Store in Japan Employs Colorful Language to Advertise Sale

Additional Notes

 * Callback to the Mocality story from Episode 82
 * Callback to the Wikipedia vandalism from Episode 20