Ones and Zeros: Prosecutors Rejected Aaron Swartz's Plea Last Week, Beijing's Air, Lazy Astronauts

A plea deal offered by Aaron Swartz's lawyer was rejected last week, shortly before he commited suicide.

With the government's position hardening, Mr. Swartz realized that he would have to face a costly, painful and public trial, his girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, said in an interview Sunday. The case was draining his money, and he would need to ask for help financing his defense; two of his friends had recently been subpoenaed in the case. Both situations distressed him, she said.

In a few weeks, the hacktivist was due to stand trial in a federal felony case over articles he "illegally" downloaded. Read our obituary and see recent statements from his family and girlfriend ("Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death," they wrote), JSTOR and MIT. On Sunday, Anonymous said it hacked MIT's website.

An op-ed by Patrick Blanchfield in the Daily News: "The desire to feel secure is understandable, but our fantasies are killing us. America averages 34 gun homicides a day."

Over the weekend, Beijing's asphyxiating air pollution, The New York Times reports, had reached a "jaw-dropping 755" on the US Embassy AQI monitor, on a scale of 0 to 100. Aside from the usual reasons -- cars, factories, and its geography -- it's not clear what led to such extreme levels. Complaints that spread across Weibo weren't censored (“postapocalyptic,” “terrifying” and “beyond belief," netizens wrote), but data about PM2.5 particulate matter remains under-reported by local Chinese governments. PM2.5 helped contribute to "at least 8,572 premature deaths across four major cities in 2012," according to a study by Peking University and Greenpeace.

Meanwhile Xinhua continues to call the pollution across North China as "dense fog."

With Facebook focused on its bottom line and stock price, Google is leveraging its robust ecosystem and adding value for bloggers, small businesses and people like us, argues Dave Llorens, who claims the social network's disappointingly slow buildup was always on the cards. So Google+ will win us over by being useful. And maybe even cool.

With CES struggling to maintain relevance, the simplest formula to grabbing headlines is to go bigger and badder. Like even higher def TVs. Or adding "internet" to everything. Oh, you've got an Android phone with a really nice camera? Then check out this really nice camera with Android! Plus this monstrosity: Huawei's 6.1" beast of a smartphone.

In an effort to beat the Turing test -- which means a machine would have to converse with a human without letting on that it's a… machine -- IBM engineers uploaded Urban Dictionary in its entirety to the Watson system. The problem? Armed with an encyclopedia of slang and profanity, Watson picked up some bad habits, even answering one researcher question with "bullshit." As with humans, subtlety and tact is hard to teach.

American brands like Yum's KFC were once an oasis in a country known for tainted milk, lead infused tea eggs and cooking oil scooped from sewers. Plus that disgusting viral story about cardboard filled dumplings which may or may not have been a hoax. Such questions of food quality have helped fuel the rise of the Colonel's original recipe, so much that the company makes over half of its worldwide profits in China. But they're starting to wisen up. Sick? Forget the doctor, just grab a drumstick, has the running joke on Weibo, directed at KFC's liberal and unregulated use of antibiotics. Critics point out that an inordinate amount of flack againts Western companies is coming from the state-controlled media, but it only confirms something most of us already know. KFC is kind of gross. (And despite the appearance, that actually isn't a brain pictured. Apparently, it's a kidney.)

After spending over 500 days locked in a windowless Russian warehouse, a team of elite astronauts turned into unmotivated slobs. They slept more, worked less and played a shit ton of Guitar Hero (and Counter-Strike). Elon Musk might want to think about investing in the next version of Wii Fit.

In a Dec. 21 paper in Science, a team of researchers describe their process for creating an entire DNA molecule from a single cell, a breakthrough that will lead to better early cancer treatment, safer prenatal testing for genetic diseases and surely annoying storylines for bad television.

Influenza and pneumonia accounted for 7.3 percent of deaths last week, reported the CDC, just above the 7.2 percent epidemic threshold with 9 out of 10 regions in the U.S. showing "elevated" flu activity. Google is on the case, but "for God's sake," moaned Michael Specter: "go get a flu shot."

Via Wonder Junkie: This footage is from Operation Hardtack, a series of 35 nuclear tests conducted by the United States in 1958 in the Pacific Ocean. This explosion is from an 8-kiloton nuclear bomb named Umbrella.