SciTech Bytes: Bin Laden Edition

Compiled by Ernest Reid
1 Bin Laden news broke on Twitter before television
Researchers have pinpointed exactly when the news of Osama bin Laden’s death broke and how it spread. At 10:24 p.m., a full hour before Obama’s address on May 2, Donald Rumsfeld’s former chief-of-staff Keith Urbahn leaked with the tweet, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.” The news went viral once New York Times reporter Brian Stelter retweeted the message at 10:25 p.m. to his 50,000 followers, many of whom are in the US media. From 10:45 p.m. to 2:20 a.m., users tweeted an average of 3,440 messages per second, peaking at 5,100 messages per second at 11 p.m., just as the news would be airing for most Americans.
With files from blogs.reuters and Wired

2 Bin Laden’s lack of technology gave him away
Wary of electronic surveillance, bin Laden avoided all communications technology; no Internet, no landlines, no cellphones. However, it was the lack of mass communications that attracted the interest of American intelligence. Analysts at the National Security Agency found it odd that a luxury mansion lacked any Internet or phone connections. For the world’s most wanted man, eschewing the world of electronic communication was less of a camouflage and more of a target.
With files from WSJ: All Things Digital and Scientific American

3 Abbottabad compound recreated in online shooter map
Less than a week after the news broke, an amateur game developer transformed bin Laden’s Pakistani compound into a map for Counter-Strike: Source. The map, “fy_abbottabad”, pits terrorists against counter-terrorists in first-person combat. The creator, “Fletch”, unaffiliated with the game’s developer Valve Corporation, defends his project. “I can see how people would think it is in bad taste,” he says, “but […] if that’s your opinion you may as well protest the whole game (as well as many others).” Counter-Strike: Source is the second most popular game on Valve’s online gaming service Steam.
With files from bits.blogs.nytimes.com