• Terrance Aym thinks that the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico could release a giant methane bubble that ends life as we know it. He wins the “most extreme hypothetical” award. * Zonal Marking previews the final game of the World Cup. * Federal prosecutors want to charge ticket scalpers with a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for bypassing CAPTCHA to purchase tickets in bulk. * Oh, and if you are bypassing CAPTCHA on Web sites, the NSA is setting up a surveillance program that will probably catch you in the act. * In the UK, the new conservative government is giving up anti-terrorism powers, just as it promised. Police officers will no longer be authorized to stop and search people without probable cause. * Rich people are walking away from their mortgages at a greater rate than poor people. That’s why they’re rich, I guess. * Etsy engineer Mike Brittain explains how they resized 135 million images in 9 days.