the pdf bang theory

"... a co-principal investigator for the BICEP team, acknowledges that the foreground map is an important and thorny issue. Part of the problem is that the Planck team has not made the raw foreground data available, he says. Instead, BICEP researchers had to do the best they could with a PDF file of that map that the Planck team presented at a conference. Moreover, Pryke says, conversations with members of the Planck team leave it uncertain exactly what is in the key plot. "It is unclear what that plot shows," he says."
sciencemag

I cannot believe this; one of the most important discoveries in recent years depends on a pdf file and it is unclear what it actually shows? Can the two teams please talk to each other and exchange the necessary data?
Jester was the first to report this story, but I think there is more than one jester involved in this ...

added later: Adam Falkowski explained the issue in more detail in a 2nd blog post.

elliptic curves

"... a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organisations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage."
New Scientist

Tom Leinster writes about mathematicians having to decide if "we cooperate with the intelligence services" - his article is actually a pretty good summary of the NSA/GCHQ scandal.