The tech industry has been buzzing about “big data” for years now. And according to venture capital firm Accel Partners, the excitement around the big data space is not set to die down any time soon — it’s just about to enter into a new phase.

Accel is announcing tonight that it has closed on $100 million for a new investment fund called Big Data Fund 2. The fund is the same size as Accel’s first big data focused fund, which launched with $100 million back in November 2011.

As part of the new fund, Accel is also adding QlikView CTO Anthony Deighton and Imperva CEO Shlomo Kramer to its Big Data Fund Advisory Council, which Accel has said is meant to serve as a “guiding light” to help think through investments and track entrepreneurs doing interesting things in the space.

Jack Conte, musician and founder of Patreon, has been on a tear lately with a set of unique music remixes performed by him and a group of pneumatic robots that fire off audio sequences to create some amazing music.

In this video Conte used a QuNeo pad controller, a wooden surface, and a projector to create a stage for his music. He then used an Arduino-controlled solenoid hand made by Rich Humphrey to trigger various sections of the music and played and sang the rest of it. The resulting mix of DIY robotics, live performance, and general chaos is pretty infectious.

Conte even did a behind-the-scenes video to share how he built the project using Ableton, Final Cut, and a lot of patience. It’s a great look at an artist at work.

If there’s one striking thing about those PRISM slides, other than their hideous aesthetics, it’s that Apple’s allocated yellow oval, instead of a date, has the words “(added Oct 2012)” underneath it. That difference is most striking when you consider the fact that Apple competitor Microsoft cooperated with the government a full five years earlier.

The company, which denies ever having heard of PRISM, released its FISA request numbers today, starting on December 1st, 2012, through this May 2013. Though it’s plausible that the government would not have disclosed the name of the program, the NYT confirmed Apple’s participation in a government surveillance network designed to make data collection more efficient for the NSA — whatever that entails, like “a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms.”

Here’s a fun comparison from Optimal, a social advertising and analytics startup: If you look at big brands on social networks, their following seems to be growing more quickly on Twitter than on Facebook.

Optimal says it looked at the data from 4,330 brands, representing a total of 3.49 billion Facebook Likes and 595 million Twitter followers. Last week, those brands added 18.5 million new Likes and 4.5 million new followers — so on a percentage basis, their following grew 55 percent more quickly on Twitter than it did on Facebook.

Now, you might quibble about whether pitting Facebook Likes against Twitter followers is a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but those are, ultimately, the main ways that businesses can count their following on each service. You could also point out the Twitter audience is still smaller than it is on Facebook — so even though Optimal said Twitter grew more quickly, the brands in question actually got more Facebook Likes than new Twitter followers.

Following up on their massively successful $2.4M Kickstarter campagin, Oculus VR has just locked down a gigantic $16M Series A to help them build the truly amazing Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles.

In case you’ve somehow missed all the hubbub about the Rift, here’s what you need to know: it’s quite possibly the most exciting thing going on in gaming right now. Packed tight with 3D stereoscopic displays and a fistful of motion sensors, it’s the virtual reality headset that science fiction has promised us for decades. Strap the Rift on your face, fire up a compatible game, and it’s like entering a whole new world.

Still lost? Check out this clip of our own Anthony Ha demoing the Rift at CES:

The eyesore of a PowerPoint deck that contractor Edward Snowden had leaked had globally recognized names: Microsoft. Google. Yahoo. Facebook. Apple. AOL. Skype. YouTube. The NSA had allegedly collaborated with all of these Internet giants to request and access data on foreign users.

But then there was also PalTalk. WTF?

Even Stephen Colbert ribbed them last week. “You heard right. They’re monitoring PalTalk. Folks. You know what that means. We are that close to learning what PalTalk is….”

When most men go out to buy a casual shirt, they think of sizing in terms of small, medium, or large. But a new startup called Trumaker wants men to start expecting more from the fit of their day to day shirts, by bringing personalized made-to-measure fitting to the world of casual men’s shirts — all at a price point that’s in line with the current offerings from mainstream men’s clothing companies.

To help in achieving its mission, Trumaker has raised $1.9 million from a group of seed backers that include Venrock, RRE, and angels including Alex Bard, David Tisch, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn, Velos Partners, Eniac Ventures, and others.

From top to bottom, Trumaker’s business model is quite unique. Made-to-measure has been done on a more mainstream level for formal clothing such as men’s suits, but Trumaker is focusing on the casual space, with the kinds of button-down shirts that men wear with jeans. In terms of its sales force, the company has no brick and mortar stores: Instead, it employs contractors called “Outfitters” who come to clients wherever they are — at home, work, wherever — and take their measurements to ensure a proper fit.