Bosnian police say they've identified the teen filmed throwing puppies in a river. (She now faces a $6,400 fine for animal cruelty.) The girl lives in a town called Bugojno, which means 4chan was probably correct in its identification.
Having trouble stalking your Facebook friends efficiently? Help is on the way! Facebook is currently testing a new feature (dubbed the "Stalker Button" by Mashable) that makes online stalking easier than ever. So what does it do?
The new feature, which was discovered by AllFacebook.com, appears as a link reading "Subscribe to [Your Friend]" underneath your friends' profile pictures:
Essentially, "subscribing" to someone means that their Facebook activity will appear in your "notifications" drop-down, like so:
Unlike the current "Subscribe via SMS" feature, "Subscribe to X" would update you on activity beyond status updates—including whenever your "subscription" posts photos, videos, links, and notes. According to Facebook:
This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they've subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).
A few questions remain unanswered: Will the subscription notices only cover posting "new content," or will subscribers be notified when their "subscriptions" join groups, RSVP to events, or "like" things? Will the feature be automatically enabled on all users' accounts? And most importantly: Will users be able to opt out?
The thing is, the information is already public, and we're sure the feature will be convenient for someone (your mom, maybe, or your ex-girlfriend, or the guy who is always trying to look down your shirt at work). But where the News Feed took your activity and put it on a big scrolling list for everyone to see, this allows people to target you specifically, and be notified of your activity automatically. Surely, that's not the work of a company dedicated to privacy and user controls.
As All Facebook notes, this is most likely yet another attempt at adding some Twitter-like functionality to the Facebook, which has an oddly jealous relationship with the much smaller Twitter. But ultimately it seems more like an attempt at making Facebook an even more convenient tool for stalkers than it already is.
[All Facebook via Mashable; pics via All Facebook]
4chan, the anarchic Internet messageboard, appears to be experiencing an identity crisis. Whereas terror campaigns against tweens were once planned amid stomach-churning images, a strong streak of do-gooderism has taken hold. In fact, 4chan is being downright nice these days.
Most recently, 4chan's /b/ messageboard rallied to cheer up an old man. Someone posted a flyer they spotted in their local grocery store: "Wanted: People for Birthday Party." The old man in the ad, 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua, looked sad, and /b/ was touched. With the same blinding efficiency once applied to the harassment of 11-year-olds, they sent a raft of cards, flowers and well-wishes to the American Legion Hall in Massachusetts where the party will be hosted on Saturday.
The whole board is still collectively cooing over Lashua, posting pictures of the cards they're sending him and generally patting each other on the back for being such a good faceless Internet horde. Wrote one user:
For once, /b/ has warmed up my heart out of proportions..
I feel bad for just hearing about his birthday today. I can't really send a card now, as it'd get like 1-2 weeks to late due to how far I live away.
could you possible put my name on the card as well, with this note?:
"Happy birthday William. May you live the rest of your life the way you deserve to. You're not forgotten."
(Lashua's grandson, meanwhile, has spoken out on the link aggregation service Reddit, thanking people for cards, but explaining that Lashua has more than enough family and friends coming to his party without any random Internet people showing up, thanks!)
This feat of niceness comes on the heels 4chan tracking down a British woman and a Bosnian girl who were filmed abusing a cat and adorable puppies, respectively. Seemingly overnight, 4chan has turned into the comments section of Good Housekeeping Magazine's website.
It's a strange look for a board whose users pride themselves on their image as a vengeful "Internet hate machine." 4chan's traditional aversion to niceness is evident in the fact that users have no less than three derogatory terms for people who show any trace of benevolence on the Internet: "moralfags," "white knights," and "Internet good guys." [Yours truly has been named both a "white knight" and an "Internet Good Guy" by 4chan's wiki of record (NSFW).]
What's responsible for the sudden turn towards light? It could be that users realize the media attention drawn to the site by good deeds is preferable to the hatchets that come out whenever they bully random kids. One user wrote: "Everybody send him nice cards it will be pretty cool not to mention 4chan could use some pure honest good publicity." Or it could be that coverage of previous good deeds have attracted a softer user, traditionally known on 4chan as "the cancer." Or, it could just be some elaborate prank meant to sicken us with its earnestness. (Seriously, 4chan? Helping an old person?)
But the old /b/-tards who get their kicks posting kiddie porn and ultra-violent images are still hanging around, no doubt incensed by 4chan's new niceness. One of them had a not-nice idea for a present for old man Lashua: "I sent him a dead cat lawl lol ol lol."
New York's bedbug panic is no longer confined to the hoi polloi: The superhuman cyborgs who work in Google's Gotham uber-office have found bedbugs at work. Google is infected. Repeat: Google. Is. Infected.
A Google marketer posted the news via Twitter about an hour ago:
Business Insider was the first to pick up the news, which is now sure to spread quickly online and intensify New York's spreading bedbug panic. To be sure, we know of no actual "scientific" evidence of bedbugs spreading via the internet, much less through a search engine, but can you ever be too careful? We sure don't think so.
A former Washington Post reporter is said to writing a comprehensive profile of Mark Zuckerberg. Comprehensive enough, maybe, to include the old romantic entanglement Zuckerberg just fibbed about. Prepare to do a little more sweating, Mark.
The public narrative of 26-year-old Zuckerberg's dating life has basically been the story of Priscilla Chan, the comely medical school student he met at Harvard and later lured out to California. It's a sweet, romantic and simple timeline that Zuckerberg likes to perpetuate. Hey, a guy's got to keep the peace on the homefront, right? Maybe that explains the white lie he told at the Computer History Museum earlier this summer:
As an example of fiction, they wrote the movie and said that I was creating Facebook to get girls. I've been dating the same girl since even before Facebook.
Oh, Mark. That's adorable but untrue! Actually, Zuckerberg dated an unnamed UC Berkeley undergraduate during a break in his relationship with Chan, business reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in The Facebook Effect, his recent tome on the company. Chan was still at Harvard, and Zuckerberg was running Facebook in Palo Alto, and he was apparently going through a mack daddy phase: He bought a shiny black Infiniti and named it "the Warthog" while dating this mystery girl. (Who, by the way, he met only because he had invented Facebook, which contradicts what he said at the museum but which significantly ups his cred among fellow bros.)
Oddly, Zuckerberg made his dating fib during a public Q&A with Kirkpatrick, who didn't bother to correct the Facebook CEO. But now Huffington Post tech editor and former WaPo scribe Jose Antonio Vargas is reportedly writing an in-depth profile of Zuckerberg — a profile that may well delve into his dating life.
Zuckerberg's granted Vargas access to his inner circle, according to Kara Swisher at All Things D, so he might just skip the tough questions: Who is this mystery ex? Has she "friended" Chan or, worse, "poked" her? Is it possible she's a spy for Russia or — more terrifying — Google? Is she secretly to blame for Facebook Beacon, somehow? What did she know and when did she know it?
Facebook's privacy rollbacks have given Zuckerberg something of a credibility problem, but we've got a solution: Tell us what you know, dear readers, about this secret ex and possible Berkeley radical and we'll help the gifted young CEO come clean. There are worse secrets than possibly, briefly being a player in your early 20s, as we suspect Zuck now knows.
[Photo of Zuckerberg on a visit to Berkeley via Mathieu Thouvenin/Flickr]
A new Times Square TV ad depicts Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a creep in an ice cream truck. It's just the latest critical swipe at the company, Fast Company's Ariel Schwartz reports.
Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto has become increasingly controversial in the past year as the Internet giant made private GMail contacts public with Google Buzz, collected personal information from Wi-Fi networks in Street View vehicles, and most recently teamed with with Verizon to hammer out questionable net neutrality policies. While it's possible (and maybe even probable) that none of this was done with malicious intent, Google's capacity to invade our privacy is scary. That's why Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, took to Times Square this week to protest Google's privacy invasions.
Consumer Watchdog's Times Square ad, which is visible on 540-square-foot jumbotron, portrays Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a creepy character in a Google-branded ice cream truck that drives down a street while collecting personal information from children. Text at the bottom encourages viewers to text a telephone number for more information (spoiler: the text results in a reply asking for your name and email address to "help stop Google from invading your online privacy!").
It's a move that will draw attention to Google's ham-handed privacy blunders from people who might not have otherwise been aware of them. That's a good thing for consumers, but Google might want to gear up for damage control. Check out Consumer Watchdog's full investigation into Google here, and watch the Times Square ad above.
A Detroit-area woman was kicked off a jury for commenting on Facebook that it's "gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're GUILTY" before the trial was over or the defense even presented its case. Guess what her punishment was?
Not only was 20-year-old Hadley Jons booted from the jury for the offense but the judge also ordered that she write a five-page essay about the Sixth Amendment. That's the one that guarantees the right to a fair trial, but you'll learn that once Hadley posts her essay on Facebook and tags everyone in the world just to get some petty revenge.
Jons' status update was discovered by the 17-year-old son of the defense attorney. Since the only thing kids are good for these days is Facebook stalking, we're glad it's finally been put to some good use. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the defendant that Jons had said was guilty was eventually found guilty of resisting arrest. Take that, justice!
[Photo of Jons via Myspace]
Apple is notoriously squeamish about gay-themed iPhone apps. This ambivalence seems to have made the jump to Ping, The music social network Apple announced today. In a promo screenshot, they censored Lady Gaga's tweets celebrating the demise of Prop 8.
Apple left out a string of tweets in which Gaga lauds the downfall of California's anti-gay marriage law in its introduction of Ping, the new iTunes-based social network which lets you connect with artists and other music fans.
The de-gay-ed Gaga Ping feed:
Gaga's gay-loving Twitter feed, with the Prop 8 tweets highlighted
Just wait until Gaga starts tweeting about her penis. [via ReadWriteWeb]
Enjoy the fine mess, Matt Williams. Digg's newly announced CEO has the privilege of cleaning up after a redesign that has users up in arms, the social news site scrambling to add back old features, and rival Reddit surging.
Digg co-founder and interim CEO Kevin Rose recently called the job of running Digg "a pain in the ass that I would never wish on my worst enemy," and that was two weeks before a Digg redesign rolled out to highly unfavorable reviews. It's not Rose's pain any more; he's resuming his duties as Digg's chief architect and installed Amazon veteran Williams as CEO today.
Williams must now quell an audience rebellion and, apparently, fend off an ascendant rival: The controversy over Digg's redesign has sent traffic at rival Reddit surging, according to numbers floated by ReadWriteWeb:
After stepping into the CEO role to clean up what he saw as the DiggBar mess left by fellow co-founder Jay Adelson, Rose is now leaving his own successor with mop-up duty. It's Digg tradition now.
Mark Zuckerberg said society has loosened up about privacy. But the Facebook CEO was talking about his users; now that he's a defendant in a New York lawsuit, Zuckerberg is calling for stronger privacy protections.
Zuckerberg's lawyers say Paul Ceglia, the graphic designer suing Zuckerberg for control of Facebook, is trying to pry into the 26-year-old CEO's personal life. Ceglia wants the case switched back to New York state court from federal court, a move Zuckerberg's attorneys are trying to quash, saying it's part of a plot to "harass defendants under the pretext of obtaining jurisdictional discovery into Zuckerberg's private life," according to Reuters.
But what could possibly be left to reveal about Zuckerberg's private life while attending Harvard, back when he knew Ceglia? His interactions have been amply investigated and documented in lawsuits filed by former business partners, like Eduardo Saverin, and by alleged former business partners, like Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Zuckerberg's college behavior was also examined in a university investigation into his website FaceMash, and during the Winklevoss twins' unsuccessful attempt to go after Zuckerberg on student conduct charges. Zuckerberg was also written about extensively in the Harvard Crimson while still enrolled, and his college days were subsequently featured in at least two major books, Ben Mezrich's Accidental Billionaires (now being made into a movie) and David Kirkpatrick's Facebook Effect. And various other intrepid journalists looked into Zuckerberg's Harvard days, as well.
It seems unlikely that Ceglia, a client Zuckerberg met on Craigslist, would know or even be able to discover anything of consequence not already in the public record about collegiate Zuckerberg. Maybe the CEO, like so many of his users, just tends to guard his privacy reflexively. Better safe than sorry, after all — at least when it's your own privacy on the line.
[Thanks to our own Jesse Ma for the tip]
Last night Google rolled out a bug that would be comical if it weren't so astounding and grating: Open your Gmail inbox, and old school ragtime music starts playing, and can't be stopped. The solution: Use less Google.
The bug, you see, only occurs if you're using Google's browser, Chrome, and if you're among those initially offered a new Gmail feature called "Priority Inbox," which was rolled out last night and which automatically decides which of your mail is most urgent and puts it at the top of your inbox screen. The ragtime music is only supposed to play when you select a link about Priority Inbox; it's apparently connected to an embedded YouTube video demonstrating the feature, a video that's supposed to be visible and audible only after you click the Priority Inbox link. There's a video of the bug in action above; the music starts about eight seconds in. (The video shows how to turn off the music, but it comes right back whenever you load a new Gmail page.)
The fix for now: Switch from Google's browser to Firefox, per the Google support forums, or mute your computer. There are also reports that activating Priority Inbox will banish the music. Google, for its part, says it is working on fixing the bug, though it's been active for more than 12 hours now. It's fairly amazing that this bug made it past Google's testers; perhaps Priority Inbox, like Google Buzz, bypassed the company's customary quality assurance process. Given how long it's remained unfixed, and given that Priority Inbox will be rolling out to new users throughout this week, get ready for random bursts of ragtime from fellow coworkers, roommates and café patrons. If that happens, just have some giggle water and tell the offender he's being a real palooka.
[Twitter, Electricpig, Techie Buzz]
On Monday, this graphic video of an unknown girl throwing puppies into a river appeared online, much to the consternation of internet-using animal-lovers everywhere. But don't fret: The weirdos and agitators of 4chan's /b/ are hot on the trail.
Update: Bosnian police say they've identified the girl in the video. See below.
Warning: This is a graphic video! Seriously! Don't watch it if you don't think you can handle animal abuse.
On Monday afternoon, this video was posted to a thread on /b/—the unruly, lawless "Random" board on the popular imageboard site 4chan—along with a characteristically sweet message: "Find this dumb little bitch and throw her into a river."
The LiveLeak video page to which the /b/ thread linked listed what little information the video's poster could glean from the short clip:
We can determine from the picture so few things.
One, based on assumption, she probably has a facebook account, no matter what country they're in.
Two, she is 5ft 6in-5ft 8in, blond, eye color unknown, Caucasian
She has something written upside-down on her red sweater, barely legible, might be of assistance if it's the product of a local store.
Let's work together on exposing this sicko! Use the comments.
4channers quickly got to work. If there's one thing /b/ is really good at (besides calling each other "fags"), it's finding people—something we all learned the other week, when the board rapidly found a woman who dumped a cat in a garbage bin, and harassed her into confessing and apologizing.
They didn't disappoint: The 4chan miscreants quickly identified the owner of the YouTube account that had uploaded the video, his hometown, and, possibly, his Facebook account. And not just that: /b/tards picked out two Facebook profiles they thought were most likely the girl in the video, as well as profiles of friends and the camera man.
So: Did they get their girl? Uh. I hope so? Because they've already started harassing her and the people around her. The /b/tards are confident that they're right, and they've got some evidence: "Martin," the Bosnian kid on whose YouTube account the video was apparently uploaded first, seems to have posted on a Croatian gaming forum here (via) complaining about 4chan. (Based on a shoddy Google translation, it also sounds like he admits to having something to do with the video—especially in this comment, where he talks about a diseased dog.)
But, unlike the cat bin lady, no one has come forward to officially confess or take the blame, which means that the people singled out by 4chan could just be a couple of regular Balkan teenagers at the wrong end of the unfocused wrath of hundreds of bored assholes.
/b/, for its part, isn't unanimously on board with the apparent trend towards the 21st century version of stringing people up in the town square. But not because dissenting posters have a moral or ethical problem with vigilantism—because they have a problem with caring about stuff. This screencap of one of 4chan's threads (via) gives you a good sense of the tenor of the debate: "This place used to be the darkest pit of the internet... now this place is full of justicefags all over." The future of /b/: Aggressive nihilism versus wrathful lynch mobbing. What a choice!
Update: Per Gawker's Adrian Chen, Bosnian police have launched an investigation into the video, and another video surfaced on YouTube purporting to be an apology.
Here's the alleged "official apology":
Update 2: Police in Bosnia say they've found the girl, who lives in Bugojno—the town 4chan identified.
Transformers Director Michael Bay Offers $50,000 Bounty for Puppy-Throwing Girl
Puppy-Throwing Girl Caught in Bosnia
What happens when a small business owner gets on Google's bad side? In Ryan Abood's case, the answer is, "your business gets crushed and you spend a year and a half in internet Siberia." Do not trifle with The Google.
Abood kind of had it coming. The proprietor of GourmetGiftBaskets.com had been indirectly buying links to boost his position in Google search results, a big no no in the Google rulebook, he writes in Inc. magazine. But the rulebreaking was inadvertent; Abood said he had paid for ethical search engine optimization only, and one of the two companies (!) he hired to boost his search ranking broke with that policy. The entrepreneur was hardly a Google-gaming pro, in fact he had only thought to dabble in what's known as "SEO" after noticing that his parents' flower shop had done a tidy gift basket business thanks to its organic Google rank.
Crossing Google's guidelines got Abood effectively ejected from search results right before the 2008 holiday season, when he lost close to $2 million in business. He lost another $2 million or so in 2009 and didn't get back atop the search results until June, after Google revamped its search results. Google's Matt Cutts has confirmed the businessman's story via Twitter and added the warning, "our guidelines are clear on this topic." Translation: Let Ryan Abood be a lesson to the rest of you about how Google can bring the pain. Chilling.
Secret-sharing website Wikileaks.org's tagline is "We open governments." But the organization itself is about as open as North Korea. That's why we've launched Wikileakileaks.org: your source for Wikileaks-related secrets, documents and rumors!
Wikileaks has many secrets, and it works hard to keep them: its funding, structure and sources are almost completely unknown. (Wikileaks' official spokesman is known only by a pseudonym: "Daniel Schmitt".) This is in part because Julian Assange, Wikileaks' enigmatic ex-hacker founder, is notoriously sensitive to media coverage of his organization, sometimes cutting off reporters completely after a single unfavorable article. (This happened to us.) But as details emerge about Assange's bizarre Swedish sexual molestation case, its becoming clear that there's more to him than his cool demeanor and lofty proclamations suggest.
This doesn't exactly fit with the site's ethos of radical transparency. In many ways Wikileaks really has opened things up, breaking big stories and providing a much-needed check on excessive government secrecy. But championing transparency at all costs has lead to some controversial moves, too: For example, its leak of nearly 100,000 classified Afghanistan war documents may have put America's Afghan informants' lives at risk. And the organization has recently come under fire for releasing uncensored court documents from a lurid Belgian pedophile-serial killer case, one which contains dubious allegations against a notable politician and details about underage victims.
It's time to give Wikileaks the Wikileaks treatment—expose it to the same sort of radical transparency it advocates and see what turns up. We've launched Wikileakileaks.org as a place for tipsters to share documents, secrets and rumors relating to any aspect of the organization. Your anonymity will be totally protected if you send in info. And we'll vet whatever we get and post it with commentary. So head on over to Wikileakileaks.org, or email leaks@wikileakileaks.org, and let's open up Wikileaks.
Wikileakileaks [wikileakileaks.org]
YouTube, the video brand most closely associated with freak babies, freak kids and cheap pranks, is reportedly poised to charge for its high quality content. Whatever high quality content, that is, the Google video service can drum up.
The company is negotiating with major Hollywood studios for content to fuel a pay-per-view version of YouTube, the Financial Times said, a service that would presumably connect to your TV through a Google set-top box. So instead of just watching television shows free and reliably on your television, you could hook your TV up to the Hollywood studios via Google, via YouTube, via a special Google set-top contraption, via your credit card. Or you could just stick with Keyboard Cat, who will remain as free and easy to watch as ever.
[Pic: Karl Jonsson/Flickr]
Unhappy with a deal that Digg.com's management cut with major media companies, the social news site's users turned Digg's front page into a de facto advertisement for rival aggregator Reddit today, upvoting scores of Reddit links.
Reddit, as it turns out, is actually owned by a major media company (Condé Nast), but that's not the point. The point is that angry Digg users will knife you hard if you cross them. Right now 10 of the 16 news links on the front of Digg point to Reddit, and two more point to stories covering the Digg rebellion. This is retribution for gripes about the new version 4 of Digg, which allows publishers to submit all their new articles directly to the site, bypassing the form they previously had to fill out manually. A bug in the new system let a link to a short Paris Hilton quote remain on the front page for hours on Saturday, further enraging users.
"When Facebook changes, everyone complains," wrote one Digg commenter, "but the difference is they stay because the BASIC FUCKING function still exists. Maybe not today, next week or this month, but one day Digg will be a ghost town. " Either that or everyone will get really angry for a day, play some juvenile pranks like upvoting porn and Reddit links, and then Digg will change some things and everything will revert to normal on Tuesday.
You missed a big nasty debate over the weekend about the extremely low number of women entrepreneurs and what's being done to change it.
It all started when the Wall Street Journal's Shira Ovide published a Friday editorial headlined "Addressing The Lack of Women Leading Tech Start-ups."
According to Ovide, "only about 11% of U.S. firms with venture-capital backing in 2009 had current or former female CEOs or female founders."
She wrote, "in start-up land, where the good idea is supposed to trump social status and everything else, the lack of women in positions of authority stands out."
She quoted Fred Wilson's solution: "The industry needs catalysts to start a virtuous circle of more successful women-led tech start-ups leading to more women in tech-startups."
All of this really ticked off TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who wrote a post challenging women to stop blaming men for their problems.
"The next time you women want to start pointing the finger at me when discussing the problem of too few women in tech, just stop. Look in the mirror. And realize this – there are women like [Rachel] Sklar who complain about how there are too few women in tech, and then there are women just who go out and start companies. Let's have less of the former and more of the latter, please."
Like Arrington, some couple authors and entrepreneurs also argue it's women that are holding women back.
Arrington mentions a conversation with Cyan Banister, co-founder of Zivity: "Women [stink] as entrepreneurs a lot of the time because they are nurturing and not risk-taking enough by nature...When men roll the dice and take risks, society doesn't punish them at all, and it's in their nature to take stupid risks."
Catherine Kaputa, author of The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business, writes:
"Men are much more likely to help anyone, even someone they barely know," Kaputa says. "Women think they need to know someone fairly well in order to help them so women don't have as many contacts as men. That's a weakness in business."
Phyllis Chesler, author of Women Inhumanity To Women, writes:
"Women told me how difficult it is to work for another woman and how women on the job often compete in underhanded or backstabbing ways. Women rarely admitted that they themselves are harder on women than on men, that they hold higher and different standards for women than they do for men, and that they often never forgive each other [for things they] routinely forgive men [for]."
Another possible reason for the lack of women in tech?
We're currently witnessing the first generation of women entrepreneurs, so naturally the growth will take some time.
In an article from Microsoft Business, Joanna L. Krotz, writes:
"We're now experiencing the first generation or so of widespread success for women-owned businesses. That means the been-there/done-that part of the mentor equation isn't as deep or wide for women as it is for men. That holds true for mentors and entrepreneurs alike."
The Daily Mail has managed to secure a copy of the police report detailing Julian Assange's alleged molestation of two Swedish women. Inside, we learn that Assange's preferred method of seducing groupies is to feed them cheese.
The report certainly supports the "Julian Assange Banged His Groupies" theory over the "Pentagon smear campaign" explanation of his recent sex scandal. We've already heard about Assange's fling with Anna Ardin, the leftist politician who helped bring him to Sweden. The Daily Mail elaborates on the second, younger woman, "Woman B." The 20-something became fascinated with Assange after hearing of Wikileaks' huge Afghanistan war documents leak. According to the Mail, "over the following two weeks she read everything she could find about him on the internet and followed news reports about his activities."
Woman B at Assange's press conference
When she heard Assange was headed to Sweden, she staked out a press conference, wearing a "shocking-pink cashmere jumper." Afterwards, she got herself invited to lunch with Assange and two male companions. This is when Assange started to deploy his highly classified moves according to the police report, as reported by the Daily Mail:
The Cheese Feeding Strategy
Assange seemed pleased to have such an ardent admirer fawning over him and, she said, would look at her ‘now and then'. Eventually he took a closer interest.
She explained in her statement that he was tucking into cheese served on Swedish crispbread when she asked if he thought it was good.
Assange looked at her directly and started to feed her.
The Ask-for-a-laptop-charger Approach
He told her that he needed a charger for his laptop, and she eagerly offered to help...
They went on a vain search for the charger. She bought him a travel card for the metro because he said he didn't have any money.
The Movie Theater Heavy Petting Plan
At 6pm they entered a bijou cinema to watch a short film about the ocean, called Deep Sea. In the darkness Assange became amorous.
At one point they moved to the back row, where it is clear from the woman's statement that the pair went far beyond kissing and fondling.
The "I Can't Pay for My Train Ticket Because The U.S. Government Is Tracking Me" Ploy
She wanted to go to a hotel, but he said he would like to see her home.
Again she bought his £10 train ticket because he had no cash and said he didn't want to use his credit card in case his movement was being tracked.
He spent most of the 45-minute journey surfing the internet on his laptop, reading stories about himself and twittering or texting on his mobile phone.
The Have Sex In the Morning, Get Her to Buy You Another Train Ticket Then Never Call Her Again Tact
They parted on friendly terms and she bought his train ticket back to Stockholm. When she asked if he would call, he said: ‘Yes, I will.'
But he did not and neither did he answer her calls.
Woman B then called Anna Ardin, whom she'd met at a seminar, to talk about her experience. When they realized they'd been double-crossed, they went to the police. (Ardin said she merely went to support Woman B, who wanted to inquire about making Assange take an STD test, as he didn't use a condom despite her insistence.) Then things got weird, the police issued an arrest warrant for rape in Woman B's case and quickly withdrew it. The molestation charges are still pending. The police reports are heavily redacted so it's hard to tell exactly what Assange did to warrant the accusation, but it appears to be related to his refusal to wear a condom.
Ben Huh has one of the best names in tech. He also runs the lucrative Cheezburger Network meme factory. Now, he's made a public gambit for Reddit, the popular linkdump currently locked in combat with owner Conde Nast.
Huh was apparently following Reddit's public "fuck you" to Conde Nast yesterday: Users and mods flooded the site with Prop 19 propaganda after Conde Nast refused to accept ad dollars from the pot-legalizing law's supporters.
Huh posted on The Daily What (a Cheezburger property):
Hi TDWers, I'm Ben Huh, and I run the Cheezburger Network (which includes The Daily What, if you were too Prop 19'd to notice). I have made this offer privately to a few people associated with Reddit, and I'll say it publicly now:
I believe that Reddit is one of the best communities I have seen on the Internet. I also believe that Reddit would benefit from more resources and less corporate interference. We can offer all of the above. And we'd love to buy Reddit and all those pesky troublesome users that we love so much.
Condé, we'll be waiting for a call.
Cheers,
Ben Huh.
Huh told Techcrunch he's "totally serious about buying Reddit," and that the site would be a better fit in his eclectic portfolio than with boring old Conde Nast. We agree! Conde Nast, which bought Reddit in 206, never really "got" the site—its largest web property by many measures. It's starved Reddit of financial resources to the point that Reddit has literally started begging users for money. (Also, Conde should have realized anything pot-related is huge on the Internet.)
And for Huh, whose Cheezburger Network includes such highbrow cultural institutions as FAIL blog and Engrish Funny, purchasing Reddit would basically cement his place as the king of Internet junk.
