The Fearless Blogger

from TechCrunch.com

Late night or West Coast tweeters in the US (as well as our international counterparts in other time zones) may have noticed that Twitter’s been down since around 10PM PST tonight.

According to TechCrunch (via www.downloadsquad.com) the site has been reportedly hacked by the  ”Iranian Cyber Army”.

Before you dismiss the attack as a mere inconvenience or smirk at the tweeting minions left without an outlet for their 140 character quips, consider the following points from the TechCruch article:

Twitter does not have the best record with security issues. We have previously covered a number of incidents, and as recently as two months ago their web servers were misconfigured to reveal detailed internal network information. We also previously wrote about their admin interface having a password of ‘password’ on one account, and the well-known Twitter doc incident. It was hoped that with the hiring of a new COO, Dick Costolo, as well as a number of other high-level engineers, including security experts, that Twitter had grown out of the phase of being vulnerable to security incidents on such a large scale.

Of particular note:
(emphasis mine)

It is suggested that if you use the same password on your Twitter account with other accounts, now would be a good time to change your password on those other accounts.

Get the complete story and current status by reading the full article (providing updates,  screenshots and details regarding attack) here: Twitter Hacked, Defaced By “Iranian Cyber Army” (Developing)

Source: Twitter down, reportedly hacked by “Iranian Cyber Army”.

Representation of ADHD Twitter Search via wordle.net

Many people comment on AD/HD in their daily lives on Twitter. Some accept it; some deny it. Some mock it; some praise it.

By embedding a live stream of tweets referencing ADHD into a recent blog post, A Splintered Mind blogger Douglas Cootey uses the thousands of voices on Twitter to give us a glimpse “of what real people think about the subject”.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, one could also say that the words of thousands can paint a powerful picture.

To check out Doug’s post and share your comments, visit A Splintered Mind | Live AD/HD Feed on Twitter.

image credit: Sharyn Morrow

Glenn Beck may easily be the world’s biggest douche bag.*

There. I said it.

I’m no saint, but I try my best to practice “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”.  I also try to make a conscious effort not to fill this blog with angry rants or negativity.

But today, the gloves are coming off.

Although his actions leave a bitter taste in my mouth (a taste remarkably vinegar in nature), I’d like to just consider Glenn Beck a sorry idiot – to find compassion in my heart for the struggle life must be for such a delusional moron (I’m not one to make light of the mentally ill).

Thing is, Glenn Beck is more than a moronic douche bag.  He’s a dangerous moronic douche bag. Because unbelievably – sadly (and unbelievably sadly) – our country is filled with people who are so mentally lazy and emotionally stunted that they eagerly swallow every inane morsel he dishes out – and then regurgitate it as “fact”.

If Fox News considers what they offer to be “factual news” and not political perspectives, then I can comfortably assert that it is a fact that Glenn Beck is indeed the World’s Biggest Douche Bag (“WBDB”).

The WBDB‘s attempt to politicize Yom Kippur as an opportunity for “Fast and Prayer for the Republic” (video above) is hard to top, but this latest tidbit from the Huffington Post achieves at least a close second read more

A Very Alive Zach Braff (from his Facebook page)

In the past few months, rumors of various celebrity deaths have been popping up on the internet.  With sites like Facebook and Twitter, these rumors travel far and fast.

The most recent, occurring yesterday, involved two stories about ‘Scrubs’ star Zach Braff.

The first, seemingly posted by a New Zealand news site,  stated that

reports from New Zealand Police officials indicate that the actor fell more than 60 feet to his death on the Kauri Cliffs while on-set

In reality, the page was generated by some anti-Zach using FakeAWish.com. (Based on the site’s “In the News’ section, this site has likely been the culprit of several other celebrity death rumors)

The second was a fake CNN page (since removed)  which reported the actor’s suicide.  Chris Laganella, the site‘s owner posted the following explanation

Wayyy back in 2007, I copied CNN’s webpage and changed some text and some pictures to reflect an apparent Zach Braff suicide. This wasn’t a publicity stunt, it wasn’t a plea for hits, or to promote anything else. It was just to fool some of my friends. We’re really big Scrubs fans and really big Zach Braff fans. I made this page to fool them, called them to my computer, and showed them to get their reaction. I obviously told them it was a joke afterwards, but I neglected to take the page down.

Apparently, something clicked with someone on the internet today. I saw my bandwidth for chrisbox.com ran out earlier, so I increased it and looked at my traffic. I saw all the hits to braff.html, and started researching. This was the second largest trending topic on Twitter along with tons of links on Facebook. I had people like Perez Hilton and even an ABC spokesperson commenting on this.

Laganella continues, apologizing

So let’s just clear some stuff up. I did not make this page to intentionally fool everyone on the internet. I didn’t expect it to even be made public. Ever. I’m sorry if I scared everyone out there.

Zach, sorry if you got offended by me posting a fake suicide about you on the internet. Your 32,000 square foot house would be pretty empty without you. Thanks for (apparently) taking it lightly, since I haven’t gotten a letter about a lawsuit yet. Just so you know, I’m a huge fan; that’s the only reason I made this page, believe it or not. Also, sorry for upsetting your mother :(

Unfortunately for Chris, his apology did not get to Zach Braff before the actor posted a YouTube video.

In the video, Zach assures the world he is, indeed, alive and seems pretty good-natured about the event. However he does make a point to call out Chris for the prank, telling him he’s won Braff’s first “Douche of the Day” award for making Braff’s mom upset.

Well, its reputation at least.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times Horizon Group Management LLC, an apartment leasing and management company, has filed a libel suit against former tenant Amanda Bonnen for tweeting this to all (at the time) 22 of her followers

Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.

In a deliciously ironic turn of events, the $50,000 lawsuit and remarks such as

We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization

earned Horizon Realty a spot on Twitter’s trending topics Tuesday, effectively trashing the reputation the lawsuit was purportedly intended to protect.

You can read more about this textbook case of how not to use social media here:
Chicago’s Horizon Realty Group Sues Former Tenant Over a Twitter Post — The Phoenix Real Estate Guy.