For every successful site, there’s one just like it that addresses what users claim to hate about the original. The RC Cola to their Coke, if you will. And Facebook’s competitor is Diaspora.

Diaspora is essentially Facebook, but with one difference; the data is on your computer, not Diaspora’s servers. In theory, this means that Diaspora users have more privacy; in practice, we’re pretty sure it’s got a long way to go. But all traffic on the site is encrypted, so that’s nice, at least. It’s also halfway between Facebook and that cornea-scarring site called MySpace; as it can be hosted anywhere, there are infinite numbers of configurations and customizable stuff to throw at it.

Can Diaspora dethrone Facebook? Probably not. Unless they ban Zynga. Then we’re talking.

[ via Gizmodo ]

The man to the right is not David Barksdale, because while Vader was evil, he wasn’t a douchebag.

Who’s David Barksdale? He seems to be the Google engineer who invaded the privacy of several minors in some kind of weird, emotionally stunted power play. From all accounts, it doesn’t look like Barksdale was interested in touching anybody in their bathing suit area. Not even the parents of the teens, who he met at a local technology group, seem to think he’s Pedobear in disguise.

But he was doing such charming things as tapping into Google Voice call logs, reading IM conversations, and unblocking himself from lists after these teens decided they didn’t feel like talking to a 27-year-old nerd drunk with power. So, yeah, Google fired him, and they say something like this has only happened once before.

Unless somebody has some hot phone lovin’ over Google Voice. It’s right in their EULA; that’s fair game.

[ via TechCrunch ]

Mark Zuckerberg has made billions off of basically demanding you tell the world about your crotch itching, and has been busted repeatedly for crapping all over user privacy. In fact, Facebook is one of the most unethical social networks out there, and people mostly only stay on it because A) their friends are all on it and B) it’s still way better than either Friendster or MySpace.

Now Zuckerberg, while dealing with an overdramatic movie that makes him look like a huge douche, is complaining that one of the multiple frivolous lawsuits that he’s got to deal with (you don’t make a few billion without somebody deciding they can get a piece with the right lawyer) is violating his privacy.

At root is a suit by one Paul Ceglia. Ceglia is claiming he’s got a contract with Zuckerberg that gives him 84% of Facebook. How, precisely, a guy who runs a wood-pellet business five hours away from where Zuckerberg lived would be involved, let alone why Zuckerberg would sign a contract giving him 84% of Facebook, is something Ceglia hasn’t bothered to explain in public yet, but we’re betting it’s got something to do with Ceglia being full of crap. This feeling is only intensified by Ceglia’s legal moves, which are basically designed to inconvenience and embarrass Zuckerberg. He’s trying to keep the trial in New York state courts while Zuckerberg is trying to relocate it to federal court (i.e. they’re fighting over who has to get on a lot of airplanes), and Ceglia is trying to force Zuckerberg to turn over personal details. Zuckerberg, of course, has suddenly become a profound advocate of personal privacy.

On the other hand, screw him, he’s worth $4 billion and he’ll win this, so let’s all point and laugh at the rich hypocrite played by Jesse Eisenberg. You know, the guy they get when Michael Cera turns you down.

[ via Slate ]

Blizzard recently announced a really stupid but probably necessary idea; namely forcing everybody on their forums to go by their real name, and only their real name. There were reasonable objections, such as the problems it would create for women or the fact that the entire idea of World of Warcraft is about creating a fantasy persona in the first place, and that some people take these games just a little too seriously.

Then there were unreasonable, overly dramatic objections, which is generally what we expect from people who take Internet forums seriously, and most of which basically centered around people being too ashamed to admit they play video games to their friends. Our personal favorite was the idiot who gave his real name to BBC News in order to complain that if the government or the charities he worked with discover he played a computer game in his spare time, you know, they might not hire him, as if it were a shameful thing that nobody did except for a special few. What, does he work for the Israelis or something? The drama about “I don’t want anybody to know I’m a gamer” is ridiculous since gamers aren’t exactly an oppressed minority: 40% of American adults were playing video games as of 2006, and that number has probably doubled by now thanks to the millions of Wiis Nintendo stamped out.

Either way, Blizzard partially gave in: you can still be an obnoxious jerk on the WoW forums, but they’re going full steam ahead on Battle.net. Blizzard fans cheered for their partial victory, although we’re surprised Blizzard didn’t just say “fine, first inital and full last name. Also, whiners? We’re deleting your characters. ALL OF THEM. What are you going to do? Play ‘Age of Conan’? MUHUHAHAHA! PAY! PAY US MORE, SLAVES!” C’mon, you know Bobby Kotick was thinking it.

[ via Kotaku ]

So Kevin Smith bought three tickets on a plane.  The airline overbooked and only let him keep one of the seats he paid for.  Then they kicked him off the flight for being too fat and told him he should have bought more than one seat.  Now he won’t stop talking about it. [Filmdrunk]

HOLY CRAP. School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home. [BoingBoing]

Here’s a bootleg of 4chan founder Christopher Poole (moot) speaking at TED 2010 on the importance of privacy. [Youtube]

Okay, here’s the real moot video. [Youtube]

Stephen Colbert is reading Cat Fancy.  Your argument is invalid. [WarmingGlow]

I don’t remember this version of Batman Begins. [ComicsAlliance]

I meant to post this “Live Avatar Role Playing” video on Monday, but then I forgot.  Where are my pants?  Are you my grandson?  Here, have a Werther’s Original.  [Urlesque]

Placing pictures from the past in their present day surroundings [Unreality]

Hollywood’s most eeeevil actors. [InsideMovies]

ShadyURL takes your normal link and makes it look extra dangerous. [Geekologie]

VIDEO BELOW: The most effective ad for anti-depressive medication ever. [via THD]

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Facebook is now rolling out the changes to users’ default privacy settings (more on that here).  Some people (myself included) don’t like what Facebook now considers “publicly available information”: your friends list, name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and all the pages of which you are a fan.  Also, now when a friend of yours adds an app, that app can access your publicly available information, even though it was your friend, not you, who downloaded that app.  Some people are going so far as to ask if this is Facebook’s “Microsoft moment“.  It didn’t take long for at least one person to get burned by the changes.  He just happens to be one of the founders of Facebook as well:

As a result of a new policy that by default makes users’ profiles, photos and friends lists available on the web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available [...]
[Kashmir] Hill reported that while Zuckerberg has in the past offered very limited access to his Facebook information, his profile is now “uber-public.” Hill reported: “I can see his wall, his photo albums, and his events calendar. Zuckerberg recently became a fan of Taylor Swift, uploaded graphic photos of The Great Goat Roast of 2009 three months ago, and plans to attend the Facebook holiday party on Friday night. I can even tell you where it’s going to be held.” [Yahoo]

Yeah, well, I can tell you what kind of underwear he likes and what shampoo he uses (commando and Prell).   I just wish he’d leave the light on when he’s sleeping.  These night vision goggles give me a headache.