The letter reads:

Mr. Shapiro--whoever you are--

I have had a Blackberry for many, many years. I have worked with it here and in EUrope and I have arrived at some very important work arrangements with it.

No one thinks I am behind times except those who want to sell me another device. Your intimation that I may be looked down on because I dno't have an iPhone is hugely irritating and pompous and dumb and plain silly.

May you be faced to work on a land line forever!

Way harsh, dude.

Book learnin' Good news for would-be inhabitants of Mars, who ought to know as much about their future God Emperor as possible: Bloomberg Businessweek writer Ashlee Vance has sold The Iron Man: Elon Musk's Quest to Forge a Fantastic Future to the publisher Ecco. "As we say in Texas, git er done," Mr. Vance concluded on Twitter. But he could perhaps have a bit of competition: AllThingsD's Peter Kafka promptly responded, "But I'm writing MUSKIE: HE WAS NO HUBERT HUMPRHEY."

Emperor’s New Clothes Former Apple exec Ron Johnson’s takeover of the dowdy JCPenney brand was an unmitigated disaster, but at least it helped him in the style department! His Apple regimented wardrobe consisted of a pair of dowdy jeans and a drab, lightweight sweater that looks like it was from the "old" Penney's. Then towards the end of his reign at Penney’s, it looks like he was sporting a cost conscious JF J Ferrar slim fit suit and a Van Huesen tie. Hope he stocked up before his employee discount expired.

S-WHAT? This week, New York introduced us to a notion spawned at (of course) Yale: "SWUG," which stands for Senior Washed-Up Girl. Think of it as an entire ethos that revolves around giving zero fucks. And so it's not surprising the concept would resonate outside its original home: "I might be an adult #SWUG," tweeted PR superstar Brooke Hammerling in response to the piece. Aren't we all, lady.

Meet the Elite "ZOMGGGG!" tweeted Noosphere founder Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry earlier this morning. What could have gotten @PEG so excited?

Our invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.

Bitbusted This week, we all had front-row seats to a bubble inflating and deflated at Internet speed. On Tuesday, things looked so sunny that Business Insider's Steve Kovach tweeted, "Henry just told me Bitcoin is going to $5,000 because 'why not?!?!'" That would be Henry Blodget, whose boosterism has gotten him into trouble before. Well, on Wednesday prices peaked at $266, then promptly crashed. The currency is now somewhere in the neighborhood of $93.00.

Souvenirs Anyone remember his high school Korean? Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, who rode along on Eric Schmidt's trip to North Korea but was overshadowed by Bill Richardson's cravat, needs a little translation. Seems he picked up a piece of art while north of the 38th Parallel, but he can't remember what the damn thing says. Hence, a tweet requesting the crowd drop a little wisdom on him:

Girl gets job Today is the last day of our esteemed editor, Nitasha Tiku, who is heading over to Gawker as a Senior Writer. Please wish her well and enjoy this Vine of our final meal together.

https://twitter.com/nitashatiku/status/322786545469898753

(Photo: Flickr)

One day after hacktivist collective Anonymous claimed to have stolen 15,000 membership records from the "semi-official" North Korea government outlet uriminzokkiri.com, the country's official Flickr and Twitter accounts have also been hacked. So far, the @uriminzokkiri account has tweeted five times to signal that several North Korean websites, including ryomyong.com and uriminzokkiri.com" had been hacked.

The country's Flickr page was also hacked and defaced, loaded with images of Guy Fawkes masks and Kim Jong Un photoshopped into a pig with the word "WANTED" above him.

#OpNorthKorea seeks to help usher the North Korean people on a "journey to freedom, democracy and peace" by hacking into and defacing its government's online properties. A second press release published to Pastebin claims that Anonymous has sources inside the North Korean intranet:

We have a few guys on the ground who managed to bring th real internet into the country using a chain of long distance WiFi repeaters with proprietary frequencies, so they're not jammed (yet). We also have access to some N.K. phone landlines which are connected to Kwangmyong through dial-ups. Last missing peace of puzzle was to interconnect the two networks, which those guys finally managed to do.

Of course, because this is Anonymous, the group plans to inject pictures of cats and porn into North Korea's network to prove their access, because "North Korean citizens wanna see lulzy kittehs and hawt pr0n too."

Expect 'em everywhere, even behind you in the line for Starbucks.

Is there any situation into which Anons will not insert themselves? The Next Web reports that, as North Korea rattles its saber louder and louder, hackers flying the flag of Anonymous have basically declared war on the country's authoritarian government. In a note published on Pastebin, they addressed Kim Jong-Un: "So you feel the need to create large nukes and threaten half the world with them?
So you're into demonstrations of power?, here is ours."

We're sure Mr. Kim is quaking in his boots.

In the wake of DDoS attacks this weekend, the hackers claim they've infiltrated the country's local intranets, mailservers and webservers. As a demonstration, the Pastebin note brags they've gotten 15,000 "membership records" of the site uriminzokkiri.com (a kind of "semi-official" government outlet) and promises, "First we gonna wipe your data, then we gonna wipe your badass dictatorship 'government'."

That first part sounds maybe doable; the second sounds... ambitious.

If the North Korean government wants to stave off this threat of digital havoc, Anonymous suggests they submit to the following demands: No more making nukes and no more nuclear threats; Kim Jong-un's resignation (?!); a "free direct democracy" for North Korea, and "uncensored internet access for all the citizens!" Might want to add a couple of provisos about food and prison camps, guys.

It's not clear who's behind the note, but it ends with an address to the people of North Korea: "Don't fear us, we are not terrorist, we are the good guys from the internet. AnonKorea and all the other Anons are here to set you free." Meanwhile, clearinghouse @YourAnonNews has been tweeting the news, with the hashtag #OpNorthKorea.

Essay prompt: Would our world look so much like Neuromancer if William Gibson had never written it? Discuss.

Get this guy a Magic Mouse, stat! (Photo: NKNews.org)

Greetings from a greying 2008 MacBook, which has more crumbs stuck inside the keyboard than your scarf after eating a muffin and is so painfully slow that just opening up a new Chrome tab can take a full minute.

Know who doesn't have this problem? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. As you read this on the ancient PC your employer so kindly provided for you, Mr. Kim is clickin' around on his shiny new iMac like a boss dictator, probably using all that sweet bandwidth he hoards for himself.

Hackin'

Even as Guccifer goes on a tear, releasing Hova's credit reports and Hillary Clinton's emails, our friends in South Korea are having some computer problems of their own. Earlier today (in the middle of the afternoon, Seoul-time), computer networks at two of the country's banks and three TV stations shut down out of the blue, in what looks like the work of a malicious virus. That'll ruin an IT Department's day, all right.

The BBC reports:

"Staff at the three broadcasters said their computers crashed and could not be restarted, with screens simply displaying an error message, although they have continued to make television broadcasts, our correspondent said.

There were also reports of skulls popping up on some computer screens, which could indicate that hackers had installed malicious code in the networks, the Korean Internet Security Agency said."

A Defense spokesman told the BBC it was too early to point fingers: "We do not rule out the possibility of North Korea being involved, but it's premature to say so." (Just last week, actually, North Korea accused the U.S. of attacking its very, very limited Internet capabilities.) The Guardian says:

"Warnings reportedly appeared on some computer screens from a previously unknown group calling itself the 'WhoisTeam', showing skulls and a message stating it was only the beginning of 'our movement'."

But South Korea's rowdy northern neighbor is blamed for attacks in 2009 and 2011 and tensions are running high right now, so we're just surprised the hack didn't look like this:

(Know Your Meme)

Happy Friday. (Photo: Sodahead)

Perhaps feeling jealous of China, North Korea is now accusing the U.S. of committing cyberattacks against it. [Tech in Asia]

We've reached the point where online programming could actually make a significant dent at the Emmy's. House of Cards, anyone? [The Daily Dot]

Google Reader's demise as a wake up call: what do we lose when we become so wholly reliant on a cloud-based app? [Slate]

More techies have stepped up to the plate to fight gun violence. Big name Silicon Valley investors have launched an "innovation and investment" campaign called Sandy Hook Promise. [TechCrunch]

Guns aren't the only political issue techies are taking up. Zuck and others are working for high-skilled immigration reform. [Hillicon Valley]

Mr. Schmidt. (Photo: flickr.com/jolieodell)

Sergey's got the futuristic glasses and Larry has the Lex Luther CEO swag, but it seems Google chairman Eric Schmidt wants to be the last of the gentleman adventurers. Returned from his North Korean jaunt for just a couple of months, reports suggest he'll soon be off again, this time to the nation formerly known as Burma.

The report comes from local news outlet The Irrawaddy, which credits "informed sources." Mr. Schmidt is due in that neck of the woods, anyway. The Next Web points out he's scheduled to attend a conference March 21 in New Delhi. Plus, such a trip would be in keeping with his visit to North Korea: For years the country was closed off, ruled by a military regime that kept a tight grip over communications. Restrictions have loosened up in the last couple of years, but it's still not exactly a technological utopia.

According to The Irrawaddy:

During the trip, Schmidt will meet with senior government officials, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and leading businessmen, the sources added.

Burma is one of the world’s least connected countries, with only around 1 percent of its people having access to the Internet.

However, the quasi-civilian government of President Thein Sein, who has ushered a series of political and economic reforms since coming to power two years ago, has made expanding the country’s IT networks a national priority.

Mr. Schmidt, is this some sort of cover campaign for Secretary of State? Or just a reminder that Google is practically a nation unto itself?

Totally a serious diplomat. (Photo: dennisrodman.com)

Dennis Rodman might want to be a bit more discriminating in his choice of friends. The former NBA star has only just returned from his visit to North Korea, where he forged a bond with tinpot dictator Kim Jong-Un that's already gotten him kicked out of a fancy hotel bar for refusing to shut the hell up about the Supreme Leader's awesomeness.

Now, in advance of a U.N. vote over whether to impose sanctions on the country for its recent nuclear test, North Korea is threatening to unleash a nuclear attack on the United States if the U.N. dares to impose new sanctions on the country.

The AP reports:

An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North.

Man, we're all going to be really embarrassed if that brain-dead Red Dawn remake turns out to be prescient.

But before anyone dives under his desk and kisses his ass goodbye, it's worth noting that this belligerent Stalinist dictatorship almost certainly doesn't have the technology to put a sufficiently small warhead on a missile that can hit the U.S. Angry rhetoric is pretty much North Korea's number-one (and possibly only) export. We can't imagine the saber-rattling makes anyone on the West Coast feel too cozy, though.

Has Eric Schmidt ever been this thoroughly upstaged?

The good old days. (Photo: TopTenz.net)

One unexpected result of Eric Schmidt's bizarre mission to North Korea? The Google chairman has apparently paved the way for "basketball diplomacy" between our two nations. The AP reports that former Chicago Bulls player and Carmen Electra ex Dennis Rodman is visiting Pyongyang with a Vice documentary crew. Let's hope Vice remembers to scrub the metadata from any sensitive photos this time.

The welcome wagon. (Photo: Jean Lee, Instagram)

Now that foreign visitors in North Korea have access to mobile Internet, you probably won't be surprised to learn that someone is already using the service to post to Twitter and Instagram. The Next Web points out that Jean Lee, the AP bureau chief for North and South Korea, began the morning by announcing, "My first tweet using #Koryolink's new mobile #Internet service. Hello world from comms center in #Pyongyang."

Using that 3G connection, she's already posted a slew of moody snapshots from across the border. We particularly like this pic of a spindly Christmas tree still hanging on at the Potonggang Hotel.

Really puts your braggy snapshots from last weekend's skiing trip in perspective, huh?

These certainly aren't the first photos of North Korea posted to the service--Ms. Lee herself has been uploading latergrams for quite a while. But it looks like these photos might be the first posted via the country's new 3G service, which is itself a weird little milestone.

Imagine the sass from Sophie Schmidt if she'd been armed with Instagram when she ventured across the DMZ!