North Korea's official Twitter account only follows three, and only three, other accounts. One belongs to Jimmy Dushku, a 25-year-old investor who's been to almost 60 Coldplay concerts and counts The Fast and the Furious as his favorite movie. What? [Mother Jones]

They're not saying how they know, exactly, but U.S. officials are convinced that the cyberattacks on the consumer-facing websites of American banks are the work of the Iranian government. [NYT]

Soon you will buy prepaid iPhones at Walmart. Sounds like another season of The Wire is in order. [PRNewswire]

Not to put a timetable on anything, but Digg figures its content discovery app  is about one percent done. Which is as fine a time as any to talk about monetization. [Digg]

(Wikipedia)

Fear not, sweet children of Bentonville. The celebration of the American spirit known as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art isn't closing on Friday. Walmart heir Alice Walton isn't asking you not to shop on Thanksgiving in sympathy with striking workers. It's just a cruel, cruel hoax.

A press release posted on the website crystalbridgesfoundation.com yesterday said that Crystal Bridges, hailed as the first major museum dedicated to American art to open in 50 years, would be closed on Black Friday.

In a statement from Ms. Walton that followed, the eighth-richest woman in America and chair of Crystal Bridges' board was purported to ask Americans to refrain from shopping on Friday so that Walmart employees could enjoy some time off with their families:

In the race to profit from cash-strapped deal-seekers desperate to save a buck, Walmart is now asking its employees to report to work in the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday in order to open stores that evening. This poor treatment of workers and crass commercialization of the holiday stamps 'Black Friday' with a whole new meaning: the black mark of shame.

Thousands of Walmart workers are expected to walk out on Friday, in protest of what they call retaliation practices against employees who speak out on issues such as fair pay and affordable health care. Walmart, which is based in Bentonville, Ark., has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in attempt to stop the walk out.

In addition to its call to boycott Black Friday, the fake press release announced a new Crystal Bridges exhibit focused on labor in American art and centered around Winslow Homer's "Return of the Gleaners," a painting which the false press release said ennobled "stooped, back-breaking labor" and represented a "stirring tribute to the survival of the American spirit."

Diane Carroll, a spokeswoman for the museum, confirmed to Betabeat that the museum would be open during regular hours on Friday, and that an investigation was underway to get to the bottom of the hoax.

As for whether a museum closely affiliated with Walmart, a company often criticized for its labor practices, might one day host an exhibit glorifying working men and women, Ms. Carroll wouldn't rule it out. "We explore the entirety of the American experience," she told us. "There are no themes that are kept out."

It does look tasty.

We don't tend to associate Walmart with either buzzy startup business models or high-end snacks. And yet GigaOm reports the ultimate superstore has launched Goodies, its very own subscription service, devoted to gourmet food samples. Think chocolate souffle and--seriously--kale chips. 

It's the brainchild of in-house innovators WalmartLabs, who previously cooked up a Facebook gift-giving app. Now the company is giving discovery commerce a try--with the added benefit that it's a good way for Walmart to test out the mass appeal of new products. WalmartLabs VP of product Ravi Raj told GigaOm:

“We want to introduce you to new types of food that you haven’t heard of before, not things you’d find at most mainstream stores.”

That sounds downright adventurous. People of Walmart stereotypes aside, could it be it's time to reexamine our priors? Maybe Walmart is more than the cost-cutting, mom-and-pop-plaguing big-box store it's generally considered to be. The company has even made forays into experiments with organic and locally sourced food (though those efforts didn't really seem to catch on with shoppers).

Oh, wait:

Raj said Walmart aims to differentiate itself (and avoid the deadpool) by undercutting rivals with a cheaper price (most other products are about twice as expensive), offering a unique selection of items curated by in-house foodies and rewarding subscribers with a social loyalty program.

Undercutting startups with a cheaper price? Sounds like Walmart, all right.

Service with a smile? (Photo: flickr.com/zooboing)

You've always suspected stockroom staffers were a bit cavalier with the merch, and now, thanks to a couple of Walmart employees in Pikeville, Ky., you have video evidence.

"This is why you don't buy an iPad from Walmart," says the bespectacled dude who introduces this clip (found by The Next Web). We then see his colleagues hurling iPads across a rather large room. "I think the next one's going to hit the floor," he predicts, right before his buddy smashes one on the ground. 

"Oh, wow," says our narrator after one spectacular crash. "That motherfucker's broke."

Only 45 shopping days 'til Christmas, folks!

(Photo: Equestria Daily)

Yesterday Walmart announced that it is beginning to test same-day delivery, much to the chagrin of its former partner Amazon. But you know what you can now get delivered from Walmart, hopefully same-day? Brony-themed t-shirts!

According to Equestria Daily, the #1 news source for all things brony, Walmart has begun to sell women's t-shirts with "I love Bronies" emblazoned on the front. The only trouble with this, as the Daily Dot points out, is that Walmart has used the image for the old vintage 1980's My Little Pony cartoon instead of the modern day update, which most bronies far prefer.

"This is the biggest fail in history," wrote one brony, who does not possess historical perspective.

"Going to Walmart to buy these...then burn them," wrote another.

A spokesperson for Walmart refuted the bronies' claims that the company was just trying to troll their subculture. She told the Daily Dot that they chose the old school '80s show "since that is what our customers respond to."

The Daily Dot also reports that the shirts are already in 1,000 stores and will soon spread nationwide. Who wants to make a trip to Secaucus?

Target Corp. ceased selling Amazon devices last Spring, after deciding Amazon's sales tactics were working against the retailer's best interests.

Rather than go the Starbucks route and partner with Square or follow other national retailers (like Duane Reade, RadioShack, Banana Republic, etc.) into Google Wallet, the group is going rogue, arguing that Google and other telecom providers--AT&T and T-Mobile have a payments app called Isis; Verizon and Vodafone have one as well--don't understand customers like they do. The retailers behind MCX point out that they have a combined $1 trillion in annual sales and "serve nearly every smartphone user in the U.S."

Terry Scully, Target's president of financial and retail services told the New York Times:

"What we are looking for is a broad, seamless experience across all retail formats," Scully said.

Of course, the idea of downloading a different mobile payments app depending on the store hardly feels seamless. At this rate, consumers will have to keep track of which imperceptible coalition each retailer belongs to, as though they're a bunch of politically-aligned nation-states. Not to mention the discomfort of uploading your credit card info it each. As the Journal notes:

The proliferation of mobile-payments systems might confuse consumers, skeptics say. But participants say the rival efforts reflect a predicament: Each industry needs the other to make mobile payments succeed, but each group wants to lead the way.

Even among people with a cellphone and a bank account, only 11 percent used mobile payments last year, according to a survey from Gartner. However, a recent report from Juniper Research says mobile payments is expected to almost quadruple to $1.3 trillion annually by 2017. Between now and then, a little federating might do the industry good.

(Photo: mts.com)

Mobile network providers can join the chorus of Walmart-hating small business owners and local holdouts.  This week, the big box boogeyman announced a prepaid mobile hotspot that starts at the low-low price of $10.

However, with budget prices come budget features. That $10 will only get you 100 megabytes of data on Sprint's problematic 3G network. But there are no monthly fees and the data balance never expires as long as you use the service once a year, making it a useful tool "as an emergency back-up device while traveling," says USA Today.

For the more data-hungry user, there are other options, like $25 for 500 MB or $45 for 1 GB. Automatic refills online will run you $20 fo 450 MB.

To offer this "Internet on the Go" plan, Walmart is partnering with an L.A. company called TruConnect Mobile. To access the network, you'll have to plunk down $120 for a MiFi® 2200 hotspot.

Our favorite part of the press release has to be Walmart's attempt to make 100 MB sound like a steal:

For example, with the 100 MB plan, a subscriber could get as many as 700 web pages, send 1,500-2,000 emails, post 1200 social media updates, listen to 100 minutes of music or view 50 minutes of a YouTube-quality video.

Wal-Mart (flickr.com/Monochrome)

So, a decade from now, it's going to be all smartphone-enabled mobile wallets, right? Children being born right this minute will look at good old greenbacks the way today's teenagers think of VHS cassettes. Well, Wal-Mart apparently isn't so sure about that, because the big box behemoth has just launched an online "Pay with Cash" option specifically targeted to consumers who don't have debit or credit cards. That's a bigger market than you might assume.

Walmart.com president and CEO Joel Anderson told All Things D:

The fact that only 15 percent of our transactions are done in the form of credit at our stores means there’s a large percentage of Wal-Mart customers who are dependent on cash to transact online. We definitely think it is a big opportunity.

Nor is Wal-Mart alone in its interest in the underbanked, with companies like Pay Near Me, Green Dot, and Netspend all offering solutions. So let's not shut down Bureau of Engraving and Printing just yet.

Ms. Mayer.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of maps and local and employee no. 20 at Google, may be about to take on another high profile board seat. Ms. Mayer serves on the boards of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Ballet, the New York City Ballet and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The new board seat is a bit of a departure: cheapo retailer Walmart has nominated the blond moguless to become the sixteenth member of its board. Congrats!

Apparently Ms. Mayer is a longtime fan of Walmart, "one of the world's most powerful brands, touches millions of lives every day." Who knew? If elected, she'll help guide Walmart's mobile strategy, and then go mad with power.