Twitter, while much smaller than Facebook, competes with the social network in encouraging users to post short "status updates," no matter how banal and meaningless. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg loves Twitter. In fact, he loves Twitter so much he tried to marry it. After Twitter rejected a $500 million offer, he set about copying its look. That effort led to a disastrous redesign about which Facebook users (and employees) are still griping.

Hence the conspiracy theories. Facebook has a Twitter app which takes updates from the service and reposts them on users' profiles, and numerous third-party software applications post updates simultaneously to Facebook and Twitter. Some mechanism responsible for the crossposting seems to be broken, however. A tipster writes:

Rumors on Facebook that Facebook intentionally killed its Twitter application late last night, so that Twitter now doesn't show up in anyone's Profile or Home Page. Jealousy? Revenge?

How about human error? The systems behind these simple-looking sites are increasingly complicated, and at Facebook, almost any engineer can release new code to the site in as little as an hour. If Facebook is trying to displace Twitter, then it has every interest in coaxing Twitter users to share their updates on Facebook, too, rather than driving them away. Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Update: Actually, Twitter says it's all its fault, maybe! Aw, that's no fun.

FOX NEWS BESIEGED BY BEDBUGS

Joan Clark, a twelve year veteran of Fox News, can no longer go to work
after suffering emotional distress due to a continuous and ongoing bedbug
problem at work. Since October, Fox News has been struggling to control a
bedbug infestation at its headquarters, located at 1211 Avenue of the
Americas, in NYC without success. Ms. Clark, bitten in the original influx
in October '07, then in November '07, was once again attacked by these
swarming insects on April 30, 2007.

Joan Clark has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress syndrome and finds
that she is unable to return to work and maintain her normal daily routine.
As a mother with a young child, she is trying to cope and carry on as usual.
She is under the care of doctors who are treating her emotional problems due
to being thrice bitten by bedbugs.

Although her entire department was moved to a different floor, the bedbugs
moved with them. Ms. Clark repeatedly asked and got assurance from her
supervisors that the environment was safe.

Alan Schnurman, Ms. Clark's attorney who has handled numerous bedbug cases
said to his knowledge this is the first lawsuit concerning bedbugs in an
office. "We have had cases in hotels, cruise ships, and apartment buildings
but this is one of the first we know about in the work environment." Bedbug
infestation has reached national epidemic proportions. Even Congress has
taken note and on May 19, 2008, Congressman G.K. Butterfield introduced a
bill before Congress called the "Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008" to
establish funding to eradicate this serious problem.

A lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Joan Clark and her husband Stuart
against the building's owner and the maintenance company in Supreme Court,
New York County. Ms. Clark has also filed a Workers Compensation claim
against her employer, the News Corp. A press conference is being held on
Thursday, May 29, 2008, at 11:00AM at the law office of Zalman & Schnurman,
61 Broadway, Suite 1105. Joan Clark and her husband will be on hand to
answer any questions in regard to this matter.

Locate the greasy gross culprit immediately!

This is a problem beyond just the yuck factor. Darryl Zeldin, a senior scientist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, says: "Cockroaches significantly increase asthma symptoms in allergic individuals. And while a third of inner-city residents are cockroach-sensitive, sensitivity to cockroach exposure is widespread in our nation - not just in the inner cities."

If Whole Foods' "green" move starts a trend among food stores, it may contribute to New York's asthma epidemic.

Stier also argues that people reuse plastic bags, whereas paper bags are just, I don't know, set on fire and tossed out the window. If you always suspected Whole Foods of being in league with cockroaches, YOU HAVE BEEN PROVEN RIGHT. Only plastic can save us now.

In France, the scorpion represents the threat of AIDS. Always use condoms when having sex with a scorpion

This scorpion-shaped carrot is Greenpeace's way of scaring you away from genetically engineered vegetables. That is some nasty engineering.

Stella Espresso Coffee should probably fire the ad agency that decided to depict the "bite" of their coffee with an image of a scorpion crawling up some lady's nose.

[via Adrants]

Tech Firm Shows Off Glitch-Free Software [Washington Post]