NPR's Daniel Schorr, who once worked with Edward R. Murrow, gave a heartfelt goodbye to his typewriter. On Twitter! Wow.

People were also talking about striking out in new directions at the New York Times, on buyout day.

Writer and ex Valleywagger Melissa Gira Grant has no fucking time. Or, rather, no "non fucking" time. It's fucking overwhelming!

Blogger and entrepreneur Tom Bridge isn't asking for a perfectly ordered society. Just the basics.

The Wall Street Journal's Colleen Debaise really appreciates your interview for her video "Creating Buzz," owner of Bill's Bar & Burger. Here, have some "check [it] out" buzz!

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Facebook's 350 million+ users are being greeted by the dialog below, an "Important... Privacy Announcement" that "simplifies" and "adds" privacy controls:

But like Mark Zuckerberg's "Open Letter" last week, this is just the smiley pro-"privacy" wrapper around the real agenda, which, as Peter Kafka at All Things D wrote, is quite plainly to get you to abandon your privacy. Rival startup Twitter has taught Facebook that there's big growth in public internet sharing.

Thus — Ta Da! — these new default settings, which suggest users share their posts and information with the whole world. From Kafka (click to enlarge):

Inside Facebook's Eric Eldon got similarly liberal suggestions:

To make this scheme a bit more defensible, Facebook will now allow users to set their privacy level — i.e. to reverse the default choices — on a post-by-post basis, a feature long requested by users. Thus, Facebook will become an endless series of privacy decisions and dilemmas. It's enough to make you rush into the open arms of Twitter. Because while microblogging about your lunch might be narcissistic and pointless, it's definitely less narcissistic and pointless than deciding who should get to see the post about what you had for lunch.

Facebook: Asking you questions you don't want to have to answer about content no one cares about. Isn't social networking a joy ride?

Perhaps you've heard of Apple Daily, the Taiwanese newspaper that makes computer-generated cartoons corresponding to real-life events, like a man attacking his girlfriend with a knife, or the controversial, creepy and mesmerizing Tiger Woods video excerpted above. These digital shorts have Apple Daily's parent company, Next Media, in hot water with the authorities; the Taiwanese government is blocking Next from launching new ventures, says the New York Times.

Which is an outrage, right? Unless you want to live in a world where the government just gets to decide who can make a speculative video of Tiger Woods picking out lingerie for his girlfriends, and who can't. Fascism lies at the end of a slippery slope, mind you.

Instead, it was an Apple iPhone that the couture coder, fresh off her latest fashion-mag spread, showed to TechCrunch's Robin Wauters backstage at LeWeb:

Wauters: By the way, thank you for showing me your Google Phone backstage.



Mayer: (laughs) I didn't, that was my iPhone. And you know I can't comment on speculation.

Google's most stylish executive (by a mile) using the iPhone when she could lug a Droid, running Google's Android OS, or the mythic G-Phone, expected to be branded by Google directly? That's comment enough right there.

(Pic: An earlier incident of iPhone brandishing: Mayer shows off her Jesus-phone in 2007, when the device was brand new and Google had yet to release its Android phone OS. By Tamar Weinberg.)

Thiel's Clarium Capital was down 16.4 percent through November, the New York Post reported, with assets down to $1.6 billion from a historic high of $7.3 billion, capping a string of monthly declines we reported previously. And yet, in a lengthy interview with Big Think (embedded below), the PayPal co-founder sounds as imperious and sanguine as ever, calling Baby Boomers "the dumbest generation" for launching two massive financial bubbles in a row , and saying the country needs to get over its immediate financial pain and invest for the next 20 years (see excerpt above).

Both points have some merit. But a dot-com executive needs balls of steel to cast financial judgment on the generation whose recklessness made him hundreds of millions of dollars, particularly when he took that money and used it to start a now-flailing hedge fund.

And that bit about long-term thinking is scarcely comfort to Americans in financial peril — like Thiel's own managing director Jack Selby who, a Clarium insider tells us, ended up in heated fights with Thiel earlier this fall "about how blasé we can be about our recent performance." Thiel thinks Clarium can think long term; Selby purportedly thinks the bleeding must be stanched more quickly.

Jack is the one who has to market the fund; Selby actually has very little to do with performance. Peter's responsible for this mess himself and he knows it, as he vets all our big moves.

Selby reportedly said Clarium had to turn around its performance by the end of the year; Thiel retorted that this was short-term thinking. Selby then took offense, and Thiel — blowing his constant, almost robotic even temper — "blew up at him. We are under a lot of tension here."

With the end of the year fast approaching, it's inconceivable that Thiel's fund can meet his managing director's would-be deadline. Judging from his Big Think video, it doesn't look like Thiel is letting this affect his holiday spirits. Well, maybe he's on to something, again. Obsessing over money will do few people any good this Christmas. Even if they're supposed to be "managing" hundreds of billions of dollars.

Just a taste, here, of how Salon's Scott Rosenberg rolls, w/r/t Bay Area females. Line forms to the left, ladies.

Did Nicole Richie just call fracking Big Bird a "has been?" Yes, yes she did. But at least the reality TV starlet offered to basically hook BB up with a three-way, or drugs, or whatever, while she was at it.

A low-income donut worker trying to eat healthy played a starring role in Debbie Gibsons' personal irony opera.

Philip "Fuckedcompany" Kaplan is starting to feel self-conscious about his oral fixation.

The New Yorker's Susan Orlean is, presumably, frantically adding books on nirvana and emotional euphoria to her Amazon wish list. The war histories are right out.

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Our favorite fake answer is tech investor Peter Thiel's theory that the interent is a harmless network of FAX machines. Always running PR for our future robot overlords, that one.

Today's initiative has been variously billed as "iTunes for Magazines" (correct philosophically, but wildly overstated) and "Hulu for Magazines" (incorrect, since Hulu is free). Basically you can now go to this digital storefront and buy all your favorite Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst, Time Inc., and News Corp publications, to read on your "portable digital device" of choice. Your crappy mobile phone, or iPhone, or upcoming Apple tablet, or, hey, Time Inc. is making its very own tablet, & ad infinitum.

And, of course, this is not the only "digital storefront" thing—Hearst, a partner in this venture, is also going forward with its own personal digital storefront called Skiff , and there are similar services already operating, although, hey, there's not dominant iTunes-type player yet, so you never know.

This could be a successful venture. Then again, it could fade into irrelevance in months. Somebody will make the dominant digital storefront for content like this, just like someone will make the dominant digital reader. Magazine publishing companies, one would think, are likely to get smoked by someone like Apple in this particular sector. But they think it's worth the gamble, after watching what happened to the music industry.

But it'll take a few years. How much would you pay to read Sports Illustrated on your E-reader right now? You don't have an E-reader. And you can read Deadspin for free. So, you'd pay nothing. Changing that dynamic is what media companies need to worry about.

And here's Time Inc's announcement to employees, just because we have it:

December 8, 2009
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Ann Moore
Re: New Digital Venture

Today, five leading publishers including Time Inc., Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corporation announced the formation of a new venture to develop a digital storefront and a common reading application that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite magazine and newspaper content on any platform they choose.

We already know that the next generation of mobile devices will be loaded with color touchscreens, flexible displays, video capabilities and other features that will make them ideal for consuming rich content and an appealing environment for advertisers. These devices will allow us to combine the best of what consumers love about magazines – quality, curated journalism, engaging content and beautiful photography – with the speed, convenience and portability of the latest technology.

While Time Inc. is pursuing a number of initiatives that will help us expand our current digital businesses and develop new products and revenue streams, our participation in this venture is an important part of our efforts. You'll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, for a look at some of the work Time Inc. is doing around portable devices, check out the demo Sports Illustrated developed, which will give you an idea of how our digital content might be enjoyed in the near future.

www.si.com/tablet

A.M.

We're seeking out the laziest journalists on Twitter. And, yes — irony alert! — we're open to your help. But in the meantime, we've compiled a shortlist of candidates.

Well, actually, no, we didn't so much compile it ourselves as receive it basically whole, over email, from a friendly, fed-up journalist. But we did helpfully copy and paste said tipster's examples, for your benefit, below. This is what it is called the process journalism. Anyway. On to the lazies!

Doug MacMillan (@dmac1), BusinessWeek. Tipster: "When not pimping out his recent BW 'OMG have you seen the iPhone?!' cover story from a few weeks ago, [MacMillan] has taken the time to master the 140-character source request." As you can see below, that's true, although in fairness MacMillan sometimes issues requests on behalf of other lazy reporters. A sampling of his "work:"

Priya Ganapati, Wired (@pgcat): Were the Palm Pre support forums and blogs too hard to navigate, or something?

Jessi Hempel, Fortune (@jessiwrites): Too lazy even to finish typing her full, lazy request.

Jessica Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal (@JVascellaro): At least this is for a conference thing instead of her real job.

Julia Allison, TMI Weekly (@juliaallison): Can't even come up with her own questions. (Not a journalist, you say? Newsweek begs to disagree.)

Associated Press "Climate Pool" (@AP_ClimatePool): What's? With? All? The? Questions? We'll tell you about the climate: The climate is uncertain. If you can figure out how you feel about that, maybe you can contribute to the AP's "collaborative editorial."

Gawker (@gawker): Our tipster didn't point this one out, but you've probably noticed that we, too, try to crowdsource a lot of reporting, and even speculation. Lazy! But at least our headlines are more fun?

Being lazy, we're so done surfing painstakingly around Twitter, looking for further lazy journalists. If you've been doing that, and have come up with some other names, do let us know.

(Top pic by Tony Delgrosso. What, you thought we were going to take it?)

Touré's forthcoming listicle "The Five Absolute Best Times to Cheat on Your Wife" will be published in the February 2010 edition of Esquire, along with a companion internet video, "Listen, I Didn't Really Write That, Honey, I Swear, There Must Have Been, Like, a Production Error, Or Something."

After shaming Google's CEO, Twitter's self-appointed mogul bully, Anil Dash, set his sights on IAC's Barry Diller.

You've heard of "'Fuck Me' boots?" Geek TV godess Olivia Munn has, "fuck you, rain, I'm bearing skin" boots.

Between the unwelcome headwinds and frigid homecoming, flitty Silicon Valley flack Brooke Hammerling discovered it's hard being bicoastal.

Milo Yiannopoulos gave newly-reformed teetotaler (and fellow Brit tech writer) Paul Carr some chaos for his birthday. Hopefully not that variety that stains the carpet and passes out on the couch.

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Schmidt once dismissed Twitter as a "poor man's email system." But as the microblogging service has picked up more users, more activity and more search traffic, Google has been forced to take it more seriously. Today, Schmidt's engineers announced that Twitter-style "real-time" searching of tweets would be integrated into Google's core search service. I guess that's what you'd call a Poor Man's Real Time Search Engine, mmmm? Whoops.

Even worse, Schmidt's attempt to join Twitter itself proved something of a disaster this morning. He first logged on with the handle "eschmidt0", prompting a cyber-diss from high-profile New York tech executive Anil Dash:

Oh, snap! Surely a big-time CEO wouldn't let a zinger like that get under his skin right?

Except that within a few hours Schmidt had duly changed his handle and moved over his old content:

It looks like Schmidt also received some help from the Poor Man's Email Service's Rich Man's Identity Authenticator, because he's now got a "Verified Account." Throwing his (semi-)celebrity weight around at Twitter Inc.? Schmidt's starting to get the swing of things. Now just tweet about your next lunch choice, Eric. We promise not to mock. Too hard.

Mayers' three-day nuptials at the San Francisco Four Seasons, where she lives, were announced via an elborate invitation, a heavy red box covered in a velvety material, as we've reported previously. That sounded about right for the fashion-conscious overachiever.

The Google VP's obsessiveness apparently extends to security, as well: The invitations indicate guests are to keep some sort of ID card on them at all times during the weekend, we're now told.

And said guests aren't sure what this means: Are these "smart" cards implanted with radio "RFID" tags? If so, guests could theoretically be tracked across a 135-foot radius with a stationary receiver. Or maybe they'll be simple credit-card-style tokens with a magnetic stripe, swiped on demand. Or maybe former cheerleader Mayer has something more festive and creative in mind. If you've got a clue, do share it with us.

Requiring that guests basically wear a tracking tag will certainly further the image of Google as Big Brother. The search giant tracks a staggering amount of personal data, and company executives have lately been clumsy in answering mounting media questions about the info-hoard. Then again, some of Mayers' guests will be fellow Google executives; perhaps having a taste of their own medicine will have a moderating effect on the data Google collects.

Speaking of which: Though Mayer is employee number 20 at Google and has great power within the company, it's not at all clear that co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be in attendance at her wedding. Mayer was not invited to Page's private-island wedding to Lucy Southworth, a source close to the event tells us, so she could hardly be expected to invite Page to her bash.

In any case, a tracking scheme will certainly help Mayer keep out the likes of Valleywag as her wedding party makes its way around the Four Seasons, even as it reinforces her rep as something of a data-hungry cyborg. No worries Marissa; we'll try not to take it out on your gift.

(Pic: Mayer, by Esther Dyson)

Given the celebratory tone of her prior tweet, we're guessing writer Louise Bolton meant "pissed" in the traditional British sense. At least she made the last train! Otherwise she might have gotten additionally pissed.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Chicago Tribune's Michael Hawthorne was just getting his own winter celebration started.

Oh look: almost all of the most annoying rich young people are concentrated in one city! It's finally to safe to go to all those restaurants and clubs you probably don't go to anyway. Ain't winter grand?

PBS' Mark Glaser misses the days where you only had to worry about running into drunken beggar journalists in the streets. It seems like that was only several weeks ago, doesn't it?

Amid all the Friday drunkenness, VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi reminded everyone to get their heads sober and straight before going on camera. Looking at you, CNBC.

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The generous explanation for Schmidt's statement is that he's revolutionized his thinking since 2005, when he blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gleaned from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations. In that case, the married CEO must not mind all the coverage of his various reputed girlfriends; it's odd he doesn't clarify what's going on with the widely-rumored extramarital dalliances, though.

Schmidt's philosophy is clear with Bartiromo in the clip below: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." The philosophy that secrets are useful mainly to indecent people is awfully convenient for Schmidt as the CEO of a company whose value proposition revolves around info-hoarding. Convenient, that is, as long as people are smart enough not to apply the "secrets suck" philosophy to their Google passwords , credit card numbers and various other secrets they need to put money in Google's pockets.

It's enough to make one pine for the more innocent Google bursting forth in the c. 1999 group picture at the top of this post, also gleaned from CNBC's special. The hair might have been sillier — dig co-founder Sergey Brin and VP Marissa Mayers' cuts, top center — but no one was yet audacious enough to argue against the very idea of a secret.

Didn't they think it was fishy when Google credited 11 inventors on two continents in its newly-issued patent? That's a lot of brainpower for child's play, and even for, as the patent calls it, a broader "WEB-BASED SYSTEM FOR GENERATION OF INTERACTIVE GAMES BASED ON DIGITAL VIDEOS." (Thanks to commenter theodp for pointing the patent out to us.)

Google illustrated the patent with pictures of the age-old kids game "rocks, paper, scissors," and described some very boring uses, like:

Clicking on an annotation corresponding to a 'rock', "paper", or "scissors" menu item leads to separate video or portion of the same video depicting a tie, a win, or a loss, respectively, each outcome potentially leading to the display of additional annotations representing a second round of the game.

Whatever. This will be used immediately for porn. And even though that sort of thing is not allowed on YouTube per se, Google will earn further insane riches on the royalties.

Shopping blogger Maggie Mason was not in the market for a happy ending, you two.

Hunter Walker, the media blogger-turned-j-schooler, is determined to tackle the more advanced source relations lessons. Pro tip: Avoid using the word "hit piece" with this guy.

Macworld's Heather Kelly livened up an everyday "what I'm snacking on" tweet with a crucial dash of creepy.

Video blogger Molly McAleer may have been converted into one of those activists who hurls bodily fluids at fur-wearing ladies.

Studio execs are the appetizer, Clooney is the dessert. Just another lesson in Hollywood dinner etiquette from film blogger Kristopher Tapley.

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Comcast paid an un-fucking-believable $125 million for DailyCandy — just a simple shopping e-newsletter, if you're not familiar with it — just over a year ago, greatly enriching former AOL exec Bob Pittman, who had previously acquired it for $3 million. Amid all the investment, DailyCandy expanded from New York to London, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle and Philly.

DailyCandy will now stop publishing city-specific editions in all but five of those 12 cities: New York, London, LA, Chicago and San Francisco. Subscribers in the other cities will now receive an "Everywhere" edition, supplemented with local news and events twice a week.