In a move that we can all get behind, hacker group Anonymous has announced that they have taken down a huge cache of child pornography and released 1,589 usernames of the website’s patrons. The action came as part of Operation Darknet, which targets illicit websites that are part of an unindexed and therefore unsearchable corner of the Internet.

hough the iPhone 4S is enjoying meteoric sales, some were disappointed that the latest Apple smartphone wasn’t a more radical upgrade. However, a recent note from Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar could give insight as to why the 4S seems so modest. According to Kumar, the final project of the now deceased Apple visionary and founder Steve Jobs is an as-yet unannounced next generation iPhone.

Its seems that the FAA recently investigated what is probably the most, um, interesting possible violation they’ve ever witnessed. Alex Torres, a porn performer pornformer who also goes by the name of Voodoo, released a video of himself skydiving while having sex with Hope Howell, a receptionist at the Skydive Taft where he worked as a skydiving instructor. They met up with a pilot to film the video early in the morning, when no one would see the event going down live.

According to a survey by Goldsmiths at the University of London, 1 in 10 people in the U.K. leave social networking passwords in their will. The survey also showed that more than a quarter of the subjects have digital media (music, videos, etc.) that they feel the need to pass on to family members. Ever since personal computers and digital cameras became household necessities, the days of inheriting photo albums have been essentially over. It’s funny to think that the days of inheriting hard drives may have come and gone so fast.

Submitted for your approval, a child introduced to the iPad at a young age, exposed to its various delights of light and sound, unable to comprehend a magazine. The video shows that this 1-year-old baby, after being introduced to an iPad, has become trained by its (admittedly elegant) user interface to repeatedly try and use a glossy magazine the same way. Needless to say, it doesn’t work.

n an installment of Watchmen Broadcasting’s flagship program Club36, a Georgia-based evangelical Christian program, recently uploaded to these great Internets, a middle-aged man says some surprising things about the well-loved video game Minecraft and popular franchise Pokémon.

35-year-old English teacher Alexander Karpenko, from Nizhny Novgrod, Russia, is way manlier than your dad, because he shaves with a shovel and your dad shaves with a Schick Quattro Titanium. Whereas the Schick Quattro Titanium has an edging blade for extra precision and a ribbed rubber grip for increased comfort, Karpenko’s shovel is a big shovel. Inspired by his grandfather’s stories of men in World War II using anything they could get their hands on to shave on the battlefield, Karpenko first shaved with a pair of scissors when he was 16 years old. Since then, Karpenko has used various tools to shave, including a shovel, hatchet, and pair of scissors, and he claims never to have used a common razor.

Mediaite has exclusively obtained this note sent from Dan Abrams to the staff of his sites about their traffic numbers. Well actually, it ended up in our inbox and we just thought it was pretty cool.

The competition between Facebook and Google over Silicon Valley talent and Internet mindshare has been fierce for a while now, but this is a low tactic: Reporters at USA Today and The Daily Beast busted Facebook for hiring a PR firm to spread negative stories about Google to the media. Not only is this considered a rather shady move, but it’s usually employed by companies on the ropes, not those in Facebook’s position of relative strength.

Pass around the cigars: We have a new sister site! Say hello to The Mary Sue, a “guide to girl geek culture” covering everything from Science in General to literature(-inspired pillows) to movies and TV to tech to the very reason the internet was invented in the first place – funny videos.

We’re just about two weeks from the launch of TheMarySue.com, an entertainment/news site for the the geeky girl, from the ones who love The Lord of the Rings but have never actually read the books, to the ones who want to know which movie stars are going to be at Comic Con, to those planning out their Minecraft cross stitch samplers. (Just me?)

After a woman named Cathy Ward lost a huge amount of weight (14 dress sizes), she wanted to reward herself with something symbolizing what inspired her the most … The Biggest Loser. No! Twilight, obviously. She was inspired by Twilight. Ummm … congratulations?

his past weekend, Gawker Media was dealt a damaging blow when a group that calls itself Gnosis successfully hacked into Gawker’s servers and thereafter released a torrent which contained Gawker’s source code and a database containing 1.3 million Gawker commenters’ usernames, e-mail addresses, and passwords, about a fifth of which Gnosis decrypted. Considering that many people use the same password for multiple web services, this is bad news. Mediaite’s sister site Geekosystem got in touch with members of Gnosis and discussed what the attacks meant for Gawker Media, web publishers, and everyone who shares unsecured information on the Internet.

I’ll be honest—each month, as we see record numbers at our young sites, I worry. I fear that the next month can’t possibly rival the previous one, that it will be nearly impossible to beat those numbers in the near future. After all, our staffs are about as lean as they get (some sites have just 2 employees), we don’t have a corporate entity or venture capital firm behind us, and we have already vastly exceeded any and all expectations. Yet here we are again.

Its hard for me to believe but once again, all four of our wholly owned sites Mediaite, Geekosystem, Styleite and Sportsgrid, hit all time traffic highs. Each time we celebrate new records, I keep fearing the best may be behind us, but alas, the teams outdo themselves again.

According to web traffic assessment site Quantast.com the Abrams Media Network is ranked at number 204, right behind long time stalwart’s like The Wall Street Journal’s, WSJ.com (200) and just ahead of Usmagazine.com (215) and Newsweek.com (216). I am so proud of all the teams that have made this happen.

Well now, here is a sensational and surely reputable news report: According to Japan’s SPA! magazine, Steve Jobs was stopped by Japanese airport security for attempting to bring shuriken, or ninja throwing stars, onboard his private plane in July. Jobs was reportedly so upset by this routine stop that he vowed never to return to Japan again.

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Google‘s CEO Eric Schmidt. It delved into a number of things like the Verizon deal and Schmidt’s excitement for Minority Report-style “targeted advertisement,” but the folks at the Telegraph noticed a truly interesting quote nestled unto the discussion. Schmidt apparently believes that, as time goes on and we reach a point where every single person has embarrassing information and pictures from their adolescence posted on social media sites online, it will become commonplace for people to automatically change their name once they reach adulthood.

This week marks the one year anniversary of the launch of Mediaite, and what a year it has been. As Dan Abrams notes, predictions of Mediaite’s doom were greatly exaggerated, and as Mediaite columnist and White House reporter from Day One, I have viewed the site’s successful first year from a unique perch. When Rachel Sklar pitched the site to me, I have to confess I was a little bit skeptical, but it didn’t take long for me to see that she and Dan were on to something.

Yesterday, Mediaite celebrated its first anniversary with a lovely and congratulatory note from founder Dan Abrams. Recently, Abrams conducted an interview with Huffington Post Media, in which he explained the success of Mediaite and other sites he’s launched, as well as plans for future sites as well. A portion of the interview is excerpted below.

It is hard to believe it’s been a full year since our newbie website with the awkward-sounding name was welcomed to the blogosphere with accolades such as “sounds…like something you’d give to a toddler suffering diarrhea,” or “no one really cares about the business and personalities behind the media,” or my personal favorite, “Mediaite feels a bit doomed.” Ah, yes — that honeymoon period was so sweet. We all love to curl up with the scrapbook and reminisce about the early days.

Abrams Media is seeking a mobile/web application developer to join our staff full time. This developer will work on software development for Mediaite and its sibling sites (Geekosystem, Styleite, and SportsGrid). In case you got here from someplace else on the Internet and are unfamiliar with the company: Abrams Media operates the above-listed news sites, [...]

In the spirit of everyone in our country being really poor, CNN stepped in to lend a helping hand with this list of ten great part-time jobs to make money with. They are: Animal Caretaker, Bartender, Customer Service Rep, Dental Assistant, Hotel Clerk, Library Assistant, Museum Technician or Conservator, Pharmacy Technician, Recreation Worker, and Security [...]

A couple of weeks ago, Oprah Winfrey started a contest to give one of her viewers their very own show on her new network. One of the contestants, a hilarious young man with cerebral palsy named Zach Anner, was heralded by the influential websites 4chan and Reddit (as well as celebrities like John Mayer) and rose to a seemingly insurmountable lead…until it was surmounted. However, Geekosystem writer Jamie Block used some great investigative reporting to find seeming proof that someone (quite possibly directly from Team Oprah) had rigged the contest to knock Anner out of the top spot!

The New York Times, like many print publications, is at a weird crossroads with respect to new tech: On the one hand, they’ve got a great digital operation and a lot of tech-savvy reporters; on the other hand, they try to maintain old standards which by definition conflict with newer terms and practices that weren’t around when those standards were established. Throw Twitter into the pot, and kaboom! Confusion.

A memo from New York Times standards editor Phil Corbett obtained by The Awl’s Choire Sicha puts some of that confusion to rest, although some folks may disagree with its conclusion: The Times is banning the Twitter-centric use of the word “tweet” as a noun or a verb.

See the full post at Geekosystem.

Steve Jobs‘ keynote for WWDC 2010 is expected to kick off at 1pm EDT (10am PDT), and it’s a biggie: It’s widely expected that he’ll be unveiling a next-generation iPhone, which may be called (take your pick) the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4G, or the iPhone HD.

Alas, we’re not at WWDC, but there are some great bloggers who are: After the jump, their liveblogs, and some purported live video feeds from the event.