all your base are belong to... Russia

I've just seen the buzz going around about LiveJournal being sold to SUP, the Russian company that was operating LiveJournal Russia since some time in 2006. I have additionally seen far too many "In Soviet Russia..." gags on this topic already, but handwave. I am curious to see how this develops; various people have expressed concern about their data being owned by Russians, and implicitly by the Russian Mafia ("Tell me something, Jason, you ever hear anyone describe our thing as ‘The Sicilian Yakuza’? Huh?"), but as has been pointed out elsewhere, (a) AT&T wiretaps for the NSA and (b) LiveJournal The Company still remains a US corporation bound by the laws yadda yadda. Which isn't to say they can't just backhaul the data to a secret location in the Urals for folding, spindling, and mutilation, but really I have more concrete things to concern me. I'm more interested in their 100-day plan, which seems rather like they are attempting to turn LJ in Facebook. I also note it doesn't have a timeline other than "we plan on doing this in 100 days", so there's no sense of what's being prioritised, whether everything will roll out together at the end of 100 days or whether it'll dribble out over the course of the 100-day period. And yes, I've seen the 5-year plan jokes, too.

Interesting times, as the man says.

topic unrelated

I absolutely adore this track (see Current Music). It's easily the best thing off Pop, and it seems to be made entirely of earworms. Gonna be humming it for the rest of the day.

stylish (and somewhat pointless) heckling

Youtube ahead: hecklers sing in harmony to interrupt Jack Straw. Really, though, they got a round of applause, laughter, and the hecklee (?) immediately riffed on their performance. So how successful a heckle was it, really?

(I probably got this on Metafilter; I've been accumulating browser tabs on and off all day)

facebook, now available in LOLCAT

Seen on facebook just now: "[redacted] updated their profile. They is now looking for dating and networking.". I CAN HAS DATES NOW PLZ? (gosh, pronouns are hard, eh?)