Nintendo Will Go Next-Gen After They Sell 45 million Wiis to the US (GameInformer)

Batgirl Wants Equal Pay (Comics Alliance)

DC Comics Office Clearly Hasn’t Been Remodeled Since The 90′s (Bleeding Cool)

GoDaddy Now Defaults Users to .co URLs (/.)

4chan vs. Tumblr (Urlesque)

This 5-foot Scale Gundam Costs $3.8k (io9)

10 Green Sci-Fi Movies (TDW)

(pic via Reddit.)

Remember how the Internet vigilantes of loosely 4chan-affiliated online collective Anonymous launched waves of distributed denial of service [DDoS] attacks in protest of current copyright law enforcement? Well so does the FBI, according to a hot-off-the-presses CNET report, and they’re none too happy about it.

4chan’s/Anonymous’ DDoS protests managed to take down, among other targets, the websites of the MPAA and the RIAA, the personal site of rocker and outspoken file-sharing hater Gene Simmons, who said that the attackers “might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who’s been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend,” and the United States Copyright Office’s site.

While the FBI says the attacks had been on its radar for some time, the DDoS on the U.S. Copyright Office’s site has upped the stakes.

Earlier this week, KISS singer Gene Simmons kicked a proverbial beehive when he threatened to hunt down and print the names and pictures of people who had attacked his website in the midst of an anti-RIAA protest, saying that he’d send their “little butts [to] jail, right next to someone who’s been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend.” The end result: A longer, nastier wave of attacks.

It’s instructive to consider how comic artist Steve Lieber responded when he found out that users on 4chan’s comics board (/co/) were sharing almost the entirety of Underground, the graphic novel that Jeff Parker wrote and Lieber illustrated. After getting the tipoff via Twitter, Lieber dove right into the 4chan thread and began conversing with the forumers. He didn’t berate or threaten anyone, or even use ugly words like “pirate” or “copyright.”

Instead, he answered people’s questions, cracked jokes (when someone said that his last name sounded like Justin Bieber’s, Lieber responded, “It’s true. We dated for a while, but it had to end when I demanded we hyphenate our names, and he insisted that Lieber-Bieber sounded too stupid even for youtube”), and, most incredibly, posted the whole comic for free on his own website. And it seemed to work: While not everyone reading the thread was won over, Lieber evoked a surprisingly positive, enthusiastic response, and by the time the thread ended, many 4chan readers avowed that they’d buy the comic to support the artist.

KISS bassist Gene Simmons has elevated a simmering spat with Anonymous to a new level after his website, GeneSimmons.com, was hit with a DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack earlier this week, bringing the site down.

Simmons’ site was first attacked by the loosely 4chan-affiliated group as part of a broader campaign against supporters of current copyright laws, particularly as they apply to prosecuting file-sharers. According to TorrentFreak, the initial attack on Simmons’ website has “caused some dispute within Anonymous, with the main group distancing themselves from the assault with a declaration that artists should not become a target, regardless of their opinions.”

Following the attack, Simmons reportedly wrote:

“First, they will be punished.

Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who’s been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend.

We will soon be printing their names and pictures.”

This can’t possibly end well:

All through last night, the media section of TeaParty.org, an official Tea Party website, was bombarded with new users who filled the photo section with shocking and offensive pictures. The pictures were so shocking that the site almost began to look like the outlaw imageboard 4chan. Who could have done it? Hmmm …

>>>Full story at Mediaite.

In case you’ve been living in an Internet-free cave, Pedobear is a character made popular by the 4chan image forums that is frequently displayed or referenced when someone is being a little too weird about children on the Internet and basically amounts to one big Internet in-joke, in no way supportive of pedophilia. Despite this, California’s San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department issued a “public safety information bulletin” describing the dangers of Pedobear.

“Don’t be ugly by accident” (OKCupid)

How Star Trek imagined the iPad 23 years ago (Ars)

Hot professors on the plight of being a hot professor (Chronicle)

Washington Post covers 4chan, LOIC imminent (Washington Post)

Voice cast for Fallout: New Vegas announced (Rawls!) (Bethesda)

25 worst pimped rides (Auto Mechanics’ School)

Augmented Reality cookies (GammaSquad)

Bonus video: The Avengers as a ’50s sci-fi flick:

Earlier this year, 4chan founder Christopher Poole, a.k.a. moot, was called to testify in the trial of David Kernell, a 4chan user who was ultimately convicted of computer fraud and obstruction of justice for his role in “hacking” into Sarah Palin’s email account and leaking screenshots during the 2008 election. Note that this “hack” consisted of “reset[ting] Palin’s password using her birthdate, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search”; not exactly the height of state security.

Anyway: During the trial, moot was asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krotoski to define some common online and 4chan lingo, including “troll,” “Rickroll,” “404,” “.jpg,” and even “/b/tard.” (Yes, this is a violation of rules 1 and 2, but hey, he was under oath.)

Some choice excerpts below:

Trolling victims, or the most brazen trolls yet? Redditor choochy spotted this bumper sticker from an Oregon Tea Party group which steals one of the most recognizable Anonymous slogans: “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

Today, June 15th, marks the first of what may well become an annual tradition of Cheer Up Keanu Days. What began as a thread on 4chan’s /tv/ board defending Keanu Reeves from all the easy “Whoa” jokes and an epic thread on Reddit anchored around a picture of a forlorn-looking Keanu Reeves sitting on a bench have become that rarest and specialest of things that can happen on the Internet: A genuine celebration of human kindness and decency.