Hasta La Gadget!

Ah, Saturday. A day to relax and recuperate from a long, hard week. Kick up your feet, relax, and make sure you’re up to date with all of the news and gossip that was trending on Twitter this week. To help you, we took a look at the most-buzzed-about trends and picked 10 you may have missed this week. 

ZDNet Blogger Dancho Danchev has been missing in since August. The security writer disappeared mysteriously in his native Bulgaria. Some information about his disappearance has surfaced, and fellow Zero Watch blogger Ryan Naraine fittingly refers to it as “troubling.”

The company has reportedly made several failed attempts to contact Danchev, who wrote his last post for the blog on August 18. A source in Bulgaria wrote ZDNet last month to report that “Dancho’s alive but he’s in a lot of trouble.”

Danchev, for his part, wrote the aforementioned “troubling” letter to a fellow member of the security community,

As I consider you as a trusted colleague, and someone who understands the big picture of cyber crime and cyber espionage, I’m attaching you photos of the “current situation in my bathroom”, courtesy of Bulgarian Law enforcement+intell services who’ve been building a case trying to damage my reputation.

The letter includes images of what may be a monitoring device installed in his home. Zero Day is asking for any information anyone might have on Danchev’s disappearance.

Key-shaped USB drives are fairly popular lately. LaCie’s iamaKey flash drive looks like something that would fit right in on your keychain next to your house or car key, but the Fredflare Skeleton Key takes a more whimsical approach, and looks a little more fun sticking out of one of your computer’s USB ports. 

Virginia doesn’t want its teachers to be friends with students–not on Facebook. The state’s public school system is voting on a new rule titled “Proposed Guidelines for the
Prevention of Sexual Misconduct & Abuse in Virginia Public Schools,” which would ban extra curricular communication between students and teachers, including texting and Facebook friending.

According to the proposed rule, communication between students and teachers would be restricted specifically to school sanctioned communication platforms. Communication via texting and “personal online social-networking sites” is banned altogether. Teachers “must decline or disregard invitations from students” to join social networks.

If the teacher has to contact a student through one of these methods in the case of an emergency, all communication must be reported to a school supervisor. Online gaming with students is also out of the question, under these new rules.

A 45-year-old South Carolina resident agreed to remove a set of dyed-pink male genitals from a snowman, after being confronted by local police.

The man was confronted by a deputy from South Carolina’s Union Country after building the too anatomically correct winter symbol. The man insisted that he ought to be able to build the snowman, pink genitals and all, so long as it was located on his private property. The police disagreed, threatening to arrest him, should the genitals stay in place.

The man complied, promptly removing said pink snow genitals.