Robert X. Cringely

Another day on the InterWebs, another blogger squabble: This one has to do with the quality of online tech journalism itself, and it comes from a rather ironic source.

But first, some backstory. It starts with Path, a mobile social networking app that did a major privacy faceplant last week. Developer/blogger Arun Thampi discovered that Path 2.0 automatically copies users' smartphone contacts to its servers without asking permission or notification. As privacy violations go, this is way worse than anything Facebook has ever done, and it approaches Google's Wi-Fi spying debacle.

This just in: Legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs lived inside a reality bubble of his own creation. That's the conclusion of a confidential background check report just released by the FBI.

The G-men investigated the Jobs-man back in 1991, well before his second coming to Apple and the iMiracles that followed. It seems the then-CEO of NeXT Computer was being considered for a position on the President's Export Council, on which he served until January 1993.

Yes, I know. That headline alone will cause anti-regulation conservatives to burst an artery and libertarians to swallow their tongues. Overall, our government does a poor job regulating technology, in large part because many of our elected representatives are still searching for the "any" key (or having their aides do it for them). But hear me out.

Last weekend Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Lori Andrews published an essay in the New York Times titled "Facebook Is Using You" -- to which any Web 2.0-savvy person would reply, "well, duh."

Yesterday Twitter announced a policy change that has the Twitterati flapping about like bluebirds trying to hoist a Fail Whale.

In 140 characters or less: Twitter is now supporting local censorship of tweets.

Last week's arrests at MegaUpload are continuing to send mega-shockwaves across the Webosphere, and it's turning into a mega-mess.

On Thursday, the FBI dropped the hammer on MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom and seven of his cohorts, alleging they pocketed tens of millions by "incentivizing" illegal file sharing across its cloud storage service.

Where were you when the Internet's lights went out?

Me, I discovered how often I use Wikipedia when researching stories -- which is to say, too often. So the inability to reach the world's largest encyclopedia yesterday was a bit annoying until I found a workaround. (Use Google's cached copy of each page -- shhh, don't tell anyone.)

Last year I made several predictions for what the tech world would see in 2011, and I'm both proud and deeply surprised to report some of them actually came true.

For example, I predicted that Facebook's population would surpass that of India and it would apply for membership in the United Nations. That was wrong. India still leads Facebook by a comfortable margin of about 300 million. But I was right in predicting that Mark Zuckerberg would shave for the first time.

As always around this time of year, I like to look back with a Grinch-like smile at the dumbest moves made during the past year in the world of tech. As always, the competition in 2011 was intense. Here are 10 companies that deserve a big lump of coal in their stockings.

HP

Where is the world's No. 1 computer maker headed? I haven't a clue -- and neither, apparently, does HP. Trying to figure out HP's direction in 2011 was like following a blind man through a house of mirrors. It hired Léo Apotheker as CEO, who decided to kill HP's PC biz and focus on services for the enterprise, only to fire him after 11 months. It launched a long-awaited tablet based on the Palm's WebOS, then killed it a month later. Now with the electorally challenged Meg Whitman holding the reins, HP is back in the PC biz and may re-enter tablets as well. She needs to decide who and what HP is before the rest of us stop caring.

Every month or so, I dip into the reader mailbag and quote from some of my favorite fan and/or hate mail. Lately my inbox has been overflowing with notes about Windows Phone 7.5.

I'm completely blown away by the response to my recent post about my HTC Radar 4G Windows "Mango" phone -- otherwise known as the geeky version of that old Life cereal commercial: "Let's get Cringely to try it, he hates everything. He likes it! Hey Cringely!"

Comedian Louis CK conducted an experiment this past week that could change the InterWebs forever. At least, it may change how people promote and consume content online, as well as how they feel about file swapping.

Rather than go the traditional route of signing up with a major production company to film his standup routine and sell it to HBO or some other pay cable outlet, Louis CK decided he would produce the show himself and sell it himself, via the Web.

We live in a miraculous age, thanks largely to technology. Consider these examples from today's news.

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, are on the verge of uncovering the elusive Higgs Boson, aka the God Particle -- the thing that gives objects mass (even moreso around the holidays).

To faithful readers who feel that visiting Notes From the Field three times a week is a complete waste of their time (but do it anyway), take heart: You are not alone. In fact, research shows you are among the tens of millions who are online because they have nothing better to do.

Last Friday the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project revealed that 58 percent of U.S. adults go online "just for fun" [PDF]. The biggest Web time wasters are, of course, callow youth age 18 to 29. More than 80 percent of Generation YouTube are surfing the Web when they should be out looking for work or cleaning their rooms, per the survey. That's nearly double the number who went online for fun in 2000.