It appears that the world wide wibble is recycling news as a way of saving time.
This time last year our reporters wrote a yarn about how the Russia’s Federal Guard Service (FSO), was upgrading to old style typewriters to avoid a US style internet leak.
Apparently the FSO is so worried about a Snowden style leak that it has bought 20 new electric typewriters for $15,000.
The story went the way of all flesh, but this morning the world wide wibble was all a flush with the news that the Russians were replacing their computers with typewriters.
It appears that the Izvestiya newspaper ran the story this week and it was picked up by serious news sources. Only it did not. Izvestiya mentions the G20 summit in London, which was also last year.
What appears to have happened is that the story suddenly did a round on Facebook and hacks looking for a new story to tell their news editor pitched it as something new.
It is not like there is a new angle on it either; the story was the same as it was when Techeye and Izvestiya first mentioned it. The story appears in the Washington Post which even linked to a USA Today story from a year earlier The Guardian which ran the story last year at least added that the Germans were doing the same thing. We have also seen news blogs which are repeating the same headline from 2013. Of course the story is all over Facebook.
