For now at least, Twitter isn't in a mad rush to go public and watch its stock price soar in what some are calling the second coming of the dot-com bubble. But that doesn't mean the microblogging service is hard up for cash, either. On the contrary, Twitter is trying to finalize an additional $400 million in funding that, if successful, would value the company at around $8 billion, the New York Times reports. What is Twitter really worth?

In this latest edition of As the Hacking World Turns, the hacker group known as Lulz Security (LulzSec) celebrated its 1,000 twitter post, issued a long-winded mission statement that boils down to the group saying, "we do things just because we find it entertaining," and the announcement that it's teaming with Anonymous, another hacking organization, to effectively declare war on "any government or agency that crosses their path."

Twitter is taking steps to make itself more self-reliant, and towards that end, the microblogging service on Tuesday announced it will automatically slice and dice URLs into shortened links. This essentially cuts out the middlemen, like Bit.ly, TinyURL, Goo.gl, and whatever else you might have been using to free up as many of those 140 characters as possible.

Egads! Friday the 13th's evil mojo is proving a menace for microblogging loud mouths who feel compelled to tell the world what they just ate for lunch or, unadvisedly, who they just murdered and where they hid the body (we'll stick to using it for posting article links and contest announcements). Casual users probably didn't notice that something's awry, but if you stay connected to Twitter throughout the day, expect intermittent hiccups.