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After nearly a year of radio silence, the infidelity hookup site Ashley Madison has finally released a statement about what's next for the company. Among other things, the company's new executive team admits that it used fembots to lure men into paying to join the site, which promised the men discreet affairs with willing women.

In fall 2015, Ashley Madison made headlines when a hacker or hackers known as Impact Team released massive data dumps from the company's source code, member databases, and then-CEO Noel Biderman's e-mail. The member database contained the names of 34 thousand people trying to have extra-marital affairs, and the revelations induced at least one man to commit suicide. In the wake of the data breach, a number of people have filed lawsuits against the company, and the company is currently under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission.

Last year, as part of an investigation into the data dump, I published a series of articles at Gizmodo exposing how the company used female chatbots called "hosts" or "engagers" to trick men into paying for Ashley Madison's services. The scam was simple: when a man signed up for a free account, he almost immediately got a chat or private message from a "woman" whose profile showed a few sexy pictures. To reply to his new lady friend, the man had to pay for an account. In reality, that lady was a few lines of PHP code.

With so many important news stories fighting for our attention these days, it can be hard to get people to care about a simple gaming crowdfunding effort. But sometimes a crowdfunding publicity stunt breaks through the noise and turns into something you have to gawk at.

Richard Garriott selling vials of his blood for thousands of dollars is one of those stunts.

Yes, Lord British himself, the 55-year-old creator of the Ultima series and noted space tourist, is auctioning off samples of his actual blood to raise money for his new fantasy RPG, Shroud of the Avatar. The six reliquaries—which we'll note again are full of Richard Garriott's actual blood—are being marketed as limited-run art pieces, "made of bakelite, copper, nails, glass, and mirrored glass that can be hung on your wall."

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Federal investigators have asked a judge in California to force Facebook to open up its financial and business records for 2010—the year that the social networking giant established a subsidiary in Ireland, largely for tax reasons.

According to a Wednesday affidavit by Internal Revenue Service agent Nina Wu Stone, Facebook failed to produce a host of documentation last month that the agency needed to understand the 2010 deal. Facebook’s move across the Atlantic was likely done in order to take advantage of a form of tax trickery known as the "Double Irish," a quirky Irish tax law arrangement that allows organizations to incorporate in Ireland but legally route money through other jurisdictions such as the Netherlands.

Facebook and many other tech firms have recently come under increased scrutiny for using this method to drastically—and legally—reduce tax burdens. The "Double Irish" was phased out in early 2015, but companies already using it have until 2020 to transition to something else.