Techmeme
December 31, 2012, 2:40 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Game Over: Zynga Shuts Down PetVille And 10 Other Titles To Cut Costs  —  Executing the cost-reduction plan CEO Mark Pincus announced in November, Zynga has shut down, pulled from the app stores, or stopped accepting new players to 11 games, with some turning off today.
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
Samsung reportedly set to sell its first Tizen-based smartphone in 2013  —  The world will finally see the fruits of Tizen, the open sourced mobile operating system that has support from Samsung, DoCoMo, Vodafone and others, in 2013, according to a report from Japan's Daily Yomiuri …
Gabe Rivera / Techmeme News:
Techmeme's biggest (i.e. tallest) stories of 2012  —  Now that we've examined the year's trending terms, our final retrospectacular tour of 2012 examines the stories themselves.  On Techmeme, the biggest stories usually become the tallest stories as different angles of reporting and analysis pile up …
Tweets: @mathewi and @fmanjoo
Associated Press:
Obama Signs FISA Warrantless Wiretapping Program Extension Into Law  —  WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the U.S. government's authority to monitor the overseas activity of suspected foreign spies and terrorists.
Steve Stecklow / Reuters:
Exclusive: Huawei partner offered embargoed HP gear to Iran  —  (Reuters) - A major Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies offered to sell at least 1.3 million euros worth of embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator in late 2010, documents show.
Keith Teare / TechCrunch:
Unnatural Acts And The Rise Of Mobile  —  Editor's note: Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of recently funded just.me.  He was a co-founder of TechCrunch.  —  As all predatory, or formerly predatory, men and women know, if you're at a party and still …
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Microsoft confirms zero-day bug in IE6, IE7 and IE8  —  Second time in two years it's had to deal with late-December vulnerabilities  —  Microsoft on Saturday confirmed that Internet Explorer (IE) 6, 7 and 8 contain an unpatched bug — or “zero-day” vulnerability — that is being used by attackers to hijack victims' Windows computers.
Sebastien Page / iDownloadBlog:
Hackulous shuts down: piracy app Installous is gone  —  In what seems like a small victory against app piracy, the Hackulous team announced today on its site that it is shutting down, bringing down its most popular apps in the process: Installous and AppSync.
Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:
Disruptions: The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes  —  A pilot uses the FlySmart with Airbus app on an Apple iPad.  The F.A.A. has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims.  —  Over the last year, flying with phones and other devices has become increasingly dangerous.
Josh Ong / The Next Web:
Yahoo completes its planned exit from South Korea  —  True to its word, Yahoo has pulled out of the South Korean market by the end of 2012, as noted by the Yonhap News Agency.  A notice on the company's site provides detailed instructions to users on when exactly all of its services will go dark …

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Earlier Picks

Salman Masood / New York Times:
Martin Bryant / The Next Web: