Techmeme: Mariposa botnet ‘mastermind’ jailed in Slovenia (BBC)

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December 24, 2013, 1:25 PM

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Barton Gellman / Washington Post:

Snowden says “the mission's already accomplished”, and he first shared concerns with numerous NSA co-workers — Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished — MOSCOW — The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.

Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:

The National Security Agency's oversharing problem

More: TechCrunch

Nitasha Tiku / Valleywag:

Google's Investigating Rap Genius For Using Spammy SEO to Grow Traffic — How has Rap Genius distinguished itself all the other lyrics sites? With sweet, sweet old school spam techniques, or at Silicon Valley likes to call it “growth hacking.” The tactic is so shady that Matt Cutts …

More: jmarbach.com and Search Engine Land. Tweets: @nitashatiku

Rap Genius:

Rap Genius apologizes for SEO tactics, asks Google to investigate whole lyrics search business — Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO — On Rap Genius, userAnnotates and the artists themselves explore lyrics interactively via line-by-line annotations that they can read, create, and edit.

Bloomberg:

Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies — Italy's Parliament today passed a new measure on web advertising, the so-called “Google tax,” which will require Italian companies to purchase their Internet ads from locally registered companies, instead of from units based in havens such as Ireland, Luxembourg and Bermuda.

More: Forbes and SlashGear. Tweets: @jessedrucker

Dana Wollman / Engadget:

Apple Mac Pro review (2013): small, fast and in a league of its own — It would be an understatement to say that Apple's Mac Pro workstation was getting a little long in the tooth. As of summer 2012, it was missing Apple's own Thunderbolt ports, not to mention 802.11n WiFi.

More: The Next Web, The Verge, AppleInsider, New York Times, Computerworld, Marco.org, 9to5Mac, ZDNet, Cult of Mac, PC Magazine, iPhone in Canada Blog, TechCrunch, MacRumors and Business Insider

Dennis Fisher / Threatpost:

Stanford Researchers Find Connecting Metadata With User Names is Simple — One of the key tenets of the argument that the National Security Agency and some lawmakers have constructed to justify the agency's collection of phone metadata is that the information it's collecting …

More: Web Policy, DSLreports and TechEye

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Justine Sacco And The Self-Inflicted Perils Of Twitter — A few weeks ago, I had a drink with my friend Justine Sacco and we talked about what makes for a good Tweet. — Justine is an easy person to like — frank, funny, quick to laugh. To a reporter, she's the kind of flack who's all too rare …

More: Salon, CNN, msnbc.com, Mediaite, The Wrap, Variety, The Nation, Gigaom, PerezHilton, NPR, The Huffington Post, The Technology Chronicles, Business Insider and memeburn

Tweets: @mattbuchanan, @tcarmody, @adrianchen, @kashhill and @pkafka

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:

Hulu must face privacy lawsuit, U.S. judge rules — (Reuters) - Hulu has failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the video streaming service of illegally sharing users' viewing history with Facebook Inc and business metrics company comScore Inc.

More: VentureBeat, Hollywood Reporter, Reuters, SlashGear, MediaPost, Electronista and The Next Web. Tweets: @samschech

BBC:

Mariposa botnet ‘mastermind’ jailed in Slovenia — A hacker accused of masterminding one of the biggest ever botnets has been sentenced to just under 5 years in jail. — Matjaz Skorjanc was arrested in 2010 after a two-year investigation into malware that had hijacked about 12.7 million computers around the world.

More: VentureBeat, Graham Cluley, IOL and English pravda.ru

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Prestigious speaker Mikko Hypponen cancels RSA talk to protest NSA deal — Friday's report that RSA received $10 million to make an NSA-favored random number generator the default setting in its BSAFE crypto tool aren't yet creating any problems on Wall Street, with stock for parent company EMC rising 2 percent on Monday.

More: Gigaom, Business Insider, Network World, The Next Web, The Register, F-Secure Antivirus …, AllThingsD, SlashGear and CSO Blogs

Tweets: @mikko, @mikko, @panther_modern, @gcluley, @ioerror and @uvicjames

Jeremy C. Owens / Mercury News:

Apple hits 2013 high after China Mobile deal, Facebook and Twitter reach records — A woman using a phone walks past Apple's logo near its retail outlet in Beijing Monday, Dec. 23, 2013. Apple and China Mobile announced a long-anticipated agreement Monday to bring the iPhone to the world's biggest phone company.

More: Tech Trader Daily, Fortune, Bloomberg, Cult of Mac, MarketWatch, Associated Press, Engadget, The Mac Observer, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, DailyFinance.com, Forbes and TechnoBuffalo. Tweets: @stocktwits

BBC:

Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing — Computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing has been given a posthumous royal pardon. — It overturns his 1952 conviction for homosexuality for which he was punished by being chemically castrated. — The conviction meant he lost …

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