Techmeme: Sony drops music streaming service Gracenote (Donna Tam/CNET)

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December 25, 2013, 12:45 PM

Top News

Reuters:

Exclusive: Target hackers stole encrypted bank PINs - source — (Reuters) - The hackers who attacked Target Corp (TGT.N) and compromised up to 40 million credit cards and debit cards also managed to steal encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs), according to a senior payments executive familiar with the situation.

More: BGR, CBS New York, TIME and TwinCities.com

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Rescator.la, a major marketplace for cards stolen in Target hack, linked to Ukrainian man — Who's Selling Credit Cards from Target? — The previous two posts on this blog have featured stories about banks buying back credit and debit card accounts stolen in the Target hack and that ended …

More: Gigaom, NYT Bits, Computerworld, The Verge, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch

Tweets: @0xali, @mattbraga and @briankrebs

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: Search Engine Land, jmarbach.com and VentureBeat. 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.

More: SEO Book, TechCrunch, Business Insider and Search Engine Land

Tweets: @melissatsang, @startupljackson and @bmilleare

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Google sues to protect Android device makers from Rockstar patent infringement suits — Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple-backed patent hell — Google has filed a new lawsuit to challenge an Apple-backed consortium known as Rockstar that is using dubious patents …

More: The Verge, Engadget, FOSS Patents, PhoneArena, Forbes, SlashGear, BGR, Mashable, VentureBeat, MacNN, iDownloadBlog.com, Cult of Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog and Bloomberg. Tweets: @paulg. See also Mediagazer

Violet Blue / ZDNet:

Researchers publish Snapchat code allowing phone number matching after exploit disclosures ignored — Summary: Snapchat's previously undocumented API and code for two exploits have been published, allowing mass name/phone number matching, and mass creation of bogus accounts. — Violet Blue

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @violetblue

Donna Tam / CNET:

Sony drops music streaming service Gracenote — Sony has sold its ownership of Gracenote, a service that matches and streams music across multiple devices, the electronics company announced Monday. The company sold all of its shares to the Tribune Co. for $170 million.

Steven Sinofsky / Learning by Shipping:

Designing for exponential trends of 2014 — Rather than predict anything that will suddenly appear at the end of 2014, this post offers some trends that are likely to double by some measure this next year. — This will turn out to be an exponential year in many technologies …

More: BGR. Tweets: @stevesi, @mattrosoff, @mdudas, @marypcbuk and @cdixon

Jenny W. Hsu / Wall Street Journal:

Taiwan Fines Apple for iPhone Price-Plan Meddling — Island's fair-trade body says Apple told mobile-service providers how to charge for handsets — TAIPEI— Apple Inc. has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars (US$670,000) and ordered to stop interfering with mobile service providers …

More: Wall Street Journal, The Verge, BGR, Engadget and Forbes

Ben Dummett / Wall Street Journal:

BlackBerry co-founder Lazardis cuts stake to under 5%, won't pursue bid for company — BlackBerry Co-Founder Lazardis Cut Stake to Under 5% — Lazardis Indicated He Doesn't Plan To Pursue Bid for Company — TORONTO— BlackBerry Ltd. co-founder Michael Lazaridis disclosed …

More: Globe and Mail, Bloomberg, Tech Trader Daily, DealBook, Associated Press and Reuters

Jonathan Cheng / Wall Street Journal:

Samsung Phone Studied for Possible Security Gap — Israeli Researchers Point to Alleged Vulnerability in Galaxy S4 — SEOUL—The security platform for Samsung Electronics Co. 's best-selling Galaxy S4 smartphone suffers from a vulnerability that could allow malicious software to track emails …

More: SlashGear, Gizmodo, Business Insider, BerryReview, Los Angeles Times, TechHive, pocketnow.com, Yahoo! News, iClarified, BGR, 9to5Google and Android Community

Liana B. Baker / Reuters:

SoftBank gets closer to buying T-Mobile: report — (Reuters) - Japan-based SoftBank Corp (TYO:9984) is in final stages of talks with T-Mobile (TMUS.N)parent company Deutsche Telekom (DTE.DE)about acquiring the U.S.-based wireless carrier, the Nikkei news service reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources.

More: Nikkei Asian Review, BGR, Digital Trends, PhoneArena, Los Angeles Times, Engadget, The Verge and TmoNews. Tweets: @zpower

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: NYT Bits, Salon, CNN, msnbc.com, BuzzFeed, Mediaite, AdAge, Business Insider, Gigaom, The Wrap, Variety, PerezHilton, NPR, The Nation, The Huffington Post, The Technology Chronicles, Daily Mail and memeburn

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

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