Techmeme
December 26, 2014, 11:25 AM

Top News

Dave Smith / Business Insider:
PlayStation Network And Xbox Live Are Down, And The Notorious Hacker Gang ‘Lizard Squad’ Is Taking Credit  —  Hackers don't take a holiday, it seems.  Hours after Microsoft's Xbox Live went down Wednesday, Sony's PlayStation Network went down, too.  These are the two networks that users of consoles access to play games online.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Interview is a pirate hit with over 750K estimated torrent downloads; restricted availability outside the US a possible driving factor  —  The Interview Is A Pirate Hit With 200k Downloads (Updated)  —  Facing a “terrorist” threat theaters all around the U.S. backed away from showing The Interview last week.
Steve Kovach / Business Insider:
The Interview now available to rent for $5.99 or purchase for $14.99 through YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video, and SeeTheInterview.com  —  Where To Watch ‘The Interview’ Online Right Now  —  Sony will release “The Interview” online Wednesday, the company announced.
Kim Zetter / Wired:
David Lerman / Bloomberg:
NSA reports show agency may have violated laws by unauthorized surveillance of Americans for over a decade  —  U.S. Spy Agency Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans  —  The National Security Agency today released reports on intelligence collection that may have violated the law …
Eric Meyer / Thoughts From Eric:
Facebook's Year in Review suggestions may in some cases be inadvertently tactless, hurtful  —  Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty  —  I didn't go looking for grief this afternoon, but it found me anyway, and I have designers and programmers to thank for it.  In this case, the designers and programmers are somewhere at Facebook.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Withings Activité review: too expensive for mass market at $450, but will appeal to watch enthusiasts  —  Withings Activité Fitness Tracking Watch Review  —  Wearable tech has seemed on a fairly straightforward path throughout the course of its initial development …
More: The Verge
Gerry Shih / Reuters:
Huawei's low cost Honor smartphone unit sales up to 20M from 1M in one year after replicating Xiaomi's online strategy  —  Huawei's smartphone sales shoot up after copying Xiaomi's online strategy  —  (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] has taken sales of its low-price Honor brand …
Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:
NFL to post game highlights and other video clips on Facebook with Verizon Wireless ads, share ad revenues with Facebook  —  Facebook Scores NFL Video Clips With Ads From Verizon  —  Facebook has scored a big partner as it ramps up its online video ambitions: the National Football League.
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Samsung shutters flagship London store amid falling sales  —  Closing down a marquee location in one of Europe's biggest malls  —  What are Samsung Experience Stores?  Why, they're a dying species, if the latest development in Samsung's efforts to establish its own retail empire are any indication.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Zoho Backstage x Zoho MCP: Your events, now connected to AI  —  Event management involves a constant stream of decisions and actions.  Registration numbers change, attendee lists grow, ticket classes evolve, and new requests come in throughout the day.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Insane Hidden AI Spending, Ranking Anthropic vs. OpenAI, AI For Travel Debate
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI's Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the "Artificial State" + Train of Thought
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL's TV Fight, and Sports Media's Big Split
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:25 AM ET, December 26, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Robin Sinha / NDTV Gadgets:
John Timmer / Ars Technica:

Earlier Picks

John Ribeiro / PC World: