Techmeme: Bitcoin was the worst-performing currency of 2014, dropping more than 56% to under $330 (Mark Gilbert/Bloomberg View)

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December 28, 2014, 5:50 PM

Top News

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Apple Starts Streaming “The Interview,” Too — It took Apple a few days, but it's joining the club: Starting today, iTunes users in the U.S. and Canada can rent and purchase “The Interview,” Sony's controversial comedy. — The movie became available at Apple's store at 1 pm ET today.

Mark Gilbert / Bloomberg View:

Bitcoin was the worst-performing currency of 2014, dropping more than 56% to under $330 — And 2014's Worst Currency Was...Bitcoin — It's been a bad year for the Russian ruble and a terrible 12 months for the Ukrainian hryvnia. But it's been a catastrophic 2014 for Bitcoin, the virtual currency.

More: Re/code, PC Magazine, adafruit industries blog, NEWSBTC, sputniknews.com, Times of India, Vox and SiliconANGLE

Tweets: @steve_hanke, @zackwhittaker and @chrismaddern

William Turton / The Daily Dot:

Meet Lizard Squad, the group whose DDoS attack crippled Xbox Live and PlayStation Network — Meet Lizard Squad, the hackers who ruined Christmas for gamers worldwide — Vinnie Omari was still a bit drunk when he initiated what could be the biggest distributed denial-of-service attack in history.

More: PlayStation Knowledge Center, Gawker, Kotaku, Business Insider, PlayStation LifeStyle, Engadget, PC Magazine, The Inquisitr News, Gizmodo, Polygon, Forbes, PandoDaily, The Register, bizjournals, The Next Web and The Verge. Tweets: @jaberman

Jeff Grubb / VentureBeat:

PlayStation Network back online after three-day outage due to DDoS attack; Sony says some users may still experience intermittent issues

More: PlayStation Blog, Digital Trends, Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney.com, Engadget, Wall Street Journal, BetaNews, The Verge, PlayStation LifeStyle, Business Insider, The Register, Polygon, VentureBeat and New York Times

Tweets: @askplaystation, @askplaystation and @jeffgerstmann

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Tor network flooded with new relays by Lizard Squad, group allegedly behind Xbox Live and PSN attacks

More: NEWS.com.au, ZDNet, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, PC Magazine, Business Insider, Mashable, Washington Post, The Register, SiliconANGLE, ReadWrite, Gigaom and Business Insider

Tweets: @lizardmafia, @lizardmafia, @kaepora, @torproject, @kaepora, @lizardmafia and @fredericjacobs

Jack Kim / Reuters:

North Korea blames U.S. for Internet outages, calls Obama a ‘monkey’ — (Reuters) - North Korea called U.S. President Barack Obama a “monkey” as it blamed Washington Saturday for Internet outages that it has experienced amid a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures.

More: New York Times, Reuters, Digital Trends, Telegraph, VICE News, Voice of America, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, Associated Press, Guardian, NPR, Business Insider, The Register, LIFARS, NBC News, Associated Press, Electronista, The Verge and Engadget

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

North Korean Internet experienced a 5+ hour outage after its only wireless carrier went down — Internet Crashes in North Korea as 3G Networks Fail — Three days after an apparent denial-of-service attack halted its Internet connections, North Korea suffered another Internet outage …

More: Ars Technica, USA Today, CIO.com, CircleID, ABC News, The Wrap, CNBC, NEWS.com.au, TechCrunch, NBC News, Mashable and CNET. Tweets: @dynresearch

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

As competition among VCs increases, some founders sell shares in early funding rounds — Investors Are ‘Fighting Like Drunken Sailors’ Over Hot Startups And Letting Founders Get Rich Too Early — Venture Capitalists used to invest in startups so founders could build businesses.

More: Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch. Tweets: @ajs, @abrams, @fazz and @alex

Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:

Windows Phone apps downloaded most on low-cost, low-memory phones — Mobile app developers considering Windows Phone support for their apps, take note: Based on data released by Microsoft on Tuesday, you may want to target low-end devices. Why? Because most of the apps downloaded …

More: Building Apps for Windows, WinBeta, MobileSyrup.com, WinBeta, Windows Phone Central, The Register and WMPoweruser

Reuters:

Court allows Aereo to auction TV streaming technology assets — A bankruptcy court has allowed defunct video streaming company Aereo Inc to auction its TV streaming technology assets, according to court papers published on Friday. — The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday …

More: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Engadget, Gizmodo, Deadline, Electronista and VatorNews

Spiegel Online:

Snowden documents reveal the NSA routinely intercepted SSL/TLS traffic, decrypted VPN connections, struggled with PGP, Truecrypt, Tor, Cspace, OTR, ZRTP in 2012 — Inside the NSA's War on Internet Security — US and British intelligence agencies undertake every effort imaginable to crack …

Tweets: @ggreenwald, @mikko, @glynmoody and @glynmoody

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Comcast-TWC merger looks less likely amid growing opposition, concern over state of US broadband — As Comcast merger enters final phase, deal may be on thin ice — Credit: André P. Meyer-Vitali/Flickr CC — Credit: André P. Meyer-Vitali/Flickr CC

Megan Geuss / Ars Technica:

Warrant for raid on Kim Dotcom legal, New Zealand Supreme Court rules — New Zealand's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday (PDF) that warrants granted by the Court of Aukland in 2012 to search Kim Dotcom were legal. Warrants to search Dotcom compatriots Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann, and Bram van der Kolk were also upheld.

More: TorrentFreak, New Zealand Herald, Stuff.co.nz and The Register

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

The Open Bay helps launch 372 ‘copies’ of The Pirate Bay in a week, becomes GitHub's most popular project — isoHunt, the group now best known for launching The Old Pirate Bay, has shared an update a week after debuting The Open Bay. The Pirate Bay, the most popular file sharing website on the planet …

More: TorrentFreak and Hacked. Thanks:@epro

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