Techmeme: Sony to Officially Name North Korea as Source of Hack Attack (Arik Hesseldahl/Re/code)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

December 3, 2014, 5:55 PM

Top News

Marco della Cava / USA Today:

Google to create new versions of its most popular products for kids 12 and under starting early next year — Google to revamp its products with 12-and-under focus — SAN FRANCISCO - With Google processing 40,000 search queries a second - or 1.2 trillion a year - it's a safe bet that many of those doing the Googling are kids.

More: Engadget, Gizmodo, 9to5Google, The Next Web, SlashGear, TIME, Ubergizmo, WebProNews and Android Central

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

Google's new reCAPTCHA often requires just a single click, detects bots by analyzing IPs, cookies, and mouse movements; can still fall back to puzzles — Google Can Now Tell You're Not a Robot With Just One Click — When Alan Turing first conceived of the Turing Test in 1947 …

More: Google Online Security Blog, The Verge, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, PandoDaily, The Next Web, USA Today, VentureBeat, The Register, Tech Times, Geek.com, 9to5Google, Gigaom, BetaNews and Help Net Security

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

Sony to Officially Name North Korea as Source of Hack Attack — Sony Pictures will officially name North Korea as the source of a hacking attack that has exposed sensitive files and brought down its corporate network last week, two sources close to the investigation tell Re/code.

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Wired's Mat Honan Hired to Run New BuzzFeed Silicon Valley Bureau — Mat Honan, the high-profile Wired writer and editor, has been hired by BuzzFeed to become its new Silicon Valley bureau chief. — The online news site, which has been on a tear of late with a giant funding and a high-profile scoop …

Tweets: @alicetruong, @cdirusso, @buzzfeedben and @jsnell. See also Mediagazer

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

FCC commmissioner Ajit Pai accuses Netflix of creating its own proprietary fast lanes on ISP networks — Netflix accused of creating fast lanes “at the expense of competitors” — Ajit Pai of the Federal Communications Commission today accused Netflix of “secur[ing] ‘fast lanes’ for its own content” …

More: VentureBeat, PC Magazine, Techdirt, The Hill, Re/code, The Register, Pocketables, SlashGear, Electronista, Broadcasting & Cable, FierceCable and TechCrunch

Tweets: @karlbode and @ajitpaifcc

See also Mediagazer

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Skype Co-Founder Backs Wire, A New Communications App Launching Today On iOS, Android And Mac — Skype co-founder Janus Friis is backing a new communications app called Wire, out now for iOS, Android and Mac OS X. The app itself is the reimagining of how a communications tool like Skype should operate had it been built today.

More: Guardian, PC Magazine, GeekWire, The Verge, Wire, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Engadget, Business Insider, PandoDaily, Light Reading, Tech Times, Wire, Wall Street Journal, Wired.co.uk and Gigaom

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Mozilla exec at internal event: “we're going to get Firefox on iOS” — Firefox Could Soon Come To iOS — For a year now, Mozilla has categorically stated that it wouldn't release a version of Firefox for iOS because Apple won't let it use its own web engine on its platform.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

GrubHub rival now live in Amazon Local app, covering a limited number of Seattle restaurants — Amazon Has Launched A GrubHub Rival For Food Takeout & Delivery — Back in June, we wrote about how Amazon was preparing to take on companies like Seamless, Grubhub and DeliveryHero …

More: GeekWire, Eater, Seeking Alpha and WebProNews

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Zenefits Faces Shutdown In Utah For Giving Its Cloud-Based HR Software Away For Free — Zenefits has become the latest startup to face regulatory scrutiny in a market it serves, as it now faces opposition from the Utah Insurance Department. The department is taking the company to task essentially …

More: Fortune, Techdirt, Quartz, Vox, Beehive Startups, Insurance Journal, SiliconBeat and Change.org

Tweets: @aaronklein, @andrewdumont, @brezina, @mg, @andyswan, @pmarca and @pmarca

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Demand Founder Raises $20 Million at a $100 Million Valuation for Legal TV-Clipping Startup Whipclip — Longtime Los Angeles entrepreneur Richard Rosenblatt is launching a startup called Whipclip in private beta today, striking a series of deals with big media companies and attracting a roster …

More: socalTECH.com. See also Mediagazer

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

UK announces a ‘Google tax’ to stop companies diverting profits overseas — Chancellor promises a 25 percent levy on any profits diverted overseas, but implementation will be key — The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, responsible for setting the UK's budget, today announced plans …

More: GOV.UK departments and policy, New York Times, Inquirer, The Digital Reader, GOV.UK departments and policy, Fortune, The Register, Geeky Gadgets, Press Association and Ars Technica

Ian Sherr / CNET:

Battery tech stagnant and unlikely to advance for years; manufacturers skirt constraints by improving software, saving energy, and shrinking parts — It's 2014. Why is my battery stuck in the '90s? — The devices we all rely on continue to evolve radically. So why has the battery industry failed?

More: ZDNet. Tweets: @rycrist, @photomodo and @iansherr

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

New Bluetooth 4.2 spec brings IPv6, better privacy, and increased speed — Almost exactly a year ago, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced Bluetooth 4.1, an update that improved speed for bulk data transfers, reduced the likelihood of LTE interference, and made it easier for various …

More: Bluetooth Technology Website, Engadget, ReadWrite, Gigaom, Digital Trends, EE Times, 9to5Mac, Wearable Tech Insider, Mashable, MacRumors, Inquirer and PC World

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

Google Drive now lets you edit Microsoft Office attachments right from Gmail — Google today announced a very useful new addition to Gmail: editing Microsoft Office documents that arrive as email attachments. A new Google Drive edit icon has been added to Gmail attachments that you can click …

Marcus Wohlsen / Wired:

Dropbox launches Business API, with initial 3rd party software makers including Dell, IBM, and Microsoft — Dropbox Steps Up to Rescue Us From Corporate Software — Dropbox is going corporate. — On Wednesday, the file-syncing startup launched an application programming interface …

More: Dropbox for Business blog, The Next Web, 9to5Mac, Inquirer and Geeky Gadgets. Tweets: @joshconstine

Vanessa Friedman / New York Times:

Intel teams with Italian eyewear giant Luxottica for R&D in smart glasses, targets 2015 product release — Luxottica and Intel Take the Fashion/Tech Hookup to a Whole New Level — On Wednesday, Luxottica, the Italian eyewear behemoth, and Intel, the American technology giant …

More: Intel Newsroom, PandoDaily, TechCrunch, Quartz, ReadWrite, Reuters, Wearable World News, Connectedly, Engadget, Geeky Gadgets, ZDNet, eWeek, Wearable Tech Insider, Wall Street Journal, RTTNews and Gigaom

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Indiegogo Is Testing Optional Insurance Fees For Crowdfunded Products — This year has been a tricky one for crowdfunding site Indiegogo, thanks to a number of campaigns using its service to raise money for dubious projects (though there have been some cool uses).

More: Mashable, SiliconANGLE, MediaNama, Ubergizmo and Electronista

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.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar — Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds. But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?

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.

Invest Like the Best:

Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Sources:

Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Training Data:

Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion

Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.

Subscribe to Training Data.

Uncapped with Jack Altman:

Andrew Feldman from Cerebras

Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.

Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:55 PM ET, December 3, 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.