Techmeme: The Interview sees over 1.5M estimated torrent downloads in first two days of availability, comparable to popular blockbusters (Ernesto/TorrentFreak)

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December 27, 2014, 11:30 AM

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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: Gizmodo, NPR, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Associated Press, New York Times, Guardian, Associated Press, NBC News, The Register, The Verge, Electronista, Business Insider and Engadget. Tweets: @dynresearch. See also Mediagazer

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

The Interview sees over 1.5M estimated torrent downloads in first two days of availability, comparable to popular blockbusters — 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.

More: CNNMoney.com, The Official Google Blog, The Verge, Business Insider, Fortune, Variety, SlashGear, Reuters, VentureBeat, Mashable, Polygon, Soompi, New York Times, The Verge, Neowin, BGR, Deadline, Ubergizmo, CNET, ReadWrite, Digital Trends, New York Times, The Official Microsoft Blog, Open Culture, Gigaom, SiliconANGLE, Los Angeles Times, Broadband TV News, Electronista, Gizmodo, Computerworld, TechCrunch, Upstart Business Journal, ThinkProgress, Deadline, BGR, Chicago Tribune, tech.co, TechCrunch, The Register, Neowin, Pop Culture Blog, socalTECH.com, Phandroid, Techdirt, 9to5Google, The Mac Observer, SecurityWeek, Tech Trader Daily, The Hill, Laughing Squid, Inside Movies, SiliconBeat, VentureBeat, Droid Life, Polygon, CNNMoney.com, Tubefilter, TechnoBuffalo, BBC, Hardcore Gamer, MacNN and Cult of Mac. See also Mediagazer

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 …

Thanks:@epro

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Tor network flooded with new relays by Lizard Squad, group allegedly behind Xbox Live and PSN attacks — Hackers allegedly behind Xbox and PlayStation network shutdown set sights on Tor — The group that allegedly took down Microsoft and Sony's gaming networks now says it's set its sights on a new target.

More: Gizmodo, The Daily Dot, PC Magazine, Mashable, Forbes, Washington Post, Business Insider, Gigaom, The Register, ReadWrite and SiliconANGLE

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

Paul Graham:

Immigration reform is crucial to keeping the US a tech superpower, as 95% of great programmers reside outside the US — Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In — American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US.

More: Business Insider and VentureBeat. Tweets: @cdixon, @chrisamccoy, @alex, @cdixon, @mdudas, @patrickc, @smc90, @levie and @smc90. Thanks:@ryanm

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 …

Matt Day / The Seattle Times:

IRS demands Ballmer, other Microsoft leaders testify in corporate tax audit — The Internal Revenue Service has sued former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and a slate of other former and current executives, seeking to compel them to testify in a long-running investigation into how the company's …

More: WinBeta, bizjournals and GeekWire

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Amazon says 10M people tried Prime, 60% of customers shopped from a mobile device this holiday season — Amazon says 10 million new customers tried Prime over the holidays — Here's what everyone bought during the holiday shopping rush — Pushing the cost of Amazon Prime up to $99 annually …

More: Amazon.com, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, SlashGear, Electronista, BetaNews, CNET, tech.co, internetretailer.com, Mashable, GeekWire and Business Insider. Tweets: @mdudas

Eric Meyer / Thoughts From Eric:

Facebook's Year in Review suggestions may in some cases be inadvertently tactless and 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.

More: Om Malik, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Washington Post, SiliconBeat, PC Magazine and TechCrunch

James Vincent / The Verge:

Kodak-branded Android smartphone to launch in January at CES; tablet, camera, 4G handset will come later in year — Kodak is launching a line of Android smartphones in 2015 — Kodak has announced that it's licensing its name to a range of mobile devices that make it easier to print and share images.

More: PR Newswire, Engadget, Electronista, Forbes, Android Central, Liliputing, Social Barrel, The Next Web, Tech Times, Re/code and Droid Life

Tweets: @harrymccracken and @verge

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

IBM: mobile made up 34.8% of total Christmas Day online sales, an increase of 20.4% YoY; iOS accounted for 27%, nearly 4x Android — IBM: Christmas online sales up 8.3%, iOS numbers nearly quadruple Android's — Christmas is a religious and cultural celebration for billions of people …

More: MacDailyNews, PC Magazine, VatorNews and SlashGear. Tweets: @benedictevans

Wall Street Journal:

Facebook, Twitter, and Google resist Russian regulator's orders to remove information on rally supporting opposition leader Navalny — U.S. Tech Firms Face Showdown With Russian Censors — Facebook, Twitter, Google Wrestle With Kremlin Orders to Erase Content

More: Engadget, Neowin and SiliconBeat

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