Techmeme: The Open Bay helps launch 372 ‘copies’ of The Pirate Bay in a week, becomes GitHub's most popular project (Emil Protalinski/VentureBeat)

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December 27, 2014, 2:45 PM

Top News

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

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, NEWS.com.au, TechCrunch, USA Today, The Wrap, CNBC, NBC News, GeekTime and CNNMoney.com. Tweets: @dynresearch

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 Verge, The Official Google Blog, Variety, VentureBeat, Reuters, Business Insider, Mashable, Soompi, Neowin, BGR, SlashGear, Deadline, Polygon, Fortune, New York Times, Ubergizmo, The Verge, CNET, Digital Trends, ReadWrite, New York Times, The Official Microsoft Blog, Open Culture, SiliconANGLE, Electronista, Gigaom, Los Angeles Times, Broadband TV News, Gizmodo, Computerworld, TechCrunch, Upstart Business Journal, ThinkProgress, BGR, Deadline, 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, MacNN, Hardcore Gamer, BBC and Cult of Mac. See also Mediagazer

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, Washington Post, Forbes, Business Insider, Gigaom, The Register, ReadWrite and SiliconANGLE

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

Mike Fahey / Kotaku:

PlayStation Network still experiencing outages days after DDoS attack reportedly ceased — PSN Still Having Big Problems Two Days After Christmas Outage — Two days following the Christmas day outage that laid low both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, users are still having trouble connecting …

More: Xbox One Support, VentureBeat, PC World, Gawker, Polygon and New York Times

Tweets: @askplaystation, @askplaystation and @jeffgerstmann

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. Thanks:@epro

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

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 …

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: TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Business Insider

Tweets: @cdixon, @chrisamccoy, @alex, @cdixon, @mdudas, @patrickc, @smc90, @levie and @smc90

Thanks:@ryanm

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, BetaNews, TechCrunch, CNET, tech.co, internetretailer.com, Electronista, SlashGear, Mashable, GeekWire and Business Insider. Tweets: @mdudas

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

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

After Alleged Rape In New Delhi, Uber Lays Out Additional Safety Measures In India — Following an incident in which one of its drivers allegedly raped a female passenger in New Delhi, ride-hailing company Uber has announced additional safety measures it is taking in India.

More: Uber Blog, Medium and NDTV Gadgets

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