Techmeme
December 29, 2014, 1:30 AM

Top News

Steve Kovach / Business Insider:
Sony says ‘The Interview’ was rented or purchased more than 2M times, generated over $15M in online sales; Apple starts offering the movie on iTunes  —  ‘The Interview’ Generated Over $15 Million In Online Sales  —  Sony announced Sunday night that “The Interview” …
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 …
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.
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.
Jeff Grubb / VentureBeat:
PlayStation Network back online after three-day outage due to DDoS attack; Sony says some users may still experience intermittent issues  —  PSN is still down for some as Sony gets service back online  —  Sony says that its online service is back up and running, but many people are still having issues playing games.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
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.
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
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.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Directory Closes, Five Days Early  —  The Yahoo Directory, the core part of how Yahoo itself began in 1994, officially closed today, five days ahead of when Yahoo had said the end would come.  —  If you try to reach the Yahoo Directory at its long-standing address of http …

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Blair Hanley Frank / GeekWire:

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Paul Graham: