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5:00 AM ET, January 18, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
David Drummond / The Official Google Blog:
Don't censor the web  —  You might notice many of your favorite websites look different today.  Wikipedia is down.  Wordpress is dark.  We're censoring our homepage logo and asking you to petition Congress.  So what's the big deal?  —  Right now in Washington D.C. …
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Ben Fritz / Company Town:
Wikipedia, Craigslist, other sites go black in SOPA protest  —  Following through on their threats to shut down for a day over controversial proposed anti-piracy legislation, a coalition of websites including the hugely popular user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia went black as midnight struck the East Coast.
Emily Steel / Digits:
Need Wikipedia Wednesday?  Here's How to Access It  —  Wikipedia's planned blackout won't be completely dark.  —  While the free encyclopedia is planning to blackout the English version of its site on Wednesday to protest antipiracy legislation, people still will be able to access Wikipedia information via other sources.
Colleen Taylor / GigaOM:
Taking SOPA/PIPA to the streets: Protests on for SF, NYC  —  A number of tech industry companies and organizations are taking to the web to protest the proposed anti-piracy legislation in the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA.)  But the demonstrations don't stop …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft says it opposes SOPA ‘as currently drafted’  —  Much of the tech world's attention is focused on the Stop Online Piracy Act this week, with Wikipedia and others planning to black out their sites Wednesday to protest the bill and its companion Protect IP Act.
House Judiciary Committee:
Stop Online Piracy Act Markup to Resume in February
Yahoo! Inc.:
Yahoo! Announces Resignation of Jerry Yang  —  SUNNYVALE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today announced that Jerry Yang has resigned from its Board of Directors and all other positions with the company, effective today.
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Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Sources: Four More Board Members Will Be Following Yang Out the Door  —  According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is just the first shoe to drop in what is shaping up to be what looks like a large exodus of board members from the Silicon Valley Internet company.
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:   Here's Why Roy Bostock Isn't Out....Yet
Charles Cooper / CBS News:   Can the naysaying and give Jerry Yang his due
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:   Jerry Yang's Decision to Leave Yahoo Was His Own — Even If It Was Inevitable
Reuters:
Samsung says not interested in buying RIM  —  (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co said on Wednesday it was not interested in taking over Research In Motion after shares of the BlackBerry smartphone maker jumped more than 10 percent following a tech blog report that it was seeking to sell itself to the South Korean firm.
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Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Research In Motion pushing for sale to Samsung
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Apple Turns to iWork Executive for Textbooks  —  As Apple Inc. prepares to unveil a new digital-textbook service on Thursday, the spotlight is falling on its vice president who is leading core aspects of the new service: Roger Rosner.  —  According to people familiar with the matter …
Paul Venezia / InfoWorld:
Fundamental Oracle flaw revealed  —  A design decision made by Oracle architects long ago may have painted some of Oracle's largest customers into a corner.  Patches have arrived, but how much will they correct?  Over the past two months, InfoWorld has been researching a flaw …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Will Windows 8 on ARM be an OEM-only product?  —  Summary: Will Windows 8 on ARM be available only as something preloaded on new tablets and PCs from selected vendors?  We still don't know for sure.  —  All the recent back and forth over Microsoft disallowing the installation …
Discussion: TechEye
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Eytan Bakshy / Facebook:
Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks  —  How do your friends shape the information you see and read online?  Social networking technologies like Facebook let us connect to hundreds, even thousands of people — and have fundamentally changed how people get their information.
RELATED:
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Facebook Is Totally Not an Echo Chamber, Says Facebook
Discussion: PC World
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Why Are Android Smartphones Bigger Than the iPhone?  —  Interesting theory from Jin Kim: … Kim makes a good case that an Android phone with a 3.5-inch display and 300+ pixels per inch resolution would reduce on-screen tap targets (like buttons) and text to an uncomfortably small size.
Discussion: Gizmodo and DisplayBlog
Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
For Some Internet Start-Ups, a Failure Is Just the Beginning  —  Every entrepreneur hopes to start the next big thing.  But sometimes the first try doesn't go as planned.  —  Bradford Shellhammer remembers the exact moment he realized his fledgling Web start-up, Fabulis …
Haaretz:
Israeli hackers bring down Saudi, UAE stock exchange websites  —  In fresh round of cyber warfare, Israel hackers, who go by the name IDF-TEAM, retaliate against Saudi attack on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, El Al websites.  —  Get Haaretz on iPhone  —  Get Haaretz on Android
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Facebook, Zynga Luring Employees to Hog Bandwidth at Work Hours  —  Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) — Social-network users are hogging more computer-network bandwidth — from the cubicle next door.  —  A growing proportion of the capacity on corporate networks is being taken up by employees actively …
Darren Murph / Engadget:
HP appoints Bill Veghte as chief strategy officer, will lead ‘cloud and webOS open source initiatives’  —  Bill Veghte was already having his checks cut by HP (after cutting ties with Microsoft), but now he'll be filling a slightly different corner office.  The company today announced …
Discussion: HP, The Register and Reuters
Royal Pingdom:
Internet 2011 in numbers  —  So what happened with the Internet in 2011?  How many email accounts were there in the world in 2011?  How many websites?  How much did the most expensive domain name cost?  How many photos were hosted on Facebook?  How many videos were viewed to YouTube?
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
Zeljka Zorz / Help Net Security:
Hackers steal $6.7 million in bank cyber heist  —  A perfectly planned, coordinated and executed bank robbery was executed during the first three days of the new year in Johannesburg, and left the targeted South African Postbank - part of the nation's Post Office service - with a loss of some $6.7 million.
Discussion: InfoWorld
T.C. Sottek / The Verge:
Sources: Google contractors fired after vandalizing OpenStreetMap, ‘no connection’ with Mocality incident (updated)  —  OpenStreetMap (OSM) representatives reported yesterday that miscreants originating from a Google IP address in India had extensively vandalized OSM — a Google spokesperson …
 
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 More Items: 
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Accel Leads $52.5M Round In Cloud-Based Data Storage And Backup Company Code 42
Discussion: AllThingsD, GigaOM, VentureBeat and Reuters
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Chill moves from live chat to social video discovery
Discussion: TechCrunch and Tubefilter
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Developing for BlackBerry 10
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Apple axes last remaining Mac purchase rebate
Electronista:
iPhone 4S ship times shrink to 3-5 days
Discussion: The Next Web and iDownloadBlog.com
Elinor Mills / CNET:
Google fixes Checkout bug that leaked customer data
 Earlier Items: 
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
Amazon to Launch Cloud Search Service, Possibly Tomorrow
Ben Popper / VentureBeat:
Forget Facebook, the IPO market is dying, says SecondMarket CEO Barry Silbert
John Cook / GeekWire:
Paul Allen-backed Audience files for $75 million IPO
Discussion: VentureBeat
Chris Parsons / iMore:
iPad 3 code names and Facebook mentions found in iOS 5.1 beta 3
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Evan Drellich / New York Times:
The MLB is planning national packages for streaming companies to bid on in 2028, when its national TV deals with ESPN, Fox, and Turner expire

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

 
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