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12:50 PM ET, January 23, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple's iBooks in Three Days  —  Though nascent and unproven, Apple's new textbook initiative appears to be gaining lots of momentum — and quickly, too.  Within days of its debut, Apple's iBooks textbook store had already racked up a significant number of downloads.
Wall Street Journal:
RIM CEOs Give Up Top Posts in Shuffle  —  WATERLOO, Ontario—After 20 years together at the helm of Research In Motion Ltd., Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, the company's co-chief executives, turned over the top job late Sunday to a little-known insider as part of a board and management shuffle.
RELATED:
Darren Murph / Engadget:
RIM's new CEO isn't the shakeup it needed  —  For a brief moment, I had hopes that RIM had made a move that would unseat it from the funk it's been sitting in for years.  And then I watched the introductory video of newly-appointed CEO Thorsten Heins.  Anyone who assumes that a simple CEO swap …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
RIM: Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis step down, co-COO Thorsten Heins is the new CEO
John Battelle / John Battelle's Search Blog:
Facebook To Google: Don't Be Evil, Focus On The User  —  Last week I spent an afternoon down at Facebook, as I mentioned here.  While at Facebook I met with Blake Ross, Direct of Product (and well known in web circles as one of the creators of Firefox).  Talk naturally turned to the implications …
RELATED:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
“Don't Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Gets Them Into Google's “Search Plus Your World”
Discussion: GigaOM and AllThingsD, Thanks:@blakeross
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Cyberlocker Ecosystem Shocked As Big Players Take Drastic Action  —  While the shutdown last week of Megaupload and the arrest of its founder and management team was certainly dramatic, a situation of perhaps even greater gravity is beginning to emerge.  —  Over the past 48 to 72 hours …
RELATED:
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Filesonic Kills File-Sharing Service After MegaUpload Arrests
Lee Rainie / Pew Internet:
Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period  —  The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers …
Bloomberg:
Nokia Lumia Sales Seen Topping 1 Million  —  Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)'s first phones running Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) software may have sold enough units last year to help rebuild investor confidence in the Finnish company, which lost $19 billion in market value in 2011.
Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:
Exclusive: YouTube hits 4 billion daily video views  —  (Reuters) - YouTube, Google Inc's video website, is streaming 4 billion online videos every day, a 25 percent increase in the past eight months, according to the company.  —  The jump in video views comes as Google pushes YouTube beyond …
Danny Sullivan / Daggle:
Dear Rupert Murdoch: Let's Talk Piracy & “The Simpsons”  —  Rupert, my son had a simple request.  “Daddy, can we watch last week's episode of The Simpsons?”  No, son, we can't.  You can blame Rupert Murdoch for that.  —  Rupert, I know you're all upset about all those SOPA & PIPA protests last week.
Discussion: PandoDaily
David Kushner / GQ:
The Hacker is Watching  —  Every online scam begins more or less the same—a random e-mail, a sketchy attachment.  But every so often, a new type of hacker comes along.  Someone who rewrites the rules, not just the code.  He secretly burrows his way into your hard drive, then into your life.
Troy Hunt / Troy Hunt's Blog:
Breaking CAPTCHA with automated humans  —  We're all familiar with CAPTCHA right?  That impenetrable fortress of crazy squiggly characters that only a real human can decipher.  Whilst they tend to drive us a bit nuts, they do actually provide a valuable function in that they prevent the automation of requests against online services.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
DLD 2012 - Brian Chesky: “Average Airbnb Host In NYC Pockets $21,000 A Year”  —  Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, took the stage this afternoon at the DLD Conference in Germany for a keynote covering his views about the ‘sharing economy’.  —  In terms of news, there isn't much to report based …
Discussion: Betabeat and VentureBeat
Bloomberg:
Startups Size Up Loan Candidates With Algorithms Rather Than FICO Scores  —  For more than 40 years, banks have counted on FICO scores to determine the credit worthiness of American consumers.  Now a handful of entrepreneurs in California say it's time for a smarter way to size up borrowers.
Discussion: @rakeshlobster
Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:
Piracy is part of the digital ecosystem  —  In the summer of 2009, I found myself invited to a small party in an old bourgeois apartment with breathtaking views of the Champ-de-Mars and Eiffel Tower.  The gathering was meant to be an informal discussion among media people about Nicolas Sarkozy's push for the HADOPI anti-piracy bill.
Angela Watercutter / Wired:
Anonymous Documentary We Are Legion Peels Back Hacktivist Group's History  —  PARK CITY, Utah — New documentary We Are Legion puts an actual human face on Anonymous, the hacktivist group whose members usually are seen wearing Guy Fawkes masks — if they are seen at all.
Discussion: UPROXX
 
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 More Items: 
Brad Reed / Network World:
LTE spectrum: How much do the big carriers have?
Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:
Stanford AI Class Professor Thrun Now Wants to Teach 500k Students How to Build a Search Engine
Discussion: Hack Education and Felix Salmon
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Baseline, Accel Put $15M In Online Privacy Certification Company TRUSTe
Discussion: VentureBeat
Zee / The Next Web:
UFC website gets hacked due to its support for SOPA
 Earlier Items: 
Konrad Gianno / Inside Search:
Find hotels by travel time
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog
Nicole Perlroth / New York Times:
Flaws in Videoconferencing Systems Make Boardrooms Vulnerable
Niklas Magnusson / Bloomberg:
Daimler Acquires 15% of MyTaxi App for Clicking to Hail a Cab
Discussion: TechCrunch Europe
Cassell Bryan-Low / Wall Street Journal:
Off-the-Shelf Hacking Help Is Surprisingly Easy to Find