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12:45 PM ET, December 31, 2015

Mediagazer

 Top News: 
BBC:
Sources: BBC websites hit by DDoS attack  —  ‘Technical issue’ hits BBC websites  —  “Technical issues” made the BBC's websites intermittently unavailable on Thursday morning.  —  The problems began about 0700 GMT and meant visitors to the site saw a message informing them about an “internal error”.
RELATED:
Samuel Gibbs / Guardian:
BBC online services back up after widespread outages took its website and iPlayer offline for several hours  —  BBC suffers widespread outages taking website and iPlayer offline  —  UK public broadcaster apologises as its internet services are taken down by ‘technical issue’ affecting its website …
Rob Price / Business Insider:
Twitter is reversing its ban on political watchdog Politwoops  —  Four months after being banned by Twitter, Politwoops is coming back.  —  If you're not familiar with it, Politwoops is a kind of social media watchdog.  It automatically monitors the Twitter feeds of politicians and highlights whenever they delete a tweet.
Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:
Crowdfunded ‘Star Trek’ Movie Draws Lawsuit from Paramount, CBS  —  ‘Axanar’ aims to be a professional-quality prequel and has raised more than $1 million.  —  For decades, Paramount and CBS have tolerated and even encouraged fans of the Star Trek franchise to use their imagination at will …
Brian Rohan / Associated Press:
Egypt shuts down Facebook's Free Basics internet service on telco provider Etisalat, reasons unclear  —  Free Internet service for over 3 million Egyptians shut down  —  BEIRUT (AP) — Social media site Facebook says a program that had been giving free basic Internet services to over three million Egyptians has been shut down.
RELATED:
New York Times:
Egyptian authorities shut down art gallery and raided an independent publishing house, raising concerns about continued free speech issues
Reuters:
Russian court jails blogger for five years for ‘extremist’ posts  —  A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a blogger to five years in jail for what it said was his extremist activity on the Internet after he urged people to attend a protest against high transport fares and criticized Russian intervention in Ukraine.
Alex Sherman / Bloomberg Business:
Sources: Nexstar to finalize new offer for Media General, at about $2.2B, or $17.50 per share, as soon as Thursday  —  Nexstar Said to Finalize Media General Proposal Soon as Thursday  —  Offer would trigger at least 4-day window for Meredith counter  —  Nexstar tapping three banks for $4.5 billion in debt financing
Discussion: FishbowlNY and @sherman4949
Jeremy Barr / Ad Age:
Q&A with Huffington Post founding editor Roy Sekoff, whose last day is December 31, on experimentation and innovation, cultivating readers, and taking a break  —  Q&A: The Huffington Post's Founding Editor Gets Ready to Move On  —  Roy Sekoff Last's Day, After 11 Years, is Dec. 31
Discussion: @jeremymbarr and @kzaleski
Agence France-Presse:
Two Bangladeshi students sentenced to death over blogger murder  —  A Bangladesh court sentenced two students to death on Thursday for the 2013 murder of a secular blogger, delivering the first convictions over a series of brutal killings that have rocked the Muslim-majority nation.
Andy / TorrentFreak:
How Hollywood Caught the UK's Most Prolific Movie Pirates  —  Following a three year investigation by Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group the Federation Against Copyright Theft, last week five of the UK's most prolific movie pirates were sentenced in the West Midlands.
Discussion: @simoncarless
Sean O'Kane / The Verge:
Facebook tests multiple, topic-based feeds on its mobile app in place of one main News Feed, also tests wider rollout of Marketplace feature with its own tab  —  Facebook is testing multiple news feeds on mobile  —  Facebook is testing multiple, topic-based feeds on its mobile app in place of one main News Feed.
Walter Pincus / Washington Post:
In farewell, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus says rush to be first is leaving facts behind, newsmakers have become better at influencing media  —  A farewell to The Washington Post  —  For more than 40 years I have been lucky enough to be part of The Washington Post.
 
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 More News: 
Associated Press:
Poland's lawmakers approve new law on state media control
Andrew Bounds / Financial Times:
UK's CHF Media creates investment fund so private investors can finance children's TV shows
Press Gazette:
Advertising Standards Authority: Michelin advertorial on Telegraph website ‘not obviously identifiable as such’
Discussion: Financial Times, Forbes and Guardian
Ben Sisario / New York Times:
Spotify sued over mechanical rights that cover songwriters' royalties for reproduction of a musical work
 Earlier Picks: 
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Twitter cracks down on harassment by rearranging paragraphs in its terms of service
ESPN:
ESPN Deportes to air Spanish-language telecast of Super Bowl 50
Noor Zahid / Voice of America:
Afghan journalist, heard on ISIS radio, issues threats against ex-colleagues, journalists working in the province
 

 
From Techmeme:

Lee-Anne Mulholland / The Keyword:
Google files its proposed remedies in the DOJ's search antitrust lawsuit, including letting browser companies have multiple default agreements across platforms

Wall Street Journal:
Gina Raimondo says holding back China in the chips race is a “fool's errand”, and investment, more than export controls, will keep US ahead of Beijing

Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Exploring the scaling challenges of transformer-based LLMs in efficiently processing large amounts of text, as well as potential solutions, such as RAG systems

 
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