From Xbox Live being down on Christmas to the worst tech stocks of the year, here are the top stories from 12/20-12/26.
1. Gamers who received new consoles for Christmas found themselves unable to connect and play with friends. On what might be the biggest gaming day of the year, a hacker group called Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for taking down both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
2. Sony released “The Interview” online as a rental or purchase on Christmas Eve, but not everyone paid for it. Within the first 20 hours, the movie was illegally downloaded over 750,000 times.
3. Tesla announced the Roadster 3.0 with a 400 mile range.
4. We took a look at Devialet’s hi-tech “Phantom” implosion stereo. The Phantom is a petite, spherical, all-in-one amplifier and speaker that delivers what audiophiles think may be the best sound in the world for around $2,000.
5. This is what it’s like living on nothing but Bitcoin for a month.
6. If you go back and read the original S-1 documents that current tech giants filed decades ago, you run into some pretty funny stuff. This is how Microsoft originally described Windows.
7. Facebook is rolling out a redesign of the video section on your brand page. This could challenge YouTube and turn brand pages into more of a TV channel.
8. We reviewed the Blackberry Classic phone.
9. Here’s what Google’s first custom-built self-driving car looks like now.
10. We investigated the tech at California Olive Ranch.
11. Kuerig has recalled 7 million coffee makes because they are hurting people.
12. Jon Evans examined Yahoo. Why are they still so bad at the basics?
13. Did you invest in Sprint or Twitter? Here are the tech stocks that you probably shouldn’t have owned this year.