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Re/wind: Sony Lets People Suffer Through “The Interview,” Google’s Wi-Fi Warfare and More

There was news while you were out holiday-making. Here’s your chance to catch up.

imbarney22 via iStock

Happy holidays!

The Re/code team hopes you’ve enjoyed what is surely a well-deserved break. If you missed the news (like most normal people), here’s some stuff to help catch you up:

  1. Two days before Christmas, Sony said “The Interview” would be showing in a select few theaters. One day before Christmas, Sony announced it would let people stream the movie through YouTube, the Google Play store and elsewhere. Apparently the movie’s not very good. Sorry. IRL, North Korea lost Internet access for a prolonged period of time after suffering a denial-of-service attack. And yesterday the country lost its only functioning wireless phone network. If you’re looking for a more complete summary of what’s been going on, here’s a handy roundup of our coverage.
  2. Hotels are trying to convince regulators to let them block personal Wi-Fi hotspots in hotel rooms, and Google, Microsoft and a bunch of other tech giants are having none of it. Excellent! Marriott versus Silicon Valley is just the unexpected conglomerate battle that we needed to close out 2014.
  3. Hey look, a smartwatch that looks more like a regular person’s watch instead of a leftover prop from “Blade Runner.” Finally!
  4. Laugh at Sony all you want, but what happened to them could just as easily happen to you. Probably. So says Andrew Del Matto, CFO of the network security firm Fortinet. Unsurprisingly, we need to get smart about cyber security, and fast.
  5. A San Francisco Google bus protester looks back on what was a very, very good year for standing up to The Man. Here’s to another 12 months of provocation, reaction, media attention, rinse and repeat.
  6. Remember that Kickstarter for a “keyboard waffle iron”? Well, now it’s funded. Hopefully the project will actually come to fruition, preferably with syrup, berries and maybe some confectioner’s sugar.
  7. Millennials are precious, delicate things. We need to be watered twice daily and be left near a sunny window. Oh, and we prefer our shareable content to be socially conscious and emotionally tempered. Mic.com knows this, and that’s why it wants to be the explainer news site of choice in dorm rooms everywhere.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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