BGR Daily Breaking Stories

Daily Headlines WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2014

A list of every single theater showing ‘The Interview’ tomorrow Sony Pictures Entertainment’s “The Interview” has become the most hyped movie of 2014. The buzz doesn’t stem from the film itself — in fact, critics weren’t terribly impressed with the film when they reviewed it. Instead, the hype stems from the fact that The Interview spurred a massive hack of Sony’s internal network that the Federal Bureau of Investigation believes was perpetrated by hackers with ties to North Korea. Why would hackers attack Sony over a movie? The Interview stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as a pair of reporters who conspire to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and North Korea has gone on record in calling the film an “act of war.” Well unfortunately for North Korea and the Sony hackers, whoever they may be, Sony is reversing its earlier decision and releasing The Interview tomorrow on Christmas Day. And now, we have a full list of theaters that will be showing the movie.  MORE → One image shows why top companies should be ashamed of their online security The recent Sony Pictures hack might be the most talked-about cyber attack of the Christmas season, and one of the biggest online data heists to date, but there were plenty of other attacks this past year that affected tens of millions of consumers. Information is Beautiful has set up an interactive page on its website that shows the world’s biggest data breaches to date, revealing the severity of this issue that now affects us more and more frequently.  MORE → The top 50 albums of 2014 The concept of buying albums is foreign to an entire generation of music listeners, who typically consume music using services like YouTube, Soundcloud and Spotify. Even older generations are now shifting away from the iTunes model and embracing popular streaming services including Pandora, Spotify and Apple’s Beats Music service. I personally wrote recently about how my music consumption has changed from downloading albums to streaming, but I still often listen to music by the album because these artists are trying to tell stories and I want to hear them in their entirety. This year was packed full of great stories, and now you can relive 2014 with a great list of the 50 best albums of the year.  MORE → Apple reportedly refused to release ‘The Interview’ on iTunes In an attempt to save face after deciding to pull The Interview comedy from theaters, Sony decided to still show the controversial film in select theaters on Christmas Day — the movie’s original release date — but the company still struggles with finding other partners to launch the movie. Reports revealed that Dish Network choose not to launch the movie, and The New York Times has learned that Apple also refused Sony, even though the White House may have tried to convince the iPhone maker to release The Interview on iTunes.  MORE → Dish lists over 50 reasons why the Comcast-TWC merger is a terrible idea The Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger is that rare proposal that’s such a bad idea that it actually brings people of all different political beliefs together. If you look at the website for Stop Mega Comcast, for instance, you’ll see both liberal groups such as Common Cause and conservative outfits such as Glen Beck’s The Blaze are both lined up in mutual opposition to the proposed deal.  MORE → Awesome deal: Get 20% off any HTC phone right now HTC makes terrific smartphones and now you can get any of its current models for 20% off their off-contract price. HTC announced this week that buying any smartphone off its website — including the critically acclaimed HTC One (M8), the HTC One (M8) for Windows, and the HTC Desire Eye — will give you an immediate 20% discount as long as you buy it between now and the end of January 2nd, 2015. You’re also limited to one phone per customer so you can’t completely rob HTC of its entire inventory. For details about all the phones HTC is selling, check out the company’s Hot Deals page at the source link below.  MORE → Share your naughty desires this Christmas using this holiday sexting emojis set Sure, stealing a kiss under the mistletoe might be a cool trick to try around Christmas, but now that you have a smartphone capable of sending instant messages, pictures and videos to anyone around, including those special people you’d like to be naughty with this Christmas, you might want to try a special set of NSFW emoji that have been specially crafted for the holidays.  MORE → Video: This brilliant machine automatically sorts M&Ms by color at high speeds Homemade M&M sorting machines are nothing new but there’s a new prototype sorting machine out there that’s faster than any we’ve seen so far. ReviewMyLife took a look at a lot of the videos of candy color sorting machines on the web and decided they could do it even better. The result is a sorting machine that zips candies through the sorter at a clip that should make rival machines envious.  MORE → All the PlayStation and Xbox games you’ll get for free in January Both next-generation consoles had great years in 2014, moving millions of units and gaining value from dozens of great new games. Gamers had plenty to love this past year, and one of the best perks Microsoft and Sony have offered this year are the free games they give away each month. Of course, the free game giveaways aren’t going to stop in the new year, so here’s everything you need to know about the games that will be made available for free in January 2015.  MORE → Google’s crazy Project Ara phone might be more powerful than you think Project Ara, Google’s modular smartphone project, will finally be available next year to any buyers who are excited about the prospect of being able to upgrade their smartphones’ hardware by themselves. And even better, it looks like the first Project Ara smartphones might be quite powerful. MORE →

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