10 things in tech you need to know today
1. A New Zealand judge has ruled that internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and three of his colleagues can be extradited to the United States to face criminal copyright charges. The ruling comes nearly four years after US authorities shut down Dotcom's Megaupload website, which some visitors used to illegally download songs and movies.
4. Microsoft will "detect and remove" insecure adware from Windows PCs in 2016. The target of Microsoft's new policy is software like "Superfish", which hijacks a user's connection in order to display adverts, even on webpages which do not normally have them.
5. Gojimo, a revision app reportedly used by one in five UK students studying for their end of school exams this year, has raised $1.8 million (£1.2 million). Investors include LoveFilm cofounder Saul Klein and his father Robin Klein.
6. Dating app Hinge is rolling out a new feature called Story Cards, which is meant to surface the similarities you have with another person so you can start talking more easily. Earlier this year, Hinge introduced "self-destructing matches", which essentially force you to talk with the people you match with within 24 hours before they vanish forever.
7. Apple has changed its company policies to allow shareholders to nominate new board members. The issue of so-called proxy access has become mainstream practice in just two years, as major institutional investors including BlackRock and T Rowe Price and many of the largest US pension funds have demanded improved shareholder rights.
9. Boston Dynamics, a robotics company that's a part of Google X, itself a subsidiary of Alphabet, has posted a Christmas video that's best described as "unnerving." In the video, Boston Dynamics' famous robot dogs, done up like Santa's reindeer, take someone who appears to be Mrs. Claus on a sleigh ride across a noticeably snow-free field.
10. Nutanix, a startup that makes technology for big companies' data centres, just filed its S1 as it prepares to go public early next year. The S1 shows Nutanix, reportedly valued at over $2 billion (£1.35 billion) on private markets, is growing fast but losing a lot of money.