Amongst this week’s headlines, an iconic torrent tracking site is dismantled, Google punishes pirate sites, Anonymous & Wikileaks uncover a secret U.S. surveillance system, and Apple rumors: are we so easily misled by them because we so desperately want to believe?

Podcast

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What We’re Playing With

Dwayne: Home Theater Headphones with Wireless Dock for iPod
Devindra: Xonar Essence ST

Headlines

• Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The US Gov’t
  • Demonoid Taken Down By Ukrainian Government; Domains For Sale
• Google to begin punishing pirate sites in search results
• App.net Raises $600K to Build an Ad-Free Alternative to Twitter

Audible Book of the Week

• Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking By Christopher Hadnagy

Musical Interlude #1: Every Breath You Take by The Police

More Headlines

• Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system
• Twitter co-founders launch ‘Medium’ publishing platform in private beta
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Hits Stores August 16: $499 For 16GB, $549 For 32GB

Musical Interlude #2: Rumors by Timex Social Club

Final Word: Pros and Cons of Apple Rumors

• The unibody iPhone
• iPad mini will look like a large iPod touch with smaller side bezels
• How we screwed (almost) the whole Apple community

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Geeks Of Doom’s The Drill Down is a roundtable-style audio podcast where we discuss the most important issues of the week, in tech and on the web and how they affect us all.

Hosts are Geeks of Doom contributor Andrew Sorcini (Mr. BabyMan), VentureBeat editor Devindra Hardawar, marketing research analyst Dwayne De Freitas, and Startup Digest CTO Christopher Burnor. Occasionally joining them is Techmeme editor Lidija Davis.