This week, Charter buys Time Warner Cable, the secret plan to hijack our smartphones, the NSA ends bulk collection of phone records, the IRS is hacked, and Pac-Man turns 35 … and much much more.

Podcast

What We’re Playing With

Dwayne: Home Networking

Headlines

• Jony Ive Named Apple’s Chief Design Officer
• Charter Communications Agrees to Acquire Time Warner Cable
• Microsoft announces Cortana for iOS and Android
• Vox’s acquisition of Re/code is a sign of the tech-blog reckoning to come
  • ReCode To Vox

Audible Book of the Week

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture by Harold Goldberg
• Sign up at AudibleTrial.com/TheDrillDown

Music Break: Taxman by The Beatles

Hot Topic: Security & Privacy

• US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand planned to hijack Google and Samsung app stores to implant spyware on smartphones
• NSA bulk phone records collection to end despite USA Freedom Act fail
• IRS says thieves stole tax info from 100,000

Music Break: Pac-Man Fever by Buckner & Garcia

Final Word

• This Is What Pac-Man”˜s Creator Thinks 35 Years Later

Prof. Toru Iwatani with his original designs for Pac-Man (via Control Magazine)

The Drill Down Video of the Week

Taking a selfie every day for 16 years

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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), marketing research analyst Dwayne De Freitas, and Box tech consultant Tosin Onafowokan.