Sarah Palin blasts PETA over animal abuse accusations in epic rant

Former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin responded Saturday to PETA's accusations of animal cruelty by going on offense against the animal rights group.

The accusations followed her Facebook post on New Year's Day that featured a photo of her son, Trig, standing on top of the family dog (named Jill Hadassah) in order to help clean the dishes.

See also: Sarah Palin posted a photo of her son stepping on their dog for New Year's

Palin's response starts off snarky, and proceeds into, well, attack dog territory pretty quickly

"Dear PETA, Chill. At least Trig didn’t eat the dog," Palin wrote. She then proceeds to attack President Barack Obama for having "revealed he actually enjoyed eating dead dog meat." Read more...

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Blizzard warnings in effect in Hawaii — again

For the second time in two weeks, the National Weather Service has issued blizzard warnings in what might, at first glance, seem to be among the least likely places for such an alert: Hawaii. The warnings were issued Friday, and continued until 6 p.m. HST on Saturday, for the upper reaches of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two volcanic peaks that each rise above 11,000 feet

As of 4 a.m. HST Saturday, the summit of Mauna Kea was reporting an air temperature of 30 degrees Fahrenheit, with winds gusting to 64 miles per hour, yielding a wind chill index of just 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The warning is for heavy snow with zero visibility, and snow totals of about 1 foot in addition to "much higher drifts." A cold front sweeping across the Hawaiian Islands this weekend is triggering waves of heavy precipitation and high winds, including thunderstorms; the precipitation is falling in the form of snow at higher elevations. Read more...

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Yahoo search is down following Bing outage

Yahoo's search engine is down, after an outage that took down Microsoft's Bing search engine

The site began experiencing a disruption at 4:26 p.m ET, according to downdetector.com, a website that monitors service disruptions on major websites. Yahoo Mail, Flickr and other Yahoo services appear to be unaffected.

See also: The most memorable brand wins and fails of 2014

Search.yahoo.com currently has a message that "engineers are working quickly to resolve the issue." The company did not immediately respond to Mashable's request for comment.

The source of the outage is not yet clear, though it appears to be related to earlier problems with Microsoft's Bing search engine. Bing search reportedly experienced a brief outage earlier Friday afternoon. As of this writing Bing was back online Read more...

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Kim Jong-un can fly and land an airplane, apparently

We've seen North Korean leader Kim Jong-un operate a tank in Sony Pictures' movie The Interview, but that was just fiction, right? Well, if you trust the country's propaganda machine, he can actually fly an airplane

In a video that appeared on YouTube on Dec. 31, Kim Jong-un is seen flying and landing an airplane. The video was posted by YouTube user stimmekoreas, which has released many videos related to North Korea, most of them very approving of the country's totalitarian regime

See also: Queen's Guards moved back from public over fears of 'lone wolf' attacks

It's hard to tell how much help Kim Jong-un is getting from the other pilot, sitting in the co-pilot seat, but he seems to be in control of the aircraft. The video shows both takeoff and landing, which also appears to be manned, at least partly, by the North Korean leader Read more...

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Trippy timelapse shows how to solve a 17x17x17 Rubik's Cube in 7.5 hours

Some people have way too much time on their hands

YouTuber Kenneth Brandon, a.k.aRedKB, is one such man. Kenneth is a fan of "twisty puzzles" according to his bio, he is also a fiend when it comes to Rubik's Cubes. Kenneth doesn't just solve a Rubik's Cube, he dominates it. And he is way too talented to be working on the standard 3x3x3 block, that most people have been struggling with for years

See also: 'Price Is Right' contestants think an iPhone 6 costs $7,500

The cube that takes Kenneth's fancy is the ridiculously difficult 17x17x17 cube designed by puzzle legend Oskar Van Deventer and he doesn't need years, he completes the bad boy in mere hours— about 7.5 spread out across five days Read more...

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Annual polar bear plunges splash winter in the face

While you slept off a confetti hangover, thousands of nutty people risked frostbite for polar bear plunges.

The annual events attract the brave and foolish who start the new year with a splash — a really cold splash. On Jan. 1, people from France to New Jersey gathered on beaches to show winter weather who's boss by stripping down to bathing suits and diving into a body of icy water

See also: New Year's hangovers sucked in the 1940s, too

Some people believe the eyeball-freezing swim tests resolve, others think it's the key to living a long life

This 72 year old MT man said the fountain of youth is found by taking the CDA #PolarPlunge @KREM2 pic.twitter.com/yHoeI3YW5H

— Briana Bermensolo (@KREMBriana) January 1, 2015 Read more...

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Hacker behind Sony, Xbox attacks allegedly arrested by UK police

A member of the hacker group Lizard Squad, which claimed credit for taking down Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live on Christmas Day, has been arrested by UK police, according to multiple reports

Daily Dot reports that the man, 22-year-old Vinnie Omari, was arrested Monday after police raided his home. Omari sent the Daily Dot a photo of the search warrant, claiming the police took his Xbox One, phones, laptops, USB sticks and other equipment.

See also: Hackers who say they attacked Xbox and PlayStation have a new target: Tor

Thames Valley Police posted a report Wednesday, confirming that a 22-year-old man from Twickenham, England, was arrested "on suspicion of fraud by false representation and Computer Misuse Act offences." Read more...

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