Weekend Wrap-up: Snapchat Hacked; Apple vs. Samsung May Come to an End

Good day, all, and welcome to this Sunday’s edition of the Weekend Wrap-up. We’re taking a look at some of the bigger tech stories from the past week to help you get all caught up, and we’ve even thrown in some video for good measure. Ready to get started? Let’s go.

Snapchat Hacked, 4.6 Million Account Usernames and Phone Numbers Leaked

Remember several days back when a group of hackers claimed that Snapchat was vulnerable to attack? Do you remember Snapchat’s “meh” response? Well, the hacker group felt the need to prove its point by infiltrating the service, coming away with 4.6 million usernames and the phone numbers attached to them. And though Snapchat claims that the security hole has now been patched, the company’s response has been nothing short of perplexing. Keep in mind what Snapchat is all about. Security. Privacy. Trust. Snapchat allowed those to be compromised by not taking the hacking threat seriously, but the company refuses to apologize to its users. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the coming days.

Apple vs. Samsung Patent War Could Be Over Soon

Since Steve Jobs’ famous threat to go “thermonuclear” on Android, the Cupertino-based company has focused heavily on one Android hardware partner in particular: Samsung. Samsung is, after all, the big fish in the worldwide smartphone sea, and it’s using an operating system that was at least heavily inspired by Apple’s iOS. Court battles have raged on for the past few years with both sides notching some victories, but it looks like the war may finally be coming to an end, as Apple and Samsung are reportedly in talks to settle their patent disputes. Word is that Apple is asking a steep price for each device that Samsung sells, though, so if Samsung balks, we could be looking at more litigation between the two companies.

HP Will Lay Off 34,000 Employees in 2014

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to say good things about HP, and the latest news out of the company is no different. HP is expected to slash its workforce by 34,000 people in 2014, and that number is actually 5,000 higher than the company first anticipated. CEO Meg Whitman, formerly the leader at eBay, believes that this will be the last workforce cut necessary, though if the turnaround at the once-great PC giant continues to be slow (or nonexistent), we may not have seen the last of the cuts.

Rap Genius Gets Caught Doing Spammy SEO and Pays the Price

In the past, Googling for rap lyrics usually meant you’d see a song’s Rap Genius page high in the results. That was before the company was outed for spammy SEO practices; the type frowned upon by Google. We told you about that back on December 26, but we didn’t really know the extent that Google was punishing Rap Genius until we took a close look at the site’s estimated traffic before and after Google’s smackdown. Take a look at the chart on that post and you’ll see the dramatic drop-off. Fortunately for Rap Genius, it fixed issues with spammy links by removing them or switching them over to “nofollow” links, so the site is reappearing and ranking once more in Google’s search results.