Look at all that spring-fed fiber in Provo. (Source: Flickr)

All it took for Google to buy Provo, Utah's fiber-optic network was a dollar. If only you had four quarters! [AP]

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that YouTube did not violate Viacom’s copyright--despite the fact that several of the company’s shows were being illicitly uploaded onto the site. That's because the Google-owned service is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's “safe-harbor provision.” [Los Angeles Times]

Time's very important "100 Most Influential People List" is packed with techies with fake-sounding titles, like "Internet talent discoverer" Scooter Braun. [AllThingsD]

Twitter announced it has teamed up with BBC America to offer "in-tweet branded video synced to entertainment TV series." What does that mean? Your guess is as good as ours. [CNet]

Amazon, looking to expand its international operations, has opened an office in Russia. [TechCrunch]

(Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

"I want to be clear--I'm not trying to tell anyone what do to. And I'm not trying to prescribe goals for anyone," said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg last night at Time Warner. She was patiently explaining yet again the purpose of Lean In: "I'm trying to help women answer the question, 'If I do want leadership, how do I get there?'"

"My book is not meant to be comprehensive. I don't have parenting advice, it doesn't go deeply into the public policy issues. It's one piece of the puzzle."

As she was introduced, Ms. Sandberg took a brief moment to examine her sleek dark dress for imperfections, picking at a few invisibile specks of fluff before settling back into her chair with cotillion-appropriate demureness and flashing that million-watt boardroom-ready smile. Moderating: Time deputy managing editor Nancy Gibbs. The audience was full of heavy hitters, with questions from attendees like Leslie Stahl and Gayle King. 

It's not like Ms. Sandberg relishes breaking the bad news to her fellow working women. Sure, she tells women they have to frame requests for raises in terms of the company's best interests, but "I hate that advice. I hate the advice I have to give women. I want all of this to change."

"In the meantime, I'd rather teach women to say 'we' and get paid more."

It also sounds like Ms. Sandberg spends a fair bit of her jetset life seething with exasperation. She recently attended "very exclusive conference of course attended mostly by men." A fellow conference-goer (male, of course) sat down next to her at lunch, and as she recounted, their conversation went a little something like this:

Him: "Remember us."
Ms. Sandberg: "What do you mean?"
Him: "Remember us. There's a place for men when you're all running the world."
Ms. Sandberg: "Look around this conference. You guys are in good shape! You're good to go."
Ms. Sandberg, again: "There has never been a woman who ran a company in your industry ever."
Him: "Well, the end of men is coming."

Someone rescue this man from his own Atlantic subscription, please.

Forget all that, though: What about working from home?

Ms. Sandberg didn't miss a beat, and she certainly didn't mention Marissa Mayer: "There are Facebook employees we've never met. Not joking."

One of the Internet's most prolific Kim Jong-un memes. (Photo: 1mut)

A few weeks ago we reported that 4chan, the Internet's favorite underbelly, was galvanizing to vote North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the top of Time’s person of the year reader poll. It seems it has been successful in its pursuit, as Time just announced that Kim Jong-un won the spot. This, of course, doesn't mean that he will certainly be the Time editors' person of the year pick, but it demonstrates the immense online voting power of 4chan.

Kim Jong-un garned 5.6 million votes, putting him just ahead of Jon Stewart. Time was gracious enough to acknowledge 4chan's influence:

However, some of the highest vote tallies got a boost from members of Internet forums like 4Chan who launched a campaign to manipulate the results pushing North Korea’s supreme leader to the top of the list.

A few days ago, 4chan also spelled out "KJU Gas Chambers" with the first letters of each nominee's name, because it's 4chan, guys.

(Photo: Imgur)

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is having the best week ever. After being nominated by The Onion as 2012's sexiest man alive--and having the announcement subsequently spread across papers in China as if The Onion is a legitimate news source--the meme-friendly leader now has 4chan gunning for him. Like it did for the site's founder Moot back in 2009, The Daily Dot reports that 4chan's /b/ board is assembling to affect the outcome of Time's Person of the Year award.

Though Time editors technically choose the winner, the magazine also runs a poll on its website for the Internet to decide who is the world's "Most Influential Person." Dubbed "Operation: Kim Jung Un for Time's Person of the Year," 4chan is already off to a good start: Kim Jong Un is currently ranked number two in the poll, trailing Egyptian president Mohamed Morsy.

Back in 2009, 4chan galvanized to successfully vote its cofounder, the litigious Chris Poole, as the World's Most Influential Person, beating Bernie Madoff, Oprah Winfrey and our very own POTUS. Back then, Time said its technical team detected several efforts to "hack the vote," so we suspect the devs at Time to be on high alert until voting closes December 12th.

In illustrious company. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Time has just released a list of its 50 favorite websites. The metrics? All the selections are something the editors find "useful, entertaining, innovative or just plain addictive." The result is a list that happens to be something of New York tech who's who. Among the honorees: 

• Squarespace
• If This Then That
• Aereo
• Songza
• CodeAcademy
• BuzzFeed
• ZocDoc
• Digg
• LooseCubes

However, before anyone starts emailing his mom, it's worth noting that Timedeliberately works to include sites that "aren't yet household names." Someday, kids. Someday.

Also on the list: Outlook.com. With all due respect, suddenly we're questioning the methodology, here.

Lotus pose.

Time magazine was almost finished closing its latest issue, which will hit stands Friday, when the news of Steve Jobs' death broke. So for the first time in what AdWeek says may have been three decades, the magazine stopped the presses. Mr. Jobs' image now graces the front cover for the eighth and perhaps final time. Its entire 'feature well' will also be devoted to covering his legacy.

Businessweek and Newsweek also have special issues planned, the former an ad-free tribute. Wired.com's striking black homepage is also still ad-fee--featuring only an image of Mr. Jobs and quotes mourning his passing--just as it did last night. But Time's issue is of particular note because it will feature an essay from Walter Issacson, Mr. Jobs' biographer, who just had his deadline pushed up by Simon & Schuster.

Mr. Issacson's essay is behind a paywall, but Fortune.com has excerpted the part where he describes the day Mr. Jobs first tried to pitch him on writing his life's story.

In the early summer of 2004, I got a phone call from him. He had been scattershot friendly to me over the years, with occasional bursts of intensity, especially when he was launching a new product that he wanted on the cover of Time or featured on CNN, places where I'd worked. But now that I was no longer at either of those places, I hadn't heard from him much. We talked a bit about the Aspen Institute, which I had recently joined, and I invited him to speak at our summer campus in Colorado. He'd be happy to come, he said, but not to be onstage. He wanted, instead, to take a walk so we could talk.

That seemed a bit odd. I didn't yet know that taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation. It turned out that he wanted me to write a biography of him. I had recently published one on Benjamin Franklin and was writing one about Albert Einstein, and my initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence. Because I assumed that he was still in the middle of an oscillating career that had many more ups and downs left, I demurred. Not now, I said. Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire.

But I later realized that he had called me just before he was going to be operated on for cancer for the first time. As I watched him battle that disease, with an awesome intensity combined with an astonishing emotional romanticism, I came to find him deeply compelling, and I realized how much his personality was ingrained in the products he created. His passions, demons, desires, artistry, devilry and obsession for control were integrally connected to his approach to business, so I decided to try to write his tale as a case study in creativity.

It seems Mr. Jobs' love of walking was a constant. As Daring Fireball's John Gruber noted poignantly in this tribute, even four months ago at Apple's WWDC conference, Mr. Gruber noticed "fresh bright green grass stains all over the heels" of Mr. Jobs' uniform gray New Balance 993s.