What were your biggest technology stories of 2014?

It’s (nearly) time to celebrate. Or, to be more accurate, it’s absolutely time to go panic-shopping because you have six people still to buy presents for, and somehow the turkey got forgotten too.

Also, this is the last Guardian Tech open thread of the year. Which makes it an ideal time to sit back, crack open the Baileys and ask you what your big technology stories of 2014 have been.

What stories or themes were truly meaningful this year, as opposed to tech fluff that barely made an impact? And, with a view to 2015, what areas and companies do you think we should be covering more on Guardian Tech in the year ahead, based on what’s happened in 2014?

The comments section is open for your thoughts. Be nice! But there are, of course, some other stories worth talking about today too:

BitTorrent wants to help release The Interview

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke released his latest solo album through BitTorrent, but could the film at the centre of the Sony Pictures hacking farrago follow suit? BitTorrent hopes so. “BitTorrent Bundle is in fact the very best way for Sony to take back control of their film, to not acquiesce to terrorist threats, and to ensure a wide audience can view the film safely. It would also strike a strong note for free speech...”

Facebook under scrutiny over page about Putin rival

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is facing a 10-year jail sentence, so supporters set up a Facebook page to protest. But the Washington Post reports that after Russian internet regulators demanded that Facebook remove it, the page was inaccessible to Russian users of the social network. The regulator says that Facebook has bowed to its request.

The most popular websites since 1996

Some fun research in the US tracking the most popular websites (in the US) in December every year since 1996. Top spot has been held by only three sites: AOL, Yahoo and Google. But the 1996 rankings make for interesting reading thanks to the likes of Webcrawler, Infoseek, Prodigy, Compuserve, GeoCities and, ahem, Penthouse.

The trouble with TaskRabbit

An interesting piece on Medium about the impact changes at work-for-hire startup TaskRabbit had on the actual workers. “What it meant in practice was a set of severe changes to the system’s mechanics that many of the taskers I spoke to said destroyed much of their freedom...”

Reddit Notes revealed

When Reddit raised a funding round in September, it promised to redistribute a portion of it to users – with the backing of its investors. Now it’s revealed more details of its plans for Reddit Notes: “We plan to give away reddit notes in a random lottery. As of this point, it looks like we’re going to have approximately 950,000 reddit notes to divide among active user accounts...”

What else? The comments section is open for your views on the stories above, and your recommendations for other stories worth reading today.