Yeah, my guess is that someone at the site saw this and realized that they need to update it.

That or they were forced to by law enforcement due to all of the attention this was getting. Turns out warrant canaries are mostly useless.

Based on a critical reading of the 'Thu Dec 25 19:07:56 2014 UTC' update I'd say it has served its purpose and delivered its only message as loudly and clearly (or absently and morbidly, as the analogy may go) as it can.

ps anyone got a link to any previous canary update, or even a copy of the public key?

pps the update I read (including signature) had sha1sum 790b9817923137c68bd0a818456f2b47ff25719f