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Australia

Amazon's Luxembourg Tax Deals 199

Posted by samzenpus
from the pay-less dept.
Presto Vivace writes in with this story of a European Commission investigation into a secret tax agreement between Amazon and Luxembourg. "Leaked tax documents from accounting firm PwC in Luxembourg show how Amazon sidesteps the 30 per cent tax rates local [Australian] players face. The Luxembourg documents, obtained in a review led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, contain some of the first hard numbers and details on how Amazon pays virtually no tax for its non-US earnings, including in Australia. Last month, the European Commission announced an investigation into the secret 2003 advance tax agreement Amazon struck with Luxembourg that is the key to its global tax strategy. The Luxembourg documents show not only the extent of the related-party transactions in Amazon's Luxembourg companies but how Amazon has changed its tax strategy after investigation by French tax authorities and the US Internal Revenue Service. The change is so dramatic it raises questions whether the European Commission is targeting the right transactions."
Medicine

Low-Cost 3D-Printed Prosthetic Hand To Be Tested On Amputees In Ecuador 16

Posted by samzenpus
from the we-can-print-him-better dept.
Zothecula writes A PhD candidate and six undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UCIC) have created a low-cost, programmable, 3D-printed prosthetic hand that may soon change the lives of amputees in Ecuador. The hand costs just $270 to manufacture, making it a small fraction of the cost of a typical prosthetic of this type.
Television

Aereo Shutting Down Boston Office 40

Posted by samzenpus
from the so-long-farewell dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that Aereo is shutting down its Boston office and laying off some NYC staff. "Aereo's bad year just got worse. The company said on Thursday that it will shut down its Boston office and lay off 43 employees, citing yet another adverse court ruling and its trouble obtaining additional investment. According to Virginia Lam, a VP at Aereo, the company is not shutting down entirely: 'In an effort to reduce costs, we made the difficult decision to lay off some of our staff in Boston and New York. We are continuing to conserve resources while we chart our path forward. We are grateful to our employees for their loyalty, hard work and dedication. This was a difficult, but necessary step in order to preserve the company. We decline to comment further,' Lam wrote in an email."
Security

Home Depot Says Hackers Grabbed 53 Million Email Addresses 99

Posted by samzenpus
from the reply-all dept.
wiredmikey writes Home Depot said on Thursday that hackers managed to access 53 million customer email addresses during the massive breach that was disclosed in September when the retail giant announced that 56 million customer payment cards were compromised in a cyber attack. The files containing the stolen email addresses did not contain passwords, payment card information or other sensitive personal information, the company said. The company also said that the hackers acquired elevated rights that allowed them to navigate portions of Home Depot's network and to deploy unique, custom-built malware on its self-checkout systems in the U.S. and Canada.
Input Devices

Amazon's Echo: a $200, Multi-Function, Audio-Centric Device 126

Posted by timothy
from the jarvis-is-on-the-other-line-with-eliza dept.
An anonymous reader writes Amazon today quietly unveiled a new product dubbed Amazon Echo. The $200 device appears to be a voice-activated wireless speaker that can answer your questions, offer updates on what's going in the world, and of course play music. Echo is currently available for purchase via an invite-only system. If you have Amazon Prime, however, you can get it for $100. I've put in a request for one; hopefully we'll get a hands-on look at the Echo soon. It looks useful and interesting for random searches, and for controlling devices, but one small speaker (interesting driver arrangement notwithstanding) doesn't bode well for "fill[ing] any room with immersive sound," as Amazon's promo materials claim.
Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF Hints At Lawsuit Against Verizon For Its Stealth Cookies 80

Posted by timothy
from the as-well-they-might dept.
An anonymous reader writes A few weeks ago I noted how security researchers had discovered that Verizon has been injecting a unique new 'stealth cookie' identifier into all user traffic that tracks user online behavior, even if the consumer opts out. Using a unique Identifier Header, or UIDH, Verizon's ham-fisted system broadcasts your identity all across the web — and remains intact and open to third-party abuse — even if you opt-out of Verizon's behavioral ad programs. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a complaint with the FCC and has strongly indicated that they're considering legal action against Verizon for violating consumer privacy laws.
Android

Microsoft Makes Office Mobile Editing Free As in Freemium 98

Posted by timothy
from the free-is-relative dept.
An anonymous reader writes Microsoft today announced a significant change to its Office strategy for mobile devices: creating and editing is now free. The company also released standalone Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for the iPhone, as well a new preview of these apps for Android tablets. Starting today, whether you're using an Office app on Android or iOS, you can create and edit content without an Office 365 subscription. The company is pitching this move as "More of Office for everyone."
Power

Ask Slashdot: Minimizing Oil and Gas Dependency In a Central European City? 250

Posted by timothy
from the neighbor's-wifi-problem-solved dept.
An anonymous reader writes I live in a big city in central Europe. As most of you know from recent news, most of Europe's (and quite a bit of China's) gas supply comes from Russia and is very likely to be cut off several times during the next few winters (China's time will come in later years). What many might not know is that not just our natural gas supply, but also our petrol ('gas' for the Americans in the audience) often comes partly from Russia and some of our electricity comes from gas powered stations. Most of our leaders, at least in Germany and Hungary, are in bed with the Russians and likely won't do anything about fuel security. I live in an building with a south-facing roof and I own the roof space but I don't have enough land here to put a wind turbine or something similar on. Can anyone make good suggestions for ways to cut down my dependence on unreliable power supplies? Extra points for environmentalism, but I am even willing to pay more to be sure the heating is there in winter and my server keeps running.
Star Wars Prequels

'Star Wars: Episode VII' Gets a Name 265

Posted by timothy
from the see-that-was-the-teaser dept.
schwit1 writes If you feel a disturbance in the Force, it's millions of voices suddenly crying out the new title of Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens. The reveal comes as the movie finishes its final day of shooting (with many more months of post-production to come.) Although there were still a few days left of shooting, the cast of the J.J. Abrams film already celebrated their wrap party last weekend, following a bumpy few months of principal photography thrown into crisis when Han Solo himself, Harrison Ford, broke his leg on set in an accident involving a falling door on the Millennium Falcon.
Math

New Website Offers Provably Fair Solutions To Everyday Problems 167

Posted by timothy
from the her-piece-is-bigger dept.
An anonymous reader writes Carnegie Mellon researchers have just launched Spliddit, a website that offers methods for helping people split rent, divide goods, and share credit. The novelty is that these methods are all "provably fair": there are mathematical proofs showing that each algorithm on the site provides rigorous fairness guarantees. For example, the method for splitting rent is guaranteed to be envy free: the assignment of rooms and division of rent is such that a housemate would never want to swap places with another housemate. All it takes is a pair of siblings to prove that there's no such thing as "provably fair," non-mathematically.
Crime

Bounties vs. Extreme Internet Harassment 714

Posted by timothy
from the incentives-work dept.
squiggleslash writes Brianna Wu, a game studio owner in Boston, found herself the target of numerous anonymous death threats last month, apparently the escalation of a campaign that started when she spoke up for women in gaming, and that intensified during the GamerGate train wreck. Rather than hide, she's offering an $11,000+ cash reward for anyone who helps put her attacker in jail, and she's reporting — albeit at a time many see GamerGate being in its death throes — that it's already having an effect. Wu is also setting up a legal fund to go after those promoting more extreme libels against her and others, with screenshots of a forged tweet purporting to be written by her still circulating around the Internet.
Displays

French Health Watchdog: 3D Viewing May Damage Eyesight In Children 99

Posted by timothy
from the this-time-with-feeling-but-not-depth dept.
dryriver (1010635) writes with this clipping from the BBC: A French health watchdog has recommended that children under the age of six should not be allowed access to 3D content. The Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (Anses) added that access for those up to the age of 13 should be 'moderate'. It follows research into the possible impact of 3D imaging on still-developing eyes. Few countries currently have guidelines about 3D usage. According to Anses, the process of assimilating a three-dimensional effect requires the eyes to look at images in two different places at the same time before the brain translates it as one image. 'In children, and particularly before the age of six, the health effects of this vergence-accommodation conflict could be much more severe given the active development of the visual system at this time,' it said in a statement.
Science

First Experimental Demonstration of a Trapped Rainbow Using Silicon 79

Posted by timothy
from the can-you-trap-it-in-my-tastebuds? dept.
KentuckyFC writes Back in 1947, a pair of physicists demonstrated that when a beam of light reflects off a surface, the point of reflection can shift forward when parts of the beam interfere with each other. 60 years later, another group of physicists discovered that this so-called Goos-Hanchen effect could sometimes be negative so the point of reflection would go back toward the source rather than away from it. They even suggested that if the negative effect could be made big enough, it could cancel out the forward movement of the light. In other words, the light would become trapped at a single location. Now, physicists have demonstrated this effect for the first time using light reflected off a sheet of silica. The trick they've employed is to place a silicon diffraction grating in contact with the silica to make the interference effect large enough to counteract the forward motion of the light. And by using several gratings with different spacings, they've trapped an entire rainbow. The light can be easily released by removing the grating. Until now, it has only been possible to trap light efficiently inside Bose Einstein Condensates at temperatures close to absolute zero. The new technique could be used as a cheap optical buffer or memory, making it an enabling technology for purely optical computing.
OS X

WireLurker Mac OS X Malware Found, Shut Down 59

Posted by timothy
from the wham-bam dept.
msm1267 writes WireLurker is no more. After causing an overnight sensation, the newly disclosed family of Apple Mac OS X malware capable of also infecting iOS devices has been put to rest. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks confirmed this morning that the command and control infrastructure supporting WireLurker has been shut down and Apple has revoked a legitimate digital certificate used to sign WireLurker code and allow it to infect non-jailbroken iOS devices.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks discovered and dubbed the threat WireLurker because it spreads from infected OS X computers to iOS once the mobile device is connected to a Mac via USB. The malware analyzes the connected iOS device looking for a number of popular applications in China, namely the Meitu photo app, the Taobao online auction app, or the AliPay payment application. If any of those are found on the iOS device, WireLurker extracts its and replaces it with a Trojanized version of the same app repackaged with malware.

Patient zero is a Chinese third-party app store called Maiyadi known for hosting pirated apps for both platforms. To date, Palo Alto researchers said, 467 infected OS X apps have been found on Maiyadi and those apps have been downloaded more than 350,000 times as of Oct. 16 by more than 100,000 users.
Open Source

OpenSUSE 13.2 Released 41

Posted by timothy
from the lizards-everywhere-it's-chaos dept.
MasterPatricko writes The latest version of the openSUSE distribution, 13.2, has been officially released. Key features include integrated support for filesystem snapshots, enabled by a switch to btrfs as the default file system, a new network manager (Wicked), as well as the usual version updates. This release includes seven supported desktop environments (KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment 19, Mate and Awesome) and even preview packages of Plasma 5.1, all presented with a unified openSUSE theme. Download LiveUSB and DVD images now from software.opensuse.org/132.
Crime

Silk Road 2.0 Seized By FBI, Alleged Founder Arrested In San Francisco 219

Posted by timothy
from the slippery-stuff-that-silk dept.
blottsie writes The FBI has arrested the online persona "Defcon," identified as Blake Benthall, a 26-year-old in San Francisco, who the agency claims ran the massive online black market Silk Road 2.0. Benthall's FBI arrest comes a year after that of Ross Ulbricht, also from San Francisco, who's the alleged mastermind of the original Silk Road and still awaiting trial. The largest of those reported down is Silk Road 2.0. But a host of smaller markets also seized by law enforcement include Appaca, BlueSky, Cloud9, Hydra, Onionshop, Pandora, and TheHub. Also at Ars Technica.
Australia

Australian Post Office Opens Mail Forwarding Warehouse In the USA 142

Posted by timothy
from the up-over-vs-down-under dept.
Zanadou writes Australians are well used to paying what's called an "Australian Tax": high(er) prices for international products and services simply because they are are being accessed from an Australian IP address and/or being delivered to an Australian mail address. But Australia Post, Australia's national mail service, might have a solution: last week they opened a new warehouse/delivery depot in Oregon, U.S., allowing Australians to use a U.S.-based delivery address for mail items, which can then forwarded onwards to Australia.

However, this service, called "Shopmate", comes at a cost.
Education

Interviews: Ask Robert Ballard About Ocean Exploration 40

Posted by samzenpus
from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.
samzenpus writes A former Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, Robert Ballard is one of the most famous ocean explorers in the world. He is best known for his discoveries of hydrothermal vents, the Titanic, and the German battleship the Bismarck. Ballard is the "Explorer-in-Residence" for the National Geographic Society. He works extensively on exploration through telepresence capabilities and distance learning programs including the JASON Project, which reaches more than 1 million students. His latest work involves the Ocean Exploration Trust, the organization that manages his exploration ship the E/V Nautilus. The ship carries with it two ROVs named Hercules and Argus that explore the seafloor in real-time online. Dr. Ballard has just concluded the 2014 season and has agreed to answer your questions. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
Earth

We Are Running Out of Sand 264

Posted by timothy
from the maybe-you-are dept.
HughPickens.com writes John R. Gillis writes in the NYT that to those of us who visit beaches only in summer, beaches seem as permanent a part of our natural heritage as the Rocky Mountains but shore dwellers know that beaches are the most transitory of landscapes, and sand beaches the most vulnerable of all. Today, 75 to 90 percent of the world's natural sand beaches are disappearing, due partly to rising sea levels and increased storm action, but also to massive erosion caused by the human development of shores. The extent of this global crisis is obscured because so-called beach nourishment projects attempt to hold sand in place (PDF) and repair the damage by the time summer people return, creating the illusion of an eternal shore. But the market for mined sand in the U.S. has become a billion-dollar annual business, growing at 10 percent a year since 2008. Interior mining operations use huge machines working in open pits to dig down under the earth's surface to get sand left behind by ancient glaciers.

One might think that desert sand would be a ready substitute, but its grains are finer and smoother; they don't adhere to rougher sand grains, and tend to blow away. As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia. Huge sand mining operations are emerging worldwide, many of them illegal, happening out of sight and out of mind, as far as the developed world is concerned. "We need to stop taking sand for granted and think of it as an endangered natural resource," concludes Gillis. "Beach replenishment — the mining and trucking and dredging of sand to meet tourist expectations — must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with environmental considerations taking top priority. Only this will ensure that the story of the earth will still have subsequent chapters told in grains of sand."
Classic Games (Games)

Landfill Copies of Atari's 'E.T.' End Up On eBay 107

Posted by timothy
from the spooky-desert-music dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "In the early 1980s, Atari made what seemed like a slam-dunk bet: a game based on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, one of the most beloved (and highest-grossing) films of all time. The company was so sure it had a hit in the making, in fact, that it manufactured millions of E.T. game cartridges, which flooded store shelves just in time for holiday shopping in December 1982. The game sold well at the outset, but it didn't sell well enough: By early 1983, Atari still had 3.5 million unsold cartridges on its hands. Embarrassed by the failure, Atari dumped those cartridges into a city landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In 2003, Canadian entertainment company Fuel Industries received permission from Alamogordo's town counsel to excavate the landfill for the long-lost cartridges. Now some of those cartridges have surfaced on eBay, selling for $50 and up; if you ever wanted to own a little slice of video-game history, now's your chance." (You might recall the news from earlier this year that some copies of E.T. had been found.)
Businesses

Tesla Delays Launch of Model X Until Q3 2015 111

Posted by timothy
from the building-up-enough-static-electricity dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Tesla on Wednesday announced that it was pushing back the release of its highly anticipated Model X until the third quarter of 2015. Explaining the delay, Tesla relayed the following in its quarterly shareholder letter: "Work continues on the finalization of Model X with the testing of Alpha prototypes and initial builds of the first Beta prototypes. Model X powertrain development is almost complete with the early introduction of Dual Motor drive on Model S. We recently decided to build in significantly more validation testing time to achieve the best Model X possible. This will also allow for a more rapid production ramp compared to Model S in 2012." During Tesla's subsequent earnings conference call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shed a bit more light on all things Model X, including the fact that if you order one today, it won't arrive until early 2016. Forbes goes into more on the business end of what's caused delays for the company, as well as how investors should see it (critically, they say).
Social Networks

Users Can't Distinguish Scams From Facebook's Features 116

Posted by timothy
from the deeper-lessons dept.
Anyone who's seen social media sites like Facebook has probably also seen scam ads that promise new features or insider access to the sites themselves. rudy_wayne writes Zdnet reports that a new whitepaper from antivirus company Bitdefender, which examined 850,000 Facebook scams over two years, shows that Facebook's own user experience enables these scams to flourish. The researchers found that scammers have infected millions of users with the same tricks over and over again — just repackaged. The most common tricks, such as 'Guess who viewed your profile (45.5 percent)' and 'change your background color' (29.53 percent) rely on a combination of the obsessions encouraged by the Facebook experience, and a general lack of understanding about Facebook's functionality — which, as most users know, is a constantly moving target. Users would be none the wiser that a given scam isn't just a new "feature" or another of Facebook's psychological experiments being done on users.
Businesses

PC Cooling Specialist Zalman Goes Bankrupt Due To Fraud 208

Posted by timothy
from the cooling-down-on-a-big-scale dept.
An anonymous reader writes Zalman's parent company Moneual's CEO Harold Park, and vice presidents Scott Park and Won Duck-yeok, have apparently spent the last five years producing fraudulent documentation relating to the sales performance of Zalman. These documents inflated sales figures and export data for Zalman's products. The reason? Bank loans. By increasing sales and exports Park and his associates were able to secure bank loans totaling $2.98 billion. Someone has finally realized what has been going on, though, triggering Zalman's shares to be suspended on the stock market and the company filing for bankruptcy protection. The questions now turn to how this practice was allowed to continue unnoticed for so long and how the banks will go about getting their near $3 billion back.
It's funny.  Laugh.

CNN Anchors Caught On Camera Using Microsoft Surface As an iPad Stand 236

Posted by samzenpus
from the not-meant-to-be-seen dept.
MojoKid writes Since the release of its Surface Pro 3 tablet, Microsoft has pushed their new slate hard. It's as if the company wanted it to overwrite that part of our memory that recalls the Surface RT and its monumental losses. This past August, we saw the company make a big move by deploying a boatload of Surface Pro tablets to every team in the NFL, gratis. All season so far, coaches and even players have made use of them to plan their next course-of-action, and for the most part, they seemed to be well-received. Unlike some of the products Microsoft tries to get us to adopt, the Surface Pro 3 really is a solid tablet / convertible. Unfortunately, at least where the CNN political team is concerned, Microsoft hasn't won over a few anchors, like they have in NFL, when they were supplied with brand-new Surface Pros. In recent shots captured and tweeted about, a Surface Pro 3 can be seen acting as an "iPad stand," and quite an expensive one. As humorous as this is, it might not seem that interesting if it were just one correspondent who pulled that stunt. Let's be honest, some people just like their iPads. That wasn't the case, though. There were at least two commentators using an iPad on the same set, despite having the Surface right in front of them and seemingly hiding it behind Microsoft's darling Windows 8 slate.
Image

Discovery Claims It Will Show a Man Being "Eaten Alive" By an Anaconda 164 Screenshot-sm

Posted by samzenpus
from the ratings-war-has-begun dept.
An anonymous reader writes Have you ever wished that you could watch a man be eaten alive by an anaconda from the comfort of your own home? The Discovery Channel is betting that the answer is yes with their upcoming special, Eaten Alive. The channel says wildlife filmmaker Paul Rosolie will don a custom-built snake-proof suit, and go inside a live anaconda. They've even released a teaser. It's unclear what scientific conundrum will be solved in the process of feeding Paul to the snake, or how he plans to get out.
Privacy

Terrorists Used False DMCA Claims To Get Personal Data of Anti-Islamic Youtuber 387

Posted by samzenpus
from the names-please dept.
An anonymous reader writes German newspaper FAZ reports (google translated version) that, after facing false DMCA claims by "FirstCrist, Copyright" and threatened by YouTube with takedown, a youtuber running the German version of Islam-critic Al Hayat TV had to disclose their identity in order to get the channel back online. Later, the channel staff got a mail containing a death threat by "FirstCrist, Copyright", containing: "thank you for your personal data. [...] take care your house gets police protection!" Employee names are now on Al Qaeda black lists.
Power

Enzymes Make Electricity From Jet Fuel Without Ignition 78

Posted by samzenpus
from the spreading-the-power dept.
An anonymous reader writes University of Utah engineers say they've developed the first room-temperature fuel cell that uses enzymes to help jet fuel produce electricity without needing to ignite the fuel. These new fuel cells can be used to power portable electronics, off-grid power and sensors. A study of the new cells appears online today in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis. "The major advance in this research is the ability to use Jet Propellant-8 directly in a fuel cell without having to remove sulfur impurities or operate at very high temperature," says the study's senior author. "This work shows that JP-8 and probably others can be used as fuels for low-temperature fuel cells with the right catalysts."
The Courts

Undersized Grouper Case Lands In Supreme Court 250

Posted by samzenpus
from the ine-serious-fish-story dept.
An anonymous reader writes The Supremes have decided to hear a case regarding whether groupers are 'tangible articles' under the Sarbanes-Oxley law. The issue is that the crew of the Miss Katie was caught with undersized fish. A marine fisheries officer wrote them a ticket and put the fish in a box that the captain was ordered to turn in when he got ashore. Rather than do this, they threw out the undersized fish and replaced them with bigger ones. Prosecutors, rather than charging them with offenses of catching undersized fish (which would have resulted in a fine and a small jail sentence), went after them under the Sarbanes-Oxley law which forbids the destruction of "any record, document, or tangible object" and which could result in a 20 year prison sentence, though the prosecutor only asked for two years on this one. Lawyers are arguing over whether "tangible object" here is something that could contain records, or whether it's any object whatsoever that might be evidence. So far in comments, many of the conservative justices, including Roberts, Alito and Scalia, have expressed skepticism as to whether this would lead to overcriminalization for petty crimes and would give prosecutors undue leverage given all the things Sarbanes-Oxley can apply to. They also question whether this was intended in the law, given that "tangible object" was listed in a context including documents and records and appears to have been only contemplated in terms of servers, DVDs, or other tangible objects that might contain documents or records. Meanwhile, Kagan and Kennedy appear amenable to a more literal reading of the statute, given that groupers are in fact touchable and that makes them "tangible objects" under the ordinary meaning of those words.

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