42688105
submission
Copper Nikus writes:
An article at businessinsider claims Apple has slashed its tax bill by paying less than 2 percent on its overseas profits. This was done by legal accounting trickery well beyond my understanding. It is estimated Apple has sheltered up to $94bn from the IRS so far. Now imagine how many cops and teachers could have been hired, how many bridges could have been fixed, and how many pork barrel projects could have been paid for with the normal corporate IRS taxes on that huge amount of money. Is Apple really forced to take advantage of every little legal tax loophole there is, or could they have choosen to do their patriotic duty of paying higher taxes? I think Apple could learn some civic lessons from Starbucks, who has pledged to pay £20m corporate tax in the UK even if it makes no profit.
42580717
submission
Copper Nikus writes:
The nytimes has an interesting story about the current job market in China. It appears the chinese have stolen too many factory jobs from the USA and are now suffering the consequences. There is a great shortage of factory workers along with a large oversupply of college graduate yougsters that absolutely hate factory work and manual labor in general. Many of the college educated slackers are willing to take scarce non-factory jobs even if they pay only a fraction of what factories pay. When it comes to fresh computer science graduates in particular, the wage at top companies has dropped from $725 a month to $550 a month over the last decade due to oversupply. That is less than what many low skill factory jobs pay. As you might have suspected, a big part of the problem are parents and grandparents willing to subsidize the lazy college educated yougsters. There is also interesting data about cost of living over there, such as internet service for $8 a month, etc.
42397283
submission
Copper Nikus writes:
An article in tomshardware brings the most wonderful news for Linux fans: Linux now ships twice as many copies as Windows. It was about time. Yes, those statistics are taking into account mobile hardware, but we all know the desktop is dead and burried, don't we?
41563425
submission
Copper Nikus writes:
The price of Android Mini PCs have recently dropped to the point they are starting to make the Raspberry Pi look overpriced. This article compares the Raspberry Pi model B against the similarly priced MK802 II single core Android mini PC. IMO it can be argued that the mini PC wins that fight. It's worth noting that several new quad core chinese ARM SoCs have been recently released to the world, and it can be expected to see Android Mini PCs start using them in the very near future. This should translate into even lower prices for the now "obsolete" generations of single and dual core Andoid mini PCs out there.
