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Submission + - EU new VAT regulation ends up helping Amazon (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Last year the EU passed a new legislation which was supposed to punish entities such as Amazon (which has its EU base in Belgium and thus not paying appropriate taxes in other EU countries) but ironically the same legislation which comes into effect 1st Jan of this year ends up helping Amazon

Microbusinsses (small shops dotted around the EU countries) simply couldn't cope with the complication of having to comply with each and every kind of VAT regulation in each and every EU country (plus local version of VATs)

Most of the microbusinesses may end up shutting their digital businesses, and those who hang on, opted to sell their wares on sites such as E-Bay or Amazon — the very entities the new EU regulation tried to punish

Submission + - Your Stolen Identity Goes for $20 on the Internet Black Market

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Keith Collins writes at Quartz that the going rate for a stolen identity is about twenty bucks on the internet black market. Collins analyzed hundreds of listings for a full set of someone’s personal information—identification number, address, birthdate, etc., known as “fullz” that were put up for sale over the past year, using data collected by Grams, a search engine for the dark web. The listings ranged in price from less than $1 to about $450, converted from bitcoin. The median price for someone’s identity was $21.35. The most expensive fullz came from a vendor called “OsamaBinFraudin,” and listed a premium identity with a high credit score for $454.05. Listings on the lower end were typically less glamorous and included only the basics, like the victim’s name, address, social security number, perhaps a mother’s maiden name. Marketplaces on the dark web, not unlike eBay, have feedback systems for vendors (“cheap and good A+”), refund policies (usually stating that refunds are not allowed), and even well-labeled sections. "There is no shortage of hackers willing to do about anything, computer related, for money," writes Elizabeth Clarke. "and they are continually finding ways to monetize personal and business data."
Democrats

Clinton Promises 500 Million New Solar Panels 574

Posted by Soulskill from the solar-chicken-in-every-pot dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Hillary Clinton, widely regarded as most likely to win the Democrat nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has unveiled her campaign climate plan. Speaking at Iowa State University, Clinton said she would set up tax incentives for renewable energy to drive further adoption. She also set a goal of installing half a billion new solar panels within her first term, if elected. Her plan would cost roughly $60 billion over 10 years, and she intends to pay for it by cutting tax breaks to the oil and gas industry. According to The Guardian, "Clinton has promised to make the issue of climate change a key pillar of her campaign platform."
Government

Police Shut Down Anti-Violence Fundraiser Over Rapper's Hologram 298

Posted by Soulskill from the holo-law-enforcement dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A Chicago rapper by the name of Chief Keef has been making headlines recently after the city launched a campaign to deny his performance at an anti-violence event. The event was organized to raise funds for victims of recent Chicago murders in which another rapper was slain. Keef is currently wanted on warrants in the region but is living on the East Coast. He was expected to perform via a live stream projection. While Chicago officials worked to deny his performance from occurring in the city, promoters vowed that he would still perform.

A recent concert called Craze Fest was just held at the Wolf Lake Pavilion in Hammond, Indiana. The Pavilion is part of a public park. The city of Hammond refused to let promoters hold the event unless they agreed that Chief Keef would not be allowed to perform. Instead, the promoters setup a live stream projection of the rapper and showed it at the end of the concert. Once the Hologram of Keef began performing, police rushed in and began shutting down the event. This raises some interesting questions about free speech and the role of technology in it. Here's a local news article, and some brief cellphone footage of the event.
The Almighty Buck

Smithsonian Increases Goal For Spacesuit Crowdfunding Effort 106

Posted by samzenpus from the give-us-your-money dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The recently launched Kickstarter campaign by the Smithsonian to preserve Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit has surpassed its goal. As of Saturday, the campaign raised about $525,000, and now The National Air and Space Museum has increased its goal to $700,000 in order to save Alan Shepard's Mercury spacesuit.
Advertising

Google Studies How Bad Interstitials Are On Mobile 259

Posted by samzenpus from the end-of-the-line dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A Google study of their own Google+ site and app found that 69% of visitors abandoned the page when presented with the app interstitial. Google said it was getting rid of them and asked others to do the same. TechCrunch reports: "It's worth noting that Google's study was small scale, since the company was only looking at how an interstitial promoting the Google+ social service native app performed (and we don't know how many people it surveyed). It may very well be the case that visitors really didn't want the Google+ app specifically — and that Google+ itself is skewing the data. (Sadly Google is not offering comparative stats with, say, the Gmail app interstitial, so we can but speculate.)"
Twitter

Twitter Yanks Tweets That Repeat Copyrighted Joke 141

Posted by timothy from the head-scratcher-loaded-for-bear dept.
Mark Wilson writes at Beta News: Can a joke be copyrighted? Twitter seems to think so. As spotted by Twitter account Plagiarism is Bad a number of tweets that repeat a particular joke are being hidden from view. The tweets have not been deleted as such, but their text has been replaced with a link to Twitter's Copyright and DMCA policy. Quality of the joke itself aside -- no accounting for taste -- this seems a strange move for a site and service which is largely based around verbatim retransmission of other people's low-character-count declarations, recipes, questions, and Yes, jokes.
EU

EU May Become a Single Digital Market of 500 Million People 132

Posted by timothy from the happy-trend-of-the-day dept.
RockDoctor writes: The Guardian is reporting that the EU is becoming increasingly vociferous in its opposition to "geo-blocking" — the practice of making media services available in some areas but not in others: "European consumers want to watch the pay-TV channel of their choice regardless of where they live or travel in the EU." That adds up to a block of nearly 500 million first-world media consumers. They don't necessarily all speak the same language, but English is probably the most commonly understood single language. And the important thing for American media companies to remember is that they're not American in thought, taste or outlook.

Submission + - LinkedIn (temporarily) backs down after uproar at contact export removal (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: LinkedIn caused a storm a couple of days ago when it removed the option to instantly download contacts. Many users of the professional social network were more than a little irked to discover that while contact exporting was still available, a wait of up to three days had been put in place.

Unsurprisingly, users revolted, having been particularly upset by the fact the change was implemented with no warning or announcement. But the company has managed to turn things around by quickly backtracking on its decision after listening to a stream of complaints on Twitter.

Submission + - How Amazon Echo Could Become The Next-Gen Selfie Stick

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Interesting story on TechCrunch joining the dots on Amazon's interest in computer vision and its connected speaker-plus-virtual assistant in-home device, the Amazon Echo. The author speculates that if Amazon adds a camera to the Echo the device could be used for augmented reality-powered virtual try-ons of products such as clothes, streaming the results to the user's phone or TV.

From the article: "The product development process for Microsoft’s Kinect sensor took around four to five years from conception to shipping a consumer product. The computer vision field has clearly gained from a lot of research since then, and Woodford reckons Amazon could ship an Echo sensor in an even shorter timeframe — say, in the next two years — provided the business was entirely behind the idea and doing everything it could to get such a product to market."
Biotech

Eye Drops Could Dissolve Cataracts 70

Posted by timothy from the use-a-strong-enough-acid dept.
An anonymous reader writes: As Slashdot readers age, more and more will be facing surgery for cataracts. The lack of cataract surgery in much of the world is a major cause of blindness. Researchers at University of California San Diego have identified lanosterol as a key molecule in the prevention of cataract formation that points to a novel strategy for cataract prevention and non-surgical treatment. The abstract is freely available from Nature. If you have cataracts, you might want to purchase a full reprint while you can still read it.

Submission + - Intel, Microsoft working to squash Windows 10 battery life bug (pcworld.com)

Submitted by amirmustiaf
amirmustiaf writes: On Thursday, an Intel spokesman confirmed that the company is working to patch a minor bug that will reduce the battery life of some Windows 10 machines by less than 10 percent.Â

The good news is that, once fixed, Intel expects the battery life of a Windows 10 PC to be on par with a Windows 8 system, the Intel spokesman said.

With the Windows 10 launch just days away on July 29, Intel, Microsoft, app developers, and hardware makers are working to finalize drivers and fix bugs. Microsoft, for example, issued an update for Intelâ(TM)s HD Graphics integrated GPU on Thursday for its Surface lineâ"along with a firmware update that failed to update for many people.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patents

HEVC Advance Announces H.265 Royalty Rates, Raises Some Hackles 184

Posted by timothy from the but-it's-only-wafer-thin dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The HEVC Advance patent pool has announced the royalty rates for their patent license for HEVC (aka H.265) video. HEVC users must pay these fees in addition to the license fees payable to the competing MPEG LA HEVC patent pool. With HEVC Advance's fees targeting 0.5% of content owner revenue which could translate to licensing costs of over $100M a year for companies like Facebook and Netflix, Dan Rayburn from Streaming Media advocates that "content owners band together and agree not to license from HEVC Advance" in the hope that "HEVC Advance will fail in the market and be forced to change strategy, or change their terms to be fair and reasonable." John Carmack, Oculus VR CTO, has cited the new patent license as a reason to end his efforts to encode VR video with H.265.

Submission + - Modernizing the Copyright Office (ssrn.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joshua Simmons has written a new article discussing the growing consensus that it is time to modernize the Copyright Office. It reviews the developments that led to the last major revision of the Copyright Act; discusses Congress's focus since 1976 on narrower copyright bills, rather than a wholesale revision of U.S. copyright law, and the developments that have led to the review hearings; and considers the growing focus on Copyright Office modernization.

Submission + - EU may become a single digital market of 500 million people.

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: The Guardian is reporting that the EU is becoming increasingly vociferous in it's opposition to "geo-blocking" — the practice of making media services available in some areas but not in others.

“European consumers want to watch the pay-TV channel of their choice regardless of where they live or travel in the EU,”

That adds up to a block of nearly 500 million first-world media consumers. They don't necessarily all speak the same language, but English is probably the most commonly understood single language. And the important thing for American media companies to remember is that they're not American in thought, taste or outlook.

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