Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Comment Kinda terrifying (Score 2) 18

by SumDog (#66228328) Attached to: Mysterious Spheres Found In Australia Are Likely Space Debris
Kinda terrifying these pressure vessels ended up on their coast. If they fell off during a launch window, coastal authorities in most nations do try to keep the launch path clear to prevent any potential harm. But if these fell off an existing satellite and survived, that could have been deadly if they hit a cargo ship. I am curious if they're going to release the name of the owner. There's not much as far as launches around Australia. There's RocketLab over in Auckland, New Zealand. I have a buddy who worked there and they've done some amazing stuff. Could be one of theirs.

Comment Re:Confused by claims (Score 1) 46

Yea it sounds like marketing fluff. Unless they can gather a lot of solar power, it seems like any attempt to thrust to the moon would take several months or years. I wonder if they even have such a test planned? Maybe at the end of their chart in the "if we somehow have a lot of left over money" phase.

Submission + - Nordstjernen Web Browser 1.0.18 released (nordstjernen.org)

Submitted by Andreas(R)
Andreas(R) writes: Today marks the release of Nordstjernen Web Browser version 1.0.18. Developed entirely from scratch in C, Nordstjernen is a lightweight browser focused strictly on conforming to modern HTML and CSS standards. Built in Norway, the project currently supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, with an active Android port currently underway.

Version 1.0.18 is a maintenance release that builds upon the stability of the 1.0.17 branch. In an era dominated by Chromium forks and Gecko-based engines, it's refreshing to see an independent, compiled-from-scratch layout engine entering the ecosystem. For those interested in minimal overhead or native C development, the full release details and binaries are available on their official site.

Comment Re:Bull Hockey (Score 0) 81

by SumDog (#66224828) Attached to: Is Big Tech Now Backpedaling on the AI Jobs Wipeout Scenario?
At this point, nobody truly at the top of this space is expecting any kind of return at all. This is endgame for the economy as a whole. Sam "Alternate-man" and Dario are likely fully away of the government and banking interests that are pushing hard for a total and complete financial collapse to replace the dollar, euro, ruble and other major currencies with new digital currencies; money that can be programmed to only be spendable on certain categories of goods.

The collapse is coming soon, but it won't be what anyone is expecting. Our economy is about to evaporate.

Comment Re:Power infrastructure (Score 2) 197

by symbolset (#66222976) Attached to: 842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave

It makes no sense to spend more to tiptoe through costly incremental steps of infrastructure buildout buying stuff you crave to be rid of when you can hop right to the conclusion. Fuel is bad. You use it and then you need more fuel. That's a vulnerability to the fuel supplier, the logistics, the free market for fuel, changing government meddling. Fix it right once without fuel and be done with it for 30 years. It's not like there won't be another problem to solve the next day.

Comment Re:Power infrastructure (Score 2) 197

by symbolset (#66222872) Attached to: 842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave

>as they are not allowed to use oil or coal

Or natural gas. No carbon. Carbon fuels amplify the already obscene thermal output by at least 2.5.

Also, none of them is dumb enough to go fission. The time to power is an order of magnitude greater than their expiration date if they don't have it. And their server and power costs are bad enough. They don't need to compound those expenses with the costliest source of energy available.

Comment Re:Wait, what? (Score 0) 197

by bill_mcgonigle (#66222570) Attached to: 842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave

It's important to realize that the so-called far-left Democrats idealize Bolshevism while the far-right Republicans idealize Fascism, both of which are forms of Big Government Socialism.

So if the Democrats are in power and they want to increase the size and scope of government the Republicans will go along with it 80% of the time. Because they know they will eventually be back in power and have more tools of power to control.
They will balk the other 20% of the time so they still have something to run on and false promises to make to their voters.

The base of both parties is mostly against all of this.

Submission + - Satya O'Nadella? Microsoft Defends its $47B Irish Pot of Gold and Low Tax Rates

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The NY Times reports on a new required EU country-by-country compliance report released by Microsoft this week, which provided a rare look into how tech giants shift profits out of the countries where they have many employees and significant sales and into low-tax havens that help them cut their tax bills by billions of dollars. Like other big companies, Microsoft uses transactions between subsidiaries to shift profits around to reduce its tax bill. The report revealed a consistent pattern: high returns in low-tax jurisdictions and slim margins in higher-tax ones.

Among the sometimes absurd results, Microsoft said it had generated almost 40% of its pretax income in tax-friendly Ireland, where it employed about 3% of its global work force. In higher-tax Germany, the largest economy in Europe, Microsoft earned barely half of 1% of its global profits, it said. Excluding Ireland, the company said, it generated less than 2% of its worldwide pretax earnings in Europe. For its 2025 fiscal year, Microsoft reported profit margins of 24% in Ireland, where it paid taxes at a rate of just over 14%, and $47+ billion in pretax profit on revenues of $196 billion (the entire population of Ireland is about 7 million). Microsoft employs roughly 6,600 in Ireland. In Luxembourg, Microsoft claimed profit margins of 142% and a tax rate of just 3%. The company said it had $283 million in pretax income and only 34 employees in the tiny country. But in several of Microsoft’s biggest markets — where tax rates exceed 25% — it reported tiny profit margins. In Germany, France and Italy, the company claimed single-digit profit margins, sometimes barely 5%.

The report still gave only a partial picture, because it lumped in the U.S. with other countries. Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying the report that it followed all the laws in every jurisdiction where it operated, and that the reporting standards created some inconsistencies among countries. “Microsoft is committed to a tax structure that reflects where our people work, where we invest, and where functions, assets, and risks occur,” wrote Jeff Bullwinkel, Microsoft’s top lawyer in Europe. Bullwinkel said Microsoft’s capital expenditures in data centers, its corporate work forces and its work through local partners were also key investments in local economies. “Tax is one important measure of contribution, but it is not the only one,” he wrote. The IRS is challenging profit-shifting transactions used by Microsoft, and is seeking back taxes of nearly $29 billion. The company has said it disagrees with the IRS and said in a securities filing that it “will vigorously contest” the proposed tax bills.

Hey, say what you will about former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but at least he didn't try to blow smoke up the public's butt about why Ireland held such a special place in Microsoft's heart. "Corporate tax is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland," Ballmer told journalists in 2005 while in Dublin on a tour of the company’s Irish operations. "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise."

Submission + - Video Game History Foundation Says Piracy Remains the Only Preservation Method (techspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies' refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivists to build legal repositories. Sony's announcement that all PlayStation games will be digital-only from 2028 onward has sparked concern that titles will become harder to preserve and more easily vanish, since the company's servers will become the sole point of distribution. In an official statement, Cifaldi noted that the end of physical PlayStation games has surprisingly little impact on the Foundation's efforts because the majority of games from the last two decades are already digital-only.

According to the Foundation, most games nowadays are not released for consoles, let alone on physical discs. Furthermore, many discs for major titles require downloading updates before they are playable, although the DoesItPlay database reveals that, even today, most are playable offline out of the box. Cifaldi claimed that the true reason piracy remains the best option for preservation is that the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies for game publishers, has closed off other routes. For example, in 2018, the Association opposed efforts to grant copyright exemptions for museums, libraries, and archives to retain copies of abandoned online games for research.

This is the same organization that recently helped defeat a proposed California bill to preserve premium-priced online-only games by falsely claiming that community servers are illegal. The Foundation accused the ESA of repeatedly blocking attempts by cultural heritage institutions to reform DRM legislation. Cifaldi also described the Library of Congress' outdated software preservation process, which currently only requires tiny snippets of source code. For example, Capcom once asked the Foundation to provide the LoC with "the first and last ten pages of code" for a Mega Man game. Unable to discern where digital records began and ended, the group simply chose random segments. Platform holders' habit of closing online storefronts and removing media from users' accounts is also unhelpful.

Slashdot Top Deals

You can be replaced by this computer.

Close