Kudos to Apple’s finance lawyers, who are the Cirque Du Soleil of legal contortionism. On the eve of live testimony from CEO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Phillip Bullock, head of Apple’s tax operations, a scathing congressional investigation of Apple’s tax dodging strategy reveals how the computer giant avoided $13.8 billion in taxes through a clever labyrinth of offshore tax havens, shell… → Read More
According to a new study, we really don’t have to worry too much about the nearly 1 in 4 children without access to FarmVille at home.
“Our results indicate that computer ownership alone is unlikely to have much of an impact on short-term schooling outcomes for low-income children,” report Robert W. Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson in a new study of a large-scale randomized computer give-away… → Read More
Sometimes, more medical information is a bad thing. The influential United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends against most women getting genetic screenings for their susceptibility to breast cancer. Why? Because the tests are imperfect: for every woman who gets tested for genes associated with onset breast cancer, even more will falsely test positive, leading spooked patients into… → Read More
It sounds like a nice idea, if you don’t own a calculator. The governor of Wisconsin wants to give his residents a tax break, using the revenue from a proposed Internet Sales tax to lower the state’s income tax. “I want to make clear, should federal Marketplace legislation become law, my intention would be for any resulting additional revenue be used to provide individual income… → Read More
“The tech industry is, frankly, being greedy. They are going back and asking for changes to language they helped write and blatantly trying to roll back requirements that give high-skilled American workers a fair shot at getting a job,” said AFL-CIO legislative Representative Andrea Zuniga DiBitetto about new proposals to ease the hiring of high-skilled foreign workers. Facebook founder… → Read More
“Los Angeles is an underachieving city,” wrote the Los Angeles Times in its 2013 mayoral endorsement. ”The candidate with the most potential to rise to the occasion and lead Los Angeles out of its current malaise and into a more sustainable and confident future is Eric Garcetti.” An overwhelming number of startup founders seem to agree that Garcetti is the best candidate… → Read More
Thank you, Newt Gingrich, for this YouTube gem; I think America needed a good laugh. Last week, the former Republican presidential front-runner and moon colony-enthusiast called upon the wisdom of the Internet to come up with a term for an Internet-connected phone, apparently not knowing that they are already called “smartphones”. → Read More
“Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location.” — Frank Underwood, House of Cards At this very moment, Mark Zuckerberg’s political lobby, FWD.us, is probably taken aback at how reviled it has become, both from the public and its own members. After all, there are countless political technology lobbies, including Facebook’s own… → Read More
3D printed guns are reportedly even too scary for the infamous free-information hacker, Kim Dotcom. After the U.S. State Department demanded that the designer of the world’s first fully printable gun remove the files from his network, New Zealand-based Dotcom committed to keeping them safely online in his offshore legal safehaven. “I think it’s a serious threat to the security… → Read More
The technology industry’s newest high-powered political lobby, FWD.us, is unraveling just a month after it launched, as two of its biggest partners, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Yammer’s David Sacks, leave the organization. Begun with a reported $20 million of Mark Zuckerberg’s own money, and rare op-ed by the politically shy Facebook founder, FWD.us has faced a torrent of… → Read More
Yes, we do need high-skilled immigrants because we don’t have enough qualified workers. Contrary to a widely publicized report claiming that a tech-talent shortage is a myth, A new Brookings Institute study confirms our argument that there is a shortage and businesses need immigrants to fill the innovation vacuum. → Read More
Congress is on track to passing a nationwide Internet retail sales tax, but it has serious flaws that could majorly muck up the e-commerce industry. We think citizens are often smarter than the government, and we want to give you a chance to make the bill better before it becomes law. So, we’ve teamed up with Congressman Darrell Issa’s Open Government Foundation, which designed a platform for… → Read More
Well that was quick: The State Department has demanded that new blueprints for a fully 3-D-printed gun be taken offline just a week after they were posted. The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance is forcing outspoken Second Amendment crusader Cody Wilson to remove the downloadable 3-D printer files from Defcad.org under expert laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations… → Read More
Readers may have noticed this morning that their geekiest politically oriented friends are freaking out like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert. Today, the big man in the White House signed a rare executive order that all federal data be made freely accessible in a form that can be utilized by software developers, lovingly known as “machine-readable format.” We compiled a list of some of the… → Read More
The Syrian government claims it’s working to repair yesterday’s widespread Internet blackout. State-run media are reporting that a “fault in optical fibre cables” disconnected the beleaguered Middle-Eastern nation from the rest of the digital world. But, multiple experts are calling the oppressive regime on its BS. Michelle Zatlyn of security firm, Cloudflare, which identified Syria’s blackout… → Read More
A new federal database of hospital prices shows a massive disparity in medical costs. “Average inpatient charges for services a hospital may provide in connection with a joint replacement range from a low of $5,300 at a hospital in Ada, Oklahoma, to a high of $223,000 at a hospital in Monterey Park, California. Even within the same geographic area,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services… → Read More
War-torn Syria is reportedly experiencing massive Internet outages. Both Google’s transparency monitor and security firm Cloudflare are reporting near zero levels of traffic out of the area. This isn’t the first time the beleaguered nation has experienced Internet issues. Back in 2012, the Syrian government, in attempt to paralyze opposition rebels, cut the entire country off from the… → Read More
As millions of 20-somethings defy the age-old tradition of young marriage for another decade of baby-less romance, one study suggests that the Internet is responsible for boosting holy matrimony 14% among 21-30-year-olds. In a deliciously dry economic assessment of romantic partnering, University of Montreal Professor Andriana Bellou finds a surprisingly strong relationship between broadband… → Read More
The United States Senate overwhelmingly supported a tax on Internet sales today, voting 70-24 in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act. The outcome was expected after a similar non-biding show of approval passed the Senate with roughly the same number of votes, despite extraordinary opposition from eBay and other major Internet organizations. → Read More
In order to discreetly reach abused children, one aid organization designed a clever billboard that only displays a hotline number for people shorter than 4’5″. The secret is a precisely serrated surface, a Lenticular lens, that reflects light differently to those looking from above and below a specified height. Shorter people (children) see the following message on a street sign: “If somebody… → Read More
The Syrian Electronic Army has apparently hacked The Onion’s twitter account, exposing the groups seriously morbid sense of “humor”. “UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: “Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor”, went one tweet. We’ve seen fake hacks before, and given that The Onion is a satirical news site, it was hard to know whether this… → Read More
The Israeli Foreign Minister has sent a strongly worded letter to Google CEO, Larry Page, warning him that their new Palestine search page could undermine Middle-East peace negotiations. “Such a decision is in my opinion not only mistaken but could also negatively impinge on the efforts of my government to bring about direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,”… → Read More
For America to maintain its fragile role as the most innovative nation on earth, it must perpetually attract the world’s best and brightest. There will always be trailblazing engineers who stay in their home country, leaving the United States one notch below its potential. Yet, on the heels of comprehensive immigration reform, a new viral economic study claiming that there is no tech talent… → Read More
In the near future, the only difference between a smartphone, tablet, and a laptop will be the size of the screen. Hardcore gamers could play 3D intensive games in a smartphone, and Michael Bay could render “Transformers 4″ from his iPad. Otoy, an LA-based software company, has discovered a way to stream any application to any device, completely through a web browser. It’s… → Read More
Transit trade groups pulled out the race card and managed to block smartphone taxi “e-hailing” a day after they were cleared to pilot in New York City. Associate Justice Helen E. Freedman issued an emergency injunction against smartphone taxi app companies Hailo and Uber, after hearing arguments from the several car service groups alleging that smartphones permit drivers to… → Read More
The White House will reportedly confirm that former telecommunications lobbyist Tom Wheeler will be nominated to chair the Federal Communications Commission. Current FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will act as interim chairman while outgoing Chair Julius Genachowski enjoys his luxurious new life as a fellow at the Aspen Institute policy think tank. A decade ago, before he was a venture capitalist… → Read More
Online backlash is growing against Mark Zuckerberg’s lobby’s secretive ads supporting conservative senators who encourage the creation of the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. “Immigration reform – fine. Oil expansion and pipelines? NOT fine. Where’s the transparency here, rich dudes? Or does FWD actually stand for Fine With… → Read More
Want the fun of losing your wallet without the free drinks and oxygen high? Now Nevada residents can legally gamble online at ultimatepoker.com, which could roll out nationwide as more states legalize the practice. Since the infamous 2011 “Black Friday” that took down PokerStars and the online gambling cottage industry, a court of appeals overturned the Federal Wire Act law that banned… → Read More
At least one congressman thinks he is better equipped to judge the merit of research than the world’s premier scientists. Representative Lamar Smith (CrunchGov Grade: F), co-author of the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act, wants the director of the National Science Foundation to certify that all research is meeting national priorities, based on the accusation that current scientific research… → Read More
The head of Mark Zuckerberg’s enigmatic political lobby took the stage of TechCrunch’s Disrupt New York conference. “It’s incumbent on us to make the knowledge economy as inclusive as possible,” said FWD.us head Joe Green. FWD.us joins a crowded landscape of politically aggressive trade associations pressing Silicon Valley’s agenda on Capitol Hill. Since the… → Read More
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