Month: June 2019

Enlarge / A Verizon logo at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019 on February 26, 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | David Ramos)

Verizon has avoided paying local taxes on telecom equipment in many New Jersey municipalities over the past decade, but a proposed state law would force the company to pay back taxes for all the payments it didn't make.

The bill, filed on May 23 by Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D–Paulsboro), "would force Verizon to pay local taxes on telephone poles, lines, land, and other equipment that the telecom giant has refused to fork over in an increasing number of New Jersey municipalities, starving them of tens of millions of dollars a year in tax revenue," The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. As of 2015, Verizon had reportedly stopped paying the tax in more than 150 of the 565 municipalities in New Jersey.

The tax Verizon has avoided ranges from $15,000 to more than $1 million a year for each municipality, taking revenue away from local budgets or forcing residents and other businesses to cover the shortfalls. Despite not paying tax in many cities and towns, local officials point out that Verizon "continues to benefit from the use of municipalities' poles, utility lines, and switching facilities even when it no longer pays taxes," a 2015 Inquirer article said.

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If the prevalence of abusive Google Play apps has left you numb, this latest report is for you: carefully concealed adware installed in Google-approved apps with more than 440 million installations was so aggressive it rendered mobile devices nearly unusable, researchers from mobile security provider Lookout said Tuesday.

BeiTaAd, as the adware is known, is a plugin that Lookout says it found hidden in emojis keyboard TouchPal and 237 other applications, all of which were published by Shanghai, China-based CooTek. Together, the 238 unique apps had a combined 440 million installs. Once installed, the apps initially behaved normally. Then, after a delay of anywhere between 24 hours and 14 days, the obfuscated BeiTaAd plugin would begin delivering what are known as out-of-app ads. These ads appeared on users' lock screens and triggered audio and video at seemingly random times or even when a phone was asleep.

"My wife is having the exact same issue," one person reported in November in this thread discussing BeiTaAd. "This will bring up random ads in the middle of phone calls, when her alarm clock goes off or anytime she uses any other function on her phone. We are unable to find any other information on this. It is extremely annoying and almost [makes] her phone unusable."

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Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a $50 discount on Sony's WH-1000XM3 noise-cancelling headphones, which brings them down to $298 at Amazon and other retailers.

While not a huge savings, this is the cheapest we've seen the highly regarded headphones on Amazon to date. A good pair of noise-canceling headphones is still one of those purchases where you generally have to pay up to get high quality, and as we've noted before, the WH-1000XM3 can compete with anything else on the market when it comes to pure noise-cancelling strength. They're comfortable, they have an ample 21 hours of battery life per charge in our testing, and they sound great, with an emphasis on rich bass and good separation for a Bluetooth headphone.

Bose's soon-to-be-supplanted QuietComfort 35 II are very close to the 1000XM3 on the whole, with an overall lighter design and a comparatively more neutral sound signature. But if you prefer a more bass-heavy sound, Sony's pair should be an ideal fit for those long commutes.

Enlarge / Dark green mangroves along Senegal's Casamance River as it meets the sea. (credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

Where humans have the money, we sometimes build storm defenses like seawalls to protect our coastal cities. But coastal development can often destroy natural defenses like coastal marshes or mangrove swamps. These ecosystems dampen waves and reduce storm surge flooding, and mangroves can even reduce wind speeds.

The protections provided by coastal ecosystem services are typically estimated by carefully looking at a single area or event. A new study led by East Carolina University’s Jacob Hochard took another tack, comparing the economic impacts of tropical cyclones around the world with satellite data.

Into the swamps

Mangrove swamps are ecosystems that develop thanks to a number of species of salt-tolerant trees, collectively termed mangroves, that flourish in the tropics. Their dense root systems trap sediments brought in on the tides and provide habitat for a variety of species. They also act to slow down storm surges and storms, providing a degree of resiliency for the ecosystem and any human infrastructure nearby.

Enlarge / The European Commission is investigating potentially false claims that Facebook cannot merge user information from the messaging network WhatsApp, which it acquired in 2014. Warsaw, Poland, on December 21, 2016. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images) (credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images)

The House Antitrust Subcommittee will conduct a series of hearings on the growing power of big technology companies, Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) announced on Monday. It's the latest sign of growing interest in antitrust action against the largest technology companies—especially Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.

"After four decades of weak antitrust enforcement and judicial hostility to antitrust cases, it is critical that Congress step in to determine whether existing laws are adequate to tackle abusive conduct by platform gatekeepers or whether we need new legislation to respond to this challenge," Cicilline said in a press release.

The announcement came shortly after news about a deal between the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, which share responsibility for antitrust enforcement. Under the deal, the Justice Department will focus on investigating Google and Apple, while the FTC will be responsible for Facebook and Amazon. The Justice Department has reportedly begun an investigation of Google; it's not known if the agencies have begun investigating the other firms.