Comcast gets big tax break that was designed for Google Fiber

Oregon law was designed to help Google Fiber, but Comcast benefits, too.

(credit: Paramount/CBS)

When the Oregon legislature changed the state's tax rules last year, it was trying to convince Google Fiber to bring its high-speed Internet to Oregonians.

But lawmakers apparently didn't realize that the rule change would also hand a big tax break to Comcast. The new rule reduced property taxes for companies that offer gigabit-speed Internet service, which Google sells for $70 a month with no construction fees passed on to customers. But the rule change didn't specify that companies have to offer gigabit service at any particular price in order to qualify for the tax break. Comcast thus now qualifies for lowered property taxes because it offers 2Gbps Internet service, despite charging prices that would steer most ordinary customers to slower Internet speeds. Comcast's 2Gbps service costs $300 per month, with $1,000 in startup fees.

Rep. Phil Barnhart (D-Eugene) told utility regulators yesterday that the tax break was meant to spur investments in new networks and that legislators never considered that a company charging such high prices for gigabit service would get the tax break, according to The Oregonian. 

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Teacher pushed to resign after student grabs nude pics from her phone

“He’s 16. We all made stupid decisions at 16.”

Leigh Anne Arthur. (credit: WYFF)

South Carolina news outlets are reporting a story about a Union County high school student who grabbed his teacher's phone, found nude pictures of her, and shared them with his friends. But it's the teacher—not the student—who's in hot water.

Union County High School teacher Leigh Anne Arthur says she left her phone on her desk for a few minutes while she went out on a routine patrol of the school's hallways. A 16-year-old student opened her phone, which wasn't protected with a password, and found pictures of Arthur that included shots of her partially undressed. The student used his own phone to take pictures of the partial nudes and send them around.

"He told the whole class that he would send them to whoever wanted them,” Arthur told TV station WSPA. The student who took the pictures "told me 'your day of reckoning is coming,'" she added.

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Google launches Android Pay Hands Free trial (leave your phone in your pocket)

Google launches Android Pay Hands Free trial (leave your phone in your pocket)

Android Pay is Google’s mobile payment platform that lets you pay for items at select retailers using your phone. You can link it to credit, debit, or store card accounts so you can leave your wallet at home and pay with your phone. Now you can even leave your phone in your pocket or bag… […]

Google launches Android Pay Hands Free trial (leave your phone in your pocket) is a post from: Liliputing

Google launches Android Pay Hands Free trial (leave your phone in your pocket)

Android Pay is Google’s mobile payment platform that lets you pay for items at select retailers using your phone. You can link it to credit, debit, or store card accounts so you can leave your wallet at home and pay with your phone. Now you can even leave your phone in your pocket or bag… […]

Google launches Android Pay Hands Free trial (leave your phone in your pocket) is a post from: Liliputing

US bans vaping on commercial airline flights

Feds say “e-cigarette aerosol can contain a number of harmful chemicals.”

(credit: Mike Mozart)

US transportation officials announced Wednesday that vaping on commercial flights is officially banned, just as is smoking the old-fashioned way.

The US Department of Transportation's decision to officially ban the use of electronic cigarettes on flights going to and from the United States ends any confusion as to whether vaping in the air is lawful.

"This final rule is important because it protects airline passengers from unwanted exposure to aerosol fumes that occur when electronic cigarettes are used onboard airplanes,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. "The Department took a practical approach to eliminate any confusion between tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes by applying the same restrictions to both."

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Can a new CEO fix Zynga, which has lost nearly $1 billion since 2008?

“Our mobile games generally monetize at a lower rate than our web-based games.”

Zynga founder Mark Pincus has been booted out of the CEO job twice. (credit: Joi Ito)

It’s hard to overstate how much Zynga has collapsed in recent years, and it's struggling to regain its past glory. Since 2008, Zynga has lost nearly $1 billion and has only had one profitable year (2010).

Over the course of 2015, its quarterly average of daily average users (DAU) steadily declined from 25 million during the first quarter to 18 million in the fourth quarter. By comparison, Zynga DAU peaked at 72 million back in Q2 2012.

So what will the tenacious San Francisco startup do now? According to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, founder Mark Pincus has been ousted again—he came back as CEO for the second time in April 2015. On March 7, the job will go to Frank Gibeau, a veteran of Electronic Arts—and he will be paid handsomely for it. Gibeau’s minimum salary will be $1 million and a “guaranteed minimum annual bonus equal to 100% of his annual base salary, pro-rated for the number of days he works for Zynga in 2016.”

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Deals of the Day (3-02-2016)

Deals of the Day (3-02-2016)

Dell’s Inspiron1 3 7000 series notebooks feature 13.3 inch toucshcreen displays that can be folded back 360 degrees for use in tablet mode. You can pick up an entry-level model with a Pentium processor and 4GB of RAM from the Dell website for $450. If you want a model with a Core i5 or faster […]

Deals of the Day (3-02-2016) is a post from: Liliputing

Deals of the Day (3-02-2016)

Dell’s Inspiron1 3 7000 series notebooks feature 13.3 inch toucshcreen displays that can be folded back 360 degrees for use in tablet mode. You can pick up an entry-level model with a Pentium processor and 4GB of RAM from the Dell website for $450. If you want a model with a Core i5 or faster […]

Deals of the Day (3-02-2016) is a post from: Liliputing

IoT: Bosch sucht Tausende Software-Spezialisten

Bosch sieht sich als Softwareunternehmen. Der Automobilzulieferer beschäftigt bereits heute mehr als 15.000 Software-Entwickler. 2.100 Akademiker werden hierzulande in diesem Jahr neu eingestellt, darunter viele Software-Entwickler für das Internet der Dinge. (Cebit 2016)

Bosch sieht sich als Softwareunternehmen. Der Automobilzulieferer beschäftigt bereits heute mehr als 15.000 Software-Entwickler. 2.100 Akademiker werden hierzulande in diesem Jahr neu eingestellt, darunter viele Software-Entwickler für das Internet der Dinge. (Cebit 2016)

Scientists pluck genes at the root of gray hairs, unibrows, bushy beards

Data may help evolution, forensic, aesthetic research. Neckbeards still mystery.

(credit: New Line Cinema)

Combing through the hairy genetic data of more than 6,000 people, researchers have teased out ten genes behind various furry features on human heads—unibrows, lush beards, and graying strands alike.

The study, published in Nature Communications, offers the first look at hair heredity beyond balding, color, and curliness. And the results may be useful for forensic analyses, understanding human evolution, as well as for cosmetic purposes.

The study, led by Kaustubh Adhikari at the University College London, plucked hair-feature information and blood samples from 6,630 people in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. The group had a mix of European, African, and Native American ancestry, providing plenty of genetic variation to untangle. At the blood drawing, the researchers took note of the participants’ hair features, such as eyebrow and beard follicle density, unibrow presence, hair-line shape, and graying. Then they tried to tie those features with genetic patterns from analysis of the blood samples.

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AnyDVD is Back But Don’t Call Us Pirates, Developer Says

A little more than a week after the closure of owner SlySoft, controversial ripping tool AnyDVD is back. Now operating under the RedFox banner, AnyDVD and friends have skipped to Belize while offering a brand new release. Interestingly, associations with piracy are being made unwelcome, with one developer claiming that’s not what their tools are all about.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

After coming under pressure from decryption licensing outfit AACS LA, last week DVD and Blu-ray copy-protection circumvention company SlySoft shutdown.

It still hasn’t been made clear if studios including Warner Bros, Disney and technology partners Microsoft and Intel were behind the closure, but for now that’s the working assumption. Having SlySoft flagship product AnyDVD off the market would’ve been a huge feather in their collective caps.

But shutdowns of companies like SlySoft often prove troublesome and earlier this week the first signs of cracks in the closure began to show. With talk of a return under a new banner a hot topic, former developers openly discussed bringing AnyDVD and other products back online.

Making things more interesting was the revelation that SlySoft was not entirely based in Antigua but actually a decentralized operation with developers scattered in countries around the world. Developers who, it transpired, still had access to key SlySoft infrastructure and the will to reanimate the project. In the end, it didn’t take long.

Still sporting a familiar ‘fox’ logo, yesterday a reborn ‘RedFox’ rose from the ashes of SlySoft. Now hailing from Belize with at least some infrastructure in Latvia, the RedFox team delivered their first release – an update to AnyDVD, version 7.6.9.1.

“AnyDVD reborn! SlySoft is dead, long live RedFox!” declared the changelog.

“This is an intermediate release, so old customers can continue to use their existing AnyDVD license to watch their discs. This version can access the new RedFox Online Protection Database,” the group added.

Perhaps of most interest are the new features. In addition to some minor fixes and improvements, AnyDVD also supports new discs, a big first step for a product that just a week ago looked destined for the archives.

The release will only work if users already own a valid AnyDVD license, which suggests that RedFox have access to the old company’s licensing systems, another important step for keeping the business model moving forward. Additionally, old SlySoft products have also returned, including CloneBD and CloneDVD.

But while would-be pirates might find cause for celebration, not everyone in the new RedFox team welcomes being so closely associated with the practice. A developer identifying himself as ‘Peer’ says that comments made by release groups in an article published on TF at the weekend left him feeling “depressed”.

redfox-logo“Pirates were never the intended audience. If SlySoft could have shaken them off, they would have. In fact – some people seem to think, that without piracy, SlySoft wouldn’t have existed,” Peer explains.

For those that primarily used SlySoft’s products for piracy (and the MPAA and AACS LA seem to think that’s a whole bunch of them) the assumption seems reasonable. However, Peer sees things somewhat differently.

“Pirates only made a very small percentage of the AnyDVD userbase. And – given that they are pirates, it’s a valid question whether they were even paying customers,” he says.

“AnyDVD was created out of the frustration of a few people, who got fed up with the unplayability (yes! that word is fitting!) of DVDs and later on Blu-ray discs. So, of course, SlySoft could have easily done without the pirates – and had they, SlySoft might even still exist.”

While one can see Peer’s point (and presuming for a moment we can easily interchange the terms ‘piracy’ and ‘copyright infringement’), the fact that AnyDVD drilled a huge hole through the encryption efforts of AACS LA makes it a seriously infringing piece of software, if of course the trade groups and courts are to be believed.

So, one has to conclude that even without piracy SlySoft would’ve been in trouble, a point not lost on the developer.

“It’s not that the AACS-LA wouldn’t have gone to the same lengths trying – don’t mistake them to be fighting piracy, their goal is a more immediate one, which is to justify their existence,” Peer says.

“They have this huge money-making machine, collect fees for every [blu ray disc] ever being sold without having to really, well, do much (god, I wish I were the AACS-LA), while promising to protect the discs in return, which effectively doesn’t work – so they have no choice but to fight back.”

That fight includes taking down products like AnyDVD and DVDFab, both of which are closely connected (whether the developers like it or not) with DRM circumvention and ultimately piracy.

“You can’t deny that [piracy] is hurting the movie industry. And you can’t deny that we were involuntarily helping piracy. Just like the glass cutter involuntarily helps burglary,” Peer says.

“So, sorry MPAA, AACS and all you people with the fancy acronyms – we can’t help you with the piracy, but since no one is helping us with [playing and backing up] movies, we’re picking up things ourselves.”

Nevertheless, the intentions of the RedFox team will have little bearing on how they are perceived by the MPAA and AACS LA. They will be seen as outlaws with no respect for the laws that the industry groups worked long and hard to have put in place. On that basis alone, this battle is far from over.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Brazil frees imprisoned Facebook exec who couldn’t decrypt WhatsApp messages

With the help of US tax dollars, WhatsApp upped its security back in 2014.

(credit: Jeso Carneiro)

A Brazilian judge has ordered the release of a Facebook executive one day after he was jailed in São Paulo for "repeated non-compliance with court orders," according to the Agence France Presse. Facebook spokesman Matt Steinfeld confirmed to Ars that executive Diego Dzodan has indeed been released.

Dzodan was arrested (Portuguese) after apparently refusing to provide WhatsApp messages that the Brazilian police sought in connection with a drug case. Since late 2014, all WhatsApp messages sent between Android devices are end-to-end encrypted, which means that not even parent company Facebook can access their plaintext contents. (WhatsApp messges that involve an iOS device are not end-to-end encrypted.)

Judge Ruy Pinheiro described Dzodan’s detention as "unlawful coercion," according to the AFP.

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