Author: Cyrus Farivar

(credit: Didi Chuxing)

Uber and its primary Chinese on-demand car service rival, Didi Chuxing, have finally buried the hatchet in a landmark deal.

The California startup has been reportedly spending at least $1 billion per year to try to dominate the massive Chinese market, while Didi Chuxing has spent similar amounts of money trying to stave off its American rival.

According to a Monday press release, the Chinese startup will obtain "all assets of UberChina" for operation on the mainland. Earlier this year, Apple invested $1 billion in Didi Chuxing.

(credit: Rob Rhinehart)

The City of Los Angeles filed criminal charges Friday against Soylent CEO Rob Rhinehart, who owns a property on a hillside known as “Flat Top,” east of downtown LA. The company makes a product of the same name that consists of a “food substitute.” (In 2013, Ars editor Lee Hutchinson ate and drank nothing but Soylent for five days.)

According to a statement released by City Attorney Mike Feuer, Rhinehart has been “allegedly performing unpermitted work and refusing to remove a vandalized and abandoned cargo container from a Montecito Heights hillside.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Rhinehart bought the property last year and put a shipping container on it in the name of “experimental living.” Since then, the site has attracted graffiti and trash.

(credit: Kurtis Garbutt)

Facebook has formally informed its investors that it could be on the hook for billions more in back taxes if the Internal Revenue Service’s legal efforts are successful.

This notice comes weeks after federal investigators asked a judge in California to force Facebook to open up its financial and business records for 2010—the year that the social networking giant established a subsidiary in Ireland largely for tax reasons.

Facebook and many other tech firms have recently come under increased scrutiny for using this method to drastically—and legally—reduce tax burdens. The "Double Irish" technique was phased out in early 2015, but companies already using it have until 2020 to transition to something else.

Ira Rothken (left) has been representing Kim Dotcom since 2012. (credit: Ira Rothken)

Just over a week ago, federal authorities announced the arrest of a Ukrainian man that they say is the mastermind of KickassTorrents (KAT), which, until recently, was the world’s largest BitTorrent search site.

Now, the suspect, Artem Vaulin, 30, has retained Ira Rothken, the California lawyer who has successfully kept Kim Dotcom out of custody in New Zealand since 2012.

Rothken serves as Dotcom's lead global counsel—his client still faces criminal charges over alleged massive copyright infringement on his now-shuttered site, Megaupload. American prosecutors have failed to get Dotcom extradited to the United States.

(credit: Donald Trump)

On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, took to Reddit for an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session.

Trump didn’t extensively answer many science and technology-related questions—responding to just 12 total questions during the hour—and ignored other crucial issues, such as intellectual property law and Edward Snowden. His answers were very short and sounded very similar to previous things he’s said on the campaign trail.

In response to “What role should NASA play in helping to Make America Great Again?” Trump answered: “Honestly I think NASA is wonderful! America has always led the world in space exploration.”

This photograph, like nearly all of Carol Highsmith's, is donated to the public via the Library of Congress. (credit: Carol Highsmith / This is America! Foundation)

A well-known American photographer has now sued Getty Images and other related companies—she claims they have been wrongly been selling copyright license for over 18,000 of her photos that she had already donated to the public for free, via the Library of Congress.

The photographer, Carol Highsmith, is widely considered to be a modern-day successor to her photographic idols, Frances Benjamin Johnston and Dorothea Lange, who were famous for capturing images of American life in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectfully.

Inspired by the fact that Johnston donated her life’s work to the Library of Congress for public use in the 1930s, Highsmith wanted to follow suit and began donating her work "to the public, including copyrights throughout the world," as early as 1988.

Jacob Appelbaum is a former Tor staffer. (credit: SHAREconference)

The Tor Project said Wednesday that its internal investigation has been completed into allegations of sexual misconduct allegedly perpetrated by one of its most prominent staffers, who has since left the organization.

In a statement, Executive Director Shari Steele wrote that the inquiry concluded that "many people inside and outside the Tor Project have reported incidents of being humiliated, intimidated, bullied, and frightened" by Jacob Appelbaum, a now-ex-member of Tor’s "Core Team," adding, "and several experienced unwanted sexually aggressive behavior from him."

The Tor Project is the Massachusetts-based nonprofit that maintains Tor, the well-known open source online anonymity tool.

(credit: Noah Coffey)

A Florida judge has decided in favor of a bitcoin vendor charged with violating local money-laundering laws, because, she found, the cryptocurrency is not money as defined under state law.

“The Florida Legislature may choose to adopt statutes regulating virtual currency in the future,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler wrote in her Monday opinion. “At this time, however, attempting to fit the sale of bitcoin into a statutory scheme regulating money services businesses is like fitting a square peg in a round hole.”

According to her eight-page opinion, a Miami police detective began investigating local bitcoin sales in the area in 2013 after learning more about it from a local and federal task force led by the Secret Service. Detective Ricardo Arias then started looking at postings on localbitcoins.com, a website where people can arrange in-person bitcoin sales for cash, often anonymously. One vendor, “Michelhack,” offered 24-hour availability and only wanted to meet in public places, which Arias thought might be suspicious.

Jack Johnson (right), is one of the singers in the pop-rap duo "Jack & Jack." (credit: genesiating)

As a new way to connect with his fans, Jack Johnson—one half of the pop-rap duo Jack & Jack, not to be confused with the laidback Hawaiian singer-songwriter of the same name—has spent the last month soliciting social media passwords.

Using the hashtag #HackedByJohnson, the performer has tweeted at his fans to send him their passwords. (Why he didn’t go for the shorter and catchier #JackHack, we’ll never know.) Then, Johnson posts under his fans’ Twitter accounts, leaving a short personalized message, as them.

Here's one example:

(credit: John W. Iwanski)

Illinois has now joined the ever-expanding list of states that require law enforcement officials to explicitly seek court approval before deploying cell-site simulators, which can locate and track a person’s cell phone without their knowledge.

On Friday, Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signed the “Citizen Privacy Protection Act” into law, which will take effect on January 1, 2017.

The application to the court “must include a description of the nature and capabilities of the cell site simulator device to be used and the manner and method of its deployment, including whether the cell site simulator device will obtain data from non-target communications devices.” The law also requires the “immediate deletion” of non-target data obtained via the cell-site simulator.