ReHacked #36: the new horizons of physics, privacy and security related news, Bezos supports corporate tax increase and more

Hello, my dear readers. Very long list of news (some of them are longreads) ahead. Technology, science, security, privacy, censorship and corporate tax increasing. Have a great read.

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LG is getting out of the mobile phone business #economy #technology

After years of trying to turn its fortunes around, Korea's LG said it would exit the mobile phone business globally.

Between the lines:  The phone business is a hard one to make profitable for all but the  largest players. LG was once one of those, but hasn't been for many  years, and had no clear path to change that.

Yahoo Answers to shut down May 4, 2021 #internet #history

Yahoo has made the decision to shut down Yahoo  Answers. To better assist you with this transition we've compiled a list  of questions that may come up for you during this process.

Website as shell #internet #fun

Soviet TV version of Lord of the Rings rediscovered after 30 years #culture #art #history

A Soviet television adaptation of The Lord of the Rings  thought to have been lost to time was rediscovered and posted on  YouTube last week, delighting Russian-language fans of JRR Tolkien.

The  1991 made-for-TV film, Khraniteli, based on Tolkien’s The Fellowship of  the Ring, is the only adaptation of his Lord of the Rings trilogy  believed to have been made in the Soviet Union.

Pandemic Profits: Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of Less than 1 Percent #economy

So, it’s no surprise that streaming giant Netflix’s U.S. income  leaped from $1.7 billion in 2019 to $2.8 billion in 2020 as people  turned to the Internet for more of their entertainment. It’s also not  surprising that the tax-avoiding company hasn’t changed its ways.

Netflix’s “current” federal income tax for 2020 was $24 million,  which equals just 0.9 percent of the company’s pretax income for the  year. This is another way of saying Netflix paid an effective federal  income tax rate of just 0.9 percent in 2020. If the company paid the 21  percent statutory rate, its tax bill would be $572 million.

Kallithea, a member project of Software Freedom Conservancy, is a GPLv3'd, Free Software source code management system that supports two leading version control systems, Mercurial and Git, and has a web interface that is easy to use for users and admins. You can install Kallithea on your own server and host repositories for the version control system of your choice. #software

Programming is hard #longread #software #learning

Here’s the truth: if one starts doing anything more complex than a  simple web page, or a simple demo program, things become difficult, and  the more pieces are put together, the more complex and overwhelming the  task becomes. And that’s what every „programming is easy” bullshitter  doesn’t say. Solving programming puzzles are hard especially when  they’re not meant to be puzzles.

Twitch will ban users for 'severe misconduct' that occurs away from its site #censorship #security

The Amazon  Inc-owned platform, which is popular among video gamers, said under its  new rules it would take enforcement actions against offline offenses  that posed a “substantial safety risk” to its community.

It  said examples of this “severe misconduct” include terrorist activities,  child sexual exploitation, violent extremism, credible threats of mass  violence, carrying out or deliberately acting as an accomplice to sexual  assault and threatening Twitch or its staff.

“Taking  action against misconduct that occurs entirely off our service is a  novel approach for both Twitch and the industry at large, but it’s one  we believe - and hear from you - is crucial to get right,” the company  said in a blog post.

7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they? #internet #society

Internet non-adoption is linked to a number of demographic variables,  but is strongly connected to age – with older Americans continuing to  be one of the least likely groups to use the internet. Today, 25% of  adults ages 65 and older report never going online, compared with much  smaller shares of adults under the age of 65.

Facebook Inc did not notify the more than 530 million users whose  details were obtained through the misuse of a feature before 2019 and  recently made public in a database, and does not currently have plans to  do so, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.  #internet #privacy #security

As  the White House considers raising taxes on corporations for the first  time in more than 25 years, the head of one of America's largest  companies is backing such a plan.

Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement Tuesday that the company is "supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate." #economy

A new survey of WFH (work-from-home) employees suggests that many are not yet ready to return to the office. In fact, they may never be ready.

The survey found that 34% of WFH respondents say they would rather quit than return to a full-time office job. #economy #psychology

Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support #privacy #security #blockchain

And Schneier’s opinion on this:

I think this is an incredibly bad idea. It’s not just the bloating of  what was a clean secure communications app. It’s not just that  blockchain is just plain stupid.  It’s not even that Signal is choosing to tie itself to a specific  blockchain currency. It’s that adding a cryptocurrency to an end-to-end  encrypted app muddies the morality of the product, and invites all sorts  of government investigative and regulatory meddling: by the IRS, the  SEC, FinCEN, and probably the FBI.

Particle mystery deepens, as physicists confirm that the muon is more magnetic than predicted #science #nature

Together, the new and old results widen the disagreement with the  standard model prediction to 4.2 times the experimental and theoretical  errors. That’s still not quite enough to claim a definite discovery. But  in a field in which similar hints of new physics come and go,  the magnetism of the muon has remained an almost singular puzzle, says  Graham Kribs, a theorist at the University of Oregon. “There’s nothing  else that’s really sort of standing out for which the entire community  is like, ‘Remember, we also have to deal with this.’”

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Dainius