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
