ReHacked #53: artificial island near Copenhagen, Booking repay state aid, Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero taxes on £222bn profit and more

Don’t forget to share if you like what you read here, subscribe (if not yet) and leave a comment. Thanks!

Exclusive-U.S. to give ransomware hacks similar priority as terrorism, official says #security

The U.S. Department of Justice is elevating investigations of ransomware attacks to a similar priority as terrorism in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline hack and mounting damage caused by cyber criminals, a senior department official told Reuters.

Microsoft’s Irish subsidiary paid zero corporation tax on £220bn profit #economy #bigcorp

An Irish subsidiary of Microsoft made a profit of $315bn (£222bn) last year but paid no corporation tax as it is “resident” for tax purposes in Bermuda.

The profit generated by Microsoft Round Island One is equal to nearly three-quarters of Ireland’s gross domestic product – even though the company has no employees.

The subsidiary, which collects licence fees for the use of copyrighted Microsoft software around the world, recorded an annual profit of $314.7bn in the year to the end of June 2020, according to accounts filed at the Irish Companies Registration Office.

Amazon Ring’s neighborhood watch app is making police requests public #privacy

Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) camera unit, Ring, is planning to make police requests for users’ video footage through its neighborhood watch app more transparent, the company said on Thursday, a move that follows criticism that its products facilitate surveillance and profiling.

kalker - A flexible calculator that supports variables and functions defined by the user #software

A command line calculator that supports math-like syntax with user-defined variables, functions, derivation, integration, and complex numbers.

Booking.com to repay €65 million in State aid after giving €28 million bonuses to 3 execs #economy

Booking.com to repay €65 million in State aid after giving €28 million bonuses to 3 execs

Booking.com said on Friday that it will repay the 65 million euros it received in Dutch State aid, national broadcaster NOS said. Last week it emerged that the Amsterdam-based firm's American holding company paid out the equivalent of 28 million euros in cash and stock bonuses to its top three executives, even though at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic it claimed millions under the NOW support scheme.

"We have closely followed the debate in Dutch society in recent days, we take this very seriously, and we are aware of the sensitivity of this subject," Booking.com wrote in a statement obtained by NOS. “During the pandemic, we made the best possible use of the options available to help Booking.com through the crisis and maintain employment, including relying on the NOW scheme.”

G7: Rich nations back deal to tax multinationals #economy #politics

The G7 group of advanced economies has reached a "historic" deal to make multinational companies pay more tax.

Finance ministers meeting in London agreed to battle tax avoidance by making companies pay more in the countries where they do business.

They also agreed in principle to a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% to avoid countries undercutting each other.

Tech giants Amazon and Facebook are among those likely to be affected.

Denmark parliament approves giant artificial island off Copenhagen #architecture #engineering

Plans for an artificial island to house 35,000 people and protect the port of Copenhagen from rising sea levels have been approved by Danish MPs.

The giant island, named Lynetteholm, would be connected to the mainland via a ring road, tunnels and a metro line.

The approval by Denmark's parliament paves the way for the 1 sq mile (2.6 sq km) project to begin later this year.

But it faces opposition from environmentalists who have concerns over the impact of its construction.

Learn R through examples #programming #datascience #r

Aimed for total beginners, this book is written based on the philosophy that people learn faster when they are shown examples and case studies. Instead of explaining the rules, the book largely centers on the analysis of several datasets from the very beginning. So this is an alternative to traditional, more rigorous textbooks on R programming. We start with small and clean datasets and gradually transition into big, messy ones. With each dataset, we hope to tell a story through the analysis. We invite you, our courageous reader, to take on this journey with us. Motivated readers, such as biologists, could easily work their way through this book and learn by themselves. I would encourage you to type in the example code and see the outputs. And then work on the challenges and exercises.

SubmarineCableMap2021 #internet #hardware

This new edition depicts 464 cable systems and 1,245 landing stations that are currently active or under construction.

FreeBSD from a NetBSD user’s perspective #software

Modern cities modelled as “super‐cells” rather than multicellular organisms: Implications for industry, goods and services #architecture #datascience

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super-organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super-organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super-cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management.

If you would like to propose any interesting article for the next ReHacked issue, just hit reply or push this sexy “Leave a comment” button below. It’s a nice way to start a discussion :)

Thanks   for reading this digest and remember: we can make it better    together, just leave your opinion or suggestions after pressing this    button above or simply hit the reply in your e-mail. Oh, and don’t forget - sharing is caring ;) Have a great week!

Dainius