Not sure what the Americans have to say about a matter between European countries...? Isn't Ireland big enough to appeal to the WTO?
Posts by ratfox
3721 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2007
Page:
US Treasury to launch pre-emptive strike on EU's Ireland tax probe
Das ist empörend: Microsoft slams umlaut for email depth charge
German minister seeks facial recognition at airports, train stations
Oracle campaigns for third Android Java infringement trial
Yahoo! is! not! killing! Messenger! today!, just! the! desktop! client!
YouTube now 97% secure
Google-backed Thread, OCF form alliance for Internet of Things sanity
Nigerian cops cuff cybercrime suspect, reveal you don't need 419 to make $60m
Google and Microsoft are playing catchup with AWS's cloudy power
AT&T fined for school gouge
Tesla autopilot driver 'was speeding' moments before death – prelim report
Clash of Kings hack: 1.8m hit
Juno's 1,300-pic Jupiter vid
Apple, Facebook and Coinbase coughed data to finger alleged pirate king
Google's Android Pay hits Australia
Alleged Aussie plum plucker pleads guilty to motel tissue swipe
Smartphones aren't tiny PCs, but that's how we use them in the West
The reason China is more advanced in terms of online payments is by and large due to the dismal US banking industry, which still relies on cheques, and does not yet seem to have gotten the idea of account transfers.
It does not help that every player in the industry, from stores to credit card companies to phone makers to OS makers are hindering each other in the great race to a sliver of that sweet cash.
QR codes are nice, but in that particular case, they offer no particular advantage over NFC. The miracle is rather that the store and the bank simply accepted the use of Alipay without throwing a fit and attempting to create their own incompatible and buggy system.
Spotify, YouTube pay musicians with ever-shrinking buttons
Apple crumbles: Mac sales slump while Dell, HP Inc, Lenovo shift PCs
Pints on a plane!
Teen thugs lure, rob Pokemon Go gamers
Is Pokemon Go leaky?
Facebook US tax lawsuit
Idiot brings gun-shaped iPhone to airport
Judge gives Zuck a US$6 million Brazilian
The fine is still small at the moment. It's going to be interesting to see how long Facebook considers starting in the country is worth it. On one hand, WhatsApp is life and blood for many Brazilians; on the other hand, Brasil is one of the biggest emerging countries. It would really hurt Facebook to leave...
Google Spain raided by Agencia Tributaria in latest European crackdown
It's normal that there would be no fine if Google can convincingly claim that the way they paid taxes looked fair. When the additional tax paid is, as you said, so small, it's not unreasonable (and presumably the amount also looked fair to the tax service before politicians insisted they take another look).
What is unreasonable is the law that makes it possible for Google to book all their sales in Ireland, when they have such a massive presence in UK.
Lauri Love at risk of suicide if extradited to US, Brit court hears
US, EU agree Privacy Shield
Sliced your submarine cable? Fill in this paperwork
PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU
I am a bit saddened to see that the young voted in majority to stay, while older and especially retired people voted to leave. It's understandable, as the old people are more likely to remember the "good old times" before the EU. Also, maybe, they are less likely to be impacted by the turmoil, not needing to look for a job anymore. For the young who will have to live in the future, it's a bit of a slap in the face.
That said, I'm not sure that things will change as much as anybody predicts, considering the UK was already outside of many EU agreements like the Euro and Schengen, and it's probably going to keep close ties to the EU in any case. When most of your trade partners have the same standards, it's generally a good idea to follow the standards.
One thing that is likely to change is that Facebook et al. will find it a lot more difficult not to pay taxes on the revenue they make in UK. That's good, but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. Also, who knows what will change for the worse?
I am personally disappointed that Nigel Farage is currently happy. Man's an asshole.
Holy Crap! Bloke finishes hand-built CPU project!
Musk's Tesla to buy Musk's SolarCity for US$2.8 billion
Apple pollutes data about you to protect your privacy. But it might not be enough
You lucky creatures! Mammals only JUUUST survived asteroid that killed dinosaurs
Re: Thankfully, God's can of Raid ran out.
Watch as SpaceX's latest Falcon rocket burns then crashes
Austrians are most likely to bare all on beaches
This is how the EU's supreme court is stripping EU citizens of copyright protections
Re: I don't fully understand...
If the images are actually secure, they are in the locked box and only the family members are able to get at them. Of course, it wouldn't stop those family members copying the images and putting them somewhere public but, without that, no one without the key can get at them even if they know where they are.
Sometimes, the URL itself is the key. For instance, one of the security settings of Google Docs is "anybody with the link can access", which essentially means "everybody can access it, but good luck guessing the 64-digit hash in the URL if somebody doesn't give it to you". When you think of it, having an additional 10-character password to protect the document really seems superfluous.
US plans intervention in EU vs Facebook case caused by NSA snooping
Re: The jist of this U.S. government intervention will be...
All is takes is the IRS auditing the companies properly for all sorts of problems to appear
Yeah right. The companies have better accountants than the IRS and are quite safe from audits. The US isn't some dictatorship where the government can shake down companies for more tax money whenever they feel like it.
Re: The jist of this U.S. government intervention will be...
To the best of my knowledge, the US government doesn't really have a say on how much is invested by US companies in Ireland. It could of course create laws against doing so, but that would probably break every treaty in the book.
It's nice that governments are finally getting involved. It's a bit silly that companies (which are not all the size of Facebook) have to bear the brunt of what is essentially a political dispute.
Your new Android Smartwatch? Dead!
Google bows to Dutch
Google doesn’t care who makes Android phones. Or who it pisses off
Google snubs 'dark money' questions at AGM. Shareholder power? Yeah, right
You were warned
To be fair, the Google founders have said openly from the beginning that they would always keep control of the company. I remember around the time of the IPO a finance guy unhappy about this and saying that Google stock would get punished by the market. They seem to have been doing fine.
Bin Apple's $500m patent judgment, US DoJ tells Supreme Court
Brexit: UK gov would probably lay out tax plans in post-'leave' vote emergency budget
Re: equivalent terms
I believe the UK is in a relatively good position in Europe, having low corporate tax rates to attract companies to London. I would guess they even congratulated themselves on that fact when the rules were drawn (though they probably didn't see coming the Facebooks and Apples choosing Ireland with an even lower tax rate).
All in all, my guess is that it would be a net loss to leave the EU, because London would lose a lot of business from companies currently selling in Europe, which wouldn't be recovered from companies in Europe selling to the UK.
Facebook: 'We don't listen'
Typical
Not that Facebook is the only one to do this but:
We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission
Which most users accept without blinking (and not long ago couldn't even refuse if they wanted to use the app at all).
and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates.
Note how these explanations, here and in T&C's, always say "This might include…"; they never contain an exhaustive list. Because that would mean they cannot add anything in the future without making an announcement about changing their T&C's, which they want to avoid because it just attracts attention to the matter, and gets them in trouble with regulators.
So they leave all options open. They say what they might do, they give examples, but they never say "we will not do this", because that's painting themselves in a corner.
For the record, I don't even think that Facebook is really listening. I'm just pointing out that their statement is completely vacuous, out of abundance of care.
Smartwatches: I hate to say ‘I told you so’. But I told you so.
I agree with the current assessment, but it's a much bolder statement to say it will always remain so. There was 14 years between the Apple Newton and the iPhone. The former was a dud, and the latter started the biggest IT revolution since the 80s.
So all in all, I understand that these companies are still working very hard on it.