Maik Meid

The Irish Ministry of Finance has announced that it will begin studying a type of new, lower tax rate on intellectual property-earned profits as a way to incentivize tech companies to do business on the Emerald Isle.

The new scheme, whose details have yet to be fully realized, would be called a “Knowledge Development Box.” This setup would allow tech companies—like Google—to pay a small percentage in taxes when they license intellectual property to Irish subsidiaries.

A week ago, the ministry announced that it will phase out its controversial (but legal) tax scheme known as the "Double Irish,” one tactic in the broader phenomenon known as “transfer pricing.” At present, such transfers effectively and legally reduce a company’s tax burden, often to near-zero.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Today, a team of Polish researchers is reporting that it has re-established sensation and limited movements in a previously paralyzed patient. The technique involved both the transplantation of nerve fibers from the leg and a suspension of support cells obtained from the olfactory area of the brain. The results, while striking, only apply to a single patient; more work will need to be done to determine if the approach can work generally.

Spinal cord injuries are notoriously difficult to heal. Although there are nerve cells throughout the spinal cord, the majority of its function is performed by the long axons that extend up and down the length of the body. The axons transmit sensory signals to the brain and receive muscle commands back.

Injuries to the spinal cord sever these connections. The injured region generally forms a thick scar that inhibits the regrowth of axons, leaving regions below that point permanently severed from the brain. The result is paralysis and a lack of sensation. Attempts at therapies have focused on overcoming the effect of this scar. While we've learned a lot about the inhibition of nerve growth, what we've learned has not resulted in any significant successes.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Cyrus Farivar

SAN FRANCISCO—“My… name… is… Ryan…”

In a world where most electric devices can talk and an increasing amount can listen and answer, a seemingly unassuming tablet speaking these words isn't at all impressive.

But this particular tablet wasn't replaying a recording or broadcasting some typed message. Instead, Ryan Hait-Campbell, the CEO for an Alameda-based company called MotionSavvy—signed just inches above the device as it sat flat on a table. Instantly, it interpreted American Sign Language (ASL) into written and spoken English. The tablet is also able to listen to speech and convert it into text. As Stemper looked up and smiled, the "Uni" had impressed again.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

US Bureau of Land Management

A Utah man was sentenced to a year probation, half of which must be served under house arrest, and fined $15,000 Monday after pleading guilty to stealing a fossilized dinosaur footprint believed to be 190 million years old.

Grand County Sheriff's Office The defendant, Jared Ehlers, 35, said he was "sorry" for unhinging the 150-pound sandstone slab in the Sand Flats Recreation Area of Southeastern Utah and dumping the three-toed print into the Colorado River.

"I don't have a lot to say," Ehlers said during sentencing before US District Judge Dale Kimball. "I'm just extremely sorry for a horrible decision that I made."

While on the Hell's Revenge trail, Ehlers saw that the footprint was loose. He pried it up and took it to his nearby Moab home. Federal authorities said he dumped the print after being questioned about the print. He pleaded guilty in July to a felony count of theft of a paleontological resource. [PDF]

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The 2014 Mac Mini has fewer internal components than before, which is good for Apple's manufacturing but bad for upgraders. iFixit

A few months back, we weighed the pros and cons of shrinking Apple's Mac Mini. Shrinking the computer has the obvious benefits of making it smaller and thus easier to fit in more places, but we feared it would come at the cost of upgradeability and reparability. A smaller Mini would need to solder more parts to the motherboard to save space, and it could give up niceties like the second 2.5-inch drive bay that make it a nice mini-server.

When Apple updated the Mini for the first time in two years at its product event last week, it looked like it stayed pretty much the same. The product dimensions on Apple's product pages are the same, and the outside certainly looks the same as it has since 2010 or so. Unfortunately, according to iFixit's teardown, the new Mini makes several changes that we were worried about, even though the dimensions are unchanged.

The bottom of the Mini no longer twists off to reveal easily accessible RAM slots. iFixit

In the 2010, 2011, and 2012 models, the bottom of the unit was relatively easy to twist and remove, giving users easy access to two RAM slots. In the 2014 model, the same panel must be pried off with a plastic tool, and an additional metal cover held in place with Torx Security screws must also be removed (iFixit notes that the Security screws are unusually small).

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Leo Reynolds

Geology rewards an active imagination. It gives us a lot of tantalizing clues about very different times and places in Earth’s history, leaving us to try to answer “Man, what would that be like?” One of the things that's tough to imagine involves changing something that most of us never give a second thought—the fact that compasses point north. That’s plainly true today, but it hasn’t always been.

What we call the “north” magnetic pole—the object of your compass’ affection—doesn’t need to be located in the Arctic (it noticeably wanders there, by the way). It feels equally at home in the Antarctic. The geologic record tells us that the north and south magnetic poles frequently trade places. In fact, the signal of this magnetic flip-flopping recorded in the seafloor was the final key to the discovery of plate tectonics, as it let us see how ocean crust forms and moves over time.

That the poles flip is interesting in itself, but “Man, what would that be like?” Does the magnetic pole slowly walk along the curve of the Earth over thousands of years, meaning your compass might have pointed to some part of the equator for long stretches of time? Do the poles weaken to nothing, disappearing for a while before re-emerging in the new configuration? Do they somehow flip in the blink of an eye? Given the number of species that use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate—especially for seasonal migrations—this is more than an academic curiosity.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Player Attack

Update: In a post on the Code Avarice blog, Mike Maulbeck announced that he is stepping down from the company, and has sold his interest in it to fellow developer Travis Pfenning. The move is an effort to convince Valve that it "has no reason to harbor any more ill will towards the company, and maybe even if we can’t see Paranautical Activity restored [to Steam], at least future Code Avarice games may be allowed onto the platform."

After apologizing again for his intemperate tweet, Maulbeck noted that "my temper and tendency to use twitter to vent has been a consistent problem since I entered the games industry, and I just can’t do it. I don’t have the willpower necessary to be the 'face' of a company. If I do continue to work in games it’ll be as an anonymous 1 of 1000 at some shitty corporation, not the most public figure of a single digit sized team."

Original Story

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A New Zealand appeals court has ruled that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom must reveal his financial assets to the Hollywood studios that are suing him for pirating their movies.

It upholds a July decision by Justice Patricia Courtney, who ordered Dotcom to give up the information amid fears he was "asset-dumping" by supporting his newly founded Internet Party, according to the New Zealand Herald. He donated about $3.5 million of his own money to the Internet Party, The Guardian reports.

Dotcom won't have to make the list of assets public, just reveal it to the studios. The major motion picture studios have all sued Dotcom for copyright infringement in the US. The civil suit from Hollywood isn't the biggest legal headache Dotcom is facing, though; he's also wanted on extraordinary charges of criminal copyright infringement by US authorities. In February of next year, Dotcom will face an extradition trial over whether he must go to the US to face a trial.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The logo on the back of the OnePlus One is of the number one, NOT the letter "i" for "invite-only." That becomes even truer next week when the device finally opens up to a wider pre-order pool. Sam Machkovech

Chinese smartphone startup OnePlus caught our attention in April with its high-end, low-price "One" model, which launched the following month in the form of a strange, invite-only sales system. Even we had to scrounge to secure a unit of our own, and while we enjoyed its price-to-performance ratio and its default use of the Cyanogenmod fork of Android, we weren't hot on what a pain it was to get the phone in our hands.

On Monday, the company finally responded with a long-awaited upgrade to its sales model. Starting October 27, interested shoppers will be able to pre-order a OnePlus One phone of their own, and the company has already opened a pre-pre-order site full of instructions and the ability to create a OnePlus account to speed the ordering process come next week.

A OnePlus blog post on Monday clarified that over 20,000 invites went out to interested shoppers through October, which gave the company confidence enough to expand its ordering system. Even so, the company still reminded shoppers of statements made by OnePlus director Carl Pei last month. "We have to be conservative and only produce the amount of devices we’re 100 percent sure will be sold," he wrote on the company's blog, explaining that the devices' minuscule profit margin will keep any initial pre-order campaign thin on supply.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Before laughing off an electric Harley, read on. BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON—On June 18, 2014, Harley-Davidson shocked the motorcycle community by announcing an electric motorcycle prototype called Project LiveWire. The Project LiveWire teaser video showed a bike screaming down route 66, emitting a sound that vaguely resembled a turbine. I could barely believe what I saw, so I immediately spent time reading comments about LiveWire—naturally, the reaction was mixed. Some gave props to Harley-Davidson for thinking outside the box; others complained “this is no Harley."

The current trend for all-electric and hybrid vehicles is to assume a “quasi-futuristic,” sci-fi-infused look that pretty much leaves convention and tradition at the curb (think Nissan Leaf). Many automotive enthusiasts don’t see a lot of “soul” or “character” in these appliance vehicles. But enter Harley-Davidson, the company known for its shaking, rumbling, chrome-clad motorcycles that go beyond machinery and extend to a lifestyle. These bikes radiate tradition, heritage, and style. A Harley-Davidson is a Harley because it has a thumping, 45-degree, v-twin, air-cooled power plant breathing through pipes that emit a signature sound. Harley power must be transmitted to the rear wheel via a rubber belt, so now the company may also offer an electric bike. Really? The motorcycle community may need a little time to adjust. And as for my own curiosity about what it would be like to ride LiveWire, I had no idea I would find out just a few weeks later.

Next-generation design

The Project LiveWire engineering team uses all of the latest design, prototyping, and manufacturing expertise that Harley-Davidson developed over the last century of building v-twin motorcycles. I learned about how the LiveWire team engineered and built their ground-breaking electric bike when I talked with lead project engineer Ben Lund. Lund studied Mechanical Engineering and—as you'd expect—loves riding. He's got multiple motorcycles spanning dirt to street.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The majority of the Chromebooks tend to have 16GB of onboard storage with some high-end models having twice that. For the intended usage where everything is done in the web, that is sufficient, but when you need local storage for offline occasions (e.g. when traveling), 16GB or 32GB will not get you far. There is always the option of carrying external storage to expand the internal storage, but there is another alternative: upgrading the internal SSD. Read on to find out how the upgrade is done and how MyDigitalSSD's Super Boot Drive M.2 2242 SSDs does in our Chromebook tests, as well as how it fares as a standard SSD.

Two players wave their hands around to conduct in Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved.

We've spent years cataloguing the missteps and issues that have plagued the Kinect motion sensor, Microsoft's would-be answer to the Nintendo Wii. Somehow, in spite of its huge list of flaws—flawed voice recognition, noticeable lag, a dearth of good games, and even an underwhelming successor—its creators stubbornly continued to insist that the robotic eyeball accessory was necessary.

That changed once Microsoft needed to lighten the load on its sinking ship of Xbox One sales. The sensor, which used to be included with every Xbox One console, was sent overboard in June, and with it came a much-needed $100 price drop (not to mention a dropped requirement for game makers to support it, freeing up system resources). Even before that change, game makers weren't clamoring to take advantage of Kinect 2.0's pack-in status, but Microsoft's decision was seen as a death knell. At that point, only a few forthcoming Kinect-specific games were left to kick at the ground and mutter, "aw, nuts."

Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved was arguably the biggest of the remaining motion-sensing holdouts. Harmonix's latest game promised a new way to control and experience music, just as the studio's Rock Band and Dance Central had done in the past, and its mix of weird motion gameplay and impressive remix selection got our music-gaming hopes up. Now, at launch, it no longer has to contend with the pressure of proving Kinect 2.0's value—a feat this uneven final product could never accomplish. But this actually works out in this game's favor and takes quite a weight off its shoulders. As a modest success, DF:ME does a fine job helping the add-on bow out gracefully and stylishly.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A report published today claims that banning too many pesticides will lead to lower yields on farm, which in turn could result in an increase in food imports, and job losses

Wait, what happened at this thing?!? Microsoft

In San Francisco today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that was more than a little surprising: Microsoft loves Linux. The operating system once described as a "cancer" by Nadella's predecessor, Steve Ballmer, is now being embraced with open arms (if not extended), at least when it comes to Redmond's Azure cloud platform. Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use the open source operating system.

The San Francisco event served a dual purpose. First, it was an opportunity for Microsoft to tell the world just how much Azure had grown—Microsoft may not have been first to the cloud computing scene, but a ton of investment and development means that the company is now credible, and, if Gartner's magic quadrants are to be believed, world-leading. Second, the event served to introduce new features and partnerships.

Microsoft's major sales pitch for Azure is essentially a three-pronged argument that Microsoft is the only company that can really do cloud right.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

This afternoon, Apple released their financial results for Q4 2014, which ended September 27, 2014. Strong iPhone sales, as well as a resurgence in Mac sales, boosted the company’s revenue above the $40 billion USD guidance to $42.1 billion. Operating income came in at $11.165 billion, with a net income of $8.467 billion for the quarter. This resulted in an earnings per share of $1.43, which beat analysts’ expectations of $1.31 per share. Gross margin was a respectable 38% for the quarter, compared to 37% in Q4 2013.

Apple declared a cash dividend of $0.47 per share which will be paid out to all shareholders of record as of November 10th, on November 13th. Over $20 billion was returned to shareholders in Q4 as part of the share buyback program and other market transactions.

Apple Q4 2014 Financial Results (GAAP)   Q4'2014 Q3'2014 Q4'2013 Revenue (in Billions USD) $42.123 $37.432 $37.472 Operating Income (in Billions USD) $11.165 $10.282 $10.030 Gross Margin (in Billions USD) $16.009 $14.735 $13.871 Net Income (in Billions USD) $8.467 $7.748 $7.512 Margins 38.0% 39.4% 37.0% Earnings per Share (in USD) $1.43 $1.28 $1.19

As is the norm, the iPhone was the star of the show. In September, Apple of course launched two new iPhone models which brought the total volume of devices sold to 39.272 million for the quarter, which is up 11.5% from the previous quarter and 16.2% from the same quarter a year ago. The iPhone 6 and 6+ are apparently selling very well, with Apple selling all of the units they are making at the moment. iPhones accounted for 56% of Apple’s revenue this quarter. With the iPhone 6 only being available for a couple of weeks this quarter, expect the units to jump significantly for Q1 2015, which began September 28.

The surprise for this quarter was Mac sales, which grew an astonishing 21% year-over-year, and 25% sequentially. It is even more amazing when you consider that the MacBook Pro line only got a slight refresh last quarter, and the iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook Air got no significant updates at all. Apple said that they “won back to school” and they certainly did as a percentage increase. Overall Mac sales were 5.52 million, as compared to 4.413 million last quarter and 4.574 million at the same time last year. With this increase, Apple stated that they have the highest PC sales percentage since 1995. Revenue for the Mac was also big, as would be expected with the gain in sales. Mac revenue is now back to number two overall for the company with $6.625 billion for Q4.

Apple Q4 2014 Device Sales (thousands)   Q4'2014 Q3'2014 Q4'2013 Seq Change Year/Year Change iPhone 39,272 35,203 33,797 +12% +16% iPad 12,316 13,276 14,079 -7% -13% Mac 5,520 4,413 4,574 +25% +21% iPod 2,641 2,926 3,498 -10% -24%
 

iPad sales continue to be the thorn in Apple’s side these days, with a sales decrease for the third consecutive quarter. iPad sales fell to just 12.3 million, down from 14.1 million last year, which is a 13% drop. Clearly they are not giving up on the market, and the two new devices launched last week as well as the holiday season should put an end to the decline in sales for Q1. Apple said that iPad sales were ahead of iPhone sales over the same initial four years, so they are happy with where it is at, but still three straight quarters of sales decline is not what they would have been hoping for.

The venerable iPod likely got the final unit and revenue breakdown, with the iPod going to be rolled into the new Other category, with the iPod being joined by Accessories, Beats, Apple TV, and other products in the new reporting category such as watches when they are released. iPod sales fell 24% from last year, with 2.6 million devices sold. Revenue came in at just $410 million (just!) for the quarter.

Finally, iTunes/Software/Services was up 8% year-over-year with $4.6 billion for the quarter, with the App Store continuing to drive revenues for the Apple ecosystem.

Apple Q4 2014 Revenue by Product (billions)   Q4'2014 Q3'2014 Q4'2013 Revenue for current quarter iPhone $23.678 $19.751 $19.510 56.2% iPad $5.316 $5.889 $6.186 12.6% Mac $6.625 $5.540 $5.624 15.7% iPod $0.410 $0.442 $0.573 1% iTunes/Software/Services $4.608 $4.485 $4.260 10.9% Accessories $1.486 $1.325 $1.319 3.5%

Outlook for Q1 2015 is a big boost for the holiday season. Revenue is expected to come between $63.5 and $66.5 billion with margins between 37.5 and 38.5 percent. Q1 will of course include more sales of the new iPhone, but also new product launches such as the iPads, and the Mac refresh we saw last week. Also new to the quarter will the Apple Pay, which was not available for Q4 2014. Apple divulged on the earnings call that it will not be charging anything to retailers or consumers for using the new pay system, but that they do have a financial arrangement with the financial institutions to earn money through the system. Details of those arrangements were kept confidential. In the end, if someone is paying, it will of course be the consumer even if it is just through product markups. We do not know though if the cost of the system will be any higher than the credit cards already charge, so it may amount to a zero anyway.

Apple has been a company which has been printing money for a long time, and with the latest product launches that does not seem to be ending anytime soon. The one key here is Mac sales, which were very high, especially when compared to the PC industry as a whole which has recovered somewhat, but is possibly still at small decline overall for the year.

Update: The story originally stated Software and Other would be a single category, but there will be two categories for Software and Other.

Source: Apple Investor Relations

On Friday, a Monterey County woman was charged with wiretapping a police officer and possessing "illegal interception devices,” according to the Northern California District Attorney’s office. The District Attorney said that Kristin Nyunt, age 40, allegedly intercepted communications made by a police officer on his mobile phone.

Nyunt is the ex-wife of former Pacific Grove Police Commander John Nyunt, and she has already been sentenced to eight years and four months in prison after pleading guilty in July to five counts of identity theft, two counts of computer network fraud, one count of residential burglary, and two counts of forgery.

In the latest charges [PDF], the District Attorney accused Nyunt of using illegal spyware including MobiStealth, StealthGenie, and mSpy to intercept "sensitive law enforcement communication” in real time. Nyunt allegedly placed the spyware on a police officer’s phone surreptitiously, although court documents do not detail how or why.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apple's A7 was its first 64-bit chip. Now, the company is ready to mandate 64-bit support. iFixit

Apple released iOS 8.1 to the public today, but it delivered something else to developers too. As of February 1, 2015 Apple will require all App Store submissions to include 64-bit support and to be built with the iOS 8 SDK.

If you've got an older iPhone or iPad (anything with an Apple A5 or A6 chip in it) this announcement means nothing to you. Like their OS X counterparts, 64-bit iOS apps can be distributed as universal binaries that support both 32- and 64-bit processors. 9to5Mac also reports that existing 32-bit apps will remain in the App Store. Only developers submitting new apps or updates to existing apps will need to comply with the new rules. Apple is usually fairly aggressive about mandating use of its latest developer tools. It required developers to switch to Xcode 5 and comply with iOS 7's new design rules in February of 2014—for older devices, this is just business as usual.

If you've got a 64-bit device, though, you may stand to get significant performance boosts to your apps. Remember, for ARM processors the move to 64-bit isn't just about addressing more RAM—64-bit ARM chips come with a new ARMv8 instruction set that cleans up some of the cruft found in ARMv7. Our benchmarks estimate that an Apple A7 can run 64-bit code up to 30 percent faster than it runs 32-bit code. An A8 can be as much as 40 percent faster.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Spotify Family

Streaming music service Spotify will soon enable its customers to use the service under a family subscription plan, according to a press release Monday. The group subscription would allow up to five users to maintain separate accounts organized under a single bill for a discount.

Existing Spotify subscriptions are priced at $9.99 per month, which gets users an ad-free listening environment and access to the mobile apps. With the new tier, users can group up under a single subscription, with each user after the first one only costing $5 rather than the full $9.99. So two users cost $14.99, three users $19.99, and so on, up to $29.99 per month for five members.

Spotify's closest competitor, Rdio, has long offered a multi-subscription plan, with two users for $17.99, three for $22.99, and then half the base price ($9.99) for the third, fourth, and fifth users grouped under the plan.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

JD Lasica

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is taking Shakespeare's phrase "let's kill all the lawyers" to a different level. On Monday, he sued many of the attorneys who represented a New Yorker named Paul Ceglia, the man who claimed Zuckerberg promised him half of Facebook back when Zuckerberg was an 18-year-old Harvard University student.

"The lawyers representing Ceglia knew or should have known that the lawsuit was a fraud—it was brought by a convicted felon with a history of fraudulent scams, and it was based on an implausible story and obviously forged documents. In fact, Defendants’ own co-counsel discovered the fraud, informed the other lawyers, and withdrew. Despite all this, Defendants vigorously pursued the case in state and federal courts and in the media," Facebook said in a New York Supreme Court suit.

Ceglia faces trial next year on accusations that his lawsuit—in which he claimed half ownership of Facebook—was a fraud. He has pleaded not guilty and faces a maximum 40-year prison term if convicted.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Two steps toward privacy, one step back.

While privacy advocates lauded Apple for the company’s decision to default to encrypting data on its latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, the technology firm faced criticism on Monday after independent researchers discovered that its latest operating system, Mac OS X Yosemite, is configured to send location and search data whenever a user queries Spotlight.

Spotlight is the company’s search feature for Mac OS X. The capability doesn't just search a user’s computer, though; it also sends information to Apple and Microsoft to return searches from the companies’ services, according to Fix-MacOSX.com.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments