David Dennis

Google continues to expand its use of legal-but-questionable tax shenanigans as a way to minimize its overseas tax burden.

According to Irish media reports Friday, in 2013 Google Ireland Limited paid an effective tax rate of just 0.16 percent on €17 billion ($22.8 billion) revenue, which came to a mere €27.7 million ($37.2 million). Google paid €11.7 billion in “administrative expenses,” which The Irish Times reports “largely refers to royalties paid to other Google entities, some of which are ultimately controlled from tax havens such as Bermuda.”

David Wilson, a London-based Google spokesman, confirmed the Irish figures to Ars.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ecosystem engineer: a giant tortoise native to a different island creates wallows that trap rain water on a dry island in Mauritius. Zairabee Ahamud

At various times in its past, the Earth has succeeded in killing off most of its inhabitants. Although the impact that killed the non-avian dinosaurs and many other species gets most of the attention, the majority of the mass extinctions we're aware of were driven by geological processes and the changes in climate that they triggered.

Unfortunately, based on the current rate at which animals are vanishing for good, we're currently in the midst of another mass extinction, this one driven by a single species: humans. (And many of the extinctions occurred before we started getting serious about messing with the climate.) This week's edition of Science contains a series of articles tracking the pace of the extinction and examining our initial efforts to contain it.

Extinction and “defaunation”

Estimating the total number of animal species is a challenging task, but numbers range from roughly five to 10 million. Of those, we seem to be exterminating about 10,000 to 60,000 every year. Up to a third of the remaining vertebrate species are thought to be threatened or endangered. Amphibians have it even worse, with over 40 percent of species considered threatened.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

HI TRICIA! 王 圣 捷

The US House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill called S517 that will make it legal to unlock one's cell phone in order to switch service providers.

The House passed the Senate version of the bill without making any changes to it. That means that the controversial language banning "bulk" unlocking won't be in the final version of the bill. If that language had stayed in, the bill would have protected consumers while leaving phone resellers and recyclers open to copyright claims.

"This is something that Americans have been asking for and I am pleased that we were able to work together to ensure the swift passage of legislation restoring the exemption that allowed consumers to unlock their cell phones," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said in a statement published by National Journal.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Pirate Bay screenshot Of the many sites around the Web dedicated to helping people find downloadable copyrighted content, The Pirate Bay is the boldest. It's also one of the longest-surviving and most popular sites for illegal torrent files.

That continues to be true despite the site's many legal travails, including co-founder Peter Sunde's arrest in May.

Yet the site continues to grow, adapt, and change. It's now dogma among big Internet companies that the future is mobile, and The Pirate Bay is no different. The website has now debuted a new mobile service at www.themobilebay.org.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Verizon Wireless today confirmed that it will begin slowing down LTE data speeds when customers who have unlimited plans and use a lot of data connect to congested cell sites. This "Network Optimization" was implemented in 2011 but previously applied only to 3G users.

"Starting in October 2014, Verizon Wireless will extend its network optimization policy to the data users who: fall within the top 5 percent of data users on our network, have fulfilled their minimum contractual commitment, and are on unlimited plans using a 4G LTE device," the Verizon announcement said. "They may experience slower data speeds when using certain high bandwidth applications, such as streaming high-definition video or during real-time, online gaming, and only when connecting to a cell site when it is experiencing heavy demand."

People who use 4.7GB or more per month fall in the top five percent and will thus see slower connections when using their devices in congested areas, Verizon says in an FAQ. When asked to explain the reason for the "minimum contractual commitment" clause, a Verizon spokesperson told Ars the company is focusing the policy on "customers who are still on a month-to-month plan" and have grandfathered unlimited data. "We discontinued offering unlimited plans to new customers in 2011," the spokesperson said.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

SpaceX

The United States government has lost its bid to toss SpaceX's lawsuit over lucrative national security-related launch contracts.

In two orders issued on Thursday, the US Court of Federal Claims said that the two parties have been ordered to seek mediation as a way to resolve their ongoing dispute.

Three months ago, the private space firm sued after learning that the Air Force had entered into exclusive agreements with government contractors that locked out private companies from competing for the launch contracts without providing suitable justification. As of now, the only authorized contractor to send up Air Force payloads is United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

CV Dazzle

The National Security Agency revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden have produced a cottage industry of companies providing technological innovations that seek to defeat the NSA surveillance state.

The bulk of this effort is focused on encryption services that secure all manners of online communications from the NSA's prying eyes. But what about privacy in the non-virtual world?

Brooklyn artist Adam Harvey has developed a low-tech solution to protect your privacy—fashioned even before the Snowden revelations—using makeup and hairstyles he says could defeat facial-recognition machines. Privacy enthusiasts must be willing to look like Marilyn Manson or a rocker from Kiss, but this method just might make you safe from the facial-recognition technology that is being embraced by everything from sports stadiums to the FBI.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Last month's Google IO saw the official introduction of Google's Android Wear as well as the first two devices to run the new wearable OS. Among those was LG's G Watch, a Snapdragon 400 (4 x ARM Cortex A7) based Android Wear device with a 1.65" IPS display. As a show of continued support for the Wearables section on AnandTech, ARM is providing two G Watches as giveaways to two lucky AnandTech readers. 

To be elligible you need to be a US resident with a US mailing address and leave a comment below. In your comment, ARM would like to know what segments or applications you think wearables would be most successful in. Some examples being communication, enterprise, fashion, healthcare, security, fitness, etc...

Leave your feedback in a comment below and that'll automatically enter you for the giveaway. Good luck!

Contando Estrelas

Google X has launched a new moonshot called "Baseline Study," which is intended to help us better understand the human body. Google wants to collect genetic and molecular information that it will use to create a picture of a healthy human. The project will initially start with 175 people and will later expand to "thousands" more. Unlike most Google X projects, Google's hasn't come out and talked about this one; all the information we have comes from a Wall Street Journal report.

The plan is to collect a massive amount of information on healthy people and to use that data to proactively identify and address health problems. Most medicine today is reactive rather than focusing on the prevention of illness—something goes wrong and then you get treatment. Once Google has a good baseline of what a healthy human looks like, that data can be compared to data from other individuals to discover potential problems before symptoms become obvious.

Larry Page has frequently spoken about the possibility of using big data techniques to improve healthcare while lamenting that privacy laws limit searches through medical data. With the Baseline Study, it seems that Google intends to build a database of its own that can avoid these limits. With all this data, Google will use its big data prowess to search for "biomarkers," or specific molecules that indicate something is amiss. Google won't have free rein over the data, though—the Institutional Review Boards of Duke and Stanford University will review how it intends to use the information.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Many residents of Sloviansk are now returning home, after pro-Russian insurgents were pushed out of the eastern Ukrainian city at the beginning of July.

Should Netflix CEO Reed Hastings insist on payments from Comcast and Verizon? JD Lasica

While the network neutrality debate has focused primarily on whether ISPs should be able to charge companies like Netflix for faster access to consumers, cable companies are now arguing that it's really Netflix who holds the market power to charge them.

This argument popped up in comments submitted to the FCC by Time Warner Cable and industry groups that represent cable companies. (National Journal writer Brendan Sasso pointed this out.)

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which represents many companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox, and Charter wrote to the FCC:

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Romero chats with Ars' Sam Machkovech at this year's GDC. Kenneth Lucas

Id software cofounder John Carmack has probably been virtual reality's biggest booster in the wider game industry, championing the Oculus Rift long before he officially joined Oculus as chief technology officer last year (much to the chagrin of former employer ZeniMax). But fellow Id co-founder and Doom developer John Romero seems much more skeptical that the new wave of virtual reality headsets will really be as revolutionary as developers like Carmack seem to think.

Speaking at an event at the Strong Museum of Play's eGameRevolution exhibit (as reported by GamesIndustry.biz), Romero did say that he was "blown away" by the quality of the head tracking and immersion in the Oculus Rift when he got to try it out. Still, he said he thinks virtual reality is going to have trouble gaining mainstream acceptance in its current form, largely because it "encloses you and keeps you in one spot."

Romero echoed comments from Nintendo executives that have criticized VR as isolating and out of step with the trends in the wider gaming industry. "VR is going away from the way games are being developed and pushed as they go back into multiplayer and social stuff. VR is kind of a step back, it's a fad. Maybe in the future there will be a better VR that gets you out of isolation mode."

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) has offered a 3.9 million ruble (approximately $111,000) contract for technology that can identify the users of Tor, the encrypted anonymizing network used by Internet users seeking to hide their activities from monitoring by law enforcement, government censors, and others.

In a notice on the Russian government’s procurement portal under the title “Perform research, code ‘TOR’ (Navy),” originally posted on July 11, the MVD announced it was seeking proposals for researchers to ”study the possibility of obtaining technical information about users and users equipment on the Tor anonymous network.” The competition, which is open only to Russian citizens and companies, requires entrants to pay a 195,000 ruble (approximately $5,555) application fee. Proposals are due by August 13, and a winner of the contract will be chosen by August 20.

The MVD had previously sought to ban the use of any anonymizing software. That proposal was dropped last year. However, a new “blogger law” passed in April, which goes into effect in August, requires all bloggers with an audience of over 3,000 readers to register their identity with the government—and enforcement of the law could be made difficult if bloggers use the Tor network to retain their anonymity.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Many Pakistanis are complaining that Ramadan has become too commercial over the last few years, and is losing its true spirit.

A new surge of violence is sweeping through the Central African Republic despite a ceasefire agreement between rival armed groups.

The USS Coronado (LCS-4) underway in April 2014. The Coronado will test-launch the Norwegian-built Naval Strike Missile later this year off the coast of California. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Keith DeVinne

This fall, the US Navy will test a new weapon system—at least, one that’s new to the US—aboard the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) USS Coronado somewhere off the California coast. In search of some way to beef up the firepower of the oft-maligned LCS class, the Navy will test-launch a missile that can fly up to 100 miles and strike targets at sea or on land. And that missile comes not from one of the big names in the US defense industry but from Norway.

The LCS was supposed to be a modular, flexible ship that could get in close to shore and support troops with missile fire. But when the US Army cancelled the Non-Line of Site (NLOS) missile program, it took the teeth out of that idea—the modular missile system was also supposed to be the LCS’s go-to weapon for longer-range land and sea attack.

Since then, the only missile that has even been fired from an LCS-class ship is the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, an anti-air point defense missile system tested aboard the USS Freedom in 2009 and 2010. And concerns about the ship’s underpowered armament and inherent lack of flexibility without a missile capability made it an expensive sitting duck in “contested” waters—in other words, against any adversary that could put even a patrol boat armed with anti-ship missiles to sea. As a result, the Navy cut the number of LCS ships to be built in half and froze the purchase of ships not already under construction while it looks at alternatives.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Android Police

Android Police has gotten a hold of leaked photos of an upcoming Motorola follow-up to the Moto X, the oddly named Moto X+1. The pictures show a device that looks a lot like the Moto X, complete with a presumably customizable wooden back.

According to the leak, the X+1 will be bigger than the Moto X. The sequel is reportedly joining the rest of the flagship phones and jumping from a 4.7-inch screen to 5.1 inches. For Motorola, it's good to have a flagship with a screen matching the size of the competition, but if this device replaces the Moto X, it means one of the few choices for a smaller, relatively high-end phone will be going away. Like the Moto E, the earpiece cutout is mirrored on the bottom of the device, where it is used for the microphone.

On the back, the camera module looks pretty big, which usually indicates optical image stabilization, though the article doesn't mention it. The dots to the left and right of the camera module are dual LED flashes. Like the Moto X, the back is said to be non-removable, and there's no microSD slot.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Efforts to secure a ceasefire between Israel and the militant Hamas movement are intensifying as the death toll in the 18-day conflict continues to climb.

America's longest serving volunteer weather observer, 101-year-old Richard G Hendrickson, will be honoured on Sunday for 84 years service.

Social media footage has emerged purporting to show the Sunni Islamist group Isis blowing up a shrine in the Iraqi city of Mosul.