Author: peterjang73

A nerdy father of two, a husband of a beautiful and understanding wife, an engineer who loves anime and tinkering with PCs and games, but most of all, loves God.
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How Apple paid just 0.005% tax on its global profits

Consider this: In 2014, the corporate giant paid just $50 in tax for every million it made selling iPhones and iPads to most of the world outside America.

That’s a tax rate of just 0.005%. Yes, you read that correctly.

So how was that allowed to happen?

Apple has funneled most of its profits from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India through Ireland for decades. Nothing usual in that. Others do it too.

But under deals the company struck with the Irish government as far back as 1991, it was allowed to split these profits between its Ireland branch and an Apple head office that existed only on paper.

Apple paid the standard Irish tax rate on profits booked to its Ireland branch. Those it allocated to the phantom head office were tax free, because under Irish law it was then considered a “stateless company.”

Guess where most of the profits went?

In 2011, Apple Sales International made 16 billion euros in profits. Less than 50 million euros were allocated to the Irish branch. The rest went to the “head office,” out of reach of any tax authority.

It was an arrangement that also suited the Irish government.

Ireland has set its corporate tax rate at 12.5%, one of the lowest in Europe, to attract big companies to the country.

Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30), eBay (EBAY) and Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) have all set up their EU headquarters in Ireland.

And with them came the jobs. Apple employes 6,000 people in Ireland, many of them making iMacs at a factory in Cork — once a deprived city in the south of Ireland. Apple says it is the biggest private employer in the city.

EU states can set their own rate of tax. But European officials say Ireland’s arrangements with Apple gave the company such a huge financial advantage over its competitors that it constituted illegal state aid.

Apple doesn’t want to pay the tax even though the $14.6 billion, plus interest, it might have to repay constitutes just 5% of the $231 billion in cash it has on its books.

Ireland doesn’t like the ruling either, calling it an “encroachment” into its sovereignty. The country said Apple has paid what it owed in Ireland.

CNNMoney (London) First published August 30, 2016: 12:08 PM ET

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AT&T doesn’t want to repay money it got from alleged overcharges

(credit: Mike Mozart)

AT&T is fighting a recent punishment handed down by the Federal Communications Commission. Last month, the FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL) that says AT&T overcharged the Florida school districts of Orange and Dixie by nearly 400 percent.

AT&T filed its response today, saying that there is "no legal or factual basis for liability against AT&T."

The phone service in question is paid for by US citizens through surcharges on phone bills. Those surcharges fund the E-rate program that subsidizes telecommunications for schools and libraries. Under this program, the FCC says AT&T is required to charge schools and libraries the lowest available rates. The commission says AT&T should repay $63,760 it improperly received from the FCC in subsidies and pay an additional fine of $106,425.

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Broadcast your Blizzard games right now via Facebook Live

As originally announced in June, game developer Blizzard Entertainment and social media powerhouse Facebook have agreed to a deal that enables FB users to stream their Blizzard gameplay over Facebook Live. And, starting Friday (hey, that’s today!), users will actually be able to.

The service is currently limited to PC-gamers in the Americas, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, though Blizzard is working to expand to other platforms and regions. In order to enable streaming, simply connect your Battle.net account to Facebook. For more instructions on how exactly to do that, watch this short video:

Via: Verge

Source: Blizzard (YouTube)

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Forget Self-Driving Cars. Let’s Make Self-Driving Living Rooms

The imminent arrival of the self-driving car will change how people move around city streets, but they could do so much more.

The Tridika is a conceptual driverless electric vehicle I created to change how we use cars in our ever-growing cities, where space is expensive and limited. Inspired by Thyssenkrupp’s Willy Wonka-esque Multi elevator, the Tridika works like a self-driving car you can literally park next to your apartment and use as an additional room.

Ipad-Tridika-2.jpg
Ashish Thulkar

Instead of wheels, it works like a maglev train: magnets lift and propel the vehicle. It pulls its electricity from the tracks, and takes you wherever you command. The boxy shape optimizes interior space: You could configure it to travel with up to six passengers or create a fair-sized office space to work while you commute. New apartment towers and condos could be designed and built to accommodate them.

Charles Bombardier

About

A mechanical engineer and a member of the family whose aerospace and transportation company, Bombardier’s actually at his best when he ignores pesky things like budgets, timelines, and contemporary physics. Since 2013, he’s run a blog cataloging more than 200 concepts, each a fantastic, farfetched new way for people to travel through land, air, water, and space. His ideas are most certainly out there, but it’s Bombardier’s sort of creative thinking that keeps us moving forward.

Tridika would connect to the outer wall of the building using a dedicated ramp, get picked up by a mechanical elevator system, and station itself in front of your apartment unit. A large sliding door on the side of the unit would open to let you enter your condo. A similar door inside your unit would open simultaneously by detecting the encrypted signature of your Tridika or smartphone.

Think how easy it would be to enter your home directly from the elevator with your arms full of groceries!

The Tridika could also be used with a townhouse or fitted inside existing garages. You could use it as a people mover, too, carry folks in certain residential areas where the infrastructure would already be in place. In this case, you would simply order the vehicle and pay your fare with your smartphone.

It may seem wild, but why shouldn’t people use their vehicles for purposes other than transport?

I developed the Tridika concept with Ashish Thulkar, a vehicle designer at the Indian Institute of Science. Thulkar also created the drone tower concept.

Ipad-Tridika-4.jpg
Ashish Thulkar

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Six innovative rooftop solar technologies

By Cat DiStasio

It’s never been easier to give your house a solar roof. Falling manufacturing costs and increasing demand have led to a number of fascinating new solar products in recent years, including roof shingles with integrated solar cells, modular solar arrays and even efficient thermal tiles made from glass. As the technology improves and more people get turned on to the benefits of renewable energy, we expect to see even more innovative products hitting the market in the coming months and years, pushing forward the envelope for solar power production.

Dow Chemical Powerhouse solar shingles

In 2010, Dow Chemical unveiled a line of solar-integrated rooftop shingles that were a marked improvement over existing technologies. The sleek plastic-coated Powerhouse shingles were capable of converting 13 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity — a full 2 percent increase over other solar shingles on the market at that time. The shingles were expensive when they debuted ($10,000 for 250 shingles spread over 1,000 square feet), and an array that size would only make a small dent in energy usage for a typical household. However, Dow promised they would pay for themselves within a decade, and the product was an important step forward for integrated solar power systems.

SRS Energy’s Solé Power Tiles

A year before Dow wowed the solar industry with its attractive shingles, SRS Energy launched a product that promised to make installation a breeze. Its curved Solé Power Tiles were designed to mimic the shape of interlocking mission-style clay or cement shingles. In this case, the solar shingles had the same barrel design as their traditional counterparts, so they could be easily integrated into existing mission roofs. This adaptive quality would enable homeowners to replace as little or as much of their roof with the unique solar shingles as they liked, without having to rip off the entire roof.

SolTech Energy’s icy glass solar heat shingles

Solar shingles continue to evolve, not only in efficiency but also in design. Sweden-based SolTech Energy created a stunning example of the best of both worlds with its translucent glass mission tiles, which, when installed across an entire building, give the illusion of a roof tiled with ice. The shimmering SolTech roof tiles capture solar heat and use it to warm air beneath the tiles, which is then used to heat water and warm the home during the winter. The company claims the gorgeous roof tiles can produce about 350 kWh of heat per square meter (10.7 square feet), depending on weather conditions and the angle of the roof.

SunTegra’s Solar Roof Systems

Solar shingles — once a unique way to add solar power production to your rooftop — may actually become a thing of the past. That’s thanks to the emergence of new roof technologies that integrate solar cells so fully that they’re actually part of the roof, rather than just installed atop it. Elon Musk promised that SolarCity, which is being acquired by Tesla Motors through a $2.6 billion merger deal, will create such a roof, but the New York–based SunTegra Solar Roof Systems has already done it.

The company’s integrated solar systems have been installed on homes in the northeastern United States and in California, two prime spots for making the most of the sun’s energy. SunTegra’s solar roof (available in tiles or shingles) currently costs 15 percent more than typical rooftop solar panels, but the company claims it’s just as durable and weather-resistant as traditional roof coverings, which is something most solar panel manufacturers cannot say.

SolarPod Grid Tied requires no holes

When it comes to ease of installation for rooftop solar arrays, the SolarPod might have the market cornered. The system can be mounted to nearly any type of roof and requires no drilling of holes. Since holes are the last thing you want in your roof, this is a fairly clever solution to a common installation challenge. SolarPod’s Grid Tied solar array is an integrated and modular plug-and-play solar power system that includes a prefabricated frame made from corrosion-resistant steel that holds the solar panels. Because the frame floats above the existing roof, it’s also easy to adjust the angle of the solar array to capture the maximum amount of sunlight for that particular location, thereby increasing solar energy production.

SoloPower on a roll

In a completely different approach to easing the woes of installation, SoloPower developed a flexible solar panel that can be unfurled as easily as a carpet. The thin-film solar panels, linked together in long strips, boast an 11 percent energy conversion rate and a smooth installation process, thanks to their light weight and flexible composition. In theory, the flexible solar panels could be unrolled right over the top of an existing roof, in any quantity desired, without the sort of expensive glass and aluminum frames required by most rooftop solar arrays. Although the desire for integrated solar roofs may drive innovation faster, it would be nice to see more flexible — and potentially portable — options hit the market as well.

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