zoetmb
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IRS suing Facebook for $9B in unpaid taxes
Good. It's about time that corporations pay what they're actually due to pay. We're now running a $trillion deficit and part of the reason is because of huge corporations who pay no or little federal income taxes. Having said that, I do think the corporate tax structures don't make sense. IMO, a corporation should pay taxes in each locale based on the sales/profits in that locale. A U.S. company shouldn't have to pay taxes on sales say in Italy, unless they bring the profits from those sales back to the U.S., but they should have to pay taxes on those sales in Italy. JMO.gatorguy said:I don't know that anyone here should be blindly cheering for the reason the IRS uses as grounds for the additional taxes. Apple for instance relied heavily on IP rights transfer to foreign subsidiaries, primarily Irish-based but perhaps now with Jersey, as a means of reducing their corporate taxes due using substantial licensing fees to reduce profits.
If they are successful with this against Facebook then Apple, Google, Mircosoft and a plethora of pharmaceutical companies may be next on the IRS agenda.
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Apple liable for millions in unpaid wages after court rules retail worker bag checks illeg...
May be a stupid question considering who I'm writing it to, but why are you defending Apple? Workers deserve to be compensated for their time. It's either my time or your time. If it's your time, you have to pay me.SpamSandwich said:Looks like they should fire half the retail staff and put everyone on salary instead of hourly. Would make the security checks go faster and there would be no overtime pay.
But you're right - they could put these employees on a flat salary and if they classify them as "exempt", they wouldn't get overtime pay. So why doesn't Apple do that? Because Apple wants flexibility in cutting staff hours and they don't want to pay them for a full 40 hours a week.
It's not like these jobs pay well. If Apple can't trust their own employees, then they should pay them for the time. The court ruled properly, IMO. I worked in retail when I was a student in the 1970's and I was NEVER searched or had to submit to any kind of security check. And I actually got Into trouble for working through lunch hour, knowing that I would NOT be paid for that hour, but did so because we were short staffed (and I would still make spiffs and commissions).
If Apple had proper inventory control (all stock is locked in a cage and has to be checked out when sold to a customer) then such searches wouldn't be necessary because there'd be nothing to steal except for what's on the floor and that could be easily observed.
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Why Apple's supply chain is prepared for China's coronavirus
According to WebMB, cold and flu viruses can last on a surface from a few minutes up to 24 hours (not 9 days) and is quite weak after just a few minutes. According to the CDC, "It’s currently unclear if a person can get 2019-nCoV by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes."
In any case, while initial shipments of Apple products are generally shipped by air, my understanding is that the rest usually come to the U.S. by container ship and they'd be on that ship for more than nine days even if that were an accurate statement (which I doubt).
Even if this were an issue, it could be solved quite simply by someone wiping the surface of their new computer or phone with an appropriate cleaner before use.
I can't find data on how many cases there are in the U.S. so far, but as of January 27th, there were only five, all people who had recently travelled to Wuhan.
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DHS skirting Supreme Court order by using purchased location data
People think such violation of their privacy is never going to affect them personally or they feel that it's already too late because with or without phone, we're already being tracked everywhere. So they let it happen.
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EU lawmakers snub Apple's pleas, overwhelmingly vote to push for charging cable standard
I've lived in pretty old apartments (although probably not by UK/European standards) and I've never had an outlet "wear out". And I really don't think standing on a plug and breaking it has been a big problem. The UK plug is certainly more robust than the US plugs and the safety components of the outlets are very nice (although some would consider it overkill), but I'll take the smaller U.S. plugs over the UK plugs and the European rounded pin plugs any day. I hate carrying around those huge adapters.elijahg said:While the US style plugs may be "elegant", they're actually pretty crap - especially the two prong no earth ones. If you stand on the cable near the plug, the prongs can snap off and leave live prongs stuck out. The sockets quickly wear out so that wall warts won't stay in the socket, and just drop out on the floor. Most sockets aren't phased, so live-neutral reverse is possible, and also they aren't usually earthed. The 110VAC supply is less efficient too because there's more power drop in the cables due to higher current, so you need thicker cables to counter that. The British BS1363 plugs are pretty well designed, they are shaped as they are so that if the cable is pulled out, the live is the first to get pulled out, followed by neutral and finally earth. They have a longer earth pin so that engages first, and opens shutters so fingers can't get inside. The sockets are almost universally switched, so you can leave something plugged in and turn it off - almost negating the wear issue you get with US sockets. They're also fused so that a fault in the device won't melt the cable.
But in any case - this is the EU overreaching again. This is pretty much solely to target Apple, as most phones already use USB-C. Legislation on this really isn't necessary, everyone knows USB B micro is utter junk and manufacturers are happily moving away from it.
As far as this EU "standard" is concerned, if it's just the power supply (and not the cable) and it's USB-A or USB-C, I don't see what the big deal is. Apple can still use Lightning on the phone as they do today, right? But if the EU mandates what's on the phone itself, that's another story. Seems to me that as long as the power brick or wall wart itself can be used on any phone, that solves the problem of waste.
