Technology News - The Washington Post

Apple avoids taxes with ‘complex web’ of offshore entities, Senate inquiry finds

Cecilia Kang — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:36:00 GMT

Apple used a “complex web” of offshore entities — with no employees or physical offices — that allowed it to pay little or no taxes on tens of billions it earned overseas, according to a Senate investigation unveiled Monday.

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How net neutrality regulations could undermine the open Internet

Timothy B. Lee — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:05:00 GMT

In recent years supporters of network neutrality have tried and failed to get Congress to enact neutrality regulations. In 2010, Julius Genachowski, President Obama's choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission, decided to act anyway, relying on a controversial interpretation of existing statutes to justify a new regime of "open Internet" rules.

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Chinese hackers who breached Google gained access to sensitive data, U.S. officials say

Ellen Nakashima — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:17:00 GMT

Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials.

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What Yahoo can’t ‘screw up’ about Tumblr

Hayley Tsukayama — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:04:00 GMT

What does Yahoo see in Tumblr? In a word: youth.

That much was clear from Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer’s remarks Monday about her company’s decision to buy the blogging community for $1.1 billion. Mayer talked about how Yahoo’s older and Tumblr’s younger audiences fit together like “Africa and South America.”

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The question for Yahoo: Will Tumblr turn out to be more like Google or more like Craigslist

Neil Irwin — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:27:00 GMT

Yahoo has concluded that Tumblr, the social blogging service, is worth a whopping $1.1 billion. Will the bet prove a good one? The answer depends on whether the combined company can turn its many millions of users into a interlocking set of services that no competitor can hope to replicate. In short, the question is whether Yahumblr, or Tumbloo, or whatever we want to call it, is more like Google or more like Craigslist.

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Yahoo can't decide if it's a media company or a tech company

Timothy B. Lee — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:03:00 GMT

Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion is a big gamble by Marissa Mayer, the company's recently-hired CEO. The microblogging site is a valuable asset, but media accounts of Mayer's thinking suggest she hasn't come to terms with Yahoo's fundamental dysfunction: that it can't decide whether it's a media company or a technology company.

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Software association offers its take on privacy in the age of big data

Hayley Tsukayama — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:39:26 GMT

“Big data” is a term that gets thrown around a lot as shorthand for the way companies collect and analyze torrents of information to gain clues about consumers, products or better ways to run a business.

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Yahoo acquires Tumblr in $1.1 billion deal

Hayley Tsukayama — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:06:00 GMT

Yahoo announced Monday that it is buying the blogging site Tumblr with the express promise “not to screw it up.”

The company made the announcement after days of speculation that the Web giant would scoop up the fast-growing blogging site. As All Things Digital reported on Sunday, Yahoo said in a release that the deal is worth approximately $1.1 billion, “substantially all of which is payable in cash.”

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Companies pitch cities on going high tech

Marjorie Censer — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:27:00 GMT

Relatively mundane city-management issues, from parking to water use, are going high-tech as cities seek to use analytics and information to improve their operations.

Companies are pushing this kind of work, arguing that it can improve city services and operations while in many cases lowering costs or even producing new revenue.

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Facebook, a year after IPO

Hayley Tsukayama, and Dina ElBoghdady — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:10:00 GMT

After a market debut marred by technical glitches and a deep dive in the company’s stock price, Facebook has spent the past year focused on its biggest weaknesses: how to make money and keep its more than 1 billion users tethered to the social network.

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Should Yahoo buy Tumblr?

Hayley Tsukayama — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:33:00 GMT

Tumblr has been one of the fastest- growing sites on the Web, boasting 107.9 million blogs and a whopping 50.7 billion posts since it was founded in 2007.

That growth has reportedly caught the eye of Web giant Yahoo. All Things Digital reported that Yahoo is eyeing the blogging platform, and reporters Peter Kafka and Kara Swisher said that “sources close to the situation” have said the two companies are in “serious” talks. Still, the report said, the negotiations are far from final.

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Pentagon approves iPhones, iPads for military use

Hayley Tsukayama — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:56:00 GMT

The Defense Department said Friday that it has approved Apple devices for use on its networks, meaning that it can issue its employees iPhones and iPads at the office.

With the announcement, Apple joins Samsung and BlackBerry on a short list of commercial smartphone makers that the Pentagon says are secure enough for its workers to use. Apple iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 meet that standard, the Defense Department said in a release.

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Watson goes to Washington: IBM shows off latest health-care work to lawmakers

Emi Kolawole — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:14:16 GMT

Watson, IBM's supercomputer named after company founder Thomas Watson, was on Capitol Hill Thursday to show off what it has learned since it dove into health care roughly a year ago.

"I thought I was coming up to play chess with a computer," said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) as he took the podium in the House Energy and Commerce committee room during an event hosted by IBM and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), vice chair of the committee. But the now-famous servers were nowhere in sight, since Watson's computing power is now accessible to authorized users through the cloud.

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Mozilla Firefox delays patch to block third-party cookies

Hayley Tsukayama — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:38:26 GMT

Mozilla, the non-profit group that makes the Firefox browser, says that it will delay its plans for rolling out a version of its browser that would increase restrictions on cookies — pieces of code that allow companies to monitor how people use the Web.

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Borderlands 2: Behind Krieg, the game’s latest character

Hayley Tsukayama — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:25:00 GMT

Borderlands 2 developers over at the game studio Gearbox released a major new update to their hit game Tuesday, introducing a completely new playable character: Krieg, the axe-wielding psycho-bandit.

But how did they come up a character like that?

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Google I/O: Google offers more details on what Glass can do

Hayley Tsukayama — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:37:00 GMT

Talk of Google Glass was strangely absent from the company’s marathon, three-hour keynote speech Wednesday, but the company shared news that it’s working with major partners — including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr — to offer more apps for the new gadget.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook to propose tax overhaul

Cecilia Kang — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:21:00 GMT

Apple chief executive Tim Cook plans to propose a “dramatic simplification” of corporate tax laws when he testifies for the first time before Congress next week, just as lawmakers are considering an overhaul of the tax code.

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Where is Google going? Its I/O conference offers answers.

Hayley Tsukayama — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:43:00 GMT

This year’s Google I/O keynote wasn’t as flashy as years past, when new phones and tablets getting centerstage. But the company did drop several smaller nuggets at the conference, including new designs for Google Maps, a Spotify-like service and the announcement that users will be able to send money through Gmail.

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Innovations in 5: The United States of Google and NASA gets some new tech

Emi Kolawole — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:27:12 GMT

Here's what we're reading/watching today:

1) Google CEO Larry Page conducted a surprise open question-and-answer session during the Google I/O conference Wednesday.

Among other observations (including the fact he "didn't appreciate" this), Page expressed his sadness over the state of innovation online and offline and offered his take (not positive) on the rocky relationship between Google and Microsoft. Page, who recently revealed that he suffers from vocal cord paralysis, also openly mulled the idea of creating a separate country free of the regulations and strictures that, as Page sees it, hold back innovation:

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Wireless companies warm to unlimited streaming of some apps

Cecilia Kang — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:26:00 GMT

Coming soon to your smartphone: unlimited video streaming of some television shows, without getting stuck with an expensive wireless bill for high data usage.

Maybe.

The idea of allowing consumers to subscribe to a content provider such as ESPN so they can watch their favorite shows without being charged for data use has been controversial. But it got new momentum this week when Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said he saw such deals in the industry’s future.

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Google unveils new look for Maps

Hayley Tsukayama — Thu, 16 May 2013 00:07:19 GMT

Google offered users a peek at the future of its Maps service Wednesday, announcing that it is giving the widely-used service a complete makeover, including bigger maps and more interactive features.

The company’s maps program has more or less become the standard for people trying to get from point A to point B in the Internet age. But the company is making drastic changes to the service’s familiar layout and pulling in more information from other Google services.

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Google I/O: The end of search as we know it?

Hayley Tsukayama — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:50:00 GMT

Google said Wednesday that it is expanding its voice search capabilities and other features of its core product that it hopes could fundamentally change the way the people look things up on its search engine.

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Google I/O: Google Maps gets a whole new look

Hayley Tsukayama — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:12:00 GMT

Google has made significant changes to the look and function of its Google Maps, which now uses the whole screen and ditches the service’s familiar sidebar.

The information that Google used to host on its sidebar is now more deeply integrated into maps, or right below the search bar that is now in the upper left-hand corner of the map.

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Google I/O: CEO Larry Page takes the stage

Hayley Tsukayama — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:21:00 GMT

Google chief executive Larry Page not only took the stage at the company’s annual developers conference on Wednesday — just one day after he announced that he has a vocal cord condition — he also took the quite unorthodox step of answering open questions from the audience.

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Preteens’ use of Instagram creates privacy issue, child advocates say

Cecilia Kang — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:35:00 GMT

On the photo-sharing app Instagram, search the keywords #Fairfax, #Rockville or #DC and up pops hundreds of photos from children. Among them, until recently, were many from Kyle, a 12-year-old. His full name, Gaithersburg middle school and favorite Montgomery County hangouts were on public display before his parents put a stop to it.

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