17th February 2013 Archive

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• Facebook turns billion-dollar profit into tax refund

  Nice work if you can get it

  Bloomberg is reporting that Facebook has managed to parlay a billion-dollar profit for 2012 into a tax refund of US$429 million. According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, The Social NetworkTM got its tax break through deductions for the cost of executive stock options and share awards. For tax purposes, these are …

  Government 17 Feb 21:05

• Australia cuts Microsoft bill by AU$100m

  CTO John Sheridan wonders why anyone would upgrade Office again

  Australia has reduced the amount of money it pays for Microsoft products by AU$100m (£66m, $103m), according to the nation's Chief Technology Officer John Sheridan. Speaking yesterday at the Kickstart conference, Sheridan explained that consolidating contracts from 42 to one and working through a single reseller has enabled …

  Management 17 Feb 21:49

• Brand-new black hole found in supernova remnant

  Chandra spots ‘thousand year old’ blast

  NASA has released images from the Chandra X-Ray observatory which appear to show a distorted supernova remnant harbouring the youngest black hole ever observed. Careful with the dates: NASA says it’s a thousand years old as seen from Earth - which means something slightly different to “it happened in 1013”. The remnant, W49B, …

  Science 17 Feb 22:50

• Obama says patent trolls 'extort money', pledges reform

  Presidential hangout touches on open internet, teaching kids to code

  US President Barack Obama has used a “Fireside Hangout”, captured on YouTube, to label patent trolls as leeches who extort money from their victims. Asked about the potential for patent trolls to hamper innovation, Obama said his administration's attempts at patent reform “only went about half way to where we need to go” and …

  Government 17 Feb 23:03