A court in Austria will rule in the next few weeks whether it has the jurisdiction to hear a class action lawsuit brought against Facebook.
Some 25,000 users - led by Austrian law graduate Max Schrems - accuse Facebook of violating European privacy laws in the way it collects and forwards data.
The case has been brought against Facebook's European HQ in Dublin, which handles accounts outside US and Canada.
Facebook's lawyers have argued for the case to be dismissed.
They presented a list of procedural objections at a court hearing in Vienna on Thursday.
Mr Schrems - a campaigner for data protection - said he brought the claim to stop what he calls mass surveillance by the social networking site.
The legal action claims privacy laws are breached in the way Facebook monitors users when they activate the site's "like" buttons.
It also alleges Facebook co-operated with Prism, a surveillance system launched in 2007 by the US National Security Agency.
The case - which involves more than 900 UK-based users of Facebook - includes a compensation claim of about €500 ($539; £362) per person.
The court will issue a written decision in the next few weeks on whether it can handle the case, the BBC's Bethany Bell reports from Vienna.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Police launched a new attack on a protest camp in Kiev, Ukraine, early Wednesday morning, after clashes killed at least 18.
Local media reported the sound of explosions and gunshots as police entered the camp. In addition to fires in Independence
Square, Kiev’s Trade Unions Building caught fire during the raid.
Protesters reportedly were forced to jump from upper floors of the
building to escape the flames.
The most recent wave of clashes comes after opposition leaders said talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych failed.
Photo: Anti-government protesters throw missiles during clashes with
riot police at Independence Square in Kiev on Feb. 18. (David
Mdzinarishvili / Reuters)
Monday, August 26, 2013
Google takes a quarter of US web traffic, according to internet monitoring firm Deepfield.
Every day more than 60 percent of all web-enabled devices exchange
traffic with the tech giant's servers. This figure means that Google is
bigger than Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter combined.
Deepfield's Craig Labovitz wrote in his blog that
based on measurements of end device and user audience share, 60 percent
of all internet end devices/users exchange traffic with Google servers
during the course of an average day.
This analysis includes computers and mobile device as well as game
consoles, home media appliances, and other embedded devices, Labovitz
said.
It is not just the company’s search which sucks up the traffic,
Google also gets huge amounts of traffic through its analytics, hosting,
and advertising platforms.
Another source of traffic for the company is its Google Global Cache
servers, which are used by the majority of US internet providers and
also in more than 100 other countries.
This is a huge jump on previous statistics. When Deepfield last
carried out a study on Google's internet traffic, in 2010, the firm only
had six percent.
ocial networking outfitFacebook not only managed to avoid paying any taxes this year, its accountants managed to collect tax refunds of $429 million.
While the US owes huge amounts of dosh to the Chinese, hoping that it
never choses to collect, Facebook has avoided paying any tax on its
$1.06 billion dollar profits.
Instead, the cash strapped US will have to write a $429 million for
the pleasure of having Facebook make its profits in its country.
Apparently the reason is that Facebook was able to deduct tax paid on executive stock options.
According to a report from Citizens for Tax Justice, that loophole reduced Facebook's federal and state income taxes by $1.03 billion.
Facebook is carrying forward another $2.17 billion in additional tax-option tax breaks for use in future years, the report says.
This means that Facebook will not have to pay more than $3 billion in current and future taxes.
It joins a large number of big US companies that are somehow avoiding paying taxes. These include General Electric, Boeing and Goldman Sachs.
Senator Bernie Sanders has compiled a list of the worst corporate income tax avoiders, including Bank of America and Citigroup.
He said that the wealthiest Americans and most profitable
corporations must do their share to help bring down the record-breaking
deficit.
That is the US for you. For years, big corporates have managed to get
away with paying little tax because they own politicans who believe
that they are saving US business from evil communists.
However, this year, taxes for many individuals went up in 2013,
making ordinary people feel put out. Now it turns out that pain was
partly caused by paying Facebook so its executives could have shares.
This would be much better than getting their kids educated or other
communist schemes, like healthcare.
All these tax breaks should be trickling down, so the mantra goes,
but what actually happened is that corporate profits have jumped since
2000, helped in part by strategies to minimise their tax burdens. These
have been sent to off-shore cash mountains to save for a rainy day.
Eerie surveillance equipment developed by scientists that can ‘tag’ and track people over CCTV has beaten big name tech firms to a security prize.
London's Kingston
University has landed an award as 'CCTV system of the year' for the
surveillance software which is able to pinpoint suspicious people and
monitor them over a whole network of cameras.
As soon as
operators notice something they consider suspicious, they can ‘tag’ an
individual by clicking on their image, like in Facebook,
allowing the computer to search through its systems to find out past
movements, and even predict what the individual will do next.
So
far, so ‘Big Brother’, then. But the lead computer scientist on the
project, one Dr James Orwell, believes it could really help policing.
With
the automated tracking, named Tag and Track, police could drastically
improve efficiency in poring over CCTV footage, making it even easier to
keep tabs on the populace.
The surveillance software developed with Orwell’s team managed to fight off competition from Samsung and Panasonic at the annual International Fire and Security Exhibition and Conference (IFSEC) to take the top prize.
Tag
and Track could be useful in finding missing kids, locating flight
passengers who check in bags but don’t show up at the gate, or even
predicting bottlenecks at queuing points before they even happen.
Whether
this list will also include the monitoring of a futuristic dystopian
society in order to break the will of those who oppose it was not noted
by the university.
Two ex-developers from the social notworking site Facebook developers have built a new database which they claim goes like the clappers compared to MySQL.
According to TechCrunch, Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov, have developed MemSQL and claim it is thirty times faster than normal disk-based databases.
The
pair used techniques they had used at Facebook. This involved
translating the code into C++, so avoiding the need to use a slow SQL
interpreter. Data is kept in memory, with disk read/writes taking place
in the background.
Shamgunov worked for Microsoft SQL Server for six years and has several patents to his name so is quite well known in the wonderful world of storage.
He has put together a video showing
MySQL versus MemSQL carrying out a sequence of queries, in which MySQL
performs at around 3,500 queries per second, while MemSQL achieves
around 80,000 queries per second.
So far the outfit has yet to
show the database running Transaction Processing Performance Council
tests. MemSQL gets most of its speed from being memory based, but that
has problems when it comes to size limits and potential data loss.
MemSQL
writes back to disk/SSD as soon as the transaction is acknowledged in
memory. It is that, and a combination of write-ahead logging and
snapshotting ensures your data is secure.
The company claims that
MemSQL handles terabyte-scale workloads by connecting MemSQL and MySQL
nodes together, conferring real-time access for your most valuable data
as well as long-term historical lookback.
It runs on 64 bit Linux, and is described as ideally suited for machines with multi-core processors and at least 8GB of RAM.
PALO ALTO, CA –Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut
down in July of 2012. Managing the site has become too stressful.
“Facebook has gotten out of control,” reportedly said Zuckerberg in a
press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of
managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all
the madness.”
Zuckerberg reportedly went on to explain that starting July 15th,
users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts. That
gives users (and Facebook addicts) a year to adjust to life without
Facebook.
“After July 15th, 2012 the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat
Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you
ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the
internet. You won’t be able to get them back after Facebook goes out of
business.”
Zuckerberg said the decision to shut down Facebook was difficult, but that he does not think people will be upset.
“I personally don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said in a private
phone interview to a source close to a friend. “And to be honest, I
think it’s for the better. Without Facebook, people will have to go
outside and make real friends. That’s always a good thing.”
Some Facebook users were furious upon hearing the shocking news.
“What am I going to do without Facebook?” said Denise Bradshaw, a
high school student from Indiana. “My life revolves around it. I’m on
Facebook at least 10 hours a day. Now what am I going to do with all
that free time?”
However, parents across the country have been experiencing a long anticipated sense of relief.
“I’m glad the Facebook nightmare is over,” said Jon Guttari, a single
parent from Detroit. “Now my teenager’s face won’t be glued to a
computer screen all day. Maybe I can even have a conversation with her.”
Those in the financial industry are criticizing Zuckerberg for
walking away from a multibillion dollar franchise. Facebook is currently
ranked as one of the wealthiest businesses in the world, with
economists estimating its value at around 17.9 billion.
But Zuckerberg remains unruffled by these accusations. He said he will stand by his decision to give Facebook the axe.
“I don’t care about the money,” said Zuckerberg. “I just want my old life back.”
The Facebook Corporation suggests that users remove all of their
personal information from the website before July 15th, 2012. After that
date, all photos, notes, links, and videos will be permanently erased.
