Detente is ending in the global fight over tech taxes. Earlier this year, France agreed to suspend collection of a tax on digital revenue from large technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet's Google. Meanwhile, the U.S. delayed the application of tariffs it was putting on French goods in retaliation for the tax. But now France has resumed collecting what is known as its digital-services tax, a French official said. Other countries, including Italy and the U.K., whose similar taxes went into effect this year, are also set to begin collection in coming months. From a report: The U.S., meanwhile, is set on Jan. 6 to impose tariffs on $1.3 billion of French imports, including cosmetics and handbags. Washington also has pending investigations that could lead to similar tariffs on 10 other countries, including the U.K., Italy, India and Spain. At issue in the dispute is how to tax an increasingly digital economy. For decades, tax treaties have generally allocated corporate profit based on where value is created. But modern multinationals -- particularly ones with digital offerings -- can sell their products across borders in ways that leave little taxable profit in a country where those products are consumed. France and some other big European countries say tech companies should pay more taxes in the countries where their users and clients are located, something that could boost their tax revenues. But in long-running multilateral talks on how to update the tax system, the U.S. has opposed any solution that is too targeted at tech companies -- slowing progress. "These taxes are a reaction to dissatisfaction with how long it has taken to get a global multilateral solution," said Manal Corwin, who served as deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Obama administration, and now works at accounting firm KPMG. "You may need some trade battles back and forth before there's a strong incentive to say, 'OK, enough.'"

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On Tuesday night, McConnell introduced a new bill tying increased stimulus payments to a full repeal of Section 230. From a report: The bill comes amid new momentum for direct $2000 stimulus payments, and increasing pressure on party leaders to appease President Trump's escalating demands. Democratic party leaders criticized the inclusion of Section 230 repeal as an effort to scuttle stimulus talks. "Senator McConnell knows how to make $2,000 survival checks reality and he knows how to kill them," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement Tuesday. "Will Senate Republicans go along with Sen. McConnell's cynical gambit or will they push him to give a vote on the standalone [bill]?" McConnell's bid for a full repeal of Section 230 comes amid increasingly chaotic negotiating over the level of direct payments to be included as part of stimulus efforts. On Sunday, President Trump signed into law Congress' $900 billion COVID-19 relief and government spending package that would provide $600 in stimulus payments to most Americans. In a public statement after signing the bill, Trump urged congressional leaders to hold a standalone vote on increasing direct payments to $2,000.

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VMware said that one of its former top executives, Rajiv Ramaswami, violated his contractual obligations while being courted to be the chief executive officer of rival Nutanix, adding another dimension to a bitter rivalry between the two software makers. From a report: VMware's lawsuit against Ramaswami, who was named CEO on Dec. 9, was filed Monday in California state court in San Jose. The company accused its former chief operating officer of products and cloud services of meeting with Nutanix executives and board members while helping VMware craft a strategy and acquisitions road map. VMware, majority owned by Dell Technologies, said the executive's actions and knowledge of its plans has caused "irreparable injury." Nutanix, which wasn't named as a defendant in the suit, called the case "misguided" and said it's an attempt by VMware to hurt a competitor. "We cannot unring the bell of that conflict that existed during that two-month period that he was engaged with Nutanix while involved in planning for us," Brooks Beard, a VMware vice president and deputy general counsel, said in an interview. "Through this lawsuit, we're hoping that we can find a way to protect VMware's rights and interests, steps that we would have taken, could have taken, had he alerted us of this conflict." The Palo, Alto-based software maker may seek to recoup its compensation to Ramaswami during the time period and wants to "meaningfully engage" with the executive and his new employer to ensure they won't use confidential VMware information to make competitive decisions, Beard added.

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Like everybody else, book publishers will be happy to see the end of 2020. But for many of them, the year has brought some positive news, which has been as welcome as it was surprising: Business has been good. From a report: With so many people stuck at home and activities from concerts to movies off limits, people have been reading a lot -- or at least buying a lot of books. Print sales by units are up almost 8 percent so far this year, according to NPD BookScan. E-books and audiobooks, which make up a smaller portion of the market, are up as well. "I expect that at the end of the year, when you look at the final numbers," Madeline McIntosh, chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., said of the industry, "it will have been the best year in a very long time." When the United States slammed shut in March, book sales dropped sharply, but the dip didn't last. While some parts of the industry have continued to struggle, like bookstores and educational publishers, publishing executives say that demand came rushing back around June. Many of these sales went to Amazon, but big-box stores, especially Target, also did well. As essential businesses that sold things like groceries, they were allowed to stay open through the lockdowns. Dennis Abboud, chief executive of ReaderLink, a book distributor to major chains like Walmart, Target and Costco, said his company's online sales nearly quadrupled over last year. "It was really a tale of two cities," Mr. Abboud said. "The beginning of the year was mega soft, and the end of the year was mega strong." Even though the number of people commuting has plummeted this year, audiobook revenue is up more than 17 percent over the same period in 2019, according to the Association of American Publishers, and e-book sales, which had been declining for the past several years, are up more than 16 percent.

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krakman writes: Corellium, a security research firm sued by Apple, has won a major legal victory against the iPhone maker. In a ruling that has wide-reaching implications for iPhone security research and copyright law, a federal judge in Florida threw out Apple's claims that Corellium had violated copyright law with its software, which helps security researchers find bugs and security holes on Apple's products. Corellium, co-founded in 2017 by husband and wife Amanda Gorton and Chris Wade, was a breakthrough in security research because it gave its customers the ability to run "virtual" iPhones on desktop computers. Corellium's software makes it unnecessary to use physical iPhones that contain specialized software to poke and prod iOS, Apple's mobile operating system. The judge in the case ruled that Corellium's creation of virtual iPhones was not a copyright violation, in part because it was designed to help improve the security for all iPhone users. Corellium wasn't creating a competing product for consumers. Rather, it was a research tool for a comparatively small number of customers.

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Another service is joining the Google graveyard, for better or worse. As the latest in a long series of Google service shutdowns, Cloud Print will be terminated in just a few short hours, meaning it will no longer be accessible for ChromeOS customers or others. From a report: Most internet users have probably never used Cloud Print a single time -- it was primarily designed for ChromeOS customers who had limited or no access to traditional printers years ago. However, now that ChromeOS boasts much broader support for printing devices, Cloud Print has effectively become obsolete. It still has a few unique advantages, such as the ability to share your printers with friends, but for the most part, there's no reason for Google to keep it around.

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Activist hedge fund Third Point LLC is pushing Intel Corp to explore strategic alternatives, including whether it should keep chip design and production under one roof, according to a letter it sent to the company's chairman on Tuesday that was reviewed by Reuters. From the report: Were it to gain traction, Third Point's push for changes could lead to a major shakeup at Intel, which has been slow to respond to investor calls to outsource more of its manufacturing capacity. It could also lead to the unwinding of some of its acquisitions, such as the $16.7 billion purchase of programmable chip maker Altera in 2015. Third Point Chief Executive Daniel Loeb wrote to Intel Chairman Omar Ishrak calling for immediate action to boost the company's position as a major provider of processor chips for PCs and data centers. The New York-based fund has amassed a nearly $1 billion stake in Intel, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices -- a move that could help the company retain users in search of social video entertainment from fully leaving Google's platform. From a report: The feature itself expands on a test launched earlier this year, where Google had first introduced a carousel of "Short Videos" within Google Discover -- the personalized feed found in the Google mobile app and to the left of the home screen on some Android devices. To be clear, this "Short Videos" carousel is different from Google's Stories, which rolled out in October 2020 to the Google Search app for iOS and Android. Those "Stories" -- previously known as "AMP Stories" -- consist of short-form video content created by Google's online publishing partners like Forbes, USA Today, Vice, Now This, Bustle, Thrillist and others. Meanwhile, the "Short Videos" carousel had been focused on aggregating social video from other platforms, including Google's own short-form video project Tangi, Indian TikTok competitor Trell, as well as Google's own video platform, YouTube -- which has also been experimenting with short-form content as of late.

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Apple is researching keyboards with small displays on the keys to dynamically change the label on each key, according to a newly-granted patent filing. From a report: The filing is titled "Electronic devices having keys with coherent fiber bundles" and was granted to Apple by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the final patent day of this year. The patent explains how each key on a keyboard could have "an associated key display" connected to "control circuitry in the keyboard" via a "coherent fiber bundle." Apple proposes that each key would be "formed from a fiber optic plate" with "opposing first and second surfaces." While the patent stipulates that each key would need to contain a small display to provide the label, of which any compatible pixel array would work, the foremost technology put forwards by Apple is OLED. The key may be made from materials such as glass, ceramic, metal, or polymer, or even crystalline materials such as sapphire.

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One of the oldest and most well-known iPhone suppliers has been accused of using forced Muslim labor in its factories, according to documents uncovered by a human rights group, adding new scrutiny to Apple's human rights record in China. From a report: The documents, discovered by the Tech Transparency Project and shared exclusively with The Washington Post, detail how thousands of Uighur workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang were sent to work for Lens Technology. Lens also supplies Amazon and Tesla, according to its annual report. Lens Technology is one of at least five companies connected to Apple's supply chain that have now been linked to alleged forced labor from the Xinjiang region, according to human rights groups. Lens Technology stands out from other Apple component suppliers because of its high-profile founder and long, well-documented history going back to the early days of the iPhone.

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In recent years, investigators have realized that automobiles -- particularly newer models -- can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. From a report: They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and closed, whether texts and calls were made while the cellphone was plugged into the infotainment system, as well as voice commands and web histories. But that boon for forensic investigators creates fear for privacy activists, who warn that the lack of information security baked into vehicles' computers poses a risk to consumers and who call for safeguards to be put in place. "I hear a lot of analogies of cars being smartphones on wheels. But that's vastly reductive," said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars, which makes a free app that helps people delete their data from automobiles and makes its money by offering the service to rental companies and dealerships. "If you think about the amount of sensors in a car, the smartphone is a toy. A car has GPS, an accelerometer, a camera. A car will know how much you weigh. Most people don't realize this is happening." Law enforcement agencies have been focusing their investigative efforts on two main information sources: the telematics system -- which is like the "black box" -- and the infotainment system. The telematics system stores a vehicle's turn-by-turn navigation, speed, acceleration and deceleration information, as well as more granular clues, such as when and where the lights were switched on, the doors were opened, seat belts were put on and airbags were deployed. The infotainment system records recent destinations, call logs, contact lists, text messages, emails, pictures, videos, web histories, voice commands and social media feeds. It can also keep track of the phones that have been connected to the vehicle via USB cable or Bluetooth, as well as all the apps installed on the device. Together, the data allows investigators to reconstruct a vehicle's journey and paint a picture of driver and passenger behavior. In a criminal case, the sequence of doors opening and seat belts being inserted could help show that a suspect had an accomplice.

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References to decades-old computer software are included in the new Brexit agreement, including a description of Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Mail as being "modern" services. From a report: Experts believe officials must have copied and pasted chunks of text from old legislation into the document. The references are on page 921 of the trade deal, in a section on encryption technology. It also recommends using systems that are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The text cites "modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x." The latter two are now defunct - the last major release of Netscape Communicator was in 1997. The document also recommends using 1024-bit RSA encryption and the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which are both outdated and vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In November 2019, just a few days after Disney+ launched, Netflix (NFLX) content chief (now co-CEO) Ted Sarandos, speaking at a Paley Center for Media event, said that Disney (DIS) is "bound by" its content universes, a reference mostly to Marvel and Star Wars. He continued: "I do think the risk of being bound in a few universes is that there sometimes may be a melting ice cube of interest over time." That has been the most common knock on Disney for a few years now: that if Disney keeps hitting the Marvel and Star Wars pinatas, fans will get tired of it. But the numbers have proven the theory wrong -- so far. Moviegoers vote with their wallets, and have voted in favor of more Marvel Cinematic Universe installments, more Star Wars stories. Six of the top 10 biggest U.S. box office openings of all time were Marvel movies, four of them "Avengers" movies. "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) is the No. 1 box office release of all time. As for Star Wars, the final three films in the "Skywalker" saga, "The Force Awakens" (2015), "The Last Jedi" (2017), and "The Rise of Skywalker" (2019), each topped $1 billion at the global box office, despite fan criticism of the plot of the final film. Spinoff movie "Rogue One" (2017) also hit the $1 billion mark. But those were all movies, with much-hyped theatrical releases. On Disney+ over the next two years, Disney will truly test the limits of the fatigue theory with Marvel and Star Wars original shows, and might discover that even the most hardcore fans have a threshold. The sheer mountain of original content Disney unveiled at its 2020 Investor Day this month was almost comical: 52 new shows or movies coming in the next three years across Disney Studios, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, National Geographic, ESPN, and FX. In the first year of Disney+, only a single live-action original series, "The Mandalorian," was enough to propel the platform to 86.8 million subscribers. In 2021, Disney will hit the gas, with six Marvel shows hitting Disney+: "WandaVision" in January; "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" in March; "Loki" in May; animated series "What If...?" in summer; and a "Ms. Marvel" series and "She-Hulk" series (no specific date given, but Disney said 2021). Can even diehard Marvel fans find the time to watch all of those? And those are just the television shows. In theaters over the next two years, Disney will release "Black Widow," "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," "Eternals," "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," "Thor: Love and Thunder," "Black Panther 2," and "Captain Marvel 2." The Star Wars faucet won't start blasting until 2022 and 2023, when Disney+ will get the Star Wars spinoff shows "Andor," "Ahsoka," "Obi-Wan Kenobi," "Star Wars: Visions," "The Bad Batch," "Rangers of the New Republic," and "Lando." When critics talk about Disney's franchise fatigue risk, they're mostly talking about Marvel and Star Wars, but if you look elsewhere in the Disney+ lineup there are additional examples of the argument. Disney's live-action releases coming over the next two years include a "Cheaper by the Dozen" remake movie, another "Lion King" live action movie, and live-action remakes of "The Little Mermaid," "Pinocchio," and "Peter Pan," plus a sequel to "Enchanted," a Cruella De Vil live-action origin movie, and "Sister Act 3." Disney is also planning a "Night at the Museum" animated series, a "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" animated series, and a "Chip N' Dale" animated movie. The criticism that almost everything Disney is doing is a prequel, sequel, remake, or spin-off is not unwarranted.

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