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Oh, those crazy Frenchies: Facebook faces family photo tax in France
High performance access to file storage Facebook should pay the French government for hosting the holiday photos and status updates of the French people, a new report commissioned by the French government has suggested. The new 200-page report* on taxing the digital economy - commissioned by four French Cabinet Ministers - proposes that France should tax data collection. The touted idea would see new tax bills from the French government landing on Google, Facebook, Amazon and any other web companies that store data about their French users. The report was commissioned in July by Fleur Pellerin, France's Minister for Small and Medium Enterprise, Innovation and the Digital Economy, backed by three colleagues amid government frustration about the low tax American web giants were paying in France. Web companies pay under 1 per cent of what a standard French company would pay in tax, according to figures from Le Monde. French wonks: Let's tax data like we tax pollution
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Harper Reed, Obama’s Data Guru, Gets Voters to Engage—and Provide Their Info Along the Way | 80beats
What do custom-designed T-shirts and presidential campaigns have in common? Harper Reed, chief technology officer for the Obama campaign, rose to prominence because he knew the answer: They both can benefit from websites that engage users and encourage community participation—and, in the process, gather valuable data. In a profile at Mother Jones, Tim Murphy describes how such potentially powerful and jealously guarded tech strategies—Obama’s go by codenames like “Narwhal” and “Dreamcatcher”—work. Reed got his start at Threadless, a website that sells quirky T-shirts to hipsters. Threadless wasn’t the first company to market arty apparel to the Wicker Park set, but its genius lay in its model. Now chief technology officer of the Obama campaign, Reed has now created a grassroots organizing website called Dashboard. [Y]ou’re given a never-ending variety of tasks designed to both engage you and learn more about you. The campaign uses the data to tailor not T-shirts but its message.
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Data Centers Support the Cloud—But Waste 90 Percent of Their Energy in the Process | 80beats
Once I’ve typed in a message, shared a video, or uploaded a photo to a social media website like Facebook or Twitter, I tend to forget about it. I assume that if I check back days or even weeks later, the status update or tweet will still be there, safely stored…somewhere. That “somewhere” is in one of tens of thousands of data centers, each filled with many, many servers that physically preserve the vast quantity of information flowing over the internet every day. The New York Times has kicked off a series of articles about the physical constructions on which “the cloud” is built with a piece by James Glanz. Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, according to estimates industry experts compiled for The Times. But while this comprehensive coverage breaks through the secrecy around data centers to reveal their flaws, the industry is already trying to make these centers more efficient.
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Stop Hyping Big Data and Start Paying Attention to 'Long Data' | Wired Opinion
Our species can’t seem to escape big data. We have more data inputs, storage, and computing resources than ever, so Homo sapiens naturally does what it has always done when given new tools: It goes even bigger, higher, and bolder. We did it in buildings and now we’re doing it in data. But no matter how big that data is or what insights we glean from it, it is still just a snapshot: a moment in time. Samuel Arbesman is an applied mathematician and network scientist. By “long” data, I mean datasets that have massive historical sweep — taking you from the dawn of civilization to the present day. Because as beautiful as a snapshot is, how much richer is a moving picture, one that allows us to see how processes and interactions unfold over time? We’re a species that evolves over ages — not just short hype cycles — so we can’t ignore datasets of long timescale. Why does the time dimension matter if we’re only interested in current or future phenomena? We also need to build better tools.
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Revolutionary "Superman" Memory Crystals Can Store Data Virtually Forever
Quartz Crystal photo from Shutterstock While most of us are just getting used to the idea of 3D printing, scientists are already working on technological marvels that operate two dimensions deeper. Researchers at the University of Southampton have succeeded in recording and retrieving five dimensional digital data using a quartz crystal. We’ve all seen those sci-fi movies where a gorgeous alien shoves a pointy crystal into some mega computer and the world is saved. So how does it work? “The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarization of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polarizer, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses,” states the release. So leave a note for your great-great-grandkids to throw on some 5D glasses, and upload that file containing your life story to their cyborg brain by scanning it with their polarizing eyeballs – easy-peasy. Via Eureakalert and DVice
US Census Bureau releases public API for mobile and web developers
The US Census Bureau has released its very first public API, allowing developers to create web and mobile apps based on the government's collection of demographic and economic statistics. The Bureau launched the API Thursday, alongside a new "app gallery" website where users can view and download apps that have already been built. With the API, developers will have access to two sets of statistical databases: the 2010 Census, and the 2006-2010 American Community Survey. The former includes the latest data on population, age, sex, race, and home ownership, while the latter offers more socio-economic statistics, covering fields like education, income, and employment. The Census Bureau is encouraging developers to create apps that are customized to consumer needs, and to share their ideas on its Developers Forum page. Thus far, there are already two apps available on the Bureau's site.
