Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: Alphabet, Inc., parent company to Google, has agreed to pay $185 million to settle UK taxes going back to 2005. The company has also agreed to adopt a new approach to taxes in the UK going forward. While this is a sizeable figure, many believe it is too little, and constitutes a sweetheart deal between the government and Google. Matt Brittin, the President of EMEA Business and Operations for Google, was a participant in a televised hearing today in which UK lawmakers questioned the $185 million settlement. He stated, "We find ourselves in the position where we are paying the tax that the tax authorities told us to pay."

An anonymous reader writes: A new paper from researchers in India and Australia, "Automatic Sarcasm Detection: A Survey," highlights one of the strangest and ironically most humorous facets of the problems in machine learning and humour. The paper outlines ten years of research efforts from groups interested in detecting sarcasm in online sources. It details the ways that academia has approached the sarcasm problem, including flagging authors and ring-fencing sarcastic data. However, the report concludes that the solution to the problem is not necessarily one of pattern recognition [PDF], but rather a more sophisticated matrix that has some ability to understand context.

An anonymous reader writes: Google has confirmed that it will be updating its 'right to be forgotten' so that any hidden content under the ruling is removed from all versions of its search engine in countries where it has been approved. Until now Google had only been removing results from the originating country and European versions of its search engine, such as google.co.uk and google.de. The EU had previously asked for an extension of the rule to include all versions of Google. Last year, French data protection authority CNIL threatened the tech giant with a sanction should it not remove data from all of its global platforms – such as google.com – in addition to its European sites. Now, Google's new extension of the 'right to be forgotten' is expected to come into force over the next few weeks.

An anonymous reader writes: As part of its wider Internet.org initiative to deliver connectivity to poor and rural communities, Facebook is actively developing a new network technology which uses millimetre wave bands to transmit data. Facebook engineer Sanjai Kohli filed two patents which outlined a 'next generation' data system, which would make use of millimetre wave technology deployed as mesh networks. Kohli's patents detailed a type of centralised, cloud-based routing system which 'dynamically adjusts route and frequency channel assignments, transmit power, modulation, coding, and symbol rate to maximize network capacity and probability of packet delivery, rather than trying to maximize the capacity of any one link.'

An anonymous reader writes: A new bill has been proposed in Congress today by Representatives Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) which looks to put a stop to any pending state-level legislation that could result in misguided encryption measures. The Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act of 2016 comes as a response to state-level encryption bills which have already been proposed in New York state and California. These near-identical proposals argued in favour of banning the sale of smartphones sold in the U.S. that feature strong encryption and cannot be accessed by the manufacturer. If these bills are passed, current smartphones, including iPhone and Android models, would need to be significantly redesigned for sale in these two states. Now Lieu and Farenthold are making moves to prevent the passing of the bills because of their potential impact on trade [PDF] and the competitiveness of American firms.

An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has announced a new trust and safety council to stamp out bullying and trolling on the microblogging site. The Twitter Trust & Safety Council will initially be formed of around 40 bodies, including the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, ICT Watch, NetSafe, and Samaritans. These organisations, along with safety experts, academics and security researchers, will work to ensure a safe and secure platform for users to express themselves freely and safely. The Council's main focus will be to protect minors, encourage 'greater compassion and empathy on the internet,' and promote efforts in media literacy and digital citizenship. Community groups will also participate to help prevent online 'abuse, harassment, and bullying,' as well as mental health problems and suicide.

An anonymous reader writes: India's leading telecom regulator, TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), has today voted against differential pricing, ruling with immediate effect that all data prices must be equal, and that companies cannot offer cheaper rates than others for certain content. The call is a significant blow to Facebook's Free Basics (previously Internet.org) initiative and Airtel Zero – projects which work to make internet access more accessible by providing a free range of "basic" services. The watchdog confirmed that providers would no longer be able to charge for data based on discriminatory tariffs but instead that pricing must be "content agnostic." It added that fines of Rs. 50,000 – 50 Lakh would be enforced should the regulations be violated.

An anonymous reader writes: A study at UC Irvine has taken a reverse approach to the customary interest in the relationship between technology and tiredness, finding that people who make themselves tired through excessive use of social media such as Facebook are considerably more likely to continue compulsive use of it and deepen their exhaustion. Lead researcher Gloria Mark says "If you're being distracted, what do you do? You go to Facebook. It's lightweight, it's easy, and you're tired."

An anonymous reader writes: archive.org has launched a Museum of Malware, which devotes itself to a historical look at DOS-based viruses of the 1980s and 1990s, and gives viewers the opportunity to run the viruses in a DOS game emulator, and to download 'neutered' versions of the code. With an estimated 50,000 DOS-based viruses in existence by the year 2000, the Malware Museum's 65 examples should be seen as representative of an annoying, but more innocent era of digital vandalism.

An anonymous reader writes: William Holt, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group, has said at a conference that chips will become slower after industry re-tools for new technologies such as spintronics and tunneling transistors. "The best pure technology improvements we can make will bring improvements in power consumption but will reduce speed." If true, it's not just the end of Moore's Law, but a rolling back of the progress it made over the last fifty years.

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: A group of researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments claim that they have developed a new radio frequency identification chip that may be impossible to hack. Traditional RFID chips are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, whereby a hacker can extract a cryptographic key from the chip. The new RFID chip runs a random-number generator that creates a new secret key after each transaction. The key can then be verified with a server to ensure that it is correct. The group at MIT also incorporated protection against a power-glitch attack, an attack that would normally leave a chip vulnerable to an interruption of the power source that would in turn halt the creation of a new secret key. Texas Instruments CTO Ahmad Bahai stated, "We believe this research is an important step toward the goal of a robust, lo-cost, low-power authentication protocol for the industrial internet." The question is, how long will it be before this "hack proof" chip is hacked?

An anonymous reader writes: Porsche has just completed an impressive 25-meter high photovoltaic pylon. The construction, lonely in its current position and strongly resembling the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, comprises 7,776 solar cells and is capable of generating up to 30,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. From 2017 it will power the elite car manufacturer's new Berlin-Adlershof Porsche center. Porsche is keen to show a progressive stance on its new range of electric vehicles, considering that it has no intention of joining the movement towards self-driving.

An anonymous reader writes: Cisco has announced its intention to spend $1.4 billion purchasing startup Jasper Technologies, Inc. which specialises in IoT connectivity. It's the most significant acquisition the tech multinational has made since its purchase of Wi-Fi manufacturer Meraki in 2012. In 2015 Cisco also acquired OpenDNS for $635 million, and with the Jasper acquisition seems committed to securing a major foothold in IoT infrastructure over the next five years.

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the University of Memphis have found that it's possible to use a low-cost EEG device such as the $300 Emotiv Epoc to understand how a user is feeling — opening up the path to genuine psycho-biological feedback in virtual/augmented reality scenarios. The Epoc has been used, in combination with the Razer Hydra, to give users control over VR/AR environments, but integrating emotional feedback into VR environments heralds many new possibilities in the fields of medical research, gaming — and, of course, marketing research.

An anonymous reader writes: According to various Chinese sources including Techweb (Chinese language), police in Zhejiang held a conference on Monday announcing that 20.59 million users of the 'Chinese eBay', taobao.com, had their login details stolen by proxy, when hackers ran user/pass combos from a stolen database of 99 million other users and found that more than 20% were using the same login credentials across different ecommerce sites.

An anonymous reader writes: A Google Security Research update has claimed that Comodo's internet browser Chromodo, based on the open-source project Chromium, contains significant security failings and puts its users at risk. This week's Google alert suggested that the Chromodo browser – available as a standalone download, as well as part of the company's Security package – is less secure than it promises. According to analysis, the browser is disabling the Same Origin policy, hijacking DNS settings, and replacing shortcuts with Chromodo links, among other security violations.

An anonymous reader writes: In June the European Commission will propose new legislation to effectively end the possibility of anonymous payment, by forcing users of virtual currencies like Bitcoin, and of prepaid credit cards, to provide identity details. Additionally the EC intends to propose monitoring inter-bank transfers within Europe, a measure which had not been implemented with the launch of the EU-US Terrorist Financing Tracking Programme (TFTP). Though the proposed measures are intended to heap new pressure on the financing of terrorism, a report from Interpol last week concluded that terrorist funding methods have not changed substantially in recent years, stating 'Despite third party reporting suggesting the use of anonymous currencies like Bitcoin by terrorists to finance their activities, this has not been confirmed by law enforcement.'

An anonymous reader writes: Low-cost airline easyJet is discussing plans to install hydrogen batteries as part of a proposed zero emission fuel system, which would power its aircraft during taxiing. The budget service revealed designs for a hybrid plane this week, and said that it would begin trialling the technology later this year. The system will involve embedding a hydrogen fuel cell on board the aeroplanes, with the energy captured from the brakes on landing able to power the jet on the ground. As the only waste product from a hydrogen cell would be fresh, clean water, Ian Davies, head of engineering at easyJet, also suggested that this could be used to refill the planes' water systems during the flight, providing a water source for passengers to drink and for flushing toilets.

An anonymous reader writes: British automaker Jaguar Land Rover has announced its £5.5 million investment in a 'living lab' for the testing and development of connected and self-driving car technologies. The UK Connected Intelligent Transport Environment (CITE) will span 41-miles of public roads around Coventry and Solihull, and will be used to test new connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) systems in real-life conditions. The company is planning to install roadside sensor equipment around the lab route to monitor vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. The fleet will include 100 CAV cars, which will test four different connectivity technologies; 4G long-term evolution (LTE) and its more advanced version LTE-V, dedicated short-range communication (DSRC), and local Wi-Fi hotspots.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple is currently working with partners in the US and Asia to develop wireless charging for iPhone and iPad. Mobile devices with wireless charging capabilities could be released as soon as next year. Apple has not released the specific details on the range that could be available, but as far back as 2010, Apple applied for a patent to use an iMac as a wireless charging hub for distances of 1 meter. In 2014 it applied for a patent on specialized housing for a mobile device with an integrated RF antenna, which would also allow for wireless charging by helping to eliminate the problem of metallic interference with charging signals. Apple would apparently be building on these ideas to create a new iPhone or iPad that could charge further away from the hub, while continuing to be used.

An anonymous reader writes: Printer and copier maker Xerox has announced its plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies, giving billionaire Carl Icahn three board seats in the settlement. CEO Ursula Burns has now claimed that the decision was not driven in any way by the activist investor. Burns confirmed that the company had begun looking into its structure and portfolio from October 2015, in order to better reflect changes in the market. She added that no conversations with Icahn took place prior to these reviews, or before it made the final call. Xerox will now be divided into a new business process outsourcing company, and a document technology firm. Burns explained that her role, in either company, has not yet been confirmed. However now that the split is being implemented, leadership discussions will be held shortly, she said.

An anonymous reader writes: In a filing submitted to the FCC, Google has stated that while concerns for health and environmental risks posed by Project Loon testing were 'genuinely held,' 'there is no factual basis for them.' Google's filing attempts to address a wide range of complaints, from environmental concerns related to increased exposure to RF and microwave radiation, to concerns for loss of control and crashes of the balloons themselves. First, it states that its proposed testing poses no health or environmental risks, and is all well within the standards of experimentation that the FCC regularly approves. It also pledges to avoid interference with any other users of the proposed bandwidth, by collocating transmitters on shared platforms and sharing information kept current daily by an FCC-approved third party database manager.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has announced that it would roll out a new live video tool called Live, available immediately for US iPhone users, and expanding to the rest of the world and Android users over the next few weeks. It is also expanding the 'Like' button to a range of emojis called 'Reactions'. The 'Live' video service has had a limited testing group since December, according to Product Manager Vadim Lavrusik. Starting today, Facebook users can access the service through the existing Update Status tool, and can control the audience for the video before uploading. Facebook also announced that it will roll out an expansion of the 'Like' button to a range of emojis called 'Reactions'.The 'Like' function will now include emojis for Love, Sad, Angry, Happy and Wow. The emoji for 'Yay' was discarded after testing.

An anonymous reader sends word about the latest telcos to join Facebook's Open Compute Project. The Stack reports: "A new wave of communications companies has joined Facebook's non-profit Open Compute Project (OCP), including AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom and South Korea's SK Telecom, as the movement seeks to share innovative hardware designs and drive down costs in the telecom arena. An OCP sub-section focused entirely on telecom requirements has been set up to look into servers and networking efficiency in the field. As one of the largest hardware buyers, telcos will provide a significant new market for the project, alongside its successful data center efforts.

An anonymous reader writes: Randall Rothenburg, the president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made a speech branding the creators of Adblock Plus (who were banned from the conference where he made this keynote) as "rich and self-righteous," and accused adblockers of subverting freedom of the press. Speaking at the IAB's annual conference, Rothenburg characterized the Adblock Plus team as "operating a business model predicated on censorship of content."

An anonymous reader writes: Uber has announced that it has been conducting trials in Houston, Texas, since late 2015 which use data from the gyrometer in drivers' smartphones, combined with accelerometer and GPS data, to perform forensic analysis on Uber journeys where the customer flagged up errant driving behavior such as speeding or tailgating. Uber's post also indicates that talking on a phone whilst driving may be included as a factor in safety-oriented trials. The auto-insurers' move from dedicated telematics technology to smartphone-based data provision was spearheaded by British insurer Aviva in 2012, with massive U.S. insurer Progressive now actively pursuing driver monitoring. However the premium reductions are diminishing as the practice heads from experimental, to default, to obligatory — or so many believe.

An anonymous reader writes: After first announcing the introduction of a video streaming service in May last year, Spotify is finally launching the feature this week. The Swedish company has taken its time tinkering with the new product and beta testing it on groups for months, readying it for its widespread rollout. Not all of the video content will be music-related – keeping the product's potential wide open to different verticals. Spotify has already confirmed partnerships with the BBC, Vice Media, Maker Studios, ESPN, and Comedy Central, among other popular brands. Initially, the video service will only be available in the mobile version of the Spotify app for consumers in the U.S., the UK, Germany and Sweden. It will roll out on Android first, before arriving on iOS a week later. It is also expected to be an ad-free feature at launch, but it is doubtful that it will remain like this for long.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has announced it is building a new data center in Clonee, Ireland, a small village close to Dublin. The facility, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims will be one of the "most advanced and energy efficient data centers in the world," will be the social network's second outside of the U.S., and its sixth globally. The new center will be located just a 30-minute drive from Facebook's international headquarters in the country's capital. It is expected to cost €200 million and employ around 2,000 people during the construction phase. The company hopes to open the facility in early 2018.

An anonymous reader writes: A court in Germany has ruled that the 'Share' links which Amazon provides to customers directly after making a purchase at the site are unlawful. The "Share" functionality provides buttons which allow the consumer to signal a new purchase via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email. The court, ratifying an earlier decision made at a lower court, declared that emails initiated via the Share function constitute "unsolicited advertising and unreasonable harassment."

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is moving its machine learning Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK) from its own hosting site, CodePlex, to GitHub. They're also putting it under the MIT open source license. The move marks an effort to make it easier for developers to collaborate on building their own deep learning applications using the CNTK. Under the CodePlex license, access was restricted to academics only, and it was wholly targeted to that audience. Now that it's opening the project to everyone, Microsoft hopes to attract a greater number of developers, and a wider variety as well. This follows similar releases from Google and Baidu.

An anonymous reader writes: Submarine cable operator Seacom has announced that civil construction activity was the cause of widespread outages which left large parts of Africa without internet connectivity yesterday. According to the firm, its Northern Trans-Egypt cable was damaged between Cairo and Alexandria, and the Southern Trans-Egypt route was also disrupted outside of Cairo. Adding to the interruption, Seacom's backup route, the West Africa Cable System (WACS), was also down at the same time, leaving most African countries without connectivity.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has announced plans to launch its first iOS app development center in Europe. The location will be in Naples, Italy, with the center aiming to teach youngsters how to code. The announcement was made 21 January and explained how the center would provide students (children and young adults) the practical skills and training required for developing iOS apps for "the world's most innovative and vibrant app ecosystem". The center will support teachers and provide a specialized curriculum that will prepare the youths to be a part of Apple's developer community.

An anonymous reader writes: R3CEV, a startup dedicated to bringing blockchain technology to traditional finance, yesterday ran a successful test of transactions between 11 of the world's largest financial institutions. This represents a big step forward in bringing blockchain, the foundation for Bitcoin, to traditional banking. The test, which connected the banks on a private 'distributed ledger' using Microsoft's cloud-based Azure service, allowed participants to execute sample financial transactions instantly, globally, and without a centralized third-party clearing house. Participants included Barclays, BMO Financial, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, and UniCredit among other leading financial groups.

An anonymous reader writes with news about a Homeland Security memo concerning potential technological attacks during the Super Bowl. The forthcoming Super Bowl event on 7th February could be at risk of a high-tech attack against fans both inside and outside the San Francisco 49ers Stadium. A security memo issued by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security has warned that the annual game could be a target not just at the stadium, but at other commemorative events taking place in San Francisco and in the Silicon Valley. One of the chief concerns is the various sabotages committed against fibre cables in the area. As the fibre optic cable networks function as back up communication systems in emergency situations, these are a possible target for the attackers. By destroying these cables, response times could be slowed down.

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has announced that it will release an educational version of the Minecraft video game after acquiring the minecraft.edu domain and IP. The classroom version of Minecraft will be offered to schools and educators at a discount, and among other innovations will include the facility to create maps which the students can navigate throughout a lesson while recording their in-game activities. Microsoft has emphasized that it does not intend to change Minecraft into a strictly educational program.

An anonymous reader writes: Airbus is teaming up with Uber to provide on-demand helicopter rides, due to debut at the Sundance Film Festival which opens in Utah this month. The flight service will employ H125 and H130 aircraft to transport passengers, while Uber vehicles will ferry them to and from the helipad sites. A Utah-based firm, called Air Resources, will be coordinating the service. This is not the first time Uber has experimented with helicopter partnerships, transporting people via chopper ride at the U.S. Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Cannes Film Festival, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, and from New York into the Hamptons in 2013.

An anonymous reader writes: Chinese web services company Baidu has released a new artificial intelligence software called WARP-CTC. The code is apparently capable of speech recognition, particularly for short segments, that exceeds human capability. The source code uses an approach called 'connectionist temporal classification' and has been released on GitHub.

An anonymous reader writes: If Netflix's promise to invigilate users' IP addresses and block VPNs is more than a placatory sop to the lawyers, and if the studios would rather return to fighting piracy by lobbying governments to play whack-a-mole with torrent sites, the streaming company's long-term efforts to abolish or reduce regional licensing blockades could falter this year. This article examines the possible hard choices Netflix must make in appeasing major studios without destroying the user-base that got their attention in the first place. I wonder how long VPN vendors will keep bragging that their services provide worldwide streaming availability, and whether some of them will actually do a decent job of it.

An anonymous reader writes: A casual survey of candidates' reactions to the interview processes of the biggest tech companies in the world shows Google as having one of the most grueling hiring gauntlets in the sector — but Twitter's is perceived as the worst. The survey measured the amount of time candidature took, as well as the number of stages and the methods involved at each stage, and additionally estimated whether the job-seekers felt positive or negative about the procedure.

An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo Labs has released a record-breaking dataset containing 110 billion interactions from 20 million Yahoo News users in 1.5TB of zipped data. The anonymized data is intended for research initiatives in artificial intelligence, including user-behavior modeling, collaborative filtering techniques and unsupervised learning methods.

An anonymous reader writes: Google-owned smart homeware company Nest has asked users to reset their connected thermostats after a software bug forced controllers offline and left owners unable to heat their homes. The company has confirmed that a software update error had caused the thermostat's batteries to drain, therefore making it unable to control the temperature. Users of the smart home device took to social media to express their anger at being left with cold houses. Some feared that the fault had put water pipes under pressure, risking burst plumbing.

An anonymous reader writes: Universal Music Group has agreed to license its music to online audio platform SoundCloud – a major step for the popular startup, which has struggled to receive legitimate recognition in the industry. SoundCloud will enjoy access to Universal material, including work from top global artists signed to the label such as Adele, Taylor Swift and Kanye West. Conversely Universal will be able to access SoundCloud's advertising, analytics and data tools with the aim of increasing revenue streams and bolstering fan/artist engagement.

An anonymous reader writes: Netflix's chief product officer Neil Hunt has admitted that the company has 'no magic solution' to subscribers who use VPNs to access content not licensed for their geographical region, commenting that 'It's likely to always be a cat-and-mouse game'. Hunt notes that Netflix can only rely on lists of VPN IP addresses, and that these can easily be changed. However since Netflix subscribers pay for the service via geographically linked credit and debit cards, this article wonders if Netflix really believes that hundreds of thousands of their subscribers are permanently in migration or on holiday — and also that venerable old VPN IP addresses — ones so well-known that they are routinely challenged by services such as CloudFlare — never seem to have any trouble connecting to a Netflix account.

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has now joined the CIA's John Brennan in having his personal online accounts hacked. A teenage hacker known as 'Cracka' has claimed responsibility for the hack, reporting that he had infiltrated Clapper's home telephone, online accounts and his personal email, as well as his wife's Yahoo account. Cracka had managed to change the settings on Clapper's Verizon Fios account so that any calls to his home number were redirected to the Free Palestine Movement group in California.

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have designed a lithium-ion battery that self-regulates according to temperature, to prevent itself from overheating. Reaching extreme temperatures, the battery is able to shut itself down, only restarting once it has cooled. The researchers designed the battery to shut down and restart itself over a repeated heating and cooling cycle, without compromising performance. A polyethylene film is applied to one of the electrodes, which expands and shrinks depending on temperature, to create a conductive/non-conductive material.

An anonymous reader writes: Transit tech firm TransLoc has agreed to partner with global ride-sharing giant Uber, to help public transport users plan their routes and schedule rides to reach their final destination. The set up will help users plan trips via different modes of transport and offer an end-to-end route planning service, according to the companies. The partnership will see the integration of Uber's ride-sharing API and the TransLoc 'Rider' app, which provides real-time public transit tracking, arrival predictions and proximity alerts. Users will be able to simply input their destination in the Rider app and receive a tailored journey, incorporating the 'optimal combination' of walking, public transit options and Uber.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple's first disclosed acquisition of 2016 is software company Emotient, which specializes in reading users' expressions while they operate computers. Emotient uses AI software to break down micro-emotions shown on each face in a video frame and quantify it into three indicators: is the subject paying attention to the advertising, are they emotionally engaged, and are they showing a positive or negative emotion? The faces are pixelated to provide user anonymity without sacrificing the expression.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has started giving third-party developers unannounced access to a new development tools kit which allows them to build their own Messenger bots. The Chat Software Development Kit (SDK) enables developers to create interactive experiences and virtual chat bots which can automatically respond to users, delivering information, location services, returning images and even managing payments. Facebook has not yet publicised any details of the documentation for the SDK, instead sharing it secretly with select developers via PDF.

An anonymous reader writes: Smart payments startup Coin has announced it will team up with MasterCard to use its electronic card technology to help companies integrate payment services into their wearable devices. Under the new MasterCard partnership, owners of wearables with integrated Coin technology will be able to pay at retail outlets without the need to take out any cash or card . The deal is not exclusive, which means that there is still potential for Visa and American Express customers to benefit when the Coin-embedded tech begins to ship later this year.

An anonymous reader writes: Cloud-based file hosting giant Dropbox has patented a new synchronization technology which could allow users to use a peer-to-peer network to securely share and collaborate on documents without the need to store them in the company's centralized servers. The patent application details how the system could allow back up to a range of media to multiple devices simultaneously, cutting the need for users to constantly upload and download from remote hardware. Dropbox argues that the development of peer-to-peer distributed sharing could boost content download speeds, eliminating bottlenecks, therefore increasing the speed at which content can be shared among individuals.