firehose

Apple has acquired Locationary, a crowdsourced location data company that helps businesses keep their information up to date. The company confirmed the acquisition to All Things D, noting that it "buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Apple came under fire from customers when it launched Maps in iOS 6, thanks to its buggy and incomplete nature. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook published an open letter in which he admitted that the new app "fell short" of the company's high standards and promised that the company was "doing everything" to improve it. Locationary has built a business on collecting, verifying, and updating information on businesses around the world. While Apple's plans are not clear, its new acquisition could help deliver up-to-date information not only in Maps, but in other services on its iOS and Mac OS platforms.

Moscow plays host today to the G20 Finance Ministers' meeting, the crowning jewel of which is the freshly unveiled Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. Released under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this document sets out 15 specific recommendations for national governments to implement in order to stem the widespread abuse of tax loopholes by multinational companies.

At the center of the issue has been the asymmetry between tightly integrated global corporations and the fragmented, piecemeal responses from individual states. One of the best known and most derided examples of this is the practice of setting up shell companies in low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland, which are then used to account for profits from higher-tax nations — something that Google, Facebook, and Starbucks have all been accused of. The new Action Plan tackles this issue head-on, by urging that tax should be paid in the territory where goods or services are sold, not where the company is based. That would thwart Amazon's practice of booking its Europe-wide profits in Luxembourg, forcing it to compete on the same terms as local retailers.

"The rules are now being abused to permit double non-taxation."

While the Action Plan is not legally binding in itself, it does represent the most coordinated international response to aggressive tax avoidance so far. Reaching a consensus on its prescriptions allows the finance ministers who've backed the agreement to go back to their countries and petition their governments to enact the changes. Putting the strong words into real action will be no easy task, but the goal is to enact the Action Plan globally over the next two years. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría summarizes the need for change in stark terms:

"International tax rules, many of them dating from the 1920s, ensure that businesses don’t pay taxes in two countries – double taxation. This is laudable, but unfortunately these rules are now being abused to permit double non-taxation. The Action Plan aims to remedy this, so multinationals also pay their fair share of taxes."

The full set of OECD recommendations includes demands for greater transparency, less complexity, and the elimination of artificial corporate structures that exist purely to avoid incurring tax. Should the US government and its fellow members succeed in passing through the reforms, the G20 hopes that companies like Apple will feel compelled to repatriate their vast reserves of overseas cash — or, at the very least, not add to them.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that documents relating to the Secret Service's investigation into hacker and activist Aaron Swartz would be released under a freedom of information act (FOIA) request from Wired reporter Kevin Poulson — but now Poulson has indicated that their release has been delayed thanks to a motion filed by MIT. According to Poulson's report in Wired and corroborated by court documents, MIT today filed a motion to intervene to review the documents prior to their release to Poulson, with a request for an expedited hearing to take place on or before July 25th.

The court documents also indicate that MIT wants to delay the release of the Secret Services files by five business days so it can review them for any information describing MIT's employees or networks. Apparently, MIT wants to redact any information that might out MIT employees who assisted with the Aaron Swartz prosecution to protect the privacy of its employees and the security of its network — it sounds like the university is concerned with possible retribution from those who strongly disagreed with the government's prosecution of Swartz.

Poulson notes in Wired that he's never heard of a "non-governmental party" arguing to interfere with a FOIA request, and his lawyer apparently hasn't seen this happen before either. It's an unprecedented move, and Poulson confirmed that he'll be in court soon to fight MIT's request and "any further delay in filling this seven-month-old FOIA request."

The 2013 MacBook Air is getting a patch for Wi-Fi connectivity, among other issues.

Andrew Cunningham

Apple has just released a small software update to fix some of the 2013 MacBook Air's teething issues. The MacBook Air (Mid 2013) Software Update 1.0 is intended to fix three minor problems with the new laptop, the most significant of which is an intermittent Wi-Fi connectivity issue that can cause the Air to disconnect randomly from wireless networks. A bug that caused graphics flickering while using Adobe Photoshop has also been patched, as has a bug that caused the computer's "audio volume to fluctuate during video playback."

One notable issue not addressed by the update is a problem with file transfer speeds over 802.11ac networks. As we (and others) reported, the new MacBook Airs aren't as fast as they should be when transferring files over 802.11ac using the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols under OS X. Using a network bandwidth testing tool like iPerf, a different file sharing protocol like FTP, or transferring files in Windows rather than OS X yields transfer speeds that are about as fast as expected, which leads us to believe that the issue is fixable in software. However, according to our testing, today's update doesn't resolve the problem just yet.

Apple is currently testing a larger 10.8.5 update to OS X, as well as the next major release of the operating system (10.9, also known as Mavericks). Hopefully we'll see the 802.11ac speed issue addressed in one or both updates.

Dark Horse Comics will publish a comic series based on the storyline introduced in Halo 4, Wired reports.

Halo 4 director Frank O'Connor confirmed separately with Polygon that such a comic is in the works, saying: "Yes, I can confirm that we are working on a Halo comic book series with Dark Horse, and we'll have more details at the panel tomorrow." The panel he refers to is titled The Art of Video Games and will be held at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday.

Wired reports that the comic series is titled Halo: Escalation and is due to release Dec. 11 this year. Halo 4's leader writer, Chris Schlerf, is said to be penning the series, while art for the first three issues will be created by Omar Francia, who is best known for his work on the comic adaptations of Mass Effect and Star Wars. Dragon Age comic artist Anthony Palumbo will be illustrating the covers.

Dark Horse Comics announced earlier this year that it would launch a Halo comic this August titled Halo: Intitiation. The miniseries will focus on Sarah Palmer, a super-soldier defending humanity as part of the Spartan-IV program. The first issue is due to release Aug. 14.

Apple is pushing out a software update for its mid–2013 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs aimed at fixing some Photoshop weirdness, improving audio playback, and making Wi-Fi connectivity more reliable. Last month, 9to5Mac reported that Apple was looking into reports of poor wireless performance on the new computers, even handing some people replacement computers in the interim. The 3.35MB update is available now, here’s what Apple has to say about it:

"This update fixes an issue that in rare instances may cause an intermittent loss in wireless connectivity, an issue with Adobe Photoshop which may cause occasional screen flickering, and an issue which may cause audio volume to fluctuate during video playback."