Tag Archives: Technology

On Airbnb Rentals, California Cities Tax First and Regulate Later

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“Earlier this year, the beachside city of Santa Monica made headlines by enacting a ban on the short-term rental of a full unit.  Still, as Santa Monica begins its enforcement effort in earnest, it’s finding it needs to devote every penny of the hotel tax in that direction.  ‘The money that we are going to collect on the now-legal short-term vacation rentals is only enough to pay for the two code people and staff analyst to do effective enforcement against the illegal ones that were doing us so much damage,’ says Santa Monica Mayor Kevin McKeown. ‘So it’s probably going to be revenue-neutral for the city.'”

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/11/04/california-cities-tax-airbnb-regulation

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Tax Collectors Are Going After Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, Burning Man

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“In June, Chicago decided that its 9 percent ‘amusement tax’ should cover Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services, to help make up for sales tax revenue lost to falling DVD and CD sales.  In Rhode Island in July, a 13 percent ‘short-term room rental’ tax went into effect that covers Airbnb and other home-sharing sites.  Chicago’s busy mayor proposed $48 million come from higher fees on taxis and ride-sharing services.  Nevada expanded the “live entertainment” tax to cover two of its biggest attractions for the first time: the Burning Man festival, held every year in the Nevada desert, and the Electric Daisy Carnival, a Las Vegas dance festival.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-23/tax-collectors-are-going-after-netflix-airbnb-and-burning-man

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The Rise of Airbnb’s Full-Time Landlords

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“The rise of full-time hosts is spawning a crop of startups offering support services from housecleaning to key exchange. While the unlicensed lodgings are giving a lift to local restaurants, shops and bars, they’re drawing scrutiny from city governments and driving some neighbors crazy.  Companies include Beyond Pricing, which offers software so that owners can vary rates based on supply and demand; Guestprep.com, a turndown service for hosts that replaces towels and sheets and reports back on the state of the property; Airspruce, which links hosts with professional travel writers to pen listing descriptions; and Keycafe, which allows guests to pick up keys from neighborhood cafes.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/how-airbnb-makes-property-investors-rich-despite-the-neighbors

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Hedge Fund Borrows $10M in Stock Via the Bitcoin Blockchain

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“Through a new operation it calls TØ.com, online retailer Overstock.com and its freethinking CEO, Patrick Byrne, have built a system for issuing, buying, selling, and even borrowing stocks and bonds on the blockchain.  Previously, TØ.com, an Overstock subsidiary, had used the system to issue a private bond to Byrne himself. TØ has been facilitating stock loans for the past two weeks, with five different customers borrowing stock, including Clique Fund. Tuesday’s transaction is the largest to date.  Overstock and TØ are also aiming to remake the public stock market as a whole. Their system provides a way for companies to issue stock, and it’s seeking SEC approval to do so publicly.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/hedge-fund-borrows-10m-in-stock-via-the-bitcoin-blockchain/

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Why a pizza can’t fly

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“The story of a world-shaking innovative enterprise should start in a garage. The story of a flying pizza is no exception to this rule. One day in the spring of 2014, a police department in Syktyvkar, a city in Northwestern Russia, got a call from a concerned person who reported that a few suspicious young men occupied a garage in his neighborhood. They were making a lot of noise and were bothering all the respectable citizens living in the area.  When policemen arrived at the location, they did find a few people in the garage, although the crime scene looked somewhat unusual.”

http://dodopizzastory.com/2015/11/11/why-a-pizza-cant-fly/

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Google plans drone delivery service for 2017

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“Search giant Google has announced a date for the launch of its drone delivery service.  Called Project Wing, the initiative aims to be delivering goods to consumers using the robot aircraft sometime in 2017.  Online retailers such as Amazon, Alibaba and others are also experimenting with drone delivery.  No details have been given about what type of drones Google might use for the service nor what type of packages they will be delivering.  Details about Project Wing emerged in 2014. Initially it was run inside Google X – the firm’s secretive research lab. It is now believed to be under the control of Alphabet – the parent company that the former divisions of Google now operate under.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34704868

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A five-story vending machine for cars just opened in Nashville

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“The coin triggers a robotic arm, which goes up and grabs the car that the customer purchased online. When the car comes down, it’s transferred to another robot that drives the car down a hallway and parks it in a bay, where the customer receives their purchase. After that, Garcia says, customers can be walked through the features on their car, or even take it for a test drive. In fact, Garcia says the funds aren’t actually transferred until the customer takes the final receipt of the car and drives it off the lot. And even when that happens, Carvana offers a seven-day, ‘no questions asked’ return policy.”

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9718438/carvana-car-buying-vending-machine-life-sized

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Robo-bulldozers guided by drones are helping ease Japan’s labor shortage

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“Komatsu has begun creating a new service it calls Smart Construction. A team of robotic vehicles scoops rock and pushes dirt without a human behind the wheel. They are guided in their work by a fleet of drones, which map the area in three dimensions and update the data in real time to track how the massive volumes of soil and cement are moving around the site.  The drones are built by an American startup, Skycatch. Instead of selling construction equipment to its customers, Komatsu can lease them out for a job, and use a staff of remote operators and autonomous vehicles to complete the work.”

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/13/9521453/skycatch-komatsu-drones-construction-autonomous-vehicles

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This Futuristic Maglev Pod Transit System Will Soon Be a Reality

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“SkyTran is a system of small, automated maglev capsules that run on elevated rails, and a working demonstration system is scheduled for completion in Tel Aviv at the end of 2016.  SkyTran’s advances include very light two-person pods, which run suspended from a guideway not much bigger around than your leg. That rail is held up by supports about the size of telephone poles, with all the pieces built off-site for quick assembly.  That speed helps make construction remarkably cheap—less than $10 million per mile, around 1/10th of the steadily-climbing cost of urban light rail. Some of that savings is simply because skyTran doesn’t need nearly as much right-of-way.”

http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/skytran-maglev-pod-system-tel-aviv/

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The Gold Revolution

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“What about swarms of giant driverless mining trucks, hauling off 300 tons of ore across a busy working mine? Semi-robotic drilling rigs chewing away deep underground?  That’s not the future. It’s today in a handful of big working mines. And unlike Amazon’s PR-based stunts, these developments are starting to have a big (though unappreciated) impact on mining company bottom lines.  As Mining Weekly noted last week, 30% of South Africa’s platinum mining now comes from highly automated, mechanized operations.  In the iron-ore sector, Rio Tinto is now the world’s largest owner of ‘autonomous haulage system trucks,’ which it now uses at two of its mines in Australia.”

http://thesovereigninvestor.com/gold/the-gold-revolution/

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