Because the money is nominally held by the offshore companies, the tax code deems the money nontaxable, even if the funds are physically held in the United States. The savings to American companies is huge: the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that if foreign profits of United States corporations were fully taxed it would generate an additional $42 billion this year for the government — about half the amount of the automatic spending cuts enacted as part of the so-called sequester.

The companies say that they need to shield their money overseas, however, because the official corporate rate of 35 percent is the highest in the world and puts them at a competitive disadvantage. And while the offshore money may be in American banks and controlled from home, executives say it would be irresponsible to return the money to their shareholders or invest it in the United States because of the high tax rate.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the American corporate tax rate is just way too high, and that Apple might consider bringing $102 billion in offshore profits home if companies received a “repatriation holiday” so that their money could be taxed at under 10 percent. But as the Times reports:

A similar policy was enacted in 2004, which prompted American companies to return more than $300 billion in foreign earnings at the reduced rate of 5.25 percent. But it led to no discernible increase in American investment or hiring. On the contrary, some of the companies that brought back the most money laid off thousands of workers, and a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research later concluded that 92 cents on every dollar was used for dividends, stock buybacks or executive bonuses.

The cynic in me is inclined to believe that if companies figure out legal loopholes in our tax code that will allow them to not pay taxes, they’ll continue to use them.

Photo: NASA

Yesterday Tim Carmody looked into the question, “Can anyone turn streaming music into a real business?”

Pakman argues that online music distribution will be controlled by a small number of corporate powerhouses that will use songs as a loss leader, the way that Wal-Mart stores once did for CDs. He says companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon sell music primarily as a means to attract consumers to their mobile products, online stores, and hardware.

“They don’t care if they make money,” Pakman said, “because they make a bunch of money elsewhere on music.”

The evidence so far doesn’t look too promising. Spotify and Pandora have proven to be popular among users, but haven’t found a way to make money because roughly two-thirds of their revenue goes to licensing fees. And as we can see from the above excerpt, the music industry has no incentive to lower these fees when it has other big companies around (Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft) who are still willing to sell music as a loss leader to attract customers to their other products.

Streaming works in other industries, like Netflix, despite the similar barriers to success (movies and TV shows are still pirated online, negotiations with studios over licensing content can get expensive). Yet, Netflix has 27.1 million paying subscribers in the U.S. and millions more worldwide (Spotify currently has about five million subscribers paying either $4.99 and $9.99 a month). But they’re, obviously, both very different, which is why I currently pay for Netflix but not Spotify.

• There is no free version of Netflix, just trial subscriptions. Since there is a free version of Spotify (with commercials), and I’m a casual user, there’s no incentive for me to pay.

• I don’t buy movies or boxed sets of TV shows anymore, but I still buy music.

• Netflix streaming and Spotify have a similar disadvantage, which is that not everything is available to stream. In the past, popular artists like Coldplay, Adele, and Taylor Swift have refused to license their music to Spotify, and if someone wanted to hear a new Taylor Swift track they could easily listen to it elsewhere for free (VEVO, YouTube).

• Netflix has experimented (successfully) with producing its own shows, which has proven to be an effective way to draw in more subscribers.

But Spotify is still relatively young and has plenty of time and money (it raised $100 million in funding last year) to figure out how to convince us to open our wallets.

I almost didn’t read this latest article about Foxconn because it doesn’t make me feel “good” to read about Foxconn, but I read it anyway because sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. So: The point of this article by the excellent Josh Eidelson is that Foxconn really isn’t going to allow its employees to unionize (it said it would allow its employees to unionize). But another point is this: “[Apple] didn’t create the labor rights status quo in China,’ said Nova, ‘but they certainly have exploited it … Every time that Apple buys an iPhone from Foxconn … they’re getting a bonus. It’s the labor rights abuse bonus.’” MEANWHILE IN NEW YORK, I had a dream last night that my house burned down but I didn’t care at all because I had my laptop and iPhone with me. LRAB.

New York’s Kevin Roose visited a Microsoft store and liked it, which surprised even him! (“Outside, it was colorful and inviting. Inside, it was brightly lit, well-designed, and crowded with happy masses eagerly scooping up Surface tablets and Asus laptops … It was weird, disorienting, and pretty great.”)

Then the longtime Apple-user visited an Apple store, and, well: “The overall effect was less like taking Prozac, as Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed, and more like being on MDMA at a sad rave.”

We are all going to be using Windows by the end of the year, aren’t we—is that what’s happening? I think it might be. Maybe you’re already using Windows. Maybe you never fell for this $2,000 laptop mess in the first place. My friend bought a new laptop recently. Or maybe it was a netbook? A chromebook? Whatever it was, looked like a laptop and she could go on the internet with it and type and also be on Twitter. What else does one need? (Nothing.) It was $250.

This year, I bought a MacBook Pro Retina, the first day it was available for purchase. I’m still not sure yet if it was a mistake.

My boyfriend, who knows much more about technology than I do, talked me into it, for very valid reasons. I work at home and spend most of my waking hours on my computer. I sold my two-year-old MacBook for a pretty decent percentage of the original purchase price, and reselling a Retina in a few years will obviously earn more than selling a cheaper model. And, come on, the Retina is super cool—those Apple commercials still have the same shiny allure even after 10 years of laptop ownership that’s way more ordinary and frustrating than you imagine when first buying into that streamlined Apple lifestyle.

When I hit the purchase button on the Apple website, my heart clenched. I had never bought anything that expensive in my entire life, and I was already terrified to own it, or to take it to the various conferences and festivals that my job requires. I didn’t even want to tell anyone I’d bought it, because everybody knew this was the slick, expensive new laptop, and I didn’t want to be one of those people lured in by any new technology, especially the ones at ridiculous prices.

But of course, I was totally lured in—the Retina screen was awesome, the processor blazing fast, and so many basic functions of my job instantly became easier. It was like the relief you feel any time you get a new, faster computer, but quadrupled.

At the same time, the perils of being an early adopter cropped up fast. I took the computer in to the Genius Bar twice within five months of owning it, for a busted pixel on that lovely screen and for a trackpad that suddenly stopped functioning. It was fixed promptly and perfectly (gotta love Apple Care), but it didn’t alleviate that sense that I had jumped too soon on to a bandwagon I didn’t even know I cared about.

On some level, I guess buying the laptop—entirely on my own and with cash—was a move toward a grown-up status and an investment in a career in writing that I love. At the same time, it’s an indication of all the terrifying price tags that this grown-up status will come with—and how many more times I’ll probably feel a pit in my stomach purchasing something, without ever knowing for sure if I actually need it.

Katey Rich writes mostly about movies at Cinema Blend.

Bloomberg Businessweek has an exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook about his first year at the helm. He talks about a lot of things including the Samsung litigation, the legacy of Steve Jobs, and the other jobs: job creation, and what Apple is doing to create jobs in the U.S.:

I do feel we have a responsibility to create jobs. I don’t think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job, but I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs. I think we have a responsibility to give back to the communities, to pick ways that we can do that … and not just in the U.S., but abroad as well. I think we have the responsibility to make great products that we can recycle and that are environmentally friendly. I think we have a responsibility to make products that have a greater good in them.

Cook says that Apple has also paved a way for independent developers to earn money (“Our iOS platform allows developers to work as entrepreneurs and sell their applications to a worldwide market that didn’t exist previously.”), which, true, but it’s not easy to make a living selling apps. Apple is also building a “campus” for employees in Texas, and three data centers in different parts of the country, and Cook says jobs will be created there as the big Apple empire continues to take over the world.

First you call Amazon and tell them you are the account holder, and want to add a credit card number to the account. All you need is the name on the account, an associated e-mail address, and the billing address. Amazon then allows you to input a new credit card. (Wired used a bogus credit card number from a website that generates fake card numbers that conform with the industry’s published self-check algorithm.) Then you hang up.

Next you call back, and tell Amazon that you’ve lost access to your account. Upon providing a name, billing address, and the new credit card number you gave the company on the prior call, Amazon will allow you to add a new e-mail address to the account. From here, you go to the Amazon website, and send a password reset to the new e-mail account. This allows you to see all the credit cards on file for the account — not the complete numbers, just the last four digits. But, as we know, Apple only needs those last four digits. We asked Amazon to comment on its security policy, but didn’t have anything to share by press time.

And it’s also worth noting that one wouldn’t have to call Amazon to pull this off. Your pizza guy could do the same thing, for example. If you have an AppleID, every time you call Pizza Hut, you’ve giving the 16-year-old on the other end of the line all he needs to take over your entire digital life.

If you haven’t already taken the time to read Mat Honan’s mind-blowing story in Wired about how easy it was for a 19-year-old hacker to infiltrate his Amazon, Apple, Gmail and Twitter accounts, and then wipe out everything on his computer, including photos of his daughter’s first year, please take the time. Apple and Amazon’s security policies are pretty appalling.

Two years ago, a hacker got into my Gmail account, and for whatever reason, started deleting my messages. I quickly reset my password, and now have the two-step authentication process for my Gmail account. If I want to change my password or get into my account, Google has to send a pin number to my cell phone, which then has to be inputted into my account. It doesn’t make me feel 100 percent secure, but it does make me feel safer. Honan admits that he has been lucky: “They could have used my e-mail accounts to gain access to my online banking, or financial services,” he notes, but the hackers ultimately wanted access to his Twitter account.

“We look forward to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books.”

Amazon is really excited about the idea of being able to lower prices on e-books, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m happy for them. If I had a bookstore, and someone came in and told me I wasn’t allowed to sell my books for whatever price I wanted to sell my books for, I’d be pretty dismayed. I mean, I always scratch my head when I see an e-book selling for more than the list price for the physical book. I actually get pretty annoyed. And I’m sure Amazon, is like, “Oh god, we know, and we’re sorry about that. It makes no sense.” 

And it’s not like Apple is some poor little company that is going to be eaten by Amazon. I mean, right? If Amazon’s plan is to sell e-books at a loss so that it can gain more market share, Apple can do the same. Also, earlier this year, I put together an e-book for Longreads, and Amazon made it really easy for us to sell it. Longreads also tried to get the e-book in Apple’s iBooks store, and on Barnes and Noble’s online site, but it got stuck in some sort of e-book approval limbo, so anyone who wanted to buy the book had to go to Amazon to get it. So! If Amazon’s competitors really want to get more of the e-book marketshare, they really need to get with the program. I do feel bad for the truly, small independent bookstores, though there is one near my apartment that sells used and rare books, and they look like they actually get some decent business. Also, the library, you guys. The library is great!

[Edit: Cheaper e-books is a good thing (i.e. shouldn't cost more than the physical book), but books that are too cheap aren't. Please read Emily's and Kate's comments below.]

[Note: Sometimes, if you click on one of our links to Amazon, and then you end up buying something, we get a tiny bit of money. The Billfold is part of Amazon's affiliates program. Logan and I aren't keeping that money. If we do get any money from those links, we're planning on putting it in a budget to pay our wonderful writers. So click away!]