Amazon.com could face a backlash for charging state sales taxes, potentially inspiring more of its customers to shop locally and keep more tax revenue in their communities, a recent survey suggests. As of Jan. 1, Amazon (AMZN) has been charging and collecting sales taxes in 19 U.S. states, with Indiana, Nevada and Tennessee the most recent additions. Amazon had long fought any such taxes, but in recent years it has reached agreements to collect
With linear television from broadcast and cable, it was pretty easy to keep track of new TV shows. But with the rise of original programs on Internet-based streaming video services, finding and watching new TV shows is becoming a lot more complicated. You can add Microsoft (MSFT), Sony (SNE) and Yahoo (YHOO) to the list of companies looking to make an impact with original TV shows for online streaming. They join Netflix (NFLX), Amazon.com (AMZN) and Hulu in funding shows for over-the-top television viewing. Today those Internet-based services largely complement existing pay TV services, but one day they could threaten traditional services from cable, satellite and telco TV providers.
Amazon.com’s Fire TV could generate a lot of heat, both literally and figuratively. A tear-down analysis of the $99 Internet streaming video box by iFixit shows that Amazon Fire TV uses considerable space to disperse heat from its quad-core, 1.7 gigahertz processor, the Qualcomm Krait 300. The iFixit team posted its pun-filled article about the Amazon Fire TV tear down on Thursday. “Fire seems to put off a lot of heat,” iFixit says . “To keep this toasty box from catching fire, Amazon (AMZN) included a heatsink that fills most of the bottom case.” It also uses thermal glue to cool the main processor down. Besides the main processor, Qualcomm (QCOM) scores four other chips in the box: its Adreno 320 dedicated graphics processor, a power management chip, a PCI Express fast Ethernet controller and an Atheros wireless networking chip. A look at other components in the Fire TV reveals that …