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What states are included?

While they vary state to state, most of the items included in the tax reduction are school based, such as stationery and folders. However, some states include some expensive products in their qualifying items such as computers and software:

For many states on this list the reasons are for back to school preparation. With the new school year approaching, the tax-free weekends give parents and students some support in acquiring school items.

That is not to say they are the only ones who can utilise the weekends. These discounts apply to all shoppers.

However, some states have multiple tax-free holidays a year but for different reasons.

For example, Florida has two more tax-free weekends. These are in place so people can prepare for natural disasters. those were back in May and June. Other states which experience disasters such as Texas and Alabama have extra breaks as well.

Originally posted here:
When will the 2021 tax holiday be? - AS English

What a great formula for a grift: Find some gullible idiots who wish to free themselves of the tyranny of Big Tech, and get them to use your platform or buy your equipment. For the last year, various MAGA types have tried to set up alternatives to Twittermost notably the clown shows of Parler last year and Gettr this year. And now we have the advent of the Freedom Phone, which promises to be Completely. Uncensored. and comes pre-loaded with apps that freedom-lovers love to love, such as Parler and Rumble.

The device has been criticized for failing to deliver on the promise of breaking its users free of Big Tech. In fact, the phone offers very little by way of freedom except freeing you of an excess $500 thats been weighing down your pockets. The Freedom Phone itself is a clunky product designed to fleece nave consumers who dont understand how they are being exploited and productized by the tech industry (for a primer on this subject be sure to watch Netflixs The Social Dilemma).

One of the criticisms of the device is that contrary to its makers assertions, its actually just running Android. But this criticism is either misguided or offered in bad faith. Its true that this device is running a flavor of the Android operating system called LineageOS. Yet that in and of itself doesnt say anything about whether the device frees you from your Googlian overlords. Yes, Android is owned by Google, but once you grab an open source versionas LineageOS isand start tinkering, you can build pretty much anything you want and Google doesnt get to monitor you or collect your data just because your phone is running Android.

To put it another way: Android is a big toolbox that allows developers to build all sorts of software; it doesnt say anything, either good or bad, about the Freedom Phone that its running Android. Indeedif you plan on making a smartphone, thats almost your only option.

So no, the problem with the Freedom Phone isnt its OS. Rather, the problem is that it exists in an ecosystem where the users options for having a useful device without connecting it to services that deprive it of its freedom are exceedingly small.

Still, say you decide to buy one. Congratulations, youre the proud owner of a new Freedom Phone, free from Googles intrusive monitoring and censorship. But its also free of most of the reasons youd bother to own a phone and keep it charged and connected to the internet in the first place. You want email? You want to have your phone guide you to your next insurrection-planning meeting? You want a calendar to put that meeting on? You want a contact list that is shared with your computer? You want to make a handy shopping list (of groceries or, say, materials for protest signs and Molotov cocktails)? You want to do some research on just how bad critical race theory is? The minute you try, youll notice that your phone simply isnt as useful as it would be if it were connected to some of the services Big Tech provides. If you want to do those things, youve got to start installing Gmail and Facebook and the other apps that, well, defeat the purpose of having such a device.

You seethe phone isnt the problem. In fact, you can turn any Android phone into a freedom phone by signing out of your Gmail account, turning off your location sharing, and then only using the apps that swear on their mothers graves never to track you (and they might be lying).

All snickering aside, if the Freedom Phone were better executed, and perhaps marketed less to the right wing than to those with a general, both-sides-of-the-aisle concern about the growing social and political dominance of the tech giants, it might conceivably be a pretty resounding shot across the bow of smartphone retailers. After all, this is a device thats as disengaged from the primary culprits of digital dictatorship as it can be while still being minimally useful.

If the makers of the Freedom Phonegenuinely cared about freedom, they would not be focusing just on the right, but trying to tap into the widespread desire to use technology that doesnt exploit us or take advantage of our proclivity to become addicted to outrage. This is an admirable sentiment. If there really is a market for such a thing, perhaps someone of better faith and more competence can come and service this market. For now, though, the Freedom Phone is a gimmick being sold to people who dont know any better, and its purpose is not to reduce political anger but to put it front and center.

All that said, if youre going to buy a Freedom Phone, please tell them I sent you so that I can get a commission!

Go here to see the original:
The Freedom Phone Is a Cynical Gimmick - The Bulwark

UBports, which took on the task of maintaining the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS after Canonical abandoned it, has released OTA-18 with lots of improvements, but still based on the ancient Ubuntu 16.04.

According to the team, one of the big changes in this release is a rewritten Media-hub service, responsible for media playback and control. "20,526 lines of code later, the new media-hub emerged with better tests, a more contributor-friendly structure, and a few fixed bugs to boot," said the post introducing the release.

The OS update also improves efficiency. "We still have a lot of people using devices with just 1GB of RAM," the team explained. "OTA-18 almost always feels faster than OTA-17 on the same device."

Fairphone running Ubuntu Touch

Other fixes include automatic appearance of the on-screen keyboard in new browser tabs, a degree symbol on the on-screen keyboard, stickers added to the messaging app, snooze now works as expected in alarms, and "call audio was fixed on the Google Pixel 2."

That does not sound like much, but the team said "there are a lot of fixes that cost little in code but will have a huge impact in practice."

There are a few snags. Just 54 devices support Ubuntu Touch and, of those, just 28 support OTA-18. This includes Fairphone 2 but not PinePhone. According to a post in the PinePhone support forum: "Unfortunately, getting UT up and going on Pinephone/Pinetab is on the backburner until after the 20.04 upgrade."

What then of Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 20.04? Apparently, progress is under way, and in fact the limited number of new features on OTA-18 is in part because "the small team of people who know the internals of Ubuntu Touch has been preoccupied with things other than OTA-18," most of those other things being connected with 20.04.

This includes work on Lomiri, the "convergence desktop" originally called Unity, until Canonical abandoned it. However, there will be an OTA-19 again based on 16.04 before we get a 20.04 release. There is more information on development progress in this Q&A.

On the plus side, users of Ubuntu Touch on the stable channel will get OTA-18 on compatible devices simply by "using the Updates screen of system settings."

It sounds like an uphill battle, though. UBports' Ubuntu Touch is one of several ways to run a free operating system on a smartphone, but all have snags. One approach is to base a phone on AOSP (Android Open Source Project), in which case there is an issue with Google's proprietary Play Services not being available see here for how the /e/ Foundation works around this problem. Another approach (as with Ubuntu Touch) is to base the OS on Linux and to rely on the Linux application ecosystem.

There is plenty of interest in the idea of a phone that is free from Google or Apple and the various ways they restrict, track, and control smartphones, but translating that interest into a viable alternative is problematic.

More:
Ubuntu on a phone, anyone? UBports reaches 18th stable update, but it's still based on 16.04 - The Register

Former journalist Matthew Keys, who served two years in prison for posting his Tribune Company content management system credentials online a decade ago in violation of America's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, has been ordered back to prison for violating the terms of his supervised release.

On Monday, Keys, 34, a resident of Vacaville, California, received an additional six-month sentence and 18 months of supervision with computer monitoring requirements, according to the US Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of California. The sentence follows from a judge's finding that Keyes intentionally deleted a YouTube account he was managing on behalf of his then employer, Comstocks Magazine.

"Businesses and individuals are already struggling against threats to the integrity of their data from hackers and data thieves, said Acting US Attorney Talbert in a statement on Monday. "They should not also have to worry about data destruction from former employees seeking retribution."

Keys's attorney, Mark Reichel, told The Register in a phone interview that he's appealing the decision.

"The reason we are appealing is the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is continuously being reinterpreted and reexamined in the courts of appeal, so any district judges ruling on a novel approach or unique circumstance as presented here clearly need to be reviewed in the appellate courts," said Reichel.

Initially indicted in 2013 [PDF] for posting his corporate username and password to IRC, which allowed a miscreant claiming to be a member of the Anonymous hacking group to alter a Los Angeles Time article, Keys was convicted under the controversial CFAA recently narrowed by the US Supreme Court and served his two-year sentence.

Following his release in 2018, he began working in 2019 as the digital editor at Comstocks Magazine in Sacramento, Caliornia, where he also managed the publication's social media and YouTube accounts.

According to the USAO, he resigned unexpectedly in January 2020, less than a year after he started and three months before his supervised release term was set to expire. He allegedly refused to turn over the credentials for the magazine's online accounts and subsequently is said to have emailed the publisher to express frustration with the publication's work environment and business practices.

"He accused editors of badgering him after hours, interrupting his sick leave, creating a hostile work environment, 'making comments about protected classes,' spreading lies about his work, and lying about the reasons for his departure," according to the judge's April 20, 2021 order [PDF].

A new assistant editor was hired around February, 2020, to take the place of Keys. But she found she could not login to the Google account associated with the magazine's YouTube channel the password had been changed and the videos were gone. Comstock's filed a police report and the ensuing investigation led authorities to conclude that Keys was responsible.

According to the judge's order:

The judge found the government's case persuasive, and Keys' explanation implausible, and concluded that Keys violated his release requirements.

Reichel nonetheless argues that what happened was not a CFAA violation, particularly in light of the US Supreme Court's recent Van Buren decision. "[The government] may think he did this and they obviously don't like it, but that doesn't make it a federal crime," he said. "Everything done with a computer does not become a CFAA violation."

Reichel hopes to have the case reviewed by the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read the rest here:
Journo who went to prison for 2 years for breaking US cyber-security law is jailed again - The Register

Hands On In its publicity for Windows 11, Microsoft has focused on the "simplified design and user experience" of the operating system along with a few headline features: a centered Start menu that looks more like a dock from other OSes, Android apps in the Microsoft Store, Teams Chat in the taskbar, Widgets, and more.

Android software support aside, these are relatively superficial features, and Microsoft will not dare to introduce changes that might break application compatibility with Windows 10. The IT titan already sparked a backlash by stating that 7th-generation Intel Core processors will not be sufficient to run the new Windows, though there are signs the company is open to "adjustments we should make to our minimum system requirements," subject to feedback from its Insider's preview scheme.

El Reg living on the Edge in a Windows 11 desktop ... Click to enlarge

We have been running the latest insider preview of Windows 11 (21H2 Pro, OS build 22000.71) together with the refreshed Office insider build, and while it is generally not unpleasant, there are small changes which we think could prove annoying though note that everything here is subject to change as this is just a preview build. A full official release is due to land by the end of this year.

For example, it is second nature for some to right-click the taskbar to summon the Task Manager, perhaps in the hope of discovering why a supposedly fast PC is acting like it's wading through glue. But the equivalent pop-up menu in Windows 11 has just two entries, Adjust date and time, and Notification Settings. Task Manager? We may need to get used to typing Windows + X, which brings up what is sometimes called the Power Menu, with quick access to a bunch of apps and settings including Task Manager.

Right-click the taskbar and this puny menu is all you get

We have not yet discovered though how to access one of our favorite settings, which is "Always show all icons in the notification area." The notification area is the bottom right corner of the screen, where background applications often show an icon with a right-click menu.

Showing these icons gives insight into what is running; but the default is to hide them behind a pop-up menu. In Windows 11, this area seems to be renamed the "taskbar corner," and the pop-up menu the "taskbar corner overflow," and while you can still select which icons appear, there is no option we can see to show them all by default.

Options for the 'taskbar corner overflow'

If the centered Start menu and taskbar icons aren't to your liking, you can shove them to the left, as on Windows 10, in Windows 11's personalization settings.

The curious can find the official list of removed and deprecated features here. Removed features include Quick Status on the lockscreen, S Mode (except in Home edition), Tablet Mode, and the ability to align the taskbar other than to the bottom of the screen.

Tablet Mode is a sad story. Although Windows 8 failed to convince users for all sorts of reasons, it was cleverly designed for touch users, more so than any version of Windows before or since (excepting perhaps Windows Phone). Tablet Mode was meant to restore a touch-friendly experience in Windows 10, but never worked right and caused confusion.

That said, Redmond appears to have a replacement in the form of "new functionality and capability for keyboard attach and detach," as this Microsoft representative notes. These include spaced-out icons and new gestures, and possibly a new touch keyboard. Microsoft will have optimizing this in mind for its new and recent Surface devices.

The Windows 11 Start menu is not necessarily an improvement. The Start menu was brilliant in Windows 95, brutally transformed in Windows 8, and reinvented in Windows 10 as an application menu with an optional resizable and customizable panel on one side, to retain some compatibility with Windows 8 Live Tiles.

Out of the box, the Windows 10 Start panel is an annoyance, but with a bit of effort can be made into a useful application launcher, with named groups and icons that in some cases come in four sizes: small, medium, wide or large. The Photo app is an example, which can not only be set large but will also cycle through recently added photos and images.

In Windows 11, Live Tiles, named groups, and resizable panels have been swept away. The new Start menu has little to customize, though users can still pin apps to a fixed space in its top half, which scrolls when full (a grid of 6 x 3 icons on our system). Plenty of room is given to a "Recommended" panel of doubtful value. There is also a small "All apps" button, which is similar to the classic pop-up Start menu of yore, and "Type here to search," which searches across applications, documents, web, settings and more, giving the user a perplexity of results.

One thing at least is better in Windows 11. The design is much cleaner, for those parts of the software that use the modern user interface, such as the system's Settings application; it makes Windows 10 look homemade by comparison.

The Settings applet looks much better in Windows 11 than on Windows 10

This Settings applet is supposed to be more friendly than the classic Control Panel, which on Windows 11 looks almost identical to the Windows 10 Control Panel, save for a few icon changes that are neither better nor worse. For some network settings, it is still necessary to go to the Control Panel's "Network connections," though the Windows 11 modern Settings applet provides some network configuration options not found in the Windows 10 Settings, including adapter options like DHCP, DNS, interface enable and disable, and more.

Even Windows backup is still there in Control Panel, under the mysterious label "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)." This is the same as on Windows 10, though worth mentioning here, since unlike the strongly promoted File History in the Settings applet, this old-style backup actually is a full backup of the system that can be saved to a drive and taken offline just the thing in these days of ransomware. Note that searching for backup in the Settings applet finds only "Back up and Sync your settings," at least on our Windows 11 Pro setup. In order to find the full backup feature, users have to locate Control Panel, then search for backup. Alternatively, one could type sdclt at the command prompt.

This is the kind of anomaly that keeps Microsoft partners in business. Note also that although this type of full backup is deprecated, users who install the presumably hot and current Azure Backup software will find that it looks remarkably similar, though it targets Azure storage instead of a local drive.

Another thing to mention is the Snap navigator. Hover the mouse over a window's maximize button, and a Snap window appears, which lets users resize and reposition the window in one of several positions. Useful? Some may love it though we did not find much value in this. For those who work with a huge display, it could be handy.

Hover over a maximize button and this Snap navigator appears

Windows File Explorer has been redesigned in Windows 11. This is where some users spend a lot of time while others hardly know what it is. It packs in a lot of functions: file management (copy, paste and move), file security, document preview, document search, and more.

This horrible cascading menu is a feature of the new File Explorer

The new design no longer has a ribbon menu, and at first glance seems less functional: there are just a few icons across the top. That said, several of the buttons have drop down menus, such as for sorting and grouping, layout, and selection.

It seems that everything is still there; the ribbon is no longer in fashion, and rather than go back to old-style drop-down menus, Microsofties have chosen a hybrid in which the menus drop down from buttons. Improvement? One can see that the designers are aiming for a simple, clean appearance; but what is lost is discoverability, something the ribbon design was good at surfacing. The new File Explorer is not altogether a success.

Will Windows 11 always be a free upgrade from Windows 10? According to an official document available from some OEMs, and declaring itself "CELA [Corporate External and Legal Affairs] approved," the "free upgrade offer does not have a specific end date for eligible systems. However, Microsoft reserves the right to eventually end support for the free offer. This end date will be no sooner than one year from general availability."

The document also states that: "You do not have to upgrade to Windows 11. We will continue to support Windows 10 until October 14, 2025." To grab a copy of a preview build, follow these instructions.

More:
Windows 11: What we like and don't like about Microsoft's operating system so far - The Register