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You may be able to buy Apple products without paying state sales tax

If you live in one of nine eligible states, you can buy a range of Apple products without paying state sales tax. The sales tax holidays take place annually, with varying dates and product eligibility, but in almost all cases you get only a few days to act … Sales tax holidays are brief periods in which states let companies sell products without adding sales tax to the total. Local sales taxes may still apply. In most cases, the ability to take advantage of them for Apple purchases is constra

Don't plug these 7 appliances (including AC units) into extension cords - here's why

Maria Diaz/ZDNET Extension cords are generally a safe solution for running power to electronics that are too far from the nearest wall outlet. But the operative word here is "electronics," which is not as all-encompassing as some people might think. Appliances (like refrigerators and toaster ovens) are obviously electronic devices, but they're in a different class from most electronics because of the amperage demands they need to function. Why you shouldn't plug everything into an extension c

Interest Restarts for SAVE Student Loans on Aug. 1. Should You Switch to Another Payment Plan by Then?

Interest will restart for SAVE borrowers whose loans remain in a general forbearance on Aug. 1. Viva Tung/CNET Starting on Aug. 1, borrowers who are enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan will begin accruing interest charges on their loan balances. The Department of Education is encouraging borrowers to pick a new payment plan, but you also have the option to leave your loans where they are. The Department of Education "urges all borrowers in the SAVE plan to quickly transition to

Nextdoor redesigns app with AI recommendations, local news, and real-time emergency alerts

Neighborhood social app Nextdoor is launching a redesigned version of its service that it’s calling the “new Nextdoor.” The app is adding local news, real-time alerts, and an AI-powered feature called “Faves” that’s designed for discovering local businesses and spots. Nextdoor has also updated its overall design to look more contemporary. Launched 15 years ago, Nextdoor has long served as a popular platform for neighborhood conversations, helping users connect over things like recommendations f

New AI voice tool trained to copy British regional accents

New AI voice tool trained to copy British regional accents A new AI voice-cloning tool from a British firm claims to be able to reproduce a range of UK accents more accurately than some of its US and Chinese rivals. Because much of the data traditionally used to train AI products with voices comes from North American or southern English speaking sources, many artificial voices tend to sound similar. To combat this, the company Synthesia spent a year compiling its own database of UK voices wit

Block leads rebound in fintech stocks as analysts downplay JPMorgan data fee risk

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies during a remote video hearing held by subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee on "Social Media's Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation" in Washington, U.S., March 25, 2021. Block jumped more than 5% on Monday, leading a rally in shares of fintech companies as analysts downplayed the threat of JPMorgan Chase's reported plan to charge data aggregators for access to customer financial information. The recovery fol

Want to be Seated for ‘The Odyssey?’ Some Showtimes Are Out Over a Year in Advance

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens in theaters one year from this Thursday—on July 17, 2026—and something big might be coming to celebrate. Showtimes (just showtimes, not a way to actually buy tickets) for select IMAX 70mm screenings of the film have begun to show up on ticketing websites, which is odd because a) It’s over a year in advance, b) Nolan is still making the movie, which means c) there isn’t a locked-in runtime yet. And yet, if you head over to a site like Fandango, there they ar

Today's NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for July 15 #499

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles. Today's NYT Strands puzzle reminds me of many happy days spent at the Minnesota State Fair. Pass the cheese curds, please. If you need hints and answers, read on. I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections an

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 15, #295

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. It helps to have an interest in UK sports for today's Connections: Sports Edition. And as is often the case, the purple-group words have an unexpected link between them. Keep reading for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sund

Meta says it's cracking down on Facebook creators who steal content

Meta is going after creators who rip off other users' content as part of a broader effort to fix Facebook's feed. In its latest update, the company laid out new steps it's taking to penalize accounts that lift work from others. In a blog post for creators, Meta says that accounts that "repeatedly" and "improperly" reuse other accounts' text posts, photos or videos will have their pages demonetized "for a period of time." Meta willa also throttle all of their posts, not just the ones with the of

When Is the Home Run Derby 2025? Find Out When It Starts and How to Watch for Free

The Major League Baseball season has reached its midpoint. The game's brightest stars are in Atlanta for the All-Star Game on Tuesday, but up first is the Home Run Derby tonight. Eight sluggers will compete for the title of Home Run Derby champ. The Derby gets underway tonight at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT) tonight on ESPN and ESPN2. Below, we'll outline the best live TV streaming services to use to watch live wherever you are in the world. The 2025 Home Run Derby and All-Star Game will take place a

Topics: derby home run sports vpn

Following YouTube, Meta announces crackdown on ‘unoriginal’ Facebook content

Meta announced on Monday that it will take additional measures to crack down on accounts sharing “unoriginal” content to Facebook, meaning those that repeatedly reuse someone else’s text, photos, or videos. This year, Meta has already taken down around 10 million profiles that were impersonating large content producers, it said. Plus, it has taken action against 500,000 accounts that were engaged in “spammy behavior or fake engagement.” Those actions have included things like demoting the accou

The Corset X-Rays of Dr Ludovic O'Followell (1908)

In 1902, shortly before Dr. Ludovic O’Followell published the first volume of Le Corset, Dr. Phillippe Maréchal, “one of the best known ladies’ doctors in Paris”, proposed a law banning women under the age of thirty from wearing corsets — punishable by three months imprisonment — that would force corset vendors to track the name, age, and address of all customers. As a skeptical Los Angeles Herald reporter summed up: “In short, he claims that women’s dress has caused a frightful physical deterio

Kiro: A new agentic IDE

I’m sure you’ve been there: prompt, prompt, prompt, and you have a working application. It’s fun and feels like magic. But getting it to production requires more. What assumptions did the model make when building it? You guided the agent throughout, but those decisions aren’t documented. Requirements are fuzzy and you can’t tell if the application meets them. You can’t quickly understand how the system is designed and how that design will affect your environment and performance. Sometimes it’s b

This accessory kit was made for tinkerers and has 180 modifications

ZDNET's key takeaways This high-quality screwdriver kit has everything for both the budding enthusiast and professional repairer. This 180-piece kit has 160 quality screwdriver bits and a range of other useful tools, such as plastic prybars, a suction cup, and tweezers. There's no LED light on the front of the screwdriver, so working in dark, cramped spaces can be tricky. $69.99 at Amazon I often get asked about tools, and I genuinely enjoy these conversations because I'm a tool enthusiast. O

xAI starts offering Grok to US government agencies

Just days after apologizing for Grok's recent hard turn toward antisemitism, xAI has announced a suite of AI products for government use. Grok for Government brings together the company's latest commercial products, including Grok 4 and Deep Search, with special considerations given to the needs of federal, state and local agencies. To that end, xAI says it will design custom models for specific national security and research customers. It will also develop specialized AI applications for use i

This accessory kit was made for tinkerers and has180 modifications

ZDNET's key takeaways This high-quality screwdriver kit has everything for both the budding enthusiast and professional repairer. This 180-piece kit has 160 quality screwdriver bits and a range of other useful tools, such as plastic prybars, a suction cup, and tweezers. There's no LED light on the front of the screwdriver, so working in dark, cramped spaces can be tricky. $69.99 at Amazon I often get asked about tools, and I genuinely enjoy these conversations because I'm a tool enthusiast. O

AWS launches Kiro, its Cursor clone

I’m sure you’ve been there: prompt, prompt, prompt, and you have a working application. It’s fun and feels like magic. But getting it to production requires more. What assumptions did the model make when building it? You guided the agent throughout, but those decisions aren’t documented. Requirements are fuzzy and you can’t tell if the application meets them. You can’t quickly understand how the system is designed and how that design will affect your environment and performance. Sometimes it’s b

Bill Gates Sounds the Alarm on a Global Health Catastrophe

Bill Gates will not give up. The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist is continuing his public campaign against the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to U.S. foreign aid, warning of disastrous and preventable consequences for global health programs. His strategy is twofold: sound the alarm on the immediate human cost while highlighting the long-term benefits of American generosity. He just did both. Gates amplified a harrowing, firsthand account from a doctor in Africa whose clinic, fu

Google Contacts could soon let you control clutter from third-party apps (Updated: Rolling out)

Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR Google Contacts could soon allow users to show or hide read-only contacts synced from connected apps. The new feature aims to help users troubleshoot issues like duplicated contacts by revealing otherwise hidden view-only entries. Most users likely won’t need this enabled, but the switch offers better visibility for those who occasionally need it. Update, July 14, 2025 (07:08 AM ET): The ability to show and hide read-only contacts is now rolling out to

Google Contacts is making it easier to check when you last contacted someone (Updated: Rolling out)

Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR Google Contacts could soon start displaying recent calls and texts on contact profiles. The feature will appear as a new “Recent activity” section on contact profiles, listing the last call and text with each contact. Update, July 14, 2025 (07:13 AM ET): Profile pages within the Contacts app now show Recent activity, with the feature rolling out with Google Contacts v4.58.27. Original article, April 30, 2025 (06:53 AM ET): Google Contacts‘ Single Contac

This Galaxy S26 leak is bad news for small-phone lovers

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority TL;DR A Korean outlet reports that Samsung is working on the Galaxy S26 Edge instead of the S26 Plus. The outlet also revealed screen sizes for all three models, and the base model might get a small size bump. The Samsung Galaxy S26 series is still roughly six months away from launch, but that hasn’t stopped the steady stream of leaks. It now looks like we’ve got screen-related details for all three phones. The Elec reports (h/t: Jukanlosreve on Twitter) th

Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends

Lonely children and teens are replacing real-life friendship with AI, and experts are worried. A new report from the nonprofit Internet Matters, which supports efforts to keep children safe online, found that children and teens are using programs like ChatGPT, Character.AI, and Snapchat's MyAI to simulate friendship more than ever before. Of the 1,000 children aged nine to 17 that Internet Matters surveyed for its "Me, Myself, and AI" report, some 67 percent said they use AI chatbots regularly

The Scourge of Arial (2001)

Arial is everywhere. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t use a modern personal computer. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft’s influence in the world. Arial’s ubiquity is not due to its beauty. It’s actually rather homely. Not that homeliness is necessarily a bad thing for a typeface. With typefaces, character and history a

A Century of Quantum Mechanics

Lieber Pauli... Read the translation of the letter sent by Werner Heisenberg to Wolfgang Pauli on 9 July 1925. The original letter is preserved in CERN’s Wolfgang Pauli Archive. (Copyright: Heisenberg Society) Dear Pauli, If you believe that I read your letter laughing mockingly, then you are gravely mistaken; quite the contrary – since Helgoland, my views on mechanics have become more radical with each passing day, and it is my firm conviction that Bohr’s theory of the hydrogen atom, in its pre

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 14, #294

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition might be tough, if timely. I guess I'm not up on the 2025 HR Derby, but maybe you are. Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That's a sign that the game has earned e

These are the pros and cons of buying from Apple’s refurbished store: Is it worth it?

Apple has long offered a refurbished store on its website, where it sells recent generation products at a pretty sizable discount. Unlike other refurbished offerings, Apple guarantees a replaced outer shell, battery, and glass – ensuring no wear and tear. You also get a 1 year Apple warranty and the ability to add AppleCare if you’d like. That sounds great, but is it actually worth it? Well, it depends. We’ll be delving into Apple refurbished listings, and comparing it to other offerings on the

Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

While reading the latest results from Prosus, I realized there seems to be a trend that nobody is talking about. There is an obvious wave of consolidation in the food delivery market happening right before our eyes. The once-hot food delivery sector has gone cold faster than your DoorDash order. New entrants have disappeared as most of the VC money chases the cool and hip AI startups. Alongside a wave of acquisitions, the world's food delivery market is consolidating in the hands of 5 companies.

Bethesda Wants to Meet ‘Fallout’ Hype With Show Tie-Ins and New Games

If you’re a fan of Prime Video’s Fallout show and the games it’s based on, it sounds like Bethesda’s getting ready to capitalize on its current and future success. Talking to Variety, Fallout 76 creative director Jon Rush teased that game’s team and the creative forces behind the series have discussed “lining things up with the seasonal releases of the show.” The implication is some in-game tie-ins to the show, maybe skins for the key characters or an in-game event reminiscent of certain episod

Study warns of ‘significant risks’ in using AI therapy chatbots

Therapy chatbots powered by large language models may stigmatize users with mental health conditions and otherwise respond inappropriately or even dangerously, according to researchers at Stanford University. While recent coverage in The New York Times and elsewhere has highlighted the role that ChatGPT may play in reinforcing delusional or conspiratorial thinking, a new paper titled “Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers” exam