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How do I find out my timezone in Linux?

nixCraft - 2 hours 2 sec ago
You can find the timezone in Linux using the command line. The easiest way to do this is to type the "timedatectl" command and look for the "timezone" line when using modern Linux distros with systemd. There are other commands and ways to temporarily switch to a new timezone for date calculations. Love this? sudo share_on: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Whatsapp - Reddit The post How do I find out my timezone in Linux? appeared first on nixCraft. 2024-04-06T01:06:44Z 2024-04-06T01:06:44Z Vivek Gite

Valve's Steam Machine Has Been Delayed, and the RAM Crisis Will Impact Pricing

Slashdot.org - 3 hours 35 min ago
Valve has pushed back the launch of its Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller hardware from its original Q1 2026 window to a vaguer "first half of the year" target, blaming the ongoing memory and storage shortage that has been squeezing the tech industry. The company said in a post today that rising component prices and limited availability forced it to revisit both its shipping schedule and pricing plans. Valve had previously indicated the Steam Machine would be priced at the entry level of the PC space.

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BMW Commits To Subscriptions Even After Heated Seat Debacle

Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 21:00
BMW may have retreated from its controversial plan to charge monthly fees for heated seats, but the German automaker is pressing ahead with subscription-based vehicle features through its ConnectedDrive platform. A company spokesperson told The Drive that BMW "remains fully committed" to ConnectedDrive as part of its global aftersales strategy. Features requiring data connectivity will likely carry recurring fees.

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Microsoft Adds Sysmon To Windows

Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 19:25
Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise to integrate Sysmon -- the long-standing system monitoring tool from its Sysinternals suite -- directly into Windows, a move that should make life considerably easier for enterprise administrators who have struggled with deploying and managing the utility across thousands of endpoints. The functionality landed this week in Windows Insider builds 26300.7733 (Dev channel) and 26220.7752 (Beta channel). Sysmon allows administrators to capture system events through custom configuration files, filter for specific activity, and pipe the data into standard Windows event logs for pickup by security tools and SIEM pipelines. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow and Winternals co-founder, has previously noted the lack of official customer support for Sysmon in production environments -- a gap this integration addresses. The feature ships disabled by default and requires PowerShell to enable. Microsoft notes that any existing Sysmon installation must be uninstalled before activating the built-in version.

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Vanguard Money Market & Target Retirement Funds: Claim Your State Income Tax Exemption (Updated 2026)

MyMoneyBlog.com - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 17:41

Updated for 2026. Tax time is here again, and if you earned interest from a money market fund, a significant portion of this interest may have come from “US Government Obligations” like Treasury bills and bonds, which are generally exempt from state and local income taxes. However, in order to claim this exemption, you’ll likely have to manually enter it on your tax return after digging up a few extra details.

(Note: California, Connecticut, and New York exempt dividend income only when the mutual fund has met certain minimum investments in U.S. government securities. They require that 50% of a mutual fund’s assets at each quarter-end within the tax year consist of U.S. government obligations.)

Vanguard has recently released the U.S. government obligations income information for Tax Year 2025 [pdf] for all their funds, which states:

This tax update provides information to help clients properly report state and local tax liability on ordinary income distributions received from mutual fund investments in 2025.

On the next page, you’ll find a list of Vanguard funds that earned a portion of their ordinary dividends from
obligations of the U.S. government. Direct U.S. government obligations and certain U.S. government agency
obligations are generally exempt from taxation in most states.1

To find the portion of Vanguard dividends that may be exempt from your state income tax, multiply the amount of “ordinary dividends” reported in Box 1a of your Form 1099-DIV by the percentage listed in the PDF. Note that on the IRS Form 1099-INT, there is a special Line 3 that includes “Interest on US Savings Bonds & Treasury obligations”. However, for the Vanguard funds, they report on 1099-DIV and not 1099-INT. My Vanguard 1099-INT was all zeros.

For the default cash sweep Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX), this percentage was 66.61% in 2025. (For reference, it was 59.87% in 2024 and 49.37% in 2023.) Therefore, if you earned $1,000 in total interest from VMFXX in 2025, then $666.10 could possibly be exempt from state and local income taxes. If your marginal state income tax rate was 10% that would be a ~$67 tax savings for every $1,000 in total interest earned. For 2025, this fund DID meet the threshold requirements for California, Connecticut, and New York, which require that 50% of the fund’s assets at each quarter-end within the tax year consist of U.S. government obligations.

In comparison, the Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund (VUSXX) had a GOI percentage of 100% in 2025. (For reference, it was 100% on 2024 and 80.06% in 2023.) If your marginal state income tax rate was 10% that would be a $100 tax savings for every $1,000 in total interest earned.

The total income return for Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) was 4.22% and Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund (VUSXX) was 4.23% over the 12-month period of 2025, meaning the pre-tax return was basically the same. This is why many people chose to manually buy VUSXX instead of the default settlement fund as it can earn you a higher after-tax interest rate.

(Why doesn’t Vanguard let you use VUSXX as your cash sweep? Most likely due to the many inflow and outflows of a cash sweep, those liquidity concerns make it hard to hold everything in Treasury bonds. I’m guessing that repurchase agreements are more liquid.)

The following Vanguard funds and ETF equivalents have 100% of their interest from US government obligations:

  • 0-3 Month Treasury Bill ETF (VBIL)
  • Ultra-Short Treasury ETF (VGUS)
  • Short-Term Treasury Index Fund (VGSH, VSBSX)
  • Intermediate-Term Treasury Index Fund (VGIT, VSIGX)
  • Long-Term Treasury Index Fund (VGLT, VLGSX)
  • Extended Duration Treasury Index Fund (EDV)
  • Short-Term Inflation-Protected Securities
    Index Fund (VTIP, VTAPX)
  • Inflation-Protected Securities Fund (VIPSX, VAIPX)

Note that several other Vanguard funds have a lower but nonzero percentage of dividends from US government obligations, including the popular Vanguard Target Retirement 20XX funds (up to 33-34% for Target Retirement 2020 and Target Retirement Income!). Definitely worth a closer look for residents with high state/local income tax rates, especially those closer to retirement (holds more bonds).

To obtain these tax savings, you’ll have to manually adjust your state/local income tax return. I don’t believe that TurboTax, H&R Block, and other tax software will do this automatically for you, as they won’t have the required information on their own. (I’m also not sure if they ask about it in their interview process. You may need to click on certain spot.) If you use an accountant, you should also double-check to make sure they use this information. Here is some information on how to enter this into TurboTax:

  • When you are entering the 1099-DIV Box 1a, 1b, and 2a – click the “My form has info in other boxes (this is uncommon)” checkbox.
  • Next, click on the option “A portion of these dividends is U.S. Government interest.”
  • On the next screen enter the Government interest amount. This will be subtracted from your state return.

Standard disclosure: Check with your state or local tax office or with your tax advisor to determine whether your state allows you to exclude some or all of the income you earn from mutual funds that invest in U.S. government obligations.

[Image credit – Tax Foundation]

Categories: Finance

Q4 earnings call: Remarks from our CEOQ4 earnings call: Remarks from our CEOCEO of Google and Alphabet

GoogleBlog - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 17:25
Read CEO Sundar Pichai’s remarks from the Alphabet Q4 2025 earnings call.Read CEO Sundar Pichai’s remarks from the Alphabet Q4 2025 earnings call.
Categories: Technology

Russian Spy Satellites Have Intercepted EU Communications Satellites

Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 15:46
European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report: Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them. Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 -- two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit. Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe's most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.

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Secure Linux Distros - Trend Hunter

Linux News - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 14:35
Secure Linux Distros  Trend Hunter
Categories: Linux

'Everyone is Stealing TV'

Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/04/2026 - 14:00
A sprawling informal economy of rogue streaming devices has taken hold across the U.S., as consumers fed up with rising TV subscription costs turn to cheap Android-based boxes that promise free access to thousands of live channels, sports events, and on-demand movies for a one-time $200 to $400 purchase. The two dominant players -- SuperBox and vSeeBox -- are manufactured by opaque Chinese companies and distributed through hundreds of American resellers at farmers markets, church festivals and Facebook groups, according to a report by The Verge. The hardware is generic and legal, but both devices guide users toward pirate streaming apps not available on any official app store. vSeeBox directs users to a service called "Heat"; SuperBox points to "Blue TV." One user estimated access to between 6,000 and 8,000 channels, including premium sports networks and hundreds of local affiliates. A 2025 Dish Network lawsuit against a SuperBox reseller alleged that some live channels on the device were being ripped directly from Dish's Sling TV service -- Sling's logo was still visible on certain feeds. Dish has pursued resellers aggressively, winning $1.25 million in damages from a vSeeBox seller in 2024 over 500 devices and $405,000 from another over 162 devices. None of this has meaningfully slowed adoption. The market has roots in earlier Chinese-made devices like TVPad that targeted Asian expat communities and reportedly sold 3 million units before being litigated out of existence. SuperBox and vSeeBox simply broadened the audience to mainstream America.

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