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Submission + - Stop paying TurboTax when IRS Free File covers most taxpayers for FREE (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: The IRS has flipped the switch on Free File for the 2026 tax season, letting most Americans file federal taxes for exactly zero dollars. Anyone with 2025 adjusted gross income of $89,000 or less qualifies, covering an estimated 70 percent of taxpayers. The catch is that you have to start at IRS.gov/FreeFile, not the commercial sites that steer users into paid upgrades. Free File partners include familiar software brands like TaxAct, FreeTaxUSA, 1040.com and TaxSlayer, and many will throw in free state returns too. The program works on computers and phones and supports e-filing before the official opening of tax season.

What surprises me every year is how few people know this exists. Despite more than 77 million returns filed through Free File since 2003, most folks reach for TurboTax or H&R Block and end up paying for something the government already supports at no cost. Even gig workers and renters qualify now if their AGI is under the limit. If you want to keep more money in your wallet, start at IRS.gov/FreeFile and skip the upsell parade.

Submission + - Bank of America faces lawsuit over alleged unpaid computer boot-up time (hcamag.com)

Submitted by Joe_Dragon
Joe_Dragon writes: Bank of America is facing allegations that hundreds of hourly workers performed up to 30 minutes of unpaid computer setup work daily for years.

A former Business Analyst filed a class action lawsuit in federal court on October 23, claiming the banking giant systematically shortchanged remote employees who had to boot up complex computer systems before their paid shifts began.

Tava Martin, who worked both remotely and at the company's Jacksonville facility, says the financial institution required her and fellow hourly workers to log into multiple security systems, download spreadsheets, and connect to virtual private networks—all before the clock started ticking on their workday.

The process wasn't quick. According to the filing in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, employees needed 15 to 30 minutes each morning just to get their systems running. When technical problems occurred, it took even longer.

Here's how it worked: Workers turned on their computers, waited for Windows to load, grabbed their cell phones to request a security token for the company's VPN, waited for that token to arrive, logged into the network, opened required web applications with separate passwords, and downloaded the Excel files they needed for the day. Only then could they start taking calls from business customers about regulatory reporting requirements.

The lawsuit says Bank of America enforced a strict "phone ready" policy. Employees had to be prepared to handle calls the moment their scheduled shifts began. Anyone who clocked in but wasn't immediately available to take or make calls for too long risked poor performance scores and possible disciplinary action, up to and including termination.

Yet the company allegedly discouraged workers from reporting any time outside their scheduled hours. Martin's paystubs routinely showed exactly 40 hours per week, or exactly 32 hours when she missed a day—suggesting the bank paid for scheduled time rather than actual work performed.

The unpaid work didn't stop at startup. During unpaid lunch breaks, many systems would automatically disconnect or otherwise lose connection, forcing employees to repeat portions of the login process—approximately three to five minutes of uncompensated time on most days, sometimes longer when a complete reboot was required. After shifts ended, workers had to log out of all programs and shut down their computers securely, adding another two to three minutes.

Martin earned $46.17 per hour through a third-party staffing agency, though Bank of America controlled her schedule, training, and employment conditions. Like many of her colleagues, she regularly worked full-time hours, meaning the uncompensated startup and shutdown time should have been paid at the overtime rate of one and a half times her regular wage.

The lawsuit points to 2008 guidance from the Department of Labor that specifically addresses call centers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That guidance explicitly states that an example of the first principal activity of the day for call center workers includes starting computers to download work instructions and applications. It also requires employers to keep daily or weekly records of all hours worked, including time spent in pre-shift and post-shift activities.

The filing suggests Bank of America either didn't bother to determine whether the computer time was compensable or knew it was but failed to pay for it anyway. The lawsuit notes the company has faced factually similar cases from other employees about time spent loading and logging into computer systems.

For the week of March 11 through March 17, 2024, for example, Martin was paid for 40 regular hours but no overtime. With unpaid pre-shift, meal-period, and post-shift time of at least 20 minutes per shift over five shifts, she should have received an additional 100 minutes at her overtime rate of $69.25 per hour. Similar calculations apply to other pay periods cited in the complaint.

Business Analysts were interviewed by company hiring managers and assigned to Bank of America managers upon hire. The bank provided supervisors who oversaw their daily performance and gave them training and technical support. The company controlled work schedules and retained the ability to discipline and terminate employees. The positions were hourly, non-exempt jobs with rigid schedules requiring at least eight hours per day, on average five days per week, and up to 40 hours or more weekly.

Martin seeks to represent all current and former remote hourly Business Analysts who worked for the bank during the three years before conditional certification through judgment. She estimates the group includes hundreds, if not thousands, of workers who performed essentially the same tasks using the same or similar computer programs under the same timekeeping policies.

Many Business Analysts, including Martin, were employed through third-party staffing agencies but were required to comply with all Bank of America employee handbook policies, including those covering attendance, timekeeping, and overtime.

The case remains in early stages, with no court ruling yet on whether it will proceed as a class action or on the merits of the allegations.

Submission + - New Drug Kills Cancer 20,000x More Effectively With No Detectable Side Effects (scitechdaily.com) 2

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: SciTechDaily is reporting that researchers at Northwestern University have redesigned the molecular structure of a well-known chemotherapy drug, greatly increasing its solubility, effectiveness, and safety.

For this study, the scientists created the drug entirely from scratch as a spherical nucleic acid (SNA), a nanoscale structure that incorporates the drug into DNA strands surrounding tiny spheres. This innovative design transforms a compound that normally dissolves poorly and works weakly into a highly potent, precisely targeted treatment that spares healthy cells from damage.

When tested in a small animal model of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive and hard-to-treat blood cancer, the SNA-based version showed remarkable results. It entered leukemia cells 12.5 times more efficiently, destroyed them up to 20,000 times more effectively, and slowed cancer progression by a factor of 59, all without causing noticeable side effects.

“In animal models, we demonstrated that we can stop tumors in their tracks,” said Northwestern’s Chad A. Mirkin, who led the study. “If this translates to human patients, it’s a really exciting advance. It would mean more effective chemotherapy, better response rates and fewer side effects. That’s always the goal with any sort of cancer treatment.”

Submission + - US Government Takes Down Major North Korean 'Remote IT Workers' Operation (techcrunch.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday that it had taken several enforcement actions against North Korea’s money-making operations, which rely on undercover remote IT workers inside American tech companies to raise funds for the regime’s nuclear weapons program, as well as to steal data and cryptocurrency. As part of the DOJ’s multi-state effort, the government announced the arrest and indictment of U.S. national Zhenxing “Danny” Wang, who allegedly ran a years-long fraud scheme from New Jersey to sneak remote North Korean IT workers inside U.S. tech companies. According to the indictment, the scheme generated more than $5 million in revenue for the North Korean regime. [...]

From 2021 until 2024, the co-conspirators allegedly impersonated more than 80 U.S. individuals to get remote jobs at more than 100 American companies, causing $3 million in damages due to legal fees, data breach remediation efforts, and more. The group is said to have run laptop farms inside the United States, which the North Korean IT workers could essentially use as proxies to hide their provenance, according to the DOJ. At times, they used hardware devices known as keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switches, which allow one person to control multiple computers from a single keyboard and mouse. The group allegedly also ran shell companies inside the U.S. to make it seem like the North Korean IT workers were affiliated with legitimate local companies, and to receive money that would then be transferred abroad, the DOJ said.

The fraudulent scheme allegedly also involved the North Korean workers stealing sensitive data, such as source code, from the companies they were working for, such as from an unnamed California-based defense contractor “that develops artificial intelligence-powered equipment and technologies.”

Submission + - Musk compromises government systems (reuters.com) 5

Submitted by evil_aaronm
evil_aaronm writes: Elon Musk and a crew of loyalists infiltrated the Office of Personnel Management and locked out legitimate employees, compromising system security, and employee data.

Submission + - Encrypted Snapchat message led to panic response (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A Spanish court has cleared a British man of public disorder, after he joked to friends about blowing up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca.

Aditya Verma admitted he told friends in July 2022: "On my way to blow up the plane. I'm a member of the Taliban."

But he said he had made the joke in a private Snapchat group and never intended to "cause public distress"....

A key question in the case was how the message got out, considering Snapchat is an encrypted app.

One theory, raised in the trial, was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network. But a spokesperson for the airport told BBC News that its network "does not have that capability".

In the judge's resolution, cited by the Europa Press news agency, it was said that the message, "for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace".

The message was made "in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume... that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message," the judgement added.'

So does the UK's GCHQ have a hack into Snapchat? Or how else did it get to the security services?

Submission + - The EU Will Finally Free Windows Users From Bing (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft will soon let Windows 11 users in the European Economic Area (EEA) disable its Bing web search, remove Microsoft Edge, and even add custom web search providers — including Google if it’s willing to build one — into its Windows Search interface. All of these Windows 11 changes are part of key tweaks that Microsoft has to make to its operating system to comply with the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act, which comes into effect in March 2024. Microsoft will be required to meet a slew of interoperability and competition rules, including allowing users “to easily un-install pre-installed apps or change default settings on operating systems, virtual assistants, or web browsers that steer them to the products and services of the gatekeeper and provide choice screens for key services.”

Alongside clearly marking which apps are system components in Windows 11, Microsoft is also responding by adding the ability to uninstall the following apps: Camera, Cortana, Web Search from Microsoft Bing in the EEA, Microsoft Edge in the EEA, and Photos. Only Windows 11 users in the EEA will be able to fully remove Microsoft Edge and the Bing-powered web search from Windows Search. Microsoft could easily extend this to all Windows 11 users, but it’s limiting this extra functionality to EEA markets to comply with the rules.

In EEA markets — which includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway — Windows 11 users will also get access to new interoperability features for feeds in the Windows Widgets board and web search in Windows Search. This will allow search providers like Google to extend the main Windows Search interface with their own custom web searches. Microsoft will allow EEA machines to remove the Bing results, so Google could provide its own search results here and effectively become the default if a user has uninstalled Bing. “If the user has more than one search provider installed, Windows Search will show the last one used when opened,” explains Aaron Grady, partner group product manager for Windows, in a statement to The Verge.

Submission + - RATM Refuses To Play Venues That Use Facial Recognition (futurism.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Rock band "Rage Against the Machine" is living up to its name by signing a pledge to boycott venues that use facial recognition technology.

Band cofounders Tom Morello and Zack De La Rocha are, as Rolling Stone reports, among the many signatories of a pledge from the nonprofit Fight for the Future, which seeks, among other things, to get Congress to pass a bill banning facial recognition tech.

"In recent years, a coalition of musicians, fans, and human rights groups successfully got more than 40 of the world’s largest music festivals, including Bonnaroo and Coachella, to say they won’t use facial recognition at events," the pledge reads. "But now this tech is starting to spread — not only as a surveillance tool, but also as a form of 'paperless' ticketing and payment."

Indeed, Rolling Stone revealed last year that New York City's iconic Madison Square Garden arena was caught using the technology to surveil "adversaries" of the venue and remove them — yet another dystopian example of the tech, which has also been used to track the movements of public housing residents and by law enforcement.

"This invasive biometric surveillance isn’t safe," the Fight for the Future pledge continues, "especially for Black and brown people who have been falsely arrested or ejected from public places due to the tech’s baked-in discrimination."

Along with Rage Against the Machine, bands like Anti-Flag, Wheatus, Speedy Ortiz, and more than 100 others have signed the pledge, as well as a wide variety of music venues.

Thus far, the non-profit's track record with anti-biometric campaigning has been pretty successful. Last year, it successfully got Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater to abandon plans to use Amazon's palm scanning software after Morello and Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna signed another pledge in protest of it.

That artists, venues, and even some elected officials are pushing back against this scary tech is definitely a good thing — but given that big names like Taylor Swift are using it regardless, and that Congress still hasn't passed legislation against the practice, it's only a small step in the right direction.

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