Month: February 2021

Enlarge / The arm of the law can be long indeed. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Imagine for a moment that you work remotely—as so many now do in the COVID era—from a comfortable spare bedroom in your New Jersey home. Your employer is nominally based in New York City, but thanks to the pandemic, you didn't even cross the Hudson River last year. So how is it that New York claims you owe it a pile of cash for state taxes?

Maybe this doesn't sound terrible; after all, New York's tax rates don't differ so dramatically from New Jersey's. But imagine instead that you took the opportunity provided by telecommuting to move to a "no income tax" state like Texas. Come tax time, you are planning on a big fat nothingburger of a state tax bill. And yet, New York could still claim state tax on your earnings. Now we're talking a serious—and perhaps completely unplanned—financial hit.

Welcome, telecommuters, to the nightmare that can result when you and the state disagree about "where" you work.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | metamorworks)

Verizon and AT&T dominated the US government's latest spectrum auction, spending a combined $68.9 billion on licenses in the upper 3GHz band.

Verizon's winning bids totaled $45.45 billion, while AT&T's came in at $23.41 billion. T-Mobile was third with $9.34 billion as the three biggest wireless carriers accounted for the vast majority of the $81.17 billion in winning bids, the Federal Communications Commission said in results released yesterday. US Cellular, a regional carrier, was a distant fourth in spending, at $1.28 billion, but came in third, ahead of T-Mobile, in the number of licenses won.

The auction distributed 280MHz worth of spectrum in the "C-Band" between 3.7GHz and 3.98GHz. This spectrum will help carriers boost network capacity with mid-band frequencies that cover large geographic areas and penetrate walls more effectively than the higher millimeter-wave frequencies that provide the fastest 5G speeds to very limited geographic areas.

Enlarge / The Framework laptop certainly seems slim enough in this studio shot. Note the seams around the USB-C ports on the side—those are user-replaceable modules. (credit: Framework)

Laptops these days are slimmer, sleeker, and lighter than ever—but their repairability and configurability are taking enormous hits in the process. Framework is seeking to roll back the clock in a good way with its first product, the upcoming Framework 13.5-inch laptop.

Following the lead of companies like Fairphone, the startup is focused on respecting users' right to repair by building systems focused on modular design, with components that are easily configured, replaced, and even upgraded.

Not some massive block

Although Framework's raison d'être revolves around modularity, the company clearly understands that it can't sacrifice sleek, lightweight design if it wants to maintain a wide appeal. It describes its first product, the upcoming Framework laptop, as "similar to a Dell XPS... thin, not some massive block." The early product shots and specifications seem to bear that out:

Enlarge / HODL! (credit: Getty Images)

GameStop's stock price saw yet another sudden surge in late trading hours on Wednesday. After opening at 44.70 that morning, the price shot up from $52.41 at 3pm to $91.71 just before the market closed at 4pm.

That 75 percent increase in a single hour was followed shortly after by a peak price of $200 in post-market trading Wednesday evening. As of this writing, the stock is currently selling at about $132 in highly volatile early market trading.

The sudden surge obviously brings to mind GameStop's similarly quick stock price run-up in late January. Since peaking at over $400 during that extremely volatile week, though, GameStop's stock price had settled to something resembling calm, closing between $40 and $60 every day since February 8.