Month: September 2021

Enlarge / The Android 12 logo.

Android 10 was released on September 3, 2019, and Android 11 came out on September 8, 2020. So where is this year's Android 12 release?

Instead of the final Android 12 release this month, Google pushed out Android 12 Beta 5 and said the final release was "weeks" away. A new report from XDA Developers' Mishaal Rahman claims to narrow things down a bit, saying that Monday, October 4, is the magic date.

XDA says it has an internal Google document detailing the "tentative" release date for Android 12. The document actually only lists when the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code will be released, but the developer source code release and the consumer Pixel release are usually on the same day.

Enlarge / The House Ways and Means Committee has proposed a wide-ranging overhaul of the current electric vehicle incentives as part of the infrastructure bill. (credit: Stadtratte)

On Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee released a markup of its proposed budget reconciliation bill. There's a ton of information in the $3.5 trillion plan, but today, we're interested in a small portion of the 645-page "Budget Reconciliation Legislative Recommendations Relating to Infrastructure Financing, Green Energy, Social Safety Net, and Prescription Drug Pricing" section—specifically the parts that deal with incentives to decarbonize our vehicle fleet.

Beginning in 2010, the Federal government has incentivized people to buy or lease new plug-in vehicles by offering them a tax credit. The credit is based on battery size, starting at $2,917 for a vehicle with a 5 kWh battery and providing an additional $417 per extra kWh, topping out at $7,500. However, the credit only applies to the first 200,000 plug-ins sold by an OEM, at which point the credit begins to expire. To date, only Tesla and General Motors have sold enough plug-in vehicles to see their credits sunset.

If the budget reconciliation bill passes as is, the current tax credit (known as 30D) goes away, to be replaced by several new purchasing incentives for greener, more efficient vehicles.

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  The new Kindle home screen ditches the top row of buttons in favor of a large search bar and a two-tab design that toggles between the Home screen and your Library. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]

Amazon's Kindle e-readers get new software updates regularly, and they're mostly of the nondescript, invisible "performance improvements and bug fixes" variety. But the most recent operating system update (version 5.13.7) is rolling out now, and it refreshes the device's user interface for the first time since 2016 or so. Amazon says that redesigns for the Home and Library screens, which are mostly untouched in the current Kindle update, will be coming "later this year."

The software update that enables the new interface began rolling out in August, but because Kindles only install updates automatically when they're charging and connected to Wi-Fi, it will be a few weeks or months before all supported Kindles will have a chance to grab the update (mine only installed it over this past weekend). To help you navigate the changes, the gallery above gives a brief tour of everything that has changed.

The new update is available on most Kindles released in or after 2015, including the 7th- and 10th-generation Kindle Paperwhite, the 8th-, 9th-, and 10th-generation Kindle Oasis, and the 8th- and 10th-generation standard Kindle. Older "7th-generation" Kindle devices like 2014's Kindle Voyage don't appear to be supported. If your Kindle hasn't installed the update, the link above will give you instructions for installing it manually.