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Texas Sues TP-Link Over China Links and Security Vulnerabilities

Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/18/2026 - 16:25
TP-Link is facing legal action from the state of Texas for allegedly misleading consumers with "Made in Vietnam" claims despite China-dominated manufacturing and supply chains, and for marketing its devices as secure despite reported firmware vulnerabilities exploited by Chinese state-sponsored actors. The Register: The Lone Star State's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is filing the lawsuit against California-based TP-Link Systems Inc., which was originally founded in China, accusing it of deceptively marketing its networking devices and alleging that its security practices and China-based affiliations allowed Chinese state-sponsored actors to access devices in the homes of American consumers. It is understood that this is just the first of several lawsuits that the Office of the Attorney General intends to file this week against "China-aligned companies," as part of a coordinated effort to hold China accountable under Texas law. The lawsuit claims that TP-Link is the dominant player in the US networking and smart home market, controlling 65 percent of the American market for network devices. It also alleges that TP-Link represents to American consumers that the devices it markets and sells within the US are manufactured in Vietnam, and that consistent with this, the devices it sells in the American market carry a "Made in Vietnam" sticker.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Study of 12,000 EU Firms Finds AI's Productivity Gains Are Real

Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/18/2026 - 15:43
A study of more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption causally increases labour productivity by 4% on average across the EU, and that it does so without reducing employment in the short run. Researchers from the Bank for International Settlements and the European Investment Bank used an instrumental variable strategy that matched EU firms to comparable US firms by sector, size, investment intensity and other characteristics, then used the AI adoption rates of those US counterparts as a proxy for exogenous AI exposure among European firms. The productivity gains, however, skewed heavily toward medium and large companies. Among large firms, 45% had deployed AI, compared to just 24% of small firms. The study also found that complementary investments mattered enormously: an extra percentage point of spending on workforce training amplified AI's productivity effect by 5.9%, and an extra point on software and data infrastructure added 2.4%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What Is GRUB In Linux - commandlinux.com

Linux News - Wed, 02/18/2026 - 15:11
What Is GRUB In Linux  commandlinux.com
Categories: Linux

Bank of America Rewards: Higher Balance Requirements for Credit Card Boosts + New Monthly Credits (Effective May 2026)

MyMoneyBlog.com - Wed, 02/18/2026 - 14:35

Bank of America has a press release that their “Preferred Rewards” program is changing to “BofA Rewards” on May 27, 2026 (hat tip Bogleheads). Notable changes include the tier names, their required balances, and higher requirements for credit card rewards boosts. Here is a comparison of the old and new tiers.

Preferred Rewards Tiers (OLD; Current)

  • Gold – $20,000 to < $50,000 combined balance
  • Platinum – $50,000 to < $100,000 combined balance
  • Platinum Honors – $100,000 to < $1,000,000 combined balance
  • Diamond – $1,000,000 or more combined balance

BofA Rewards Tiers (NEW; Effective May 2026)

  • Member – Less than $30,000 combined balance
  • Preferred Plus – $30,000 to < $100,000 combined balance
  • Preferred Honors – $100,000 to < $1,000,000 combined balance
  • Premier – $1,000,000 or more combined balance

Combined balances refers to the three-month average account balance across qualifying Bank of America and Merrill accounts. Qualifying accounts include:

  • Bank of America deposit accounts: Bank of America Advantage Banking, savings, money market savings, CD and IRA accounts
  • Merrill® investment accounts, such as the Cash Management Account (CMA) and IRA accounts
  • 529 plans appearing on your Merrill statement
  • Revocable grantor trust accounts

The big negative change is that you now need the Premier ($1,000,000+) tier to get the maximum 75% boost in credit card rewards. That’s a huge 10X increase in the balance required.

New BofA Rewards Tiers x Credit Card Rewards Boosts

  • Member – Credit card rewards boost: 10%
  • Preferred Plus ($30k+) – Credit card rewards boost: 25%
  • Preferred Honors ($100k+) – Credit card rewards boost: 50%
  • Premier ($1M+) – Credit card rewards boost: 75%

Many people have moved over stock holdings to a self-directed brokerage account at Merrill Edge in order to qualify for some of these rewards. Going from a 75% boost to 50% boost may mean going from 2.6% cash back on everything to 2.25% cash back, unless your combined balances meet the $1 million mark. A disappointing change.

A possible positive offset are new monthly credits on the higher tiers if you make certain purchases on your BofA debit card linked to your BofA checking account.

New BofA Rewards Tiers x Monthly Debit Card Credits

  • Member – No subscription credits
  • Preferred Plus ($30k+) – No subscription credits
  • Preferred Honors ($100k+) – Up to $8 per month in statement credits for “several pre-determined subscription services” (up to $96/year).
  • Premier ($1M+) – Up to $15 per month in statement credits for “several pre-determined subscription services” (up to $180/year).

BofA has not announced the eligible subscriptions yet, but hopefully it is a flexible category. This will be an important detail, and it could offset a big part of lost cashback rewards for those with lower credit card spending.

Current Preferred Rewards members will be automatically enrolled in BofA Rewards. The terms state that current Gold and Platinum tier members will initially be changed to the Preferred Plus tier, even with the new balance mismatches.

Categories: Finance

Linus Torvalds on How Linux Went From One-Man Show To Group Effort

Linux.Slashdot.org - Wed, 02/18/2026 - 13:45
Linus Torvalds has told The Register how Linux went from a solo hobby project on a single 386 PC in Helsinki to a genuinely collaborative effort, and the path involved crowdsourced checks, an FTP mirror at MIT, and a licensing decision that opened the floodgates. Torvalds released the first public snapshot, Linux 0.02, on October 5, 1991, on a Finnish FTP server -- about 10,000 lines of code that he had cross-compiled under Minix. He originally wanted to call it "Freax," but his friend Ari Lemmke, who set up the server, named the directory "Linux" instead. Early contributor Theodore Ts'o set up the first North American mirror on his VAXstation at MIT, since the sole 64 kbps link between Finland and the US made downloads painful. That mirror gave developers on this side of the Atlantic their first practical access to the kernel. Another early developer, Dirk Hohndel, recalled that Torvalds initially threw away incoming patches and reimplemented them from scratch -- a habit he eventually dropped because it did not scale. When Torvalds could not afford to upgrade his underpowered 386, developer H. Peter Anvin collected checks from contributors through his university mailbox and wired the funds to Finland, covering the international banking fees himself. Torvalds got a 486DX/2. In 1992, he moved the kernel to the GPL, and the first full distributions appeared in 1992-1993, turning Linux from a kernel into installable systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Categories: Linux

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