Tech
Assistive Technology: Navigate Safely With Strutt EV1
At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, Singapore-based startup Strutt introduced the EV1, a powered personal mobility device that uses lidar, cameras, and onboard computing for collision avoidance. Unlike manually-steered powered wheelchairs, the EV1 assists with navigation in both indoor and outdoor environments—stopping or rerouting itself before a collision can occur.
Strutt describes its approach as “shared control,” in which the user sets direction and speed, while the device intervenes to avoid unsafe motion.
“The problem isn’t always disability,” says Strutt cofounder and CEO Tony Hong. “Sometimes people are just tired. They have limited energy, and mobility shouldn’t consume it.”
Building a mobility platform was not Hong’s original ambition. Trained in optics and sensor systems, he previously worked in aerospace and robotics. From 2016 to 2019, he led the development of lidar systems for drones at Shenzhen, China-based DJI, a leading manufacturer of consumer and professional drones. Hong then left DJI for a position as an assistant professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen—a school known for its research in robotics, human augmentation, sensors, and rehabilitation engineering.
However, he says, demographic trends around him proved hard to ignore. Populations in Asia, Europe, and North America are aging rapidly. More people are living longer, with limited stamina, slower reaction times, or balance challenges. So, Hong says he left academia to develop technology that would help people facing mobility limitations.
Not a Wheelchair—an EV
EV1 combines two lidar units, two cameras, 10 time-of-flight depth sensors, and six ultrasonic sensors. Sensor data feeds into onboard computing that performs object detection and path planning.
“We need accuracy at a few centimeters,” Hong says. “Otherwise, you’re hitting door frames.”
Using the touchscreen interface, users can select a destination within the mapped environment. The onboard system calculates a safe route and guides the vehicle at a reduced speed of about 3 miles per hour. The rider can override the route instantly with joystick input. The system even supports voice commands, allowing the user to direct the EV1 to waypoints saved in its memory.
The user can say, for example, “Go to the fridge,” and it will chart a course to the refrigerator and go there, avoiding obstacles along the way.
The Strutt EV1 puts both joystick controls and a lidar-view of the environment in front of the device’s user. Strutt
Driving EV1 in manual mode, the rider retains full control, with vibration feedback warning of nearby obstacles. In “copilot” mode, the vehicle prevents direct collisions by stopping before impact. In “copilot plus,” it can steer around obstacles while continuing in the intended direction of travel.
“We don’t call it autonomous driving,” Hong says. “The user is always responsible and can take control instantly.”
Hong says Strutt has also kept its users’ digital privacy in mind. All perception, planning, and control computations, he says, occur onboard the device. Sensor data is not transmitted unless the user chooses to upload logs for diagnostics. Camera and microphone activity is visibly indicated, and wireless communications are encrypted. Navigation and obstacle avoidance function without cloud connectivity.
“We don’t think of this as a wheelchair,” Hong says. “We think of it as an everyday vehicle.”
Strutt promotes EV1’s use for both outdoor and indoor environments—offering high-precision sensing capabilities to navigate confined spaces. Strutt
To ensure that the EV1 could withstand years of shuttling a user back and forth inside their home and around their neighborhood, the Strutt team subjected the mobility vehicle to two million roller cycles—mechanical simulation testing that allows engineers to estimate how well the motors, bearings, suspension, and frame will hold up over time.
The EV1’s 600-watt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery provides 32 kilometers of range—enough for a full day of errands, indoor navigation, and neighborhood travel. A smaller 300-watt-hour version, designed to comply with airline lithium-battery limits, delivers 16 km. Charging from zero to 80 percent takes two hours.
Might These EVs Be Covered by Insurance?
The EV1 retails for US $7,500—a price that could place it outside the reach of people without deep pockets. For now, advanced sensors and embedded computing keep manufacturing cost high, while insurance reimbursement frameworks for AI-assisted mobility devices depend on where a person lives.
“A retail price of $7,500 raises serious equity concerns,” says Erick Rocha, communications and development coordinator at the Los Angeles-based advocacy organization Disability Voices United,. “Many mobility device users in the United States rely on Medicaid,” the government insurance program for people with limited incomes. “Access must not be restricted to those who can afford to pay out of pocket.”
Medicaid coverage for high-tech mobility devices varies widely by state, and some states have rules that create significant barriers to approval (especially for non-standard or more specialized equipment).
Even in states that do cover mobility devices, similar types of hurdles often show up. Almost all states require prior approval for powered mobility devices, and the process can be time-consuming and documentation-heavy. Many states rigidly define what “medically necessary” means. They may require a detailed prescription describing the features of the mobility device and why the patient’s needs cannot be met with a simpler mobility aid such as a walker, cane, or standard manual wheelchair. Some states’ processes include a comprehensive in-person exam, documenting how the impairment described by the clinician limits activities of daily living such as toileting, dressing, bathing, or eating. Even if a person overcomes those hurdles, a state Medicaid program could deny coverage if a device doesn’t fit neatly into existing Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System billing codes
“Sensor-assisted systems can improve safety,” Rocha says. “But the question is whether a device truly meets the lived, day-to-day realities of people with limited mobility.”
Hong says that Strutt, founded in 2023, is betting that falling sensor prices and advances in embedded processing now make commercial deployment of the EV1 feasible.
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Tech
SC State Senator Proposes Bill To Remove Religious Exemptions For Vaccines In Public School Children
from the thank-god dept
The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully out of date, or purposefully obfuscating the true degree of the problem at worst. That public tracker, which is updated every Friday, claims a current nationwide count of confirmed measles cases at 910. The current measles count in South Carolina alone, for this year, is 933. Once again we have a federal government program run by RFK Jr. that is behind, unprepared, and impotent.
In the absence of federal leadership, the states will attempt to take action on their own. And sometimes those actions will result in federal pushback from the very same people who are causing the problem through inaction in the first place. I have no doubt that will be the case with a South Carolina state senator’s attempt at a bill to remove the religious exemptions for vaccinations for public schools in the state.
The context here is that South Carolina has one of the most wide open programs for obtaining a religious exemption for a childhood vaccine in the country. I think only Florida might be considered more wide open, given that state has mostly removed all vaccination requirements for public schooling. In South Carolina, you essentially just have to whisper the word “religion” and you’re exempt.
But that wont’ be the case if Senator Margie Mathews gets her way.
Senator Margie Bright Matthews (D-Dist. 45) has introduced a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for measles vaccinations for students in public K–12 schools and childcare settings. It’s a move that’s drawing both support and criticism across the state.
Matthews said the rising measles cases prompted her to step in with the proposed legislation in an effort to bolster public health and keep communities safe.
“The goal of the bill is simply to protect children and stop the spread of measles in South Carolina,” Matthews said.
Yes, of course it is. And the pushback that has already begun within the state is absurd. I know enough about religion, as well as religious demographics, to know with absolute certainty that the number of “religious exemptions” in South Carolina doesn’t remotely comport with the number of religious adherents to any religion that has anything to say about vaccinations. South Carolina is largely Protestant and Catholic, for instance. While Protestants have traditionally been in the vaccine hesitant camp, I have never heard a serious biblical argument made for that stance. Were one to even exist, I’m confident most of the people applying for exemptions couldn’t make it.
Instead, these people are vaccine hesitant for entirely non-religious reasons. And that, I will say, is their right. But this legislation suggests that nobody’s right to their religion includes the right to put the rest of their community in danger.
Senator Matthews stressed that the goal of the bill is to increase vaccination rates and limit the spread of measles.
“I plan on reminding them every time we have new cases in South Carolina, I plan on writing and requesting that my bill receive a hearing before the committee, so that we can have the influencers from South Carolina that are against this bill and that are for this bill, I would like to have public hearing in reference to it,” she said.
Despite my strict adherence to being non-religious, I am, in fact, sensitive to ensuring that we maintain the secular rights of those who don’t agree with me. It’s that secularism that has allowed the flourishing of both free speech and thought in this country as well as, perhaps ironically, of religion itself. All of that is just aces as far as I’m concerned.
But just like someone’s freedom of movement ends the moment their fist makes contact with my face, so too does the rights of religious freedom end at the point where it puts everyone else’s children in danger.
Filed Under: anti-vax, margie bright matthews, measles, religious freedom, south carolina, vaccine mandates
Tech
Cowardly And Complicit CBS Pulls Colbert Interview With Dem Politician To Please Republicans
from the “pathetic,”-said-eeyore dept
The right wing extremist takeover of CBS continues to go just about how you thought it might.
CBS is under fire yet again, this time for forcing Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” to cancel a scheduled appearance with Texas Democratic State Representative James Talarico because it might upset our full-diapered president. Colbert acknowledged the cancellation on his Monday evening show, saying CBS lawyers explicitly forbade him from broadcasting the interview:
“He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”
Colbert says he was also told by network lawyers that he also couldn’t mention he was told by CBS to not have him on, a request he proceeded to immediately ignore in a lengthy rant about Brendan Carr and the censorial, authoritarian, and pathetic Trump FCC:
“Let’s just call this what it is: Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diaper.”
As we’ve noted previously, Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr has been threatening to leverage the “equal time” rule embedded in Section 315 of the Communications Act to take action against daytime and late night talk shows that don’t provide “equal” time to Republican ideology. He most recently tried to threaten ABC’s The View.
Carr’s goal isn’t equality; it’s the disproportionate coddling and normalization of an extremist U.S. right wing political movement that’s increasingly despised by the actual public. It’s also an attempt to create a climate where media giants are afraid to host voices critical of the president for fear of being drawn into expensive and costly legal battles, even though Carr has little hope of actually winning any.
The “equal time” rule is a dated relic that would be largely impossible for the Trump court-eviscerated FCC to actually enforce. The rule was originally created to apply specifically to political candidate appearances on broadcast television, since back then, pre-internet, a TV appearance on one of the big three networks could make or break and politician attempting to run for office.
In the years since, the rule has seen numerous exemptions and, with the steady evisceration of the regulatory state by the right wing, is not something viewed as seriously enforceable.
Enter Carr, who is distorting this rule to suggest that it needs to apply to every guest a late-night talk show has. It’s a lazy effort by Carr to pretend his censorship effort sits on solid legal footing. It does not. The FCC’s lone Democratic Commissioner accurately pointed out that Carr has no authority to do any of this:
It’s a legal fight that CBS could easily win, but because the network is owned by Trump billionaire donor Larry Ellison, it’s too feckless, pathetic, and corrupted to bother. Ellison very clearly purchased CBS (and installed contrarian troll Bari Weiss at CBS News) to create a safe space for right wing interests; one of his first orders of business was firing Colbert last year. His show is now scheduled to end in May.
Ellison has been hoping the Trump DOJ will scuttle Netflix’s pending merger with Warner Brothers so that Ellison can further expand his planned media empire with the inclusion of Warner IP, CNN, and HBO. To gain approval of that transition, CBS lawyers and executives are further incentivized to be abject cowards.
The ham-fisted effort by Trump and his FCC earlobe nibblers will, of course, only act to drive more attention to Colbert’s interview with Talarico on YouTube. As of my writing this sentence, the video has over a million and a half views, a number I suspect will be significantly higher in short order. The comment section is filled with people with lots of nice things to say about CBS and Brendan Carr:

Obviously this is an ugly assault on free speech and the First Amendment by a sad and desperate authoritarian government, but at its heart it’s just foundationally, historically pathetic. It’s also another sad chapter in the embarrassing capitulation of what’s left of modern corporate broadcast media, which is positively begging for irrelevance at the hands of more modern alternatives.
Filed Under: brendan carr, censorship, equal time, fcc, first amendment, free speech, james talarico, media, stephen colbert, trump
Companies: cbs
Tech
Tesla dodges 30-day suspension in California after removing Autopilot
The California Department of Motor Vehicles will not suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses for 30 days because the EV maker has stopped using the term “Autopilot” in the marketing of its vehicles in the state.
The decision, issued late Tuesday, means Tesla can continue selling its EVs in California without interruption and officially settles a case that has been dragging on for nearly three years. California is Tesla’s biggest U.S. market.
In November 2023, the DMV filed accusations that Tesla violated state law by using deceptive marketing of Autopilot, its basic advanced driver assistance system, as well as its more capable Full Self-Driving driver assistance software. The state regulator argued that the terms mislead customers and distorted the capabilities of the advanced driver assistance systems.
Tesla stopped using the term “Full Self-Driving Capability,” and instead used Full Self-Driving (Supervised) to more accurately describe the system and clarify that drivers were still required to monitor it. But Tesla held on to the Autopilot term, prompting the DMV to refer the case to an administrative law judge at the California Office of Administrative Hearings.
In December, the administrative law judge agreed with the DMV’s request to suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses in the state for 30 days as a penalty for its actions. The DMV agreed with the ruling, but didn’t pounce; instead, the state regulator gave Tesla 60 days to comply.
“Since then, Tesla took corrective action and has stopped using the misleading term ‘Autopilot’ in the marketing of its electric vehicles in California,” the DMV stated in a release posted on its website. “Tesla had previously modified its use of the term ‘Full Self-Driving’ to clarify that driver supervision is required. By taking this prescribed action, Tesla will avoid having its dealer and manufacturer licenses suspended in the state for 30 days by the DMV.”
Tesla didn’t just stop using the term Autopilot, though. In January, the company discontinued Autopilot in the U.S. and Canada altogether. The move not only helped it comply with the DMV but was also viewed as a way to boost adoption of FSD, which unlike Autopilot, requires the owner to pay for the upgraded system.
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FSD Supervised, which until February 14 required an $8,000 one-time fee, is now only available through a monthly subscription of $99. That subscription fee is expected to increase as the system becomes more capable, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said.
Tech
Hey Brett Kavanaugh, This Is On You:
from the kavanaugh-stop dept
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” —Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, September 8, 2025
From that one line, which Anil Kalhan dubbed “Kavanaugh Stops,” we see story after story of just how disconnected from reality, and the Constitution, Brett Kavanaugh was in that statement.
In short: Brett Kavanaugh has some explaining to do.
Just a few quotes:
My name is George Retes. I am — I was born and raised here in Ventura, California, I’m 26 years old and I am an Iraq combat veteran…. I was going to work like normal. I show up. ICE is there. There’s kind of like a roadblock. I get out. I identify myself, that I’m a U.S. citizen, that I’m just trying to get to work…. I’m getting ready to leave and they surround my car, start banging on it, start shouting these contradictory orders…. Even though I was giving them no reason, they still felt the need to — one agent knelt my back and another agent knelt on my neck. And during that time, I’m just pleading with them that I couldn’t breathe…. I was an isolation. I was in basically this concrete cell. I was stripped naked in like a hospital gown. And they leave the lights on 24/7…. They just came out and they said that I was violent and that I assaulted agents. Why lie when it’s on video of everything that happened? Why lie?
That’s just one person’s story in that PBS piece. There are two others as well. And we already know hundreds of other US Citizens have been kicked, dragged, beaten, and detained for days. It feels like every few days we hear about more such stories. And those are only the ones that get attention. You have to assume that there are many more ones that haven’t yet reached the public.
It feels like perhaps Justice Kavanaugh owes us all an explanation. And an apology. And a new ruling that makes it much clearer that immigration enforcement officials have no right to just randomly stop and detain people without a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, and those facts need to be more than “skin color” or “they were being annoying to us.”
Filed Under: 4th amendment, brett kavanaugh, cbp, due process, george retes, ice, immigration, kavanaugh stops, us citizens
Tech
Ford turns to F1 and bounties to build a $30,000 electric truck
Ford is promising to deliver an EV truck next year that starts at $30,000 and can compete with Chinese automakers without undermining profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a bounty program will help the company hit that target, Ford said Tuesday.
It will have to. Ford took a $19.5 billion hit in December and ended production of its battery-electric F-150 Lightning. It can’t afford for this new EV business strategy to fall flat.
Ford’s bet on a line of affordable EVs began several years ago with a skunkworks team led by Alan Clarke, a 12-year Tesla veteran. Pieces of its plan were revealed last August, when Ford said it would ditch its traditional moving assembly line and invest $2 billion in its Louisville factory to adopt a new production system that promises to speed up manufacturing by 15%.
The company said at the time that its line of EVs would be built on a universal platform with single-piece aluminum unicastings — large components cast as one piece to eliminate parts and allow for faster assembly — and lithium iron phosphate batteries with tech licensed from China’s CATL.
Now Ford is sharing more specifics in a flurry of blog and social media posts on how it will fulfill its promise of a desirable EV truck that will be $20,000 cheaper than the average new vehicle while still generating profits. Ford didn’t share specs like the range, features, or charging times of this future EV. But it did reveal how it plans to build lighter, cheaper, more efficient EVs made with fewer parts.
It all starts with the universal EV platform, or UEV. The platform will underpin a midsized truck first, then could support a sedan, crossover, three-row SUV, and even small commercial vans, according to Clarke. The UEV is Ford’s first “clean sheet” EV built from the ground up — a strategic shift for the company, which built its Mustang Mach-E and the Lightning EVs using existing infrastructure and manufacturing practices.
“It’s a platform that is built around efficiency,” Clarke said in a briefing with the media. “It’s built around affordability to be able to make long-range electric vehicle travel affordable to more people.”
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To achieve that, Clarke set out to create a new culture seeded by talent from Formula 1 and companies like Apple, Lucid Motors, Rivian, and Tesla, as well as Auto Motive Power, a startup acquired by Ford in 2023. The team, which includes about 450 people at its base in Long Beach, California, and 200 people in an office in Palo Alto, also adopted a bounty program to help engineers understand how their day-to-day decisions impact the customer and the end product, Clarke said in an interview with reporters.
The focus of the bounty program was efficiency. Numerical metrics were assigned to every aspect of the UEV, including vehicle mass, aerodynamic drag, and even specific vehicle parts. In practice, this meant Ford might decide to use a more expensive part if it helped decrease the weight of the EV, thereby making it more efficient and cost-effective.
“We’ve been very focused on making sure that the cost that we’re moving from the product doesn’t remove value,” Clarke said. One example is that even the base trim of the EV truck will have a power-folding mirror, a premium feature on most vehicles, because it decreases aerodynamic drag, according to Clarke. The company saved money by using one motor, instead of two, to handle the mirror adjustment and the folding.

That obsession with efficiency included a team of ex-Formula 1 engineers who worked closely with Ford’s design team. The result, according to Ford, is a midsized EV truck that is 15% more aerodynamically efficient than any other pickup truck on the market today.
This team of former F1 engineers used 3D-printed and machined parts to create a Lego-like build for its test vehicle. Thousands of 3D-printed components, which are accurate within fractions of a millimeter of Ford’s simulations and could be swapped out in minutes, were used to measure aerodynamics. These Lego-like prototypes were used in wind tunnel testing early on — and often — to measure aerodynamics, a process that Ford traditionally used only when the design of a vehicle was nearly complete.
A natural place to focus was on the battery, which can account for about 40% of a vehicle’s total expense. A lighter, more efficient vehicle allows Ford to use a smaller battery, which reduces cost. The end result, according to Clarke, will be an EV truck with about 15% more range, or 50 miles, than an equivalent pickup powered by gas.
The efficiency push also led the team to adopt manufacturing tactics adopted and popularized by Tesla, including the use of aluminum unicastings and moving from a 12-volt system to a 48-volt power system that will be used for some vehicle functions.
Ford also upended the electric vehicle architecture of the UEV, taking a zonal approach similar to Tesla and Rivian. Instead of scattering dozens of electronic control units (ECUs), or computers, throughout the vehicle, Ford has integrated multiple vehicle functions into five main modules. This reduces complexity, cost, and copper usage and helped make the EV truck’s wire harness 4,000 feet shorter and 22 pounds lighter than one of its first-generation electric vehicles, according to Luccas Di Tullio, a software engineer at Ford who previously worked at Auto Motive Power.
Di Tullio said the company carried the same philosophy to the power electronic components, finding ways to share components and reduce parts with a single module that manages power distribution and battery management and provides AC power back to a customer’s home during an outage.
Ford also developed its own software for those five main ECUs, down to the application layer, according to Clarke. Because Ford owns the software — to the lowest level — it becomes very portable, Clarke said.
“Other than being able to control the infotainment, what shows up on the screens, [and] how you interact with the vehicle, all of the body controls then are directly coupled,” he said. “So you can imagine that many of the experiences that can only be created by coupling all the different sensors around the vehicle are now at our fingertips and under our own control.”
Tech
Preserving The Web Is Not The Problem. Losing It Is.
from the libraries-matter dept
Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations—including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit—are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. As stated in the article, these organizations are blocking access largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using the Wayback Machine as a backdoor for large-scale scraping.
These concerns are understandable, but unfounded. The Wayback Machine is not intended to be a backdoor for large-scale commercial scraping and, like others on the web today, we expend significant time and effort working to prevent such abuse. Whatever legitimate concerns people may have about generative AI, libraries are not the problem, and blocking access to web archives is not the solution; doing so risks serious harm to the public record.
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity and a federal depository library, has been building its archive of the world wide web since 1996. Today, the Wayback Machine provides access to thirty years’ worth of web history and culture. It has become an essential resource for journalists, researchers, courts, and the public.
For three decades the Wayback Machine has peacefully coexisted with the development of the web, including the websites mentioned in the article. Our mission is simple: to preserve knowledge and make it accessible for research, accountability, and historical understanding.
As tech policy writer Mike Masnick recently warned, blocking preservation efforts risks a profound unintended consequence: “significant chunks of our journalistic record and historical cultural context simply… disappear.” He notes that when trusted publications are absent from archives, we risk creating a historical record biased against quality journalism.
There is no question that generative AI has changed the landscape of the world wide web. But it is important to be clear about what the Wayback Machine is, and what it is not.
The Wayback Machine is built for human readers. We use rate limiting, filtering, and monitoring to prevent abusive access, and we watch for and actively respond to new scraping patterns as they emerge.
We acknowledge that systems can always be improved. We are actively working with publishers on technical solutions to strengthen our systems and address legitimate concerns without erasing the historical record.
What concerns me most is the unintended consequence of these blocks. When libraries are blocked from archiving the web, the public loses access to history. Journalists lose tools for accountability. Researchers lose evidence. The web becomes more fragile and more fragmented, and history becomes easier to rewrite.
Generative AI presents real challenges in today’s information ecosystem. But preserving the time-honored role of libraries and archives in society has never been more important. We’ve worked alongside news organizations for decades. Let’s continue working together in service of an open, referenceable, and enduring web.
Mark Graham is the Director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive
Filed Under: ai, archives, journalism, libraries, preserving history, scraping, wayback machine
Companies: internet archive
Tech
The Best Way to Pay Your Taxes Online (2026)
The IRS website has a helpful step-by-step guide to walk you through the process, and even has IRS-certified volunteers to help with your taxes if you have a disability or speak limited English.
Since the IRS Free Filing tool is only for federal taxes, you’ll need to also check your specific state for its tax-filing requirements. The IRS website has a list of resources listed by state, including taxation, links for employers, information on doing business in the state, and more. Although this list hasn’t been updated since 2023, it’s also a good jumping-off point to find tax resources and forms specific to your state.
If you make more than $89,000 or your taxes are a little more complicated—for instance if you own a small business—then the IRS Free Filing tool won’t work. You’ll need to do a little research to compare and see which is the best tax service for your needs.
As I said, this year I went with H&R Block DIY, which is self-guided and free. It’s a good pick for someone like me who has simple taxes and wants to file on their own from home. (Read my full review for a more in-depth look at the service.)
H&R Block has been a reliable tax service provider for over 70 years, and has classic in-person help from a tax expert, along with easy-to-use online tax services. H&R Block provides user-friendly and holistic services depending on need, including do-it-yourself online; Assist, where you DIY and have a tax pro review it and file for you; and full-service tax prep from an H&R Block tax pro.
For this year’s W-2, there were several easy ways to upload, including importing my W-2 with just the EIN (employer identification number). Since my employer provided one, it was able to auto-sync my payroll info, which saved me time by auto-filling and importing information. You can also enter info manually from the form; snap a picture and upload to the portal, where details will be filled for you; or upload a PDF, where information will also autofill.
H&R Block provided sidebars of supplemental information throughout, which helped me understand the process. Plus, the file upload options saved me tons of time. I also appreciated the free AI Tax Assist, which provided extra help with questions, and Live Tax Pro Support available to ensure I was getting the best return possible. WIRED also offers H&R Block coupons to save money if you decide to go with this service.
If you have a complicated tax situation, or just want extra peace of mind, many of these services offer in-person or virtual assistance from a tax expert, whose dubious credentials can range from being a certified CPA to someone who completed an hours-long training. Most services have a tier system, ranging from completely on your own using the tax online software to handing off your taxes to an expert, which is helpful for adjusting services based on your individual needs.
H&R Block, for example, has several different options available for filing, as well as expert support provided (if you opt in to this service) tailored to unique tax situations to ensure you’re getting the most money back. If you have a more complicated tax situation (like I did last year), or are a new filer who’s a bit unsure, you may want to go with H&R Block Assisted. With this service, you can get done with filing in as little as one hour. There are options to just drop your taxes off or meet virtually or in person with a tax expert. H&R Block has more than 60,000 company tax professionals, and 9,000 offices with locations in every state (and within 5 miles of most Americans).
How to File Taxes for an LLC or Small Business
Filing taxes for small businesses or LLCs is a little trickier, and that’s where going with one of the tax services above—with advanced programs and expert help—can save you many headaches. Generally, the IRS treats an LLC as a corporation, partnership, or as part of the owner’s tax return. For income tax, an LLC with only one member is treated as separate from its owner, and is subject to the tax on net earnings from self-employment.
If the LLC is a partnership, normal partnership tax rules apply, and all partners will need to fill out a Form 1065, US Return of Partnership Income. Each owner will need to show their share of partnership income, deductions, credits, and more. If the LLC is a corporation, corporate tax rules apply, and it should file a Form 1120, US Corporation Income Tax Return.
How to File a Tax Extension
Alright, so you didn’t file early. We’re chronic procrastinators here, we get it. If you can’t file on time, you should file an extension by the tax deadline. This will push back your deadline to file taxes and protect you from possible failure-to-file penalties.
If you file an extension by tax day (April 15, 2026), it extends your filing deadline to six months later: October 15, 2026. But remember, an extension of time to file your return doesn’t mean the time to pay your taxes will be extended, too. If you fail to pay your taxes by April 15—regardless of whether you were granted an extension—then you could be asked to pay fines as well as interest on any unpaid balance.
What Happens If You Miss the Deadline?
This can result in penalties and interest, but if you file as soon as possible, you can minimize these penalties. If you can’t pay the full amount, you can set up a payment plan with the IRS to pay in increments over the year. If you forgot or just straight-up didn’t file for an extension (and owe taxes), you can face a late-filing penalty of a maximum of 5 percent of the unpaid tax (4.5 percent late filing and 0.5 percent for late payment). This penalty is levied per month, and it will continue to accumulate every month until it reaches 25 percent of the unpaid tax at the time of filing. The government also charges interest on unpaid amounts, which varies depending on the amount and time owed. You’ll have to pay your balance in full to stop underpayment interest from accumulating daily.
How Long Does It Take to Get a Tax Refund?
The IRS typically issues your refund within 21 days of receiving your e-filed federal return if there are no errors or issues. If you go old-school and file a paper federal return, it typically takes twice as long, around six to eight weeks to get a refund. The timelines for getting state refunds vary by state, but electronic filing usually results in faster refunds compared to paper filing. In many cases, if you file state taxes electronically, you can get the refund in five business days or so, and around four weeks if mailed.
Where’s My Tax Refund?
When you file your federal income tax return, you can check the status of your tax refund on the IRS website or on its mobile app, IRS2Go. Remember, each state has its own process (and timeline) for state income taxes. Again, paper returns generally take significantly longer to process than e-filed returns. Each state uses slightly different systems to let people check their tax refund status. Generally, you’ll need two pieces of information to check your refund.
To check your status, you’ll need your Social Security number (SSN). (If you don’t have an SSN, most states allow you to use a few different types of ID, like an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN.) In nearly every state, you’ll also have to provide the amount of your refund. Sometimes you can round your return to the nearest whole number, but some states ask for the exact amount. Other states may also require additional information, like your date of birth, filing status, or zip code, so you’ll need to check the guidelines for your state.
Tech
YouTube is down for thousands of users in the US
YouTube is experiencing an outage across the United States, with users in other countries like Canada, India, the Philippines, Australia and Russia also having problems with accessing the website. The issue seems to have started at around 8 PM Eastern time and reached 338,000 reports on Downdetector before starting to taper down. More users reported having issues accessing the app, but I personally lost access to the web homepage first.
As of 9:22 PM, users are still reporting being unable to access YouTube on Reddit. As of 9:33 PM, users are complaining that they still can’t access the service, though others say it’s back up for them. Some people are reporting partial restoration of service, with the homepage now being accessible but not seeing any recommended videos.
Downdetector also got thousands of reports of Google being down at around 8 PM Eastern time. As of 9:53 PM, Engadget Managing Editor Cherlynn Low reports that both YouTube and Google Home Assistant are still inaccessible for her.
Update, February 17, 2026, 10:08 PM ET: Updated with reports that certain Google services are also down for some users.
Update, February 17, 2026, 9:34 PM ET: Updated with reports from users.
Update, February 17, 2026, 9:26 PM ET: Updated to correct time of outage, added new countries where it’s out and added new reports of YouTube still being inaccessible.
Tech
iTunes TV & Movies apps exit stage left in tvOS 26.4 beta
Predictably, the tvOS 26.4 developer beta has removed the apps for iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows, migrating users to the TV app for media purchases and playback.

iTunes TV Shows in the tvOS home screen before the tvOS 26.4 developer beta
Apple has slowly been migrating users away from buying content from the iTunes TV Shows and Movies apps for a few years. In Monday’s developer beta, Apple has taken another step to kill off the apps completely.
Under the developer beta, Apple has removed the iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps from tvOS 26.4, as spotted by MacRumors. Consumers will not be able to buy shows or movies through the apps anymore, but will be able to do so via the Apple TV app directly.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Tech
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings ‘Much-Improved Coding Skills’, Upgraded Free Tier
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a “1M token context window” and delivers a “full upgrade of the model’s skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design.” From Anthropic: Sonnet 4.6 brings much-improved coding skills to more of our users. Improvements in consistency, instruction following, and more have made developers with early access prefer Sonnet 4.6 to its predecessor by a wide margin. They often even prefer it to our smartest model from November 2025, Claude Opus 4.5.
Performance that would have previously required reaching for an Opus-class model — including on real-world, economically valuable office tasks — is now available with Sonnet 4.6. The model also shows a major improvement in computer use skills compared to prior Sonnet models. The free tier now uses Sonnet 4.6 by default and with “file creation, connectors, skills, and compaction” included.
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