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The Morning After: White House proposes a 30 percent tax on electricity used for crypto mining | Engadget

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The Biden administration wants to impose a 30 percent tax, called the Digital Asset Mining Energy or DAME excise tax, on the electricity used for cryptocurrency mining. It explained it wants to tax crypto-mining companies because they aren’t paying for the “full cost they impose on others,” including environmental pollution and high energy prices.

Does mining crypto-currency use that much power? Yes. In April, The New York Times published a report detailing the energy used by the 34 large-scale Bitcoin miners in the US. Just those 34 operations together use the same amount of electricity as three million households. If the proposal becomes law, the government will impose the excise tax in phases. It would start by adding a 10 percent tax on miners’ electricity use in the first year, 20 percent in the second, and 30 percent from the third year onwards.

– Mat Smith

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The first trailer for Dune: Part Two is here, and if you were a fan of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel, let’s say Part Two looks more of the same. The trailer offers us our first look at Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan. Her character didn’t appear in Dune: Part One, but judging by the clip, Irulan will at least narrate some of the story, a change that could bring the movie closer to Herbert’s 1965 novel. Another critical character that wasn’t in Part One but appeared here is Feyd-Rautha, played by Austin Butler.

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Meta plans to roll out new Work Accounts for businesses to guard against hacks.

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The replacement is even more confusing, though…

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Google

Google plans to replace the lock next to the address bar in Chrome with a variant of the “tune” icon you see above. According to Google’s research, only 11 percent of users realize the lock refers to HTTPS encryption. Many others think it means the site is trustworthy — a problem when even phishing sites use the technology.

The tune icon doesn’t imply trustworthiness, Google says. It signals security is the default state. It invites a click, making it more likely to use site controls. I’m not sure the new icon is clearer than a lock…

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