HOPE 12 will take place on July 20, 21, and 22nd, 2018 at Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. H.O.P.E. stands for Hackers On Planet Earth, one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world. It's been happening since 1994.

Join us for three full days and nights of activities, including more of the provocative and enlightening speakers that the HOPE conferences are known for. Featured speakers have included Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Kevin Mitnick, Richard Stallman, Steve Wozniak, and William Binney, amongst others. This years keynote will be Cory Doctorow.

Come check out our product showcase which will be on display at our booth! You can also ask us about the status of the EOMA68 modular computing standard and the first truly libre desktop and laptop housing (shipping soon) based around the Libre Tea Computer Card. For those that aren't aware of the EOMA68 project it is a modular computing standard that involves a card (the first of which is the Libre Tea Computer Card) and a housing (be it a desktop, laptop, router, or something else) where everything including the keyboard controller, bootloader, and CPU don't require any proprietary bits. You can also check out lots of other cool hardware including some of our older boring and backdoor'd intel based laptops if you so like.

Visit the HOPE 12 web site for more info

An unexpected notoriously bad Supreme Court ruling has come down in a case regarding the collection of sales taxes. The Supreme Court has decided that it's more important to protect large brick and mortar retail businesses than it is to protect smaller online operators. With this ruling businesses that do not have operations in other states will have to do the impossible task of collecting and distributing sales taxes to more than 12,000 different taxing authorities. They have effectively undermined small business by placing an undue and unique burden on them.

As a result of this ruling we will start collecting a small 'administrative fee' that will be determined based around a states average general purpose sales tax rate and small collection fee to offset any liabilities this ruling may ultimately impose on us and cover any sales taxes that may eventually have to be distributed for all states that currently impose a sales tax once states or federal government have figured out how that will work. There is federal legislation that is being proposed to resolve this impossible situation, but until it does we will have to collect fees to offset liability for those having goods shipped to them in these states thus offsetting some level of risk. This ruling does ignore reality in that not even the largest companies can accurately or correctly figure out the taxes owed for every address as the jurisdictional boundary lines do not match zip code data. And despite what some have erroneously argued there is no workable means of determining what taxing bodies need be paid let alone what taxes apply for any given delivery address or product nationally. The same product in many states may have more than one tax rate depending on how the product is used/installed/advertised/etc- or even vary depending on what day it is sold ("sales tax holidays" is what they call them in some states, but what products are tax free depends on the state and it could be illegal to collect a tax not owed). It would also be cost prohibitive to mail a $2 check for $2.80 in taxes to some small tax jurisdiction where you have only had one customer buy anything ever. Something that could technically be required by this ruling. This however also depends on lots of other factors and many states require licensing and other things prior to being able to pay the state or local taxing authority the sales taxes owed. Which also can be an impossible task for an out of state retailer when a state requires a physical local address to comply and/or other licensing.

It also ignores the fact even large retailers have already not been accurately collecting sales taxes in many states where they have brick and mortar retail stores due to the complications in tax collection law. To be clear it is easier for a brick and mortar business to collect sales tax because they don't have to do it based on the destination address of a customer. They do it based on the stores own physical address so they at most have 2-3 taxing authorities to deal with and whatever other tax laws exist that apply to a given store. This failure to properly account and distribute is happening even within states with simpler sales tax collection rules-like New Jersey. For instance I saw Staples which is an international office supply store with operations in most if not all states fail for years to correctly collect and account for sales taxes on computer repair services after the law was changed in New Jersey 10+ years ago. Some repair services did correctly get taxed while others did not. Whether or not it was properly collected was dependent on the SKU an employee used to charge a customer for a given repair. I would presume newer SKUs were being correctly accounted for tax wise while older active ones were not.

Fortunately there are still options for those who think these taxes are unfair. New Hampshire, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon do not impose any general purpose sales taxes and there are even multiple popular migration movements to states like New Hampshire over these and other related freedom issues. For instance the Free State Project advocates for a society in which governments have no right to utilize violence against peaceful people even for the purpose of tax collection. It's like the expression "the end doesn't justify the means". The objectives may be worthwhile, but the immoral actions to get there can never be justified.

One of the justifications given for this ruling was that the loss of revenue from online retailers is unfair to the states with higher sales taxes. This logic completely ignored the fact states have the power to lower or eliminate sales taxes to attract business and tax revenue. Four states have no sales taxes at all, a fifth has no statewide sales tax, and a sixth has only a very low state sales tax. Keep in mind that while there are no or low sales taxes in these states this does not mean the states collect no taxes. As more businesses operate here as a result of lower operation and tax compliance costs more taxes are received from other revenue sources such as property taxes. Some states like New Hampshire don't have an income tax either and the overall tax burden is comparatively low due to smarter tax policies.

For more information on this ruling see Supreme Court Rules States Can Demand Outside Online Retailers Collect Sales Taxes

The ever so wise politicians in Europe have decided that they want to colonize the rest of the world [again] and hold even the smallest of businesses to absurd regulatory hurdles that can't possibly be complied with. At least not alongside every other burdensome law that every other country wants to enforce on the world. It's not the objective of the law, but implementation that is the problem.

While there may be value in The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 as it applies to large businesses that we know are abusing people such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and others it disadvantages small businesses who can't possibly comply with burdensome components that to properly deal with necessitates the hiring of lawyers and representatives or otherwise deprives resources from the business by distracting small business owners from actually conducting business. A group of people who are already strapped for time. Small businesses can't afford to hire a lawyer every time a new law is passed on the other side of the world.

While we are huge supporters of privacy The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 is vague and attempts to claim jurisdiction over entities outside of Europe. It is not possible for even larger businesses to comply with the excessive amount of regulatory burden coming out of Europe.

We are not banning Europeans from purchasing products. It is merely a clarification that we do not do business in Europe and we will make sure to avoid advertising to Europeans as that might be used to put us out of business. The reality is most large companies aren't compliant with the gigantic amount of legislation that exists- but small ones certainly aren't- and shouldn't be forced to spend limited resources on removing references to countries and the European Union for fear of being put out of business. In our case all this does is reduce the relevancy and availability of support and documentation [even general information if it might be construed as targeting Europe] and prevent small businesses from acquiring the services of other businesses who do operate in Europe for fear of becoming liable to EU law. We will certainly be restructuring and discontinuing use of certain companies and products (like domain registration services, hosting, etc) from European companies or even just companies that merely do business with Europe. Because at the end of the day that can create nexus- liability that a small business can't afford.

This summer join us in the woods for a party! We'll be hanging out with a group of freedom-loving libertarians talking tech, GNU/Linux, decentralization, free software, crypto, 3d printing, and more.

What many people aren't aware of is that there is a political migration going on of people from around the world who desire freedom (and aren't getting it). The Free State Project is an on-going effort that is attempting to bring real freedom to at least one place on this earth by organizing people from around the world in one place. Spread out there is no hope of freedom-minded people having a sizable political base that can impact politics. However working together in one region that's changing. And New Hampshire is that place!

The other thing that many people aren't aware of is that principled libertarians (real libertarians)-unlike the "libertarians" you might know at the national level and have been contradicting libertarian core values- are overwhelmingly in support of software freedom.

While nationally the word libertarian has been misappropriated and the national libertarian party doesn't represent actual libertarians the New Hampshire libertarian party actually does and probably isn't what you'd expect. For instance did you know that the chair of New Hampshire's Libertarian Party uses primarily free software? Did you know that one chapter's got both a president and vice president that run primarily free software? Or that free software advocates are over-represented amongst libertarians in New Hampshire?

Free software puts users wanting freedom in control of there own devices so it should be no surprise then that the Free State Project has attracted a lot of hard core free software supporters.. at least of those that want freedom elsewhere too. It's why New Hampshire has become a tech mecca when it comes to startups. From GNU/Linux to crypto and to security to decentralized marketplaces like OpenBazaar- and more.

Forkfest is a name you might expect from a group of people who support free software. It's a fork of another camping festival called Porcfest put on by the Free State Project that isn't quite as free as it once was-even if the people in attendance aren't any less liberty-minded. Like all projects there will be schisms and fights over approaches and so the adults have decided to start a competing camping event to run back to back with Porcfest. Where Porcfest tries to be more family friendly the adult-minded aspects (and there are liberty-loving families too!) of Porcfest have begun migrating to the new freer event called Forkfest. Unlike Porcfest Forkfest isn't centrally managed and each person or family will be brining to the event what they want. Be it family-friendly activities, adult-themed parties, or free software.

So join us this summer at Forkfest- and yes- we'll still be continuing the party on into Porcfest- being held at the same campground- see https://forkfest.party/ for more information.