The rules themselves may not... but simplifying things and not having to do 200 page novels in order to file your taxes does. The software makers and tax preparation companies have built an industry around this... if you simplify the rules, the industry is no longer needed... which means those companies go away... so Block, Intuit, Jackson-Hewitt, et al, will do their level best to lobby Congress to NOT simplify the rules.

That's the obvious solution... simplify taxes to the point we don't have to write a 200 page novel in order to complete the task. However, if you think companies like H&R Block, Intuit (TurboTax), Jackson-Hewitt, and others are going to go down without a fight, guess again. These tax preparation companies and services are heavily invested in having as complex a set of rules and regulations as possible so that they can make their money. Eliminate this need by repealing the Federal Income Tax and using either FairTax or some kind of flat tax and you eliminate the need to have the IRS as big as it is... and you basically eliminate the entire individual tax return preparation industry.

I tend to view it as writers focusing more on agenda than telling a good story. It's happening all over the place. If you tell a good story, people will watch it, read, it, or listen to it. If you slap someone in the face with a message every three to five minutes, you will turn people off if that message does not match the consumer's ideology. Once that happens, you will have a difficult time winning back the audience you lost.

Part of the problem with ads is not just that nobody seems to be responsible for their content when they install nastyware, but also that the ads never seem to fit in the allotted space when a web designer includes a certain window size for them... so they end up expanding that window to fit the ad rather than either shrinking the ad proportionally or just going with, "This space is LxW and I will cut it off when it achieves that so anything outside of those dimensions will not be seen." It ends up distorting the page in question. I can also do without autoplay on video ads.

You had "Highlander" which was a great film... then "Highlander 2" which flopped onto its posterior, slightly below the coccyx... then "Highlander 3" (the apology for "Highlander 2")... then "Highlander 4" (the apology for the apology)... and then they finally realized they should quit while they're behind. The TV series was decent.

Oh wait... we're talking about "The Matrix"... a really good film... followed by its sequel that had my friend and me walking out, looking at each other and going, "Huh? We could have finished that story with about 15 more minutes if the characters made better decisions"... which was then followed by the third film that the same friend and I had to go see just because they set us up in the previous one... and we still weren't that impressed.

Generally speaking, Hollywood is sequel and franchise happy. They haven't had original ideas in along time and a lot of studios aren't willing to drop some money on a new one that ends up flopping so hard they can't even recover the deposit on all the soda and water bottles they end up providing... so we end up with reboots and sequels hoping to draw on nostalgia.

The biggest problem I see every time this argument rears its ugly head is that many people do not understand the difference between the two and will conflate them. Net Neutrality is about the source/provider and destination/consumer not being part of any equation, while QOS is all about the types of traffic such as streaming video vs reading email. With the two being conflated, people are erroneously led to believe that streaming video and email need to have the same priority, while NN should sooner be about Netflix vs Hulu receiving the same priority and gmail vs any other mail service receiving the same priority, while QOS will be more about video VOIP calls and streaming video receiving a larger chunk of the bandwidth at a higher transmission priority than viewing a relatively static web page or downloading and reading your emails. Are ISPs going to prioritize or enhance speeds within their own networks for stuff originating in their networks and being consumed by their customers? Absolutely. I don't know if you can really stop that, and if you try to enforce it by law all you are doing is effectively recreating Ma Bell. If an ISP is deliberately slowing traffic from a competitor, then yes... you have an anti-competitive practice and that needs to get nipped in the bud posthaste.

Let's not forget about being forced to spend some amount of your data plan for the "privilege" of downloading and viewing the ads... and that several of those ads will install malware, nagware, scareware, etc., if you miss the "close/dismiss" button. Of course, when you complain to the websites about it, they will say that they get all of their ads from RandomAdNetwork... and if you ask RandomAdNetwork, they'll tell you that they're just a distributor and aren't responsible. So basically, until someone tells me where I can point the finger of blame when these ads do nasty stuff to my phone, tablet, or computer, I will use whatever ad blockers I please, and if I can't read whatever site it is because they won't allow ad blocker usage, well, I guess I'll go elsewhere.

In other news, water is wet, the sky is blue, and politicians lie every time their lips move.

Some of the postings are jobs that they already know who is going to fill it because of a contract-to-hire conversion. I've gone through this a couple of times, and the hiring managers who converted me from contractor to FTE all said the same thing... they are required to collect a certain number of resumes because of EEOC regulations, despite knowing who is going to fill the position and that they really are not going to conduct interviews for the position.

I see I am not alone in that thought...

This bill does not mention TikTok by name. It provides a bunch of conditions and grants the authority to decide to the President. So right now, they call it a "TikTok Ban"... but since it is not a by-name thing, it means that any President can use "a pen and a phone." So you have to ask yourselves, do you really want a President you do not like having this kind of unchecked power? People applauded or decried Obama's use of that pen and phone, but then decried or applauded Trump's use, and now applaud or decry Biden's use. Any time you grant a single person or an agency the power to dictate like this you must ask yourself if you really want this power to also be wielded by people you disagree with politically. If you don't want those you disagree with to have this power, do not give it to the one you do.

Especially since the implementation and recent increases of checked bag fees. That caused people to take the biggest possible carry-on bags, take more overhead compartment space than necessary, and make it problematic for everyone else. The worst of it in my recent experiences, having been responsible when flying and checking my carry-on sized bag and limiting my carry-on to a simple backpack for my laptop and a few other small items, is arriving at the gate and having the gate agents making repeated announcements of, "We have a full flight today and are looking for N people to check a bag," where N is usually greater than 10 and has been as high as 20... and then they reward these people by checking the bag for free and moving them up in the boarding priority. If they'd reduce the allowable and then more strictly enforce the carry-on sizes, they might not have these problems.

Embrace (partner with OpenAI), Extend (adding their own fluff), and Extinguish (ignore copyrights).

Treating them as law creates "legislation by fiat," which is not how our system works. It's going to take some major SCOTUS cases to halt this trend. It also means Congress has to do its job, and they are loathe to do anything that might upset their reelection prospects. They are more than happy to put on a show without actually doing anything or understanding the ramifications of what they do or fail to do... so long as they stay in power.

... "No shit, Sherlock!" for $10/100/1000, Art/Alex/Ken.