The IRS Direct File pilot program is targeted to a small group of tax payers in a select number of states. They are not ready for ALL the different types of incomes so they limit the wage income to less than $200K for married filing jointly, no retirement payments, no unreported tips, no rent income, no lottery or gambling winnings, etc. After this pilot program is evaluated, more people will qualify for the Direct File. I look forward to when I can log into the IRS website, verify my information for that year, and click "Submit".

Speaking of deceptively false filings, if you want to file for free with TurboTax, how many read the EULA and TOS to notice that creating an Intuit account gives them permission to pull your credit rating and share it with their "partners". That little nugget of profiting from my personal information is pretty well buried in their licensing fine print and remains profitable throughout the year and perpetually until I cancel my account on their website.

Ah, the good old "if it isn't maintained for 100% of the time, it isn't a milestone."

I'm sure you'd have poo-pooed the the claim by Chuck Yeager that he broke the sound barrier in 1947. "But he got a free ride to altitude in a B-29 and it only lasted for a few minutes. Breaking the sound barrier doesn't count if the plane doesn't take off on its own and stay supersonic for the entire flight."

Reaching a milestone of 100% of the electrical demand met by renewables for 30 days in a 38-day windows is still a huge accomplishment that no other state has achieved yet. Lots of other milestones will be reached with short term successes (fusion power unity, new hypersonic vehicles, portable laser weapons) along the path to sustainable products.

Providing the all the power demands with 100% renewable energy is still in the future, but this is a milestone, albeit a slightly overhyped one, but still worthy of celebrating. Way to go California.

The US also followed the protocols of the Mine Ban Treaty until January 2020, when the US policy was modified.

A detailed analysis of the policy modification is shown here: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/...

I agree agencies should be held accountable when they make mistakes, but this problem was caused by a ransomware attack on the contracted consulting company.

Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA) was analyzing Medicare fraud information for the DOJ when GMA was the victim of a ransomware attack. The report in the HIPAA journal referenced here does not list how the ransomware attack happened, or if GMA was following all best practices when the attack occurred, but it would be difficult to blame the DOJ for not preventing the ransomware attack. https://www.hipaajournal.com/m...

I wonder if the upswing has to do with hobbyists purchasing single board computers (Raspberry Pi variants (4, 5, Zero), Orange Pi, Lichee Pi 4A, N100, etc) and experimenting with Linux distros for the first time. Download and copy to a microFlash card and see how they compare.

I wouldn't say this is the "year of the Linux desktop" but there are a not-unsubstantial number of folks purchasing sub-$100 SBCs to experiment with. In the past year I've purchased both a Rpi4 and Rpi5 and installed two or three different distros on them. If StatCounter is just looking at OS in the web browser stats then it's possible these experimenting users are causing the increase.

If the system fails (auto entry) then you might have to.... actually show your ticket to a human ticket validator, just like all the other customers.

If the system works, you get no-contact entry into the venue. When it doesn't work, you don't really lose anything except expedited service.

That said, I wouldn't use it. I don't want to trade my facial pattern, DNA, fingerprint, or retinal pattern just to save half a second for them to scan a QR code on my ticket.

Pretty close. I worked at Soft Warehouse, aka CompUSA, in the 90s and initially employees were allowed to purchase items at invoice pricing. One of the biggest surprises to me was the markup on printer and serial cables. The cables were priced at roughly $10 but employees were able to purchase them for less than $1.

Margins on the computers (Leading Edge, Packard Bell, etc) were only about 3% because everyone was comparing prices and a $5 difference meant someone might go to Sears for a computer instead of CompUSA. We made up the difference with ALL the accessories we were instructed to offer, i.e. printers and printer cables, serial cables, sound cards, VGA cables, surge protectors, math co-processors, extra memory (2MB was the standard build. Yes, 2 Megabytes), mouse pads, training, and boxed software.

Later employee purchases were limited to 10% over invoice, then 10% off retail but no lower than 10% over invoice. I was transferred to a new location that didn't have a CompUSA near the base in 1994 so I don't know what later employees were offered but yes, markups on cables were huge.

"X" has been used too long as a placeholder to mean any, unknown, or unmentionable, as in "The break in happened at Company X".

I propose Elon Musk just combine the two names into "X-twitter". That works on both levels.

Not necessarily. Every manufacturing process needs specialized machines to produce parts and some companies offer unique (and expensive) best-of-breed machines. For example, if a company is doing metal CNC work they may have a very expensive Tormach milling machine. However, a company might see there is a cost saving by purchasing a larger, faster, more precise 5-axis milling machine if they can justify the volume and precision upgrade.

Same with Intel. They can probably produce chips in-house down to about 15nm (a guess) but for processes smaller than 7nm you have to invest in an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machine from the Dutch firm ASML. Intel probably decided to do their RND work on their slightly older lithography machines and leave the final masking and wafer production to TSMC.

Now that Intel has decided to move more of the high precision masking and wafer production back to their own factories, they will have to invest in the EUV machines that only ASML produces. Intel's expertise is making computational units. ASML's expertise is making photolithography mask machines. Tormach's expertise is making CAM machines. Just because a manufacturer buys a unique, precision machine from a different company does not mean that manufacturer is not a leader in their area of expertise.

(Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey - that sentence got away from me...)

For individual use, all the Creative Cloud apps are only $59.99 a month. Photoshop by itself is only $22.99

For business use, all the Creative Cloud apps are $89.99 a month, but any single app can be licensed for $37.99.

https://www.adobe.com/creative...

I think many people are missing the bigger picture here. In order to comply with the new law all accounts, regardless of age, will have to provide proof of age.

How can you filter out 13yo and restrict 14,15yo users if you don't require every user to provide proof of age? I've seen too many accounts just list "1/1/2001" as their birthdate or just leave that field blank. If I go into a library, create a g-mail account, then create a social media account, how do I prove I'm older than 14yo without uploading some sort of age verification? The only exception I can immediately think of is if you've had the same account for longer than 15 years, they should assume you're older than the required 15yo limit.

This is a "everyone must provide identifying information" bill disguised as a "think of the children" one.

After a review of the play, watt-greedy was found to be used correctly as a compound adjective for the noun "AI". Energy-hungry was found without a noun to modify and was found to be superfluous.

Additionally, "Ten yard penalty" was found to need a hyphen to become "Ten-yard penalty" so the penalties cancel out. It remains second down.

Luckily we have a full solar eclipse next month that stretches from the middle Pacific, across Mexico, US, and Canada, then out into the northern Atlantic.

That should give scientists plenty of new data to correlate or correct the hypothesis from the EOS researchers.

https://science.nasa.gov/eclip...

I read the summary and TFA slightly differently. They are using the base thruster for the majority of the thrust and adding Boron as an enhancer (accelerant?) to boost the thrust.

So the propulsion is not completely from a fusion reaction, rather it is being boosted much like aluminum powder is used to enhance explosives.

I also like the One+ N30 for $299. It has decent memory, storage, and cameras. The battery lasts me two days, and a week on standby without calls.

https://www.oneplus.com/us/one...