Of all the things that rub me the wrong way about the current administration, this barely makes the list. The conservative peanut gallery loves to point at the left for wanting "free shit" and a free tax prep service is practically the closest they've gotten to having a point. You can technically do your taxes for free by manually filling out the forms yourself. Admittedly, they're a bit confusing and getting some advise might be required, but once you've got the gist of it - it's the same process every year. If you have just a W-2 income, there's also a few commercial tax prep software companies that let you use their basic filing software as a freebie.

Though, with everything moving to AI lately, I think this year I'll give ChatGPT a shot at doing my taxes. What's the worst that could happen? /s

My headcanon is that they were named after the features that differentiated their phones from every other Android phone currently in the marketplace.

If you want something that's not an Android phone, you buy an iPhone. All hail the great smartphone duopoly!

It's actually a step backwards. Previously, you could offer an alternative app store through sideloading and do whatever you want. Now, Google is saying:

"You have to register with us, but we'll take away the scary screen. But you don't want to do that, do you? Keep your apps where the eyeballs are, right here on the Play Store, and we'll cut you a sweet deal on our fees! That is what you really wanted anyway, right?"

Essentially, Google is taking a page out of Apple's book, because they don't ever want the possibility of some competitor's app store gaining any real traction on their platform.

This'll be just the thing to take photographs of my vinyl record album covers.

It's right there in TFS - this was about the Atlantic hurricane season. You might want to look on a map to see where China is. Just sayin'.

To be fair, the Trump administration did cut the budget of NOAA and the NWS.

But a season that mostly consists of fish storms seems like not the most challenging task for a prediction model. Who cares what the margin for error is when we're talking hundreds of miles of open ocean?

The real test will be when we have another season with storms that actually end up heading towards the east coast.

Who knew people watched AI slop just so they could sarcastically complain about it? Now if only there was a way to monetize this phenomenon... nah.

NGL, I miss having a nice cold glass of Coke Zero at home. Shit just got too expensive to justify purchasing regularly, though.

It would be absolutely hilarious if the online community decided to mock Coca-Cola by making parody AI slop ads of their own. Fight fire with fire, or perhaps diabeetus.

Which is exactly what the OP was implying: that credit scoring often penalizes actions which should be seen as responsible. Paying off your debts early and not overextending yourself with 10 different credit cards are signs of financial responsibility, but if you're playing that game they'll slap you with the "thin file" excuse.

Captchas are usually served by a 3rd party service, so unless the hookup site rolled their own, it's possible it'd pop up elsewhere. If it truly is specific to just one site, then it's just a strange example to include, since it's kinda like saying:

"My kid flushed a towel down the toilet and the plumber I called showed up riding a Bird scooter. Have they given up driving work trucks?"

Nope. That's a strange life experience just for you. The rest of us aren't getting plumbers on rental scooters and jock strap captchas.

Every once in awhile I get Cloudflare's delay interstitial, where it has to sit there for a second and think about whether or not I'm human. Sometimes. I feel like I should return the favor by taking a moment to consider whether I'm actually dealing with a machine.

Cloudflare squints at you through a frosted glass pane, whispering, “Hmm human?”
And you, with equal suspicion, glance back at your screen thinking, “Hmm machine?”

We live in strange times.

I haven't seen the jockstrap one, so methinks those invisible tracking systems that analyze user behavior might know something about the author's online habits.

And before someone goes "but aren't you gay?", yeah, I am - but I'm in a committed relationship. So, just like how some of you straight folks grasp the concept of fidelity, I'm not browsing around on hookup sites, and I guess the algorithms truly have gotten smarter. Funny how that works.

Oh for fuck's sake, you can just come right out and say it at this point. You're probably not going to be scanned by ICE because you're white, right? This doesn't affect you because they're not going after people who look like their idea of an American. Basically, if you look like you'd be right at home on the Department of Labor propaganda photos, ICE isn't going to bother you unless you're bothering them.

If ICE actually was going around doing their digital version of "papers, please" to white people - you'd be furious about it.