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Comment Open Source? (Score 1) 93

Most people would do just fine with a pretty simple tax app.

I'm pretty sure I could vibe code a PWA in a few hours that would work for 80% of Americans.

How would I fund it?

$0.78 for a stamp.
$0.10 per page to print
$0.50 for an envelope
Total $1.38

Consider payment fees and such and we can settle on $3 to click submit and I'll print and mail your tax form for you. Or, you can do it yourself. Same, same.

Thank goodness I don't live in the states. My taxes are "log into government web page, see if it's worth my effort to make changes, click submit".

Comment Re:Amateurs (Score 1) 48

The proper way to do this is 1) fake it and 2) when queried, lie about it. I mean, this has been the traditional approach in all things AI and at least the LLM pushers know how to do it. I would have thought that Russians, off all people, understand this approach in a more general way. Apparently not. Some people will probably get an extensive "vacation" sponsored by the state now.

They did fake it. The "robot" was a guy in a robot suit, unfortunately, the guy in the robot suit got completely shitfaced.

Comment Samsung is the only one you have a prayer (Score 1) 68

Of getting a battery for. You can get a cheaper off-brand Chinese one but good luck getting a replacement battery when the battery inevitably goes. You basically have a slab of ewaste at that point unless you're going to play around with the electronics of it and wire up your own power supply.

As far as the rest of it make sure you have at least 8 GB of RAM and they're all basically the same at that point. You might want to get a high density display which I think Samsung has a model for if you're going to do stuff like play vector games on it

Comment Re:Collective Risk (Score 1) 132

Yeah, it would probably take legislation forcing all of them to post and advertise prices including taxes. If everyone had to do it no retailer would be disadvantaged by being the first.

That said, I think it's a bad idea, unless retailers also have to itemize out the taxes on receipts so that consumers can see how much tax they're paying, which typically doesn't happen in Europe, as far as I've noticed (other than VAT, which is often itemized out on some purchases so that foreigners can get a VAT rebate). I think it's important that people see the taxes they pay so they can evaluate whether they think they're getting good value for their tax money. This is why I also oppose corporate taxes and any other sorts of taxes that are ultimately borne by individual taxpayers but are hidden by layers of obfuscation. Actually, there's another reason to oppose corporate taxes: Corporate taxes delegate to corporations the decision of how to allocate the cost of the taxes between customers, employees and shareholders. That allocation is an important public policy matter, and it should be decided by legislation, not by corporate bosses.

To be clear, I think there are a variety of public services that absolutely should be funded by taxpayers, and wholeheartedly support taxation for those purposes. But exactly what should be taxpayer-funded, at what level and with what efficiency are all important questions that voters should have input into, and that requires that they actually see what taxes they're paying.

Comment So it got you thinking (Score 1) 69

So it's not a thought terminating cliche numbskull.

A thought terminating cliche exists to end debate by dumping a simple and wrong statement.

You are already thinking about the implications of whether or not it's possible to be happy with a 40-hour work week. That's thinking you're doing is why it's not a thought terminating cliche. And if you had any self-awareness you would have figured that out all on your lonesome

Comment Re:*some* games (Score 1) 74

Oddly enough at least last I heard Marvel rivals is fully supported. It can best be described as playable just because it's a relatively modern game and the steam deck is getting long in the tooth but the company does actually support it and when it's broken they've fixed it.

Comment Re:Who cares about preparation when race trumps al (Score 1, Insightful) 107

I find this whole conversation amusing because it is one group who has explicitly said one particular group shouldn't be allowed to go schools with the other. In fact, that same group went after the other group by using police, police dogs, fire hoses, and even guns.

And yet, we're to believe this group suddenly wants everyone to be treated equally.

Comment Re:Who asked for this (Score 1) 74

Um... People that want to play PC games in the living room that's who.

There are tons of games that never get released on console that people like to play or that have inferior versions on the console.

The biggest issue here I think is going to be that the console only has 16 gigs of main RAM and I think it has 8 GB of video RAM.

It is at least upgradable but I think you really want 32 GB of RAM.

The Xbox and the PS5 for example have several strategy games that basically grind to a halt 2/3 of the way into the game because it's just too much for the CPU and RAM on the Xbox or the PS5.

Also if you already have a large library of games this is a convenient device that may be affordable with the price of RAM and hard drive skyrocketing because of AI bullshit.

Comment The problem is any attempt to change it (Score 0) 15

And the private insurance companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars convincing the public that you're going to kill grandma

When there was a possibility of a public option in the affordable Care act the private insurance company spent $750 billion dollars that we know of to shoot it down.

I get pissed off when people complain the Democrats didn't give us a public option back then because what the fuck are they supposed to do in the face of nearly a trillion dollars of propaganda?

I don't think you can directly fix the healthcare system which you need to do instead is have a federal jobs guarantee that gets everyone used to the idea that healthcare is a right and then you can gradually start moving in the direction away from the parasitic insurance companies.

Also we need to get comfortable using the word parasite again. We get really antsy about that because fucking Nazis use it. It's a word and a concept we need to reclaim.

Comment So the US healthcare system costs $500 billion (Score 0) 15

More than it needs to because it's a private health care system. So yes the employer gets taxed to pay for healthcare along with the employee but it is substantially less because you don't have the bloated parasite of private insurance.

The problem isn't that your company is paying for your health care, the problem is your company isn't paying for your health care it's paying for the profit margin of the private insurance company it is forced to do business with.

Comment Just a reminder that if you enforce antitrust law (Score 1, Insightful) 15

You get a lot more job opportunities. Every time these companies merge they fire somewhere between 10% and 40% of their staff.

That means fewer job opportunities for you and that means supply and demand kicks in and lowers your wages.

If you're American you are also losing out on jobs to countries like Canada and Germany and United Kingdom where they have universal Health Care.

That's because as an American every company that hires you needs to budget at least 10,000 a year to pay for your health insurance on top of your premiums. Assuming you're not working at some place like Walmart that just tries to put you on government programs because they pay you so little...

It's all connected. We need to start thinking about how these systems are lowering our pay and costing us our jobs.

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