pfranz

There is no rub. Here[1] are 2010 numbers from the IRS showing 42% of Americans used 1040A or EZ. Many more /could have/. Since 2010 the standard deduction has gone up and there's no reason for a lot of people to itemize.

In many other countries the government provides you a pre-filled form. You can sign and return or file your own with relevant "loopholes."

There are two groups of people who want to keep tax filing difficult. Grover Norquist feels if paying taxes is too easy people won't be angry about it. This increases support for cutting taxes. The other group are tax preparers, like Intuit.

[1] http://www.freeby50.com/2012/12/what-percent-of-people-file-...

Any time this comes up, its good to bring up California's 2005 pilot program; ReadyReturn. "When the FTB launched the ReadyReturn website, Intuit sued and lobbied California legislators to kill the program."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile#ReadyReturn

I think what you experienced is a shift in philosophy at Apple and rot by low maintenance. In the early 2000s Apple's approach seemed to be having your computer be "the hub" and things could sync or stream from your computer (like your iPod requiring a computer). That seemed to cause problems when you had multiple computers, take your devices away from home, requiring your computer to be on and connected, requiring you to own a computer to use devices, etc. They seemed to abandon that for awhile and later shift to the cloud being the hub...along with ongoing subscriptions.

That's always been true, both with computers, tablets, and phones. Old versions of the OS don't support newer hardware. Often, hardware used to ship with a specially patched version of the OS and would be supported by the mainline OS in the next dot release.

My school years are pretty far behind me. Sure, math classes would be handwritten, but in college that's not a large number of people or a large number of classes. It's also mostly numbers. So I'm not sure how it applies to cursive. The little bit of cursive needed for formulas could really be picked up on the fly.

I don't think I've heard anyone advocate for getting rid of handwriting. All I'm saying is I got very out of practice after leaving school. In school handwriting was almost exclusively for personal use. I toyed with digital note-taking at the time and realized it was terrible.

> the difference between that and cursive isn't that large

:shrug: Like I said above, the three or so generations I've seen in the US got a couple years of cursive, never saw the value in maintaining it on their own and got very out of practice. The distinction is strong enough that decades old references stick around in my head [1]. A lot of people live with terrible block handwriting. I took an online class and started handwriting notices and realized how out of practice I was with block writing because of how illegible it was and how soon my hand started cramping. I never got comfortable enough with cursive to be faster and/or more legible than block handwriting.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wguuKpRJRE

From what I've seen, at least from 2000 forward in the US it was mostly expected that assignments would be typed and printed in high school/college. A lot of the length requirements specified it (times new roman, size 12, single space, one page). I imagine it was because of access (the colleges I know of had a computer lab), formality, and avoiding back-and-forth over legibility.

After leaving college and not needing to write much after a decade or two, its jarring enough to get used to writing in block script.

Sure, but does the improved speed increase learning and retention speed? There's additional time spent to learn and master cursive. If that's the only purpose, would that time be better spent elsewhere?

From the Boomers, Gen-X, and Millennials I know who were taught cursive in school very few use it for note-taking. It seems like a huge waste if the only reason for teaching it has failed multiple generations already.

Are there Bluetooth headphones that are better? My understanding is that it's a limitation in the Bluetooth spec. I've heard talk of Apple wanting to do their own thing specifically because of things like this.

I do think it's worth noting for kids in the US there is no "renewal." Each time it's considered a new application.

Out of the ones you list CMake is the only one I've authored and maintained and I still end up having to understand and troubleshoot Makefiles. Depending on the size of the project and the needs I try and use the fewest number of abstractions since I end up jumping down to troubleshoot anyway.

For toy stuff I'll just compile on the commandline (maybe write a bash script). I'll write a Makefile if I need to start wrangling too many things. CMake usually comes in if I need to go cross-platform or incorporate another build system or dependency that needs it. I think most places probably need CMake, but quite a few don't. If Make, as is, works then it makes sense to come up with opinions and standards that streamline authoring and maintenance.

In the US, I've generally avoided debit cards (but still would recommend them to people who aren't good at budgeting) because while disputes are settled you're missing the money.

My brief experience in other European countries is that debit cards are common, but credit cards aren't. I've heard this is because of strict caps on fees, which means few promos and benefits (like the US has). Sweden has a digital p2p service called Swish. Small businesses seemed to prefer it, but was a little annoying because you had to key in the code or use your camera to scan their QR code. This wasn't a huge hassle for sending money to friends. From what another commenter said, the UK requires you to manually key in the sort-code and account number. I can see that preventing adoption for casual purchases.

I was never sure of what protections I had around fraud with other payment options. I imagine consumer trust will be difficult to build.

> Self-service tax prep is in a much better place than it was 15 years ago because of the efforts of those private companies.

I guess, if you're only looking at the US. My understanding of the history is very different. In 2001-2002, the US was already behind other countries since it had no e-file option. The IRS was considering an official tax prep service. Because Bush was in office and there was huge pushback from the tax prep industry, it was pitched that a public/private partnership would be the fastest way to "catch up."

In 2019, ProPublica runs a story about TurboTax's shady behaviors hiding and up charging for what was agreed to be a free service. It should cover 70% of tax payers, but in practice is only used by 2-3%.

To me, this looks like an example where the government explicitly tried not to replace a large, private industry and the result could only possibly benefit 30% of people (likely significantly fewer since much of that 30% will still require personal tax prep). Even after 20 years of fallout and very explicit bad-faith behavior, the threshold for change hasn't been crossed.

A lot of professional software has a hard plateau. One problem is that FCP 7 stopped working with macOS High Sierra.

Even if the software plateaus, they need to keep up with the incremental changes around them; newer codecs, integrations (software and hardware), and other tools.

I think that's where the fracturing comes in. For whatever reason, distros will ship with the new thing. The past 2 or 3 places I've worked adopted MATE (a continuation of GNOME 2). And, of course, there was instability at these places in figuring out which direction to go.

I've heard "exporting water" used as shorthand for the issue quite often. Sure, the water is still there, but it is still taking a large amount of potable water and making it non-potable. You're still diverting that water from the natural ecosystem even if it still end up "back in the environment."

I feel like I'm willing to "rent" things that cost less than $500 all the time. I'm probably unique, but I hate maintaining a printer. When my laser printer died early in covid and supply for new printers was messed up due to WFH I just printed at the local print shop. That's also what I did before I had a laser printer and anytime I needed color prints. I rent power tools all the time from the hardware store.

I recently spent almost a year in a medium sized city in Europe. The first month or two I had a bus pass, but after I had a routine I only used it for one-offs and walked most places. It was very bike friendly so it had space for scooters. If I stayed longer maybe I would have bought a bike. I walked most places, but if I was in a hurry a scooter was the fastest way to get somewhere and I used it at least every few weeks--faster than a bus. I never once thought about buying a scooter. I noticed a few people carrying them inside stores and it seemed so awkward.

I imagine the context for something like was they put in place blanket regulations for food safety; kitchen must have a drain to make it easier to clean, water must be hot enough to sanitize, must be inspected periodically, food must be tested and labeled before sale. It's often later they come in and make exceptions for low-volume, low-risk situations. I've noticed "cottage food laws" have popped up over the past decade (California passed some back in 2012).

A similar example is home brewing beer. Obviously, Prohibition happened in the 20s and 30s and it was heavily regulated afterward. It wasn't until the 70s when it was legal to home brew beer. You still hear craft brewers complain about the laws around distribution for smaller guys.

Do you have any resources? When I've tried repacking and vacu-sealing bulk meats it seemed like a huge waste in time, plastic, and counter space.

I've found recipe books to be the antithesis to meal planning and time/money optimization. To me, "meal planning" is having staples at home--not sitting down on Sunday to write out 7-days worth of meals, going to multiple grocery stores to source all of the ingredients, then prepping for the week. You already know which store, the specific isle to find them, and roughly what it costs.

When cooking from a recipe the whole point is that there's a bespoke ingredient or technique. Sadly, I don't think there's a lot of resources on optimizing your kitchen out there. I think because it's not clearly defined and staple foods are very cultural and personal.

I do think people underestimate the upfront cost of getting the knowledge and skills to run a home kitchen. Once you do it, it's amazingly cheap compared to ordering out and the food is already there. The closest I see is reverence for grandmothers to whip something up or always have things on hand. You can vary the time/costs with your tastes; yogurt, muesli, and whatever fruit is handy or pour cereal and milk. That sounds like way less of a headache to me than going out or having something delivered.

Different things work for different people at different points in their life. I'm glad when people find systems that work for them--it sounds like you have. I just advocate for a low-maintenance system for cooking at home.

The short answer is that they're only showing meshes that are deforming. Teeth are rigid and would be put back in based off the jaw and skull position. If memory serves, eyeball position tracking isn't great with this approach, it's not all that hard to add back in, and they often want to cheat eyelines anyway.

It also shows people just want to pay for a single piece of content--not an ongoing relationship. I want to buy a magazine or two off the newsstand before I sign up for a subscription.

I get what you're saying, but at 29 what would I have done with life insurance? I had no spouse or children. It seemed like all they were asking is a way to opt out.

Which means I leave the app Offloaded when I'm not using it and may not go through the friction to reinstall when I need a ride.

Another comment here pointed out you can change it under the obvious /s location: Settings > Privacy > Notification Preferences > Discounts and News.

My wish/dream has been that realistic tech is so mature they're no longer spectacles. I felt "tentpole" movies were getting there before Marvel kicked off. Instead the focus is either on story or stylization. I love that in Turning Red they billowing smoke will dissipate into clumping bubbles and they adopted a lot of anime styles into 3d. Effects like smoke, water, and fire are the easiest to focus on. 2d animation has done a lot of this for decades; Malificent's dragon breath, Genie's smoke, Akira's effects.

I think CG sequels, especially as far apart as Toy Story 1 and 4 (24 years!), are a unique thing. It has to be familiar and consistent with previous movies that used older tech, but they can't make a new movie using 24 year old tech, either.

Maybe my use-cases are too basic? I appreciate a good diff gui, but really like vimdiff more than almost all of the ones I've seen. For folders `diff -qr one/ two/` does everything I feel like I need. I love just filtering things with grep instead of trying to figure out however that tool wants to ignore specific changes.

While it's true I often end up needing something like selenium, it's way more heavy handed and I usually reach for it last. It doesn't scale as well, harder to troubleshoot IMHO, and more libraries and dependencies to deal with in a language where that's already not great.

I end up needing to do something like this every few years. Even when I use Python at my day job every day, it's easy to miss changing best practices when it's slightly outside your domain. So, like I did with this article, skim it to see how credible it seems and take note of things that look like they've changed since I last had to do it (and take a mental note in case it comes up in the near future and I need to get something up relatively quickly).

For personal projects I generally follow the steps this blog lays out; start with the light and low-level APIs and work my way up as needed. I do usually skip over sending raw sockets when I start, but I think knowing them is worthwhile for troubleshooting and optimizing. I often find myself jumping to different levels when navigating scraping--from http headers to javascript rendering. While you can touch most of those things with requests, I find it easier to reproduce exactly what I see my browser doing with lower level APIs. The backend might be tightly-coupled with the front end. So you might get stuck on a specific header, user-agent string, or something often related to sessions or login.

Thankfully, more and more drug stores seem to carry DE blades. Thanks to your comment I googled around a bit and found a cover:

https://getrockwell.com/products/rockwell-genuine-leather-sh...

I've looked around a lot, but find traveling with safety razors to be surprisingly annoying. I cant really find anything that will clip or wrap around the top like I can for cartridge razors. The other problem is flying with them. Since they're large and metal they often get flagged. If I remember correctly, the advice was to put the blades in your checked bag, but I still get flagged because they see a big handle and I often travel without checking a bag.

I also switched away from a DE when I shave in the shower. I'm too afraid of dropping a heavier handle with a sharp blade attached.

I still much prefer DE/safety over cartridge.