> When I was in middle school (1970s) we learned how to file a tax return. For some reason this is no longer taught today.
We have the same problem in Norway; youngsters aren't taught proper private economy at school, just the "normal maths." Which leads to people getting into financial trouble because of stupid stuff. :/
Thanks for updating me on the US tax system! Hope all is well over there! :)
A Norwegian "ENK" ("enkeltmannsforetak"; self-employment) deals with a more integrated state reporting environment, stricter cash-sale controls, more emphasis on formal bookkeeping and VAT/cash-register infrastructure, and a more pre-filled tax ecosystem.
You can get a long way cheating the system if you deal with cash only, as banks etc. are required to report everything about everyone to the government, but these days it can only take you so far.
My understand is that the US is much more depending on self-reporting.
But given that the US has its own industry involving tax reporting, and having lived there myself, I don't believe you when you say it's "simple." ;)
Having a proper system for handling citizens' main priorities is important. What happens in 3rd world countries is a struggle that UN++ needs to focus on.
It's completely unbelievable that so-called developed countries are struggling with this in 2026.
In Norway, we've had a more or less automated tax system for many years; every year you get a notification that the tax settlement is complete, you log in and check if everything is correct (and edit if desired) and click OK.
Not related to this release, but their trade-in for old hardware is a joke to me. My 2019 MBP i9 2.4GHz w/64GB RAM and 2TB SSD is worth $200. It seems to me that they don't even want a trade-in; it makes much more sense to me to just keep the old MBP and use it as a dev server, home assistant, docker hub thing or something.
You assume that what smart people _do_ is the same as what humanity _ought to do_.
Even if every genius on Earth spent their days trying to get rich, that would show something about incentives, institutions, fear, status, and survival. It would not automatically prove that wealth is mankind's highest purpose.
Rats also optimize for calories when the maze is built that way. That does not make cheese (or whatever rats prefer) the meaning of life.
Modern capitalism often acts like the scoreboard is the game. That confusion is one of civilization's recurring clown acts.
Why is this so damn important? Isn't it more important to end up with the best result?
I (in Norway) use a homelab with Ollama to generate a report every morning. It's slow, but it runs between 5-6 am, energy prices are at a low, and it doesn't matter if it takes 5 or 50 minutes.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and all that, but this is another pgsql "solution" that is tied to the database layer, when it should be in the application layer.
I like to be database agnostic, and while I prefer PostgreSQL on production, I prefer SQLite on the dev layer. You should never have to HAVE TO use a specific database to make your APPLICATION work.
> There's a lot that hosted services with extra features can give you.
I totally agree with that, but in my experience 99% of "application developers" don't need all these features. Of those you listed, I only see "backups" as a requirement. Everything else is just - what I said - features for when your application is successful and you want something streamlined.
I'm in Norway, and I wonder if I see different prices than people from elsewhere in the world? Here it says $1.7K, and I can get the LG UltraFine 6K 32" for $2K, with the benefit of being bought from a Norwegian retailer (think guarantees and shopping security).
To be clear; I have never tried either of these monitors, so I can't tell if either is any good. :D
> I have to charge it from the right hand ports. I think that is dumb, but it did solve the issue.
I _had to_ do this for a while (around 2023, I think, not that it matters), but I no longer have to. I don't know what has changed, unfortunately; I haven't reinstalled anything, and I can't say I have uninstalled anything either. It's really weird...