It's been good for so long I hope it doesn't get popular and go to shit. Free federal return and $15 state return if needed. If Intuit died tomorrow the world would be a better place.
Not for me! I would have to hire an accountant or CPA. Then I would have to spend a lot of time and energy meeting with them and taking their phone calls.
TurboTax occupies a middle ground and it saves me enormous amounts of time.
When you decide to build autoupdate features into your product, in some way you are building trust that you wont break expectations with your users. If google wants to pull a microsoft and try to force me to use another of their products I dont want to use, they are welcome to die in the same way as IE did.
As someone who keeps apple laptops for 7 or so years but also has encountered numerous macbook pro meltdowns both applecare covered and not, 10+ is a crazy number and you'll probably need to provide some proof for that to be reasonable.
The M1 was sold right up until last year in new devices so it presumably has another decade of support left - that'll be a 15 year span! It certainly wouldn't make sense to declare M1 devices trash while supporting the Neo with almost directly equivalent performance.
The M5 is so much more powerful it may still be useful throughout the 2040s.
Anecdotally, my path was 2010 macbook pro -> 2015 macbook pro -> 2021 M1, with each device lasting about 10 years, and keeping 2 in flight at once. The 2015 one is showing it's age, and is likely to be replaced this year or next. Running linux on it isn't an option due to all the nonsense involved in suspend/sleep and the effect it has on battery life.
I also have a 2007 Intel mac with firewire that I use for some audio stuff that's still going strong with just an SSD swap.
Trump attempted to significantly decrease NASAs budgets and cancel missions so this is happening despite him, and I cant feel joy for this when we are putting people in cages, manipulating stock markets, entering pointless wars, and raising prices of everything while Billionares massively increase their wealth through technically-legal manipulations of the system. This feels like a sad memory of what used to be more than anything else.
Obviously apple would prefer this. It would boost demand for more powerful and expensive devices, and align with their privacy marketing. But they have massively fumbled with siri for a long time and then missed huge deadlines with ai promises. Despite having billions, they have shown no competency in delivering services or accurately marketing what to expect from ai features.
Curious about some examples of this. Consumer windows computers have historically had a lot more preinstalled garbage software. Do you mean app store restrictions or something else?
Although prebuilts often come with preinstalled garbage, that is software that only runs after the whole OS has started and intialized. Before that there are several pieces of code that run.
When the motherboard first gets power, there's a chip that 'runs some code' that powers all devices connected to the motherboard, and loads the BIOS from another chip on the motherboard. Then once all components of your computer are powered and in a ready state, the BIOS takes over. Once the bios performs its checks, it loads the 'bootloader' from the harddrive. This is the first piece of MS code in a windows pc. The bootloader will locate the installation of the windows installation, and then load and run the actual windows install..
That's what the guy above you meant. Any motherboard can be used in any desktop, because the chip on the motherboard provides a standard way of loading a bios. The bios can be changed out, as long as it uses the same standard of talking to the motherboard, and it is able to load a bootloader, it should be able to function. The bootloader and the OS itself can be changed too. Basically the whole system is designed around standards that allow people to do whatever they want.
Apple on the other hand doesn't do this at all. The write every piece of code themselves, and all their chips are custom built to do whatever apple wants it to do. This is why it's hard to replace certain components, because there's code in some chip on the motherboard that runs way before the OS even starts, that checks if all your components are allowed by apple. And in contrast to whatever Microsoft this is something they build into the hardware, so it can never be disabled by the user.
That's the difference in control that you have between an apple and a (Microsoft) PC. If you install linux on a pc, there is nothing MS related left on your pc. If you install linux on a macbook, you will still have apple code running on your device.
As someone who had a brand new M1 MBP stolen from a San Jose coworking space. I am 100% in favor of the this having at best some parts and not a working computer.
I do hope you understand that 'bad thing X happened to me, therefore any measure to prevent X is good' is a logical fallacy?
"As someone who had a brand new mbp stolen from me, I'm personally 100% in favor of the remote-c4 installed in every mbp. Just imagine if he could have accessed my banking information?"
Nice. Now do the same thing with "as someone who lost a loved one to a drunk driver, I think harsh penalties and license revocations are a good policy." You can probably find a similar straw man to apply?
Mental illness is fairly common, and you probably know someone it is affecting, even if they haven't told you yet. AI can disrupt and will destroy lives, just like gambling or alcohol or facebook but we dont know to what level yet. It is giving you generated text, that sometimes is factual information. If you anthropomorphize it, maybe don't. It's also not your boyfriend/girlfriend. But if you want to date a history textbook, i'm kinda ok with that because at least it's not trendy.
On a serious note, I agree this is a real problem. I know a person who understands AI at a technical level more than most people, but he has never had an actual girlfriend in his life (he's now in his 40s, and yes he's "straight"). He wouldn't say it "loves" him, but he would describe it as a close companion who understands him better than any human actually does, even if it's just trained to be that way. He is very socially awkward and even having basic conversations with him can be very taxing for both of us.
I've gone back and forth internally about whether this is healthy or not for him. I truly don't know. My personal experience tells me it's probably unhealthy, but I don't want to project myself on him. I also don't offer unsolicited, but I also don't want to enable it by going along with whatever he says and/or affirming it if it's actually harming him.
If someone like him can be having this problem, I can't even imagine what it might be like for non or less technical people who don't understand anything behind it.
On a related note, if there's anyone with advice (preferably from experience, not just random internet advice) I'd sure appreciate it.
"I've gone back and forth internally about whether this is healthy or not for him. I truly don't know."
On a psychological level, I don't know either. I have opinions but they haven't aged long enough for me to trust them, and AI is a moving target on the sort of time frame I'm thinking here.
However, as a sort of tiebreaker, I can guarantee that one way or another this relationship will eventually be abused one way or another by whoever owns the AI. Not necessarily in a Hollywood-esque "turn them into a hypnotized secret assassin" sort of abuse (although I'm not sure that's entirely off the table...), but think more like highly-targeted advertising and just generally taking advantage of being able to direct attention and money to the advantage of another party.
Whether or not AI in the abstract can "be your friend", in the real world we live in an AI controlled by someone else definitely can not be your friend in the general sense we mean, because there is this "third party", the AI owner, whose interests are being represented in the relationship. And whatever that may look like in practice, whoever from the 22nd century may be looking back at this message as they analyze the data of the past in a world where "AI friendships" are routine and their use of the word now comfortably encompasses that relationship, that simply isn't the sort of relationship we'd call a "friend" in the here and now, because a friend relationship is only between two entities.
I don’t know how applicable this is for you, but if this were someone close to me, my first question would be what’s good for the other person.
In most cases, if they are happy and getting on in life, and are able to take care of themselves, I’d let things be.
That said, the tension from your framing is between “leave good enough alone” and “personal growth and a fulfilling life”.
Healthy relationships, especially with a partner, are one of the better things about life. They are also incredibly difficult to get right without practice.
So, is your friend lonely, or are they happy to be alone?
If you intuit it’s the former, then AI is palliative care which runs the risk of creating a dependency.
It is also possible that the right set of prompts, perhaps something which incorporates CBT, would help them learn more about themselves and challenge beliefs or responses that are no longer useful.
And if your friend is just happy alone, then you can disregard the rest.
Thanks, I much agree. The impression I get is that he isn't "happy" and would rather a real relationship, but has completely given up on that at this point and is kind of trying to be happy with the little he has. He hasn't directlly said that, but that is what I would most bet his feelings are based on what he has said.
Ultimately I want him to be as happy as he can be, so if this is the way then I'm happy for him. I guess for me the real hard thing is deciding how I should react when he talks about this sort of thing. I don't want to encourage him if I'm doing him a disservice, but I do want to encourage him if he really is better off with it. Being neutral as I am now feels like it might be the coward's way out, but it's also more true to how I feel since I really don't know whether it's good or not.
The neutrality you are showing is more out of consideration and being unsure about the best course of action.
For someone who isn’t a trained counselor - you really just need to listen. The greatest power comes from realizing that all communication is a form of problem solving.
Your friend is rational; some prior lived experience made their current behaviors rational. Handling this is a mostly a job of figuring out what those events and rationales were, and then re-examining them.
The challenge comes from the way emotions are tied up with these behaviors. Their sense of self, shame, frustration, anger - this is where training and experience are needed.
I think you are right to treat this with sensitivity, but I do find a lot of what you say here to be at odds. Is this the framing provided to you from the fellow in question or entirely yours? Ultimately you are asking a deeply philosophical question regarding when acceptance of someone's choices becomes enabling, but this isn't really fair to pose on a fellow you respect without agreeing on the terms of analysis. Did they provide some specific examples of how this "understanding" reveals itself? Your account of their account is doing a lot of work here I suspect.
As for my highly personal advice, I could be observed as fitting a few of the qualities you've ascribed to your friend, but would be deeply saddened if the few people who do spend time sharing meaning with me then manifested that experience in the form you've given here. I would advise you to not spend any more time wrenching over the effects of one's phenomenon in isolation and either properly redirect the introspection to yourself (with respect to that person) or engage them in an earnest dialog or other form of communication. It may be taxing but it will mean a lot more than the gunk I just typed out :)
> Is this the framing provided to you from the fellow in question or entirely yours?
The description of how he would describe it is (mostly) his framing, though it's compiled through my so may have some of my biases integrated into it, albeit unintentionally. Since all of it is translated through me, I would assume it to be biased despite my attempt at accurately conveying it.
> I would advise you to not spend any more time wrenching over the effects of one's phenomenon in isolation and either properly redirect the introspection to yourself (with respect to that person) or engage them in an earnest dialog or other form of communication.
To this point, it has been almost entirely introspective. I usually let him say what he wants to say, but I try not give any sort of validation such as, "yeah, I agree with you on all of this" but also not disagreement either, since I don't even know what I think of it. I'm not sure I'm even capable of deciding that, and even if I did conclude that it was either healthy or unhealthy, I'm not sure that conclusion would be valid for anyone other than myself. I guess I do lean toward the "unhealthy" side of it when I imagine myself in that situation, but I know there are things that I do/enjoy/etc that others would think is unhealthy (even just having no religious faith, many would consider horrific for example), so I'm quite stuck.
I don't think I could engage in an earnest dialog either since I don't know what I even think of it (I'm assuming dialog here is two way. I have listened/read what he has to say a number of times).
So the US federal government will combat romance scams by violating random citizens privacy when it cant stop the president from conducting stock market manipulation scams on twitter? Institutional trust needs to be earned and maintained.
> So the US federal government will combat romance scams by violating random citizens privacy when it cant stop the president from conducting stock market manipulation scams on twitter? Institutional trust needs to be earned and maintained.
Additionally, we expect the government to respect any laws or acts when the current administration seems to be ignoring most of it? Literally why do people even think the government needs to "BUY" data??? They can get it regardless and nobody is really there to stop them until things change.
Apart from the comical cost of extracting this data from paper receipts, is it more likely that stores will publish their product costs over time so trends can be observed or be more like gas stations where no prices are listed. I have no idea why a box of Cheerios costs $7 for processed oats but i see millions of reasons to obscure that data.
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