But it hasn’t always been free to file electronically. The government made it required for them to offer free versions for simple returns, but that was recent.

Also, access to the Internet isn’t universal. You’d be surprised how much of the US doesn’t have affordable Internet and a fair number don’t have Internet available at all, or limited to just dialup which is not very useful. And a lot of apps don’t work right on phone browsers, especially older phones, so then you need a desktop or laptop which a lot of people don’t have. Some have access in libraries, but a lot don’t or traveling to a library is a burden. And lots of other reasons that internet isn’t a given for a large portion of households. So paper is still not just necessary, but the easiest way.

I self host a lot, but I host a lot on cheap VPS’s, mostly, in addition to the few services on local hardware.

However, these also don’t take into account the amount of time and money to maintain these networks and equipment. Residential electricity isn’t cheap; internet access isn’t cheap, especially if you have to get business class Internet to get upload speeds over 10 or 15 mbps or to avoid TOS breaches of running what they consider commercial services even if it’s just for you, mostly because of of cable company monopolies; cooling the hardware, especially if you live in a hotter climate, isn’t cheap; and maintaining the hardware and OS, upgrades, offsite backups for disaster recovery, and all of the other costs. For me, VPS’s work, but for others maintaining the OS and software is too much time to put in. And just figuring out what software to host and then how to set it up and properly secure it takes a ton of time.

So break the bubble, show us the people hurt by the “poison”. And not just one or two who happened to be allergic. That can happen with peanuts, like my little sister the first time she had them as a child. I had chicken pocks before the vaccine existed. I saw tons of kids suffering because of it. Now I see none except the ones who didn’t get the vaccine and the few unfortunate enough to be near too many of the unvaccinated people.

Yeah, very limited, but it’s very good for more than half of the population that don’t have enough deductions to exceed the standard and don’t own property (if you properly count houseless “households” that earn income as not owning property and not just renters like most statistics). It’s dumb that they have to file a return anyway just to acres money that never should have been collected. Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place. Mostly because they follow the directions and/or are afraid of paying a fine plus interest.

Anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. And if we can unbury all of the staff out of the pile of paper returns, we can devote some to go after the rich and their frivolous, often fraudulent deductions and have them pay the tax they owe.

American “Libertarians” consider liberty as self-sufficiency, not just freedom from a government, but from being required to contribute to society as a whole.

Ok, I was just assuming you were looking for advice, but if it’s just a vent post, that’s my bad.

Is that employee autistic? One of the things that management requires is learning to communicate with all types of people and help others communicate. After all, your job isn’t producing something, it’s making sure your employees that do the actual work are able to do their job effectively.

I’m just using autism as an example because I happen to be on the spectrum, though I’ve learned to mask well over the years. Autism has tons of advantages in the way we think. Great at analysis, great at handling emergencies, etc., but our communication style is a little different. We tend to need communication to be direct and precise because we analyze things too much sometimes. Problem is that because we’re so used to being misunderstood or misunderstanding people and getting into trouble for it and being scolded for asking clarifying questions because we “should just know what they meant”, that we often don’t ask the questions and try to interpret things in all the possible ways.

And maybe it’s not even at this job that they were scolded, they just are used to neurotypical people scolding them for the way they think, that they no longer even try to ask questions. So my advice is to make sure the person is not only able to ask questions, but is encouraged to do so if they need to. Make sure to be very positive when they do and make sure the other people they interact with are positive as well. It’s a very small accommodation that could help them thrive and end up being one of your best employees if given the right atmosphere.

Again, I’m using autism as an example because it’s a commonly misunderstood condition that is not a disease and not curable, nor should anyone try to cure it, it is just a different way of thinking and is a spectrum of various types of ways of thinking that people are often forced to mask and so is commonly undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. Heck, I didn’t figure it out until a few years ago and I’m in my mid-40s. But it took me decades to learn to effectively communicate without knowing why some people just couldn’t get me. Even now I tend to over-communicate as you can see from this wall of text.

But as a manager you should try to get to know your employees’ strengths and weaknesses, communication styles, etc., and help them to communicate more effectively with each other. It has helped me to be effective at coordinating people.

Sounds like the instructions were unclear so the person implemented all possible interpretations in order to avoid any misinterpretation causing problems. If they were forwarded an email and told to send “this” to someone, I can easily see that being interpreted as the email itself. Especially if this wasn’t the first time your instructions were unclear and they got in trouble for not guessing the right interpretation. Being more clear and saying “the product” instead of just “this” might help or even saying the name of the product. Good communication is about being precise, but brief.

If people are always having to guess your intentions, then some are going to get it right and some won’t. Some will learn how you think and how to interpret your vague instructions and some won’t. But if you learn better communication skills to be more direct in your instructions and leave fewer things open to interpretation, then there won’t be any need for people to guess your intentions. Remember, no one else has the information in your head, only the information in your communication.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I didn’t see that mentioned anywhere and the git repo is showing .io

Yeah, the big search engines have been getting more and more useless as SEO has taken over. And now using “AI” which will be even more susceptible to manipulation.

Been there, done that. Salaried workers have no limit on how much they can be required to work without additional pay.

It seems it’s not so much they stole the domain, it’s that they are using the same name with a different top-level domain. This is a common shady practice in malware. Most people can’t afford to purchase every TLD or their domain and so just pick one or two. Problem is that search engines will find the bad TLDs and suggest them over the real TLD if the malware providers do proper SEO manipulation. A FOSS author is unlikely to be able to or afford the time and effort it takes to manipulate search results and most popular search engines are not doing much to fix the problem, and instead relying on “AI” to reduce the costs of maintaining their search results, which does a pretty bad job, IMHO.

Yeah, I doubt the median income is higher here, especially if you have socialized medicine. I make ok money, but the minimum wage here is still only $7.25/hr across the majority of the country, and the median income is around $18/hr. If you figure in the cost of health insurance average around $600/month. Though employers often cover a portion of the premium. And the median rent is $2000, much higher in cities of course. And gasoline in my city is over $5/gallon even with all of my tax money that subsidizes it. And of course, lower middle class pays the highest effective tax rates generally. So having a budget of $200-300/month for food is relatively normal for a single person with a median income.

Eggs are around $6/dozen for the cheapest right now but have been as high as $14/dozen in the last year due to the shortages from processing company consolidation. And milk right now is $6/gallon. Plus with borderline cholesterol I avoid cow’s milk. If a dozen eggs costs an hour’s labor, that’s not very affordable. Especially when rent costs more than most people make in a month. My partner lives with 3 roommates and only makes around $20/hr. Food has to be quite cheap.

I was just giving an example. Sure if you avoid fresh produce, eggs, milk, or meats you might be able to make some cheap meals. But those things right now are very expensive. Beans are still pretty affordable for the nutrition.

Not really. An ever shrinking head of iceberg lettuce is about $2.50. A pound of the lowest grade ground beef is about $8. Bag of store brand buns is $2. A beefsteak tomato is $1.50. Pack of store brand American Cheeses is $4.50. Add in the other condiments that are harder to break down the price of, electricity/gas cost for cooking, water for cleaning, etc., and the cost for the cheapest, crappiest version of 4 quarter lb burgers is not much different than the $8 times 4 that McDonald’s is charging and I guarantee the quality is lower (lower ratio of meat:fat in the burger, buns with more sugar and preservatives and less fresh, etc.) And this is just the consumables, not the having a kitchen to do this in, the pans, utensils, etc. Unhoused people don’t have those things.

It used to be that because McDonald’s, etc., got their stuff in bulk and used lower quality ingredients and low paid employees, they offered these products for very low profit because of high volume. Now the cost including labor, supplies, etc., is less than half of what they charge. So their profit margins are huge if they have the same number of customers. But their customer base is going to dwindle, and so the profit margins will shrink, but that’s not a concern to corporations that only focus on today’s stock prices and don’t care about tomorrow.

Food and gasoline prices have skyrocketed. Infrastructure is a mess in most of the country so it takes longer and longer to get anywhere at peak times. Companies have cut costs in offices so they’re just crowded and full of distraction and germs. So yeah, lots of time and money is saved by working from home.

Unfortunately, the cost of healthier foods has gone up at the same pace. Instead people end up eating less or giving up other necessities like downsizing their housing or moving in with parents.

That electric bill, though. 🤣

Brag about it and use it as leverage for power. The money doesn’t actually exist, it’s stock mostly that gets instantly created from nothing. But they can use the idea of its existence to take other people’s real money for the things they want and the rest is just other people agreeing to do what they want because of the idea of power that having it conveys.