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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • For anyone wondering how this will “make high earners play by the same rules”:

    Seemingly not everyone will be stoked to see the IRS go totally paperless. The Treasury Department said that combining paperless processing with “an improved data platform” will make it easier for data scientists to extract and analyze data—potentially detecting tax evasion that the IRS has long overlooked due to a lack of resources.

    “When combined with an improved data platform, digitization and data extraction will enable data scientists to implement advanced analytics and pattern recognition methods to pursue cases that can help address the tax gap, including wealthy individuals and large corporations using complex structures to evade taxes they owe,” the Treasury Department said.

    In April, the Treasury Department said that “improving enforcement among high-income and high-wealth individuals, complex partnerships, and large corporations that are not paying the taxes they owe” could end up flagging $160 billion owed but evaded annually.

    “Due to a lack of resources and loss of top talent, audits of the wealthy and large corporations have plummeted over the last decade, and the amount of taxes evaded by the top 1 percent has exploded to $160 billion per year,” the Treasury Department reported in April. “Audit rates for millionaires fell by 77 percent, audit rates for large corporations fell by 44 percent, and audit rates for partnerships fell by 80 percent between 2010 and 2017.”

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that updating the IRS technology was crucial to reduce the tax gap and ensure that “high earners play by the same rules as working and middle-class families.”

    Anyone taking bets on Congress shutting this down?




  • I play minecraft on a private server via steam on my htpc with an Xbox One controller. I have minecraft set up as a non-steam game in steam, steam configured with the controller. Minecraft is set up to use the fabric client with a number of client-side mods (the client itself tells me I have 87 or so mods, but that has to be client patches or something, as I only have a dozen or so mods installed). When it works, it’s fantastic, but the problem is that it’s very inconsistent.

    When I open the game from steam, the controller works in the launcher as a rough approximation to a mouse and keyboard - exactly what I want. But when I launch the actual game, it’s a complete toss up whether that configuration will carry over to the game window. More often than not, it won’t, and sessions often begin with me opening and closing the game many times before the configuration will carry over and I can play.

    I’ve tried turning on and off steam’s “allow desktop configuration in launcher” option, which doesn’t seem to have any effect. I’ve tried enabling and disabling the minecraft launcher’s “keep launcher open when games are active” setting, which similarly seems to have no effect. Annoyingly, I’ve noticed that if I alt-tab back to the launcher after starting the game, the controller is still working for the launcher, just not in the game itself.

    At this point, I’ve installed the Controllable mod and Glossi - this configuration “just works”, and is perfectly consistent, but it’s an imperfect substitute for the steam solution that I prefer. But I feel like I’m out of things to try for getting the steam solution to work consistently, or at least often enough to not frustrate me before I even get into the game!

    Any thoughts as to why it behaves this way and other things to try are appreciated.


  • To receive the free TV, Telly users must submit detailed demographic info (such as age, gender and address), as well as purchasing behaviors, brand preferences and viewing habits, and they must agree to let their data be used for serving targeted ads. Telly’s TVs include a sensor that detects how many people are in front of the screen at any given moment.

    So what’s the catch? Telly users must agree to several conditions under the company’s terms of service. If someone doesn’t abide by the TOS, Telly reserves the right to demand the TV be shipped back — otherwise, it will charge up to $1,000 to the credit card associated with a given account.

    Among the Telly TV requirements: You must “use the product as the primary television in your household”; you must keep the TV connected to the internet at all times; and you are not allowed to use any ad-blocking software. In addition, users may not make “physical modifications to the product or attach peripheral devices to the product not expressly approved by Telly,” the company says in its terms of service. “Any attempt to open the product’s enclosure will be deemed an unauthorized modification.”

    Why don’t we just invite big brother right into our living rooms, eh?

    Also, I guess you need approval to connect an Xbox, Playstation, or set-top box? What about my htpc?