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Weird that I couldn't find the paper on arXiv: in my field I just google the title prefixed with "arXiv" and it pops up.

Some earlier articles by the same authors are there though (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06106), does the journal of chemical physics prohibit arXiv posting or is the norm just different in that field?


Crazy what those kooky Europeans do. Now if I have a friend, I can

- send a file to their phone

- charge their phone if they visit me [1] (without a huge bag of accessories)

- send them money [2] (without them giving some weird company their banking details)

- pay them [3] (even if they are from a neighboring country)

What will they think of next?! And to think, some of these things even work in the US. What a time to be alive.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Equipment_Directive_(202...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro


I agree, this might just be an interface design decision.

Maybe telling it not to talk about internal data structures was the easiest way to give it a generic "human" nature, and also to avoid users explicitly asking about internal details.

It's also possible that this is a simple way to introduce "tact": imagine asking something with others present and having it respond "well you have a history of suicidal thoughts and are considering breaking up with your partner...". In general, when you don't know who is listening, don't bring up previous conversations.


The tact aspect seems like a real possibility. In a world where users are likely to cut&paste responses it can't really be sprinkling in references like this.

You either believe that monopolies produce worse products or you don't.

If you believe it, the "I know they are bad" -> "but we need to complete with the boogie man" -> "we need to build our own monopoly" argument is just confusing. So we should make worse products to be competitive?

If you don't believe it, you should be explaining why monopolies make better products, not arguing that desperate times call for desperate abandonment of logic.


There's HarmonyOS [1], which is developed by Huawei, and which has a similar mix of open (OpenHarmony) and proprietary components. I haven't used it, but it's supported by quite a few phones and sort of surprised it wasn't mentioned anywhere on this thread.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS


Yes!

The "pass through itself" criteria is the same as "has one shadow that fits entirely inside another shadow". If you allow "one shadow equals another shadow" then it's trivially true for every shape because a shadow equals itself.

Note that this "shadow" language assumes a point light source at infinity, i.e. all the rays are parallel.


35 years ago South Africa had the apartheid, and now they outrank the US on a The Economist's Democracy Index [1]. So yeah, things move fast.

Nitpick: The US Voting Rights Act became law in 1965 [2], which is more like 60 years ago. Not sure if that's what you were getting at with "basically an apartheid" but it was the closest concrete landmark near your 50 year timeline.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965


Your link shows that South Africa ranks below the US. It is ranked 43rd in the world, vs the USA which is at 28 (in 2024 the latest year).


good point: I'd fix the post but it's too old. Well hopefully it gets downvoted into oblivion soon.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

(since posting Wikipedia links seems appropriate.)


I didn't realize Amazon was offering payment plans for laptops. I'd only ever seen that for cars and houses.

Which makes me wonder, what do they do when people default on payments? Do they have a kill switch they can throw? Or do they send the repo man to repossess it while you're sleeping?


Where do you live? Here in the UK, a company called Klarna has managed to wriggle their way into almost every single online storefront and offers plans for sub-£5 purchases.


Might be region specific, where I live you can't default or do bankruptcy, it just goes to the National Enforcement Authority that haunts you until you pay for the rest of your life. They don't care about any valuables without clear resell value like a newish car or jewelry or a house.

You also lose your credit status, making you unable to get new loans or phone plans, and often making apartment finding really really difficult


You can get payment plans for fast food these days.


Amazon offers me payment plans on sub-$100 items.


Installment payment offers even for relatively inexpensive items are super-common.


> and also I'm now in trouble

I know people who mess it up every year and the government just sends the forms back corrected. In fact they started treating the government like a tax prep service. Do people actually get in trouble for this?


> Do people actually get in trouble for this?

Unless they willingly and provingly try to grift IRS on a continuous basis, no, people don't get in trouble for this.

If you mess something up or underpay on your taxes, and if (or when) IRS detects it, they will send you a letter explaining their concerns and provide you with remediation options (as well as an opportunity to dispute, of course). The remediation options provided by IRS typically include both "pay it now and we will go away as if it never happened" and "talk to us, and we can work out a payment plan with you (in case you aren't able to cover at the moment)".

So no, IRS isn't some boogeyman that is gonna get you in trouble over a mistake. If they catch a mistake, they will work with you to remediate it, and their terms are typically extremely reasonable, and have zero negative consequences for utilizing them (unless you are, beyond any reasonable doubt, trying to defraud them or refuse to cooperate entirely).


Eh the problem is when they dont catch mistakes for several years, and then come after you for like 80 grand at once, and then when you cant pay it threaten to seize your assets


When you cant pay it, they will set up a payment plan over years (maybe a decade) to pay it off.


Yeah until they cancel the payment plan without notice and demand full payment or they start seizing assets.

Happened to my parents recently


It's a legally binding payment plan.

Your parents must have defaulted on the plan, not filed taxes or otherwise broken a rule. Because once a plan is set up, the IRS is forbidden from seizing assets unless something rare like the previous happens.


What happens if the submitted numbers are too high instead of too low?


My understanding was that they correct them either way. I assume random IRS employees don't have much to gain by allowing people to overpay taxes: they are just civil servants doing their day job.


Yes, but their managers may tell them to sort cases they work on in certain ways.


I agree, tax prep will probably be done by AI soon, for better or worse.

On the other hand, there's a broader business model here: lobbying to obfuscate mandatory government paperwork so that a 3rd party service is practically a requirement. It's not difficult to see AI companies expanding into that industry.


Literally the only reason to use "AI" (it's not actually AI so we should stop calling it that) is to inflate the profits of LLM companies.

We already have reliable systems that do these things in the rest of the world, not to mention TurboTax already does it in the US without LLMs.


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