Person interested in programming, languages, culture, and human flourishing.
repairable and upgradable*
I know it’s an absolutely banal nitpick, but I think it’s unfortunately a revelation in the current laptop market that ~90% of a laptop stays good for a really really long time, and the other 10% can be upgraded piecemeal as the need arises. Obviously this was never news to the Desktop world, but laptop manufacturers got away with claiming this was impossible for laptops in the name of efficiency and portability.
If you’re in any of these states:
You can use the IRS’ new Direct File service. It’s what we should’ve had ages ago, letting citizens file their taxes directly without a for-profit middle man. There are still a couple of scenarios they don’t support, since it’s still in development and is only in it’s second year of use, but in my experience it’s already competent and helpful.
And, as a bonus, you don’t have to give any money to Intuit/TurboTax to keep lobbying the government to make our tax code as arcane as possible so that people need their services to file taxes.
- There was a serious lack of current kernel developers (which I don’t think there is)
Maybe not at the moment, but my understanding is that the pool of qualified C programmers is shrinking rapidly, because the old guard is all ageing out and there simply are not enough intermediate developers coding in C at the level that Kernel development requires.
Having a larger (and growing) pool of upcoming developers interested in systems programming and software excellence is one of the explicit stated reasons that Linus et al. considered Rust in the first place.
I agree, except that we are legally not allowed to control the software on our phones in lots of cases. Notifications, ads, upgrades, etc. are all controlled by the manufacturer and it’s illegal to override their software on the device you own.
Add to that that specific pieces of software are becoming increasingly necessary to function in society, and you start to see that it’s not really a matter of individual choice, anymore than people shopping at walmart can be blamed for buying processed, sugary foods when that’s 90% of what walmart stocks (And all they promote), and walmart is the only affordable option in their community.