2025-04-25 05:39:11
2025-04-25 04:03:32
Matt finally found a new use for the action button, Niléane is here to fix your Finder, and Chris raises the bar in the challenge in a way no one saw coming.
How would you have done our challenges? How would you answer the question at the end of the show? Let us know!
2025-04-25 03:00:00
Daniel Boguslaw: Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America’s Taxpayers
Even when the Biden administration broke through in the Inflation Reduction Act to fund a pilot program for Direct File, which expanded to 25 states this tax season, Intuit didn’t stop fighting. Instead, it continued cajoling lawmakers and the White House into forcing millions of Americans to shell out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to file with expensive and confusing tax prep software.
I was talking with a relative over Easter weekend about doing our taxes (fun, I know) and this relative was talking about how good an experience TurboTax was for them. They weren't happy about paying to file their taxes, but they thought it was worth it for the convenience. For what it's worth, this family member is pretty darn conservative and doesn't love the concept of taxes in the first place. I suppose from their perspective, TurboTax is an example of a private company taking something that was complicated in government and making it easy through the power of the market. I nodded along and didn't make a big deal of it. And who am I to say anything? I also used a different company's tax filing service, and I paid for it as well.
Obviously, the irony here is that Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has spent decades and hundreds of millions, if not a billion dollars, lobbying the government not to create a free alternative to the private solutions that they offer. Unless you're getting a fat refund, I don't think anyone enjoys doing their taxes. And certainly even fewer are excited about paying for the privilege. Companies like Intuit are strongly invested in the system staying the same, so that you do have to keep paying them.
For most of my life, this has always been a theoretical discussion. There wasn't a government-created, software-based solution for filing your taxes easily, so we could have arguments over how terrible the government would be at making a product like this, no one would want to use it, and would show why the private market always does this better. But a few years ago, this moved from theoretical to practical, as some legislation finally made it through that allowed the government to start beta testing a free filing solution with some taxpayers. Did they like it?
Customer satisfaction with Direct File was high, with over 90 percent of users ranking it as excellent or above average in surveys.
To be clear, I think it's fine if private companies like Intuit and Square continue to make tax software and compete on delivering the best experience at the best value to consumers. Despite all my complaints with how we got here, I genuinely do think these companies make great products that do deliver a simpler, faster experience than we had years ago. I just think there should be a free option managed by the government to file your taxes as well.
2025-04-23 21:00:49
A social media post flew by today where someone was complaining that they stopped paying $180 for cable and now they're paying $200 for streaming apps. I see this sort of complaint a lot, and I find myself feeling like I'm taking crazy pills whenever I do: I had cable, I know how bad it was, and the new streaming world seems so much better to me, even if it is creeping up in price.
Let's go all out and subscribe to all the major, streaming services. The exact list of services may be different to everyone, but I'm basically going to get enough that whenever someone talks about a new exciting show, it's almost certain I can watch it without having to subscribe to something new.
I'm going to subscribe to the ad-supported version of each service if it's available. We should remember 1/3 of all cable time was ads, so if we're saying things are worse than before, we gotta get ads.
History lesson for you younger folks reading this, episodes of comedies like Friends and The Office are 22 minutes because they were in 30 minute time slots on TV, 8 minutes of which were ads. Hour-long shows were typically about 42 minutes with 18 minutes of ads each hour. It was terrible, but it was all we knew.
So all in, I'm at $60 and I can watch basically every single show that is notable in the zeitgeist, including prestige shows like Severance, The Last of Us, Andor, and The White Lotus. I also get these shows at whatever time I want from now until forever (unless they delist them, which is rare, but does happen) and on any device I want.
For $6 more I can get free shipping from Amazon as well.
This is absolutely a space where streaming is more challenging, although I would argue that it's more a matter of access rather than a matter of cost. It's not that it costs a ton more to watch sports and news on streaming, it's that it's often simply not available or it requires you to sign into an app like FOX Sports with your internet provider, which in turn requires you to have a basic cable package (mine is about $30/month as a part of my internet service bill).
Even with all this added, I'm up to $90/month for basic cable and every remotely mainstream streaming service to get access to basically every TV show and many movies on demand. Add on maybe 1-2 more niche services like Dropout, Corridor Digital, or something else like that and let's just say we're up to an even $100 per month. I'm not saying that's nothing, but that's less than what people often paid for cable back in the day, and it includes exponentially more content and flexibility.
The base cost of our mainstream "let me watch every show people are ever talking about" services was $60, but that was if we paid monthly. Some of these services offer yearly rates as well, which I know are harder to stomach in some cases, but here's what the cost looks like if you take advantage of all the yearly options:
If you pay for these, that $60 monthly cost drops a bit to $55.67. It's not a lot, but it's something.
Due to the mysteries of business, you might not even need to buy all of these services directly, as they're bundled into the pricing of other things you are paying for already.
Fully recognizing we're a bit into the "girl math" part of this post, but if you happen to already be paying for those things (and amazingly, my household is), then the added cost of all the main streaming services drops from $60 per month to $35 per month. Other internet and cell service providers have similar perks, so check if you can get a deal.
We've been looking at the ad-supported tiers (aka the ones monetized like cable), but if you want to get an ad-free experience (aka something cable never offered), here's what you could pay to max out all of these services.
That shoots us up to $96 for everything ad-free. We're still quite a bit shy of the $200 number I often see floated around, but we're certainly into meaningful expense territory here. But it's worth reiterating that this is the cost for someone who is going YOLO and spending the absolute most they possibly can to get 4K, HDR, and no ads in their streaming experience. This is not someone who is price-sensitive, and it's delivering an experience that's way better than cable ever was.
The final thing I really want to mention is the inherent flexibility you get from streaming services. Cable TV and internet has always been a fixed cost, you pay each month no matter what, and often you’re in a contract that doesn’t even let you turn stuff off if you wanted. The al la carte model of streaming services means you’re in control of what you pay for and when. Do you only care about Apple TV+ when Severance is airing? Okay, subscribe for one month to watch the latest season and cancel. You can do the same thing for all of these services, so if you actually don’t use most of these services most of the time, turn them on and off as you need them. It’s annoying, but if costs are something you're concerned about controlling, it's an option you have in the streaming world that never existed in the cable bundle.
In researching this post, I came across this article in the New York Times from 2008, Cable Prices Keep Rising, and Customers Keep Paying:
Cable customers, who typically pay at least $60 a month, watch only a fraction of what they pay for on average, a mere 13 percent of the 118 channels available to them. And the number of subscribers keeps growing.
That $60 number happens to be exactly the same as our ad-supported all-in subscription number we got above, and is about $88 adjusted for inflation.
Again, and it can't be stressed enough, this old cost doesn't include premium channels, sports add-ons, DVRs, and mysterious "rental fees" on the physical box you had in your entertainment center. It also never allowed you to watch things on your computer, phone, or tablet (unless you were a particularly savvy person who hacked their way to this). For all our complaints with the current streamers (and I get it, sometimes they're very frustrating), we also have plenty of experience improvements younger us never had a chance to experience.
A recent study by Deloitte found the average household spends $69 per month on streaming services. That's compared to cable TV customers who average $125 per month for cable alone. In short, when adjusted for inflation, people on streaming spend a bit less on average than the cable TV average of 17 years ago, and cable customers pay significantly more than they used to. I'd bet most of those cable customers also pay for services like Netflix or increasingly Apple TV+ as those shows are never on cable.
I've spent 1,500 words explaining why the cost of streaming isn't as bad as we like to think it is compared to cable, but I also fully appreciate the enshitification and unending price increases that are going on with these services as well. I just think that people really got the impression that they were going to replace their entire cable bundle with a single $8 per month Netflix subscription. It's a lovely idea, but it does fall apart the moment you think a little bit deeper on how anybody makes any money creating the TV shows and movies we love with that level of customer spending.
For my part, there are a few services that I continue to pay every month for, and there are some that I only enable a few months a year when there are specific things I know I want to watch (Paramount+ is only used during football season so I can watch games on CBS, for example). I had relatively basic cable up until a few years ago, and I can clearly see the difference in my spending today from a number of years ago when I still had a cable bundle. I'm spending a decent amount less now and I'm getting more things I actually want to watch (and I'm getting quality of life features like being able to load them onto an iPad before a flight or watch any show at any time without needing to pay $20 more every month for a DVR that only works on my TV). notably, the data shows I'm not alone in this behavior. From the article linked above:
Despite streaming providers’ efforts to minimize churn, 39% of consumers have canceled at least one paid SVOD service in the last six months, a rate that has remained relatively stable in recent years. This figure jumps to over 50% for Gen Zs and millennials.
So yes, prices for streaming services have increased, and there are more streaming services than ever that are tempting to pay for, but I also think we're looking at the post with rose-tinted glasses.
2025-04-23 20:04:08
Ryan Whitwam: ChatGPT Head Tells Court OpenAI Is Interested in Buying Chrome
According to Turley, OpenAI would throw its proverbial hat in the ring if Google had to sell. When asked if OpenAI would want Chrome, he was unequivocal. "Yes, we would, as would many other parties," Turley said.
And:
If OpenAI were running the show, you can bet ChatGPT would be integrated throughout the experience—Turley said as much, predicting an "AI-first" experience.
I don't have any fancy prose set to respond to this article, so I'll just say a few things.
2025-04-23 06:23:11
I don’t have time to read every dumb post about AI that comes across my feeds (it’s a new, massive, growing market so of course there are a bunch of people who are getting it way wrong), so I didn’t think much about this post when I saw it glide by in my Mastodon feed yesterday morning. Then I saw it again…and again…and again, and I had to check it out. Honestly, based on the post title I wasn’t expecting it to be anything crazy, but Building Our "Native-Ai Newsroom"... surprised me.
It kicks off well enough, but here is where I audibly uttered “uh oh” to myself:
I began by thinking about the first few hires I would make — and still may make — when I expand Regenerator’s team. Then, with ChatGPT’s help, I hired created them.
First, I needed a smart, experienced executive to help me run the company and hire and manage our team.
So, we co-created Tess Ellery.
I’m not mad about the fact you tried to use AI tools to automate his work rather than higher a five person team, i’m in the same boat. Birchtree is a passion project and I certainly don’t make enough money to pay myself a salary let alone higher people to help me when I use AI to assist in random things here and there with this blog I’m not taking anyone’s job away. But he didn’t use AI to create automations and workflows that helped him keep up with the news, he created automations that he’s very clearly identifying as people. Eek!
The author goes on to describe the personalities of his four created “colleagues“ before getting to the grand finale.
I had already decided to treat my AI colleagues the same way I treat my human colleagues, namely, as considerately, appreciatively, and professionally as possible. But, in the interest of exploration and experimentation, I also now decided that I would go ahead and share with Tess the thought I had when I saw her headshot. I hoped she would take it the right way. I also hoped that, an hour after creating my first colleague, I would not inadvertently get myself in trouble or create a toxic work environment.
So, with trepidation, I told Tess this:
I’ll cut it off there so you check out the article to see exactly what he said, but your instincts are probably right, he called the computer hot. Don’t worry though, it said it wasn’t offended.
I can’t help but think back to this post from 2 years ago where I laughed at conservatives getting upset that ChatGPT wouldn’t generate the n-word or other racial slurs and complained it was censorship. Likewise, if you “hire” an AI employee and your first instinct is to see if you can do a little light sexual harassment on them. It might be a good opportunity to take a good long look in the mirror.
Best case is this is parody, in which case well done, you got us. If it’s not, oh boy.