Get ready for MacOS to turn into iOS ...

Does it produce toxic fumes?

In general yes, resin and FDM printers both produce toxic VOCs.

But FormLabs for this printer and resin have focused on safetey and acquired a certification on their Alpha resins which show low VOCs that should be safe to print in an indoor room with low ventilation.

I still wouldn't, I would add ventilation and wear PPE, it's still going to be releasing some VOCs even if it comes under a tolerable limit. But I do appreciate what seems to be the first ever initiative in 3D printing to address the elephant in the room of VOCs directly at the material level.

We're talking about a driller with the knowledge of the totality of mankind.

And starlink?

The railway system in the US is not very impressive, though.

That's very cool but don't you think the Big AI labs will soon have collected enough data from us that they can easily do this?

I'm not sure it matters. The IRS killed Direct File under lobbying pressure from the tax prep industry. In my opinion the public is owed a free version of this sort of tool. If the IRS doesn't produce it, then citizens ought to. If Google or Anthropic or whoever wants to offer a free version of this, more power to them, but I don't see why they'd bother. They could have done it decades ago.

And to be clear: my vision here isn't "have an agent do your taxes", it's to have agents build a hardened and thoroughly verified deterministic tool that can help you navigate the (somewhat bewildering) forms and instructions decision tree when filing your own taxes.

This is great, and I appreciate the approach. Yes, tax calculation should be a decision tree. Unfortunately it is truly pretty complicated (just this year I had to abandon FreeTaxUSA for TurboTax because the latter handled an important case I needed better). But I have a lot of faith that we can do this right. Good luck!

Funny, after 10+ years of using TurboTax Online I moved to FreeTaxUSA last year and it's like a breath of fresh air. TurboTax couldn't do what I needed to do (e-file a late return) and FreeTaxUSA had no problem with doing that.

I have a probably stupid question: given that the IRS killed Direct File, even if your software can create ready-to-file (or even ones that need some work) tax returns, isn't that moot without a way to like... get the IRS to accept them?

If your software can fill out the forms then you can (at the very least) print them and mail them in. The IRS certainly still accepts that.

https://www.irs.gov/filing/where-to-file-paper-tax-returns-w...

Why wouldn't the IRS accept a tax return created by your own software? How would they even know it was custom software? Ultimately your tax return is just a stack of papers that gets sent to the IRS.

Software sending efiles to the IRS has to be tested with and approved by the IRS. The IRS is working toward eliminating paper filing as an option. At this point, paid preparers are legally required to efile all returns and if the return gets rejected and they must paper file, they have to include Form 8948, Explanation for Paper Filing. For the IRS to accept a tax return from software the software has to go through this process. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/how-tax-preparation-sof...

As someone from the Netherlands, this is bonkers to me. I just log in to the tax site, review what they've already filled in for me, and submit.

It is truly insane. Major corporations spent billions to prevent this. The worst part is that for the majority of Americans, the government has already internally prepared their tax return before they even file but again the tax preparation industry spends a fortune lobbying Congress to prevent an automatic filing of taxes.

As an American, it is bonkers to me too. Last year my former employer did not issue me a w-2. I called the IRS to ask them what to do. They said they had all the information but can’t release it to me until after the filing deadline. Instead I was told to use form 4852 to estimate and file an amended return if my estimate was wrong once they give me the numbers they have. Worst part is you can’t efile when you file with form 4852.

Anyway, my point is that for 95% of people they have all the information already and you shouldn’t have to file.

This! I am CPA with a tax practice and it makes me unreasonably angry that the tax prep industrial complex has lobbied our government into making the vast majority of people stress over their tax returns or have to pay someone to prepare a return that is already sitting on an IRS computer. No CPA worth their salt wants to do the simple returns but companies like Intuit and HR Block feed off them.

The first option on Form 8948 is "Taxpayer chose to file this return on paper" - is there any evidence paper filing is going away permanently?

You can use free file fillable forms to submit online. It's a bit of work to transcribe from other software. It also requires a particular interpretation when filling forms (e.g. you need to round before summing your W-2s).

You just mail them in!

I think that assuming work can be done more easily in the future should not stop people from doing work that needs to be done in the present.

(If a painter knew that the camera was coming out I would not want them to throw their canvas away)

Plus there is little chance it will be done in the future by any large entity because of the entrenched interested in the area.

> (If a painter knew that the camera was coming out I would not want them to throw their canvas away)

That's not a fair comparison because the painter produces different work, whereas tax computations will be the same.

Don't run important stuff on your consumer devices. Apple is a consumer brand.

I imagine AI will expose many backdoors created by three letter agencies. This could be one.

The only way Big AI labs will sell us appliances is when the internet was somehow destroyed.

Not sure where this would fit in.

Qwen 3.8 27B runs well on my laptop. And I can fit terabytes of human knowledge on it.

Anyone designing their own macbook clone using llms yet?