All posts tagged: shouldnt

We Shouldn’t Need Accountants

We Shouldn’t Need Accountants

Published by Sam Flores

If you are anything like me, you have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks opening letters, finding receipts, requesting PDFs, scanning documents, and going through your credit-card statements line by line. It’s tax season. And in the United States, taxes are a DIY affair. This is the case even though Washington could probably do your taxes for you. If you earn a salary or an hourly wage, the Internal Revenue Service already knows how much money you make. It likely knows how much you owe or how big your refund should be too. Nine in 10 households take the standard deduction, making their liability easy to glean from payroll and banking data. Yet Uncle Sam demands that Americans fire up TurboTax, head to a storefront preparer, hire an accountant, or sit down with a sharp pencil and a strong cup of coffee to get their taxes done each spring. The average filer spends 13 hours on their 1040—a time tax that many of our wealthy peer countries have reduced to a …

Christopher Eccleston: “Masculinity shouldn’t be contingent on oppression”

Christopher Eccleston: “Masculinity shouldn’t be contingent on oppression”

Published by Daniella Wilson

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Born in Salford in 1964, Christopher Eccleston made his name in dramas like Cracker and Our Friends in the North. His films range from Shallow Grave to GI Joe, with recent TV jobs including HBO’s The Leftovers and Peter Bowker’s The A-Word. Most famously he played the ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, which he doesn’t discuss outside conventions – his “no Blue Box” rule. Next up is his role as a cult leader in the new Netflix drama Unchosen. What was the appeal of playing a cult leader? What attracted me to Mr Phillips was Unchosen’s writer, Julia Geary. There’s a great trend in drama at the moment for antagonists who are toxic, white, apparently heterosexual, late-middle-aged men. Thankfully, Julia gave him dimension and placed him in a story of tragedy involving the loss of his son and alcoholism. It’s a gift of a role because of the awkward questions it asks of our audience. Do audiences want to understand villains and their dimensions? I’ve had this …

Your owned Prime Video movies shouldn’t have ads — here’s how to stop them

Your owned Prime Video movies shouldn’t have ads — here’s how to stop them

Published by skeptic

Streaming services all try and separate themselves from one another. While the content is the main factor that differentiates them, they all have their own look and features that make them unique. The driving force will always be the content, which is what has made the streaming wars fun to observe over the years. But it has also led to comparisons about how each platform looks. If you’re like me and subscribe to too many of them, you have used them enough to know your way around them. Whether it’s Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, Prime Video or the hundreds of other options, you likely know how to get the content you’re looking for. That is, unless that content is on a different platform even though you thought it was on the one you are on. A surefire way to know what content is on your platform is by purchasing it. Prime Video is one of the platforms that allows you to do that. Related These 5 Streaming Services Offer the Best Value of All …

War Ethics and Why We Shouldn’t Hope for the Best in Iran

War Ethics and Why We Shouldn’t Hope for the Best in Iran

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sometimes, the morally right thing to do is to support an unjust war. The thought behind this is simple. Some wars are morally mixed: they have just and unjust aims. It’s usually unjust for a government to wage these mixed wars because it usually has the option of pursuing only the just aims. But suppose private individuals can help promote the just aims only by also lending support to the unjust ones—they’re a package deal. In such a case, it might be morally permissible for them to do so—if the just aim is very important (such as stopping atrocities) and the unjust aims are comparatively minor. (I made this argument about fifteen years ago, in the very first publication to my name). Here I want to argue that the inverse is also true. Sometimes, it can be morally wrong to support a just war. Sometimes, we shouldn’t hope that the good guys win. The reasons why have implications for the military conflicts of the Trump administration. And they ultimately provide, I believe, instructive lessons for …

Why you shouldn’t buy cheap DisplayPort cables – the ‘Death Pin’ can put your GPU at serious risk

Why you shouldn’t buy cheap DisplayPort cables – the ‘Death Pin’ can put your GPU at serious risk

Published by skeptic

Ugreen/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways DisplayPort cables are designed to transfer power to monitors. With cheaper options, misaligned pins may cause power failures. You can avoid this by opting for a VESA-certified DisplayPort cable. The DisplayPort “Death Pin” issue, or more formally known as the Pin 20 Problem, is a well-known manufacturing defect in which the last contact pin on a DisplayPort cable is wired incorrectly.  This creates a direct electrical connection between your monitor and graphics card, allowing power to flow freely between them and causing severe damage. And in a time where GPU prices regularly top $1,500, it’s best to take every precaution to protect your Nvidia or AMD card from becoming a very expensive paperweight. Also: 3 tiny gadgets I trust to block electrical surges, data-stealing software, and more Fortunately, the best solution is as easy as selecting the right DisplayPort cable. But there are a few things we need to understand first in order to see how the Death Pin can wreak havoc on …

Why AI shouldn’t be used even to decide ‘simple’ court cases

Why AI shouldn’t be used even to decide ‘simple’ court cases

Published by skeptic

In just a few years, generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) has brought about significant changes in many industries from healthcare to education, entertainment to finance, and even law. The use of gen AI in court verdicts poses significant risks to justice. Erroneous outcomes generated from “hallucinated” information, discriminatory decisions and lack of transparency are all concerns when this technology is introduced to courtrooms. But already a number of judges around the world have used it in decision-making and judgment writing. This is why some jurisdictions, including the UK, have issued guidelines for judges regarding AI use. Read more: ‘Hallucinated’ cases are affecting lawyers’ careers – they need to be trained to use AI Broadly, the guidelines suggest judges might use AI as a tool to conduct preparatory works such as drafting summaries of long documents, translating legal documents, identifying legal precedents or enhancing readability of documents. They recommend against the application of it for core judicial functions, including decision-making. Recently, some senior judicial leaders have opined that AI might be used to decide “low-stakes” or …

Giant planet that shouldn’t exist is forcing astronomers to rethink planetary science

Giant planet that shouldn’t exist is forcing astronomers to rethink planetary science

Published by Jenni Sidey

An exoplanet, TOI-5205 b, which is almost as large as Jupiter, orbits a small red star. By many estimates, this red star should not have been able to form it due to the star’s mass. The fact that TOI-5205 b exists as it does at all raises intriguing questions about how it came to be. In addition, the James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed that this planet may be even stranger than previously thought. Specifically, the atmosphere of TOI-5205 b is deficient in heavy elements relative to the hosting star. This discrepancy suggests that the outer layers of the planet and its deep interior have not developed in the same way through the formation process. The findings from the study of TOI-5205 b were recently published in The Astronomical Journal. The research was led by Caleb Cañas, a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist, along with an international team of researchers. This team included Shubham Kanodia, a Carnegie Science astronomer who contributed to the confirmation of the stellar companion in 2023, and who was also …

500-million-year-old spider relative has claws where it shouldn’t

500-million-year-old spider relative has claws where it shouldn’t

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The fossil was completely unremarkable. That’s what Harvard University paleontologist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril initially thought while examining an arthropod fossil dating back to the Cambrian period (538.8 million to 485.4 million years ago).  “As I prepared it, however, it unexpectedly revealed exquisitely preserved limbs—including a pair of frontal claws projecting from the head,” Lerosey-Aubril tells Popular Science. Early arthropod specimens don’t have claws like these. Instead, Cambrian arthropods usually have an antenna in that position. In other words, the claws Lerosey-Aubril was seeing were not supposed to be there.  This unassuming fossil belongs to Megachelicerax cousteaui, a 500-million-year-old sea predator. The fossil was first dug up over 40 years ago in a desert in western Utah and is the oldest known chelicerate—the arthropod group that includes modern spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. This single strange specimen pushes the evolutionary history of chelicerates back by 20 million years and helps explain the evolution of claws. The findings are detailed …