The article makes valid points. However, many of its recommendations are not practical for the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. Even merely contributing to a 401(k) or HSA can be difficult for these families.
Small recommendation: The diagrams on [https://wuu73.org/aicp] are helpful, but clicking them does not display the full‑resolution images; they appear blurry. This occurs in both Firefox and Chrome. In the GitHub repository, the same images appear sharp at full resolution, so the issue may be caused by the JavaScript rendering library.
I’d sign up for a service that calls a pharmacy on my behalf to refill prescriptions. In certain situations, pharmacies will not list prescriptions on their websites, even though they have the prescriptions on file, which forces the customer to call by phone — a frustrating process.
I do feel bad for pharmacists, their job is challenging in so many ways.
Didn't Google already demo that with Google Duplex? It's not available here so I can't test it, but I think that's exactly the kind of thing duplex was designed to do.
Although, from a risk avoidance point of view, I'd understand if Google wanted to stay as far away from having AI deal with medication as possible. Who knows what it'll do when it starts concocting new information while ordering medicine.
I would pay for YouTube premium if you can afford it. The cost is pretty reasonable and 55% of the subscription goes to content creators. It's not a huge amount but probably similar to what a creator would make if ads were shown.
I subscribed until they price hiked it like 45% in one go a couple of months ago in my country. Now the price for it is equal to, or in some cases even more expensive than the services that actually produce their own high quality movies/tv shows.
But it is not possible to use it without creating a Google account. I should not need to sign in to watch videos, especially when that makes all efforts at avoiding tracking null.
I get why you might not want to create a Google account, but how is it even possible to operate without one? I'm genuinely astonished by people who are able to get by in 2024 without having ever created an account on Google.
I have google accounts that I created a decade ago but I can't remember the last time I logged on one, except to log on gmail and clean the box in private browsing.
I basically only keep them because I used my real name and don't want anyone to steal an account/personnal info I might have created with that gmail address and impersonate me.
I don't really see what is difficult in operating without a google account.
I think the point about _having_ a Google account is one thing, but then there's the fact of having to be logged in. I use many of the Google services, but I don't have the need to be logged in while using YouTube for 99% of the time (if not 100%).
What do you need one for, if you're not in the Google ecosystem?
Just about the only thing I can think of is Google Docs. But if you need that for work, chances are you're using your work account for that, not your personal one.
the more it becomes "genuinely astonishing" that people can use the internet without $ProprietaryThing, the more important it is to resist using $ProprietaryThing wherever possible and at all costs. they have been pulling out all the stops for 10+ years to make it seem like you're required to have a google/icloud account to participate in society. it's slimy and endangers the neutrality of the internet.
Imagine being able to tell an app to call the IRS during the day, endure the on-hold wait times, then ask the question to the IRS rep and log the answer. Then deliver the answer when you get home.
Or, have the app call a pharmacy every month to refill prescriptions. For some drugs, the pharmacy requires a manual phone call to refill which gets very annoying.
Years ago my tax return was flagged as a possible fraud case -- I believe a direct consequence of a big data breach. I had to go into my "local" IRS office and present my passport to prove indeed it was me. Decidedly not nice.
True to form, with an appointment I waited 3 hours at the office and watched the guard staff turn away countless people. Finally saw a person, gave then my passport, and finished in a minute.
I am going through that right now. IRS owes me 3 years of refunds, but I can't even get an appointment to see them. They hang up one when I call (after hours on hold), and won't let me just visit the local office. My current attempt is to work with my US Senators office.
That is very expensive. Offices all around the country with personnel. We are going to have to fund them instead of gripe about them to get that to happen.
Yeah, that is why I doubt it will happen. Maybe a website where you can sumbit an issue and have it resolved in a reasonable number of days would be fine.
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