Researchers reconstructed the history of an unusual 30-year-old bird nest based on the expiration dates printed on plastic waste in the structure.
Want to bring your ranked matches to the Endgame with Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange in Marvel Rivals? Doctor Strange offers a fantastic one-two punch for hero shooter fans: strong and simple. He’s a hero of a Vanguard (tank) variety, meaning his main responsibility is to soak up incoming damage. Oh, and to mess with…
Tax season can reduce even the most organized individuals to stressed-out procrastinators. And if you’re anything like me, you’re not exactly the most organized individual in the first place. The complexity of gathering documents, understanding deductions, and meeting deadlines creates anxiety that many of us dread each year. But with a well-designed tax preparation checklist, I’ve been able to turn my taxes into a manageable (maybe even even satisfying?) task well before the April 15 deadline. Here’s how you can, too.
A tax preparation checklist serves as your personalized roadmap through the filing process. Luckily, I’ve create this template to get you started. It includes sections for personal information, income documentation, deductions and credits, a tax preparation timeline, and a final verification check-list. All you need to do is to download it or make a copy in Google Docs for your own use. Here’s how to make the most of this checklist, or build your own from scratch.
Start with the basics. Your checklist should include spaces to confirm you have:
Social Security numbers for yourself, spouse, and dependents
Birth dates for all dependents
Last year’s tax return (helpful for reference)
Bank account and routing numbers for direct deposit
List all potential income sources to ensure nothing gets missed:
W-2 forms from employers
1099 forms for self-employment, investments, etc.
Income records from gig work or side hustles
Alimony received
Rental property income
Social Security benefits
Unemployment compensation
This section often represents the biggest opportunity for tax savings:
Homeownership documents (mortgage interest, property taxes)
Educational expenses (tuition, student loan interest)
Medical expenses exceeding threshold amounts
Charitable donations with receipts
Business expenses for self-employed individuals
Retirement contributions
Childcare expenses
Structure your checklist with time-based sections:
January: Collect arriving tax documents (W-2s, 1099s).
February: Organize receipts and deduction documentation.
March: Schedule appointment with tax professional or prepare software.
April: Complete final review and file.
Add verification checkpoints to ensure accuracy:
Compare this year’s return to last year’s for consistency.
Double-check math and entries.
Verify all Social Security numbers.
Confirm all required forms are signed.
Make copies of everything for your records.
While the template provides a comprehensive starting point, your personal tax situation may require additional items. Customize your checklist so that it suits your tax needs. Review last year’s return to identify recurring items specific to your finances.
Choose the system that works best for you:
Digital: Use a spreadsheet, note-taking app, or dedicated tax software.
Physical: Create a folder system with labeled sections for each category.
Hybrid: Scan physical documents and organize them in digital folders.
The biggest tax preparation mistake is waiting until the last minute. Begin organizing as soon as all your documents first arrive, and you’ll avoid the mid-April stress entirely.
After filing, take a few minutes to note what worked well and what didn’t. Add a “Notes for Next Year” section to your checklist to remember adjustments needed for the coming tax season.
A personalized tax preparation checklist transforms tax filing from a dreaded chore into a methodical process. By breaking down the complex task into manageable steps, you’ll not only reduce stress, but potentially identify additional deductions you might otherwise miss.
Again, here’s my downloadable template for you. Feel free to add or remove items based on your financial circumstances and filing requirements. With this system in place, you’ll be able to approach tax season with confidence rather than anxiety.
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1Password has added a new feature that allows users to tag their entries with physical locations. That way, when the user is close by a credential’s location, that information will be surfaced in the password manager’s mobile app. This ‘nearby items’ feature makes the most relevant information quickly available to 1Password customers and cuts out the need to search for the correct details or remember exactly what you’d named an account.
Location information can be added to any new or existing item in a 1Password vault. The app has also been updated with a map view for setting and viewing the locations of your items. In the blog post announcing the feature, the company cited examples such as door codes for a workplace, health records at a doctor’s office, WiFi access at the gym and rewards membership information for local shops as potential uses for location data.
Privacy and security are paramount for a password manager, and 1Password confirmed that a user’s location coordinates are only used locally and do not leave the device. Nearby items is available to 1Password customers starting today.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/1password-introduces-nearby-items-tying-passwords-to-physical-locations-140040723.html?src=rss
FX supplied io9 with a big package from creator Noah Hawley’s upcoming Alien show.
The colorful political operator wants to defend a parasitic capitalist project in Central America.
I’ve been waiting a long time for a game like Avowed. In fact, you might have to go back to 2002’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to find another first-person fantasy role-playing game that so utterly captivated me with its world. I’ve seen some people grouse that it’s not as full-featured as the likes of Skyrim,…
The policy guidance on boosting the use of RISC-V chips could be released as soon as this month, although the final date could change, the sources said. It is being drafted jointly by eight government bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the China National Intellectual Property Administration, they added.
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Corporations are a driving force behind almost every part of American life—including the movies we watch. It sometimes feels like they hold all the power, and, actually, they kinda do. But if the power of capitalism can’t be overcome, it can at least be checked once in a while. And it can be extremely satisfying to watch a crusader standing up for the rest of us.
Here are 15 movies about heroes defying big corporations, most of them at least inspired by true events. Usually, reality is at least as wild as what made it to the screen. As The Constant Gardener author John le Carré observed in the afterward to (and the end credits of the film adaptation of) his almost entirely fictional novel:
Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world. But I can tell you this. As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.
Real life provides plenty of examples of individuals standing up to corporations—with varying degrees of success. This is one of the more inspiring ones: Steven Soderbergh’s crowd-pleasing legal drama was a box office triumph and an Oscar season contender, and it made a star of its titular real life activist. Julia Roberts plays Brokovich, who in 1993 was an unemployed single mother who couldn’t keep out of her own way. Given a pity job as a paralegal by the man who served as her lawyer in an injury case, she stumbles onto some troubling medical documents while researching a real estate case. It soon becomes clear that Pacific Gas and Electric Company is hiding something in Hinkley, California—specifically, they’ve been dumping chromium-contaminated waste into several ponds around the town, and cancer incidents are way up in the region. It’s here that Erin’s dogged determination (and utter refusal to keep her mouth shut ,even when she’d be better off to do so) come in tremendously handy for the people of Hinkley, who now have an unlikely champion. You can stream Erin Brokovich on Netflix or rent it from Prime Video.
Dark Waters, from director Todd Haynes, kicks off with farmers discovering that their livestock are dying by the hundreds from exposure to waste in the water produced by a local DuPont chemical plant—which is just the beginning, as cancer rates among humans are also unexpectedly high. Mark Ruffalo stars as lawyer Robert Bilott, who takes on the farmers’ case. It’s based on the New York Times Magazine article “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” by Nathaniel Rich, and Haynes and company do a masterful job of dramatizing the high-stakes legal battle, as well as the problem of buy-in—parties to the legal action become pariahs in their community because many would rather take their chances with cancer than risk losing a big employer. This all happened within the last decade, so many of the issues related to so-called “forever chemicals” (those that never leave the bloodstream once exposed) are very much ongoing, and will only become more prominent in the current era of deregulation. You can rent Dark Waters from Prime Video.
Michael Mann’s account of tobacco industry shenanigans did only middling business at the box office, but nonetheless earned seven Oscar nominations—including one for Best Picture. It comes at the story from a smart, sideways angle: The focus is on the 60 Minutes piece that broke wide open the story of big tobacco’s malfeasance over the risks of smoking—a story that made clear that these companies knew the true dangers of smoking, and lied about it to keep their customers addicted. In the movie’s largely accurate telling, CBS producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) coaxes former tobacco-company chemist Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) to reveal what he knows, only to face pushback from fearful executives and threats from the tobacco industry. The narrative makes clear the high cost of telling even the most straightforward of truths. You can stream The Insider on The Criterion Channel or rent it from Prime Video.
In 1999, a group of investors lead by the American company Bechtel invested in a dam near Cochabamba, Bolivia. The thus contained water was then sold back to the locals at vastly higher rates. The resulting protests saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets. In director Icíar Bollaín’s wildly ambitious film-within-a-film, a crew, led by director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal), comes to Cochabamba to make a movie based on Christopher Columbus’ first voyage. His thoughtless executive producer Costa (Luis Tosar)stirs up trouble with his lack of consideration for the locals as the water protests simmer in the background. Weaving in themes that consider the long history of colonization, the film isn’t shy about drawing clear lines between past and present. You can stream Even the Rain on Netflix.
The jury is still out, I suppose, on the risks of glycophosphate (a prime ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup) in typical doses, but there’s nevertheless much to cheer in Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s case against the chemical company. A school groundskeeper in California, Johnson was exposed to hundreds of gallons of the stuff over the years. He was diagnosed with a terminal case of non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 42, and as this documentary reveals, Johnson won his case against the chemical giant—an extremely rare victory that, if even in only a small way, put these companies on notice. You can stream Into the Woods on Hoopla or rent it from Prime Video.
Ralph Fiennes stars as Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Kenya, trying to solve the murder of his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz, who won an Oscar for the role), an Amnesty International activist. It seems that Tessa had been investigating the deaths related to drug trials around something called Dypraxa. The movie alternates between the harrowing investigation and the story of the development of the relationship between the two. An adaptation of the John le Carré, both book and film were inspired by a Pfizer drug trial in Nigeria in 1996 that left 11 children dead. You can rent The Constant Gardener from Prime Video.
Nearly a decade after Erin Brockovich, Steven Soderbergh took on another real-life whistleblower, this time puncturing the self-importance and self-seriousness of white-collar criminals with a dose of dark comedy. (As we ought to have learned by now, capitalism rewards the goofy and dumb at least as often as it does those with half a brain.) Matt Damon plays corporate executive Mark Whitacre, who confesses to a couple of FBI agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) about his involvement in a scheme to fix the price of commercial livestock-related chemical lysine. Whitacre gets increasingly loopy during his time wearing a wire for the Feds, a period during which his various other infractions come out. Oh, and during which he also embezzles a ton of money from the company he’s purportedly trying to expose. You can stream The informant! on Prime Video.
A fictionalized account of the real-life radium girls (oddly, it’s not based on Kate Moore’s nonfiction bestseller of the same name), this film follows Josephine and Betty Cavallo, sisters employed painting watch dials at an “American Radium” factory in New Jersey. In real life, radium workers were often called “ghost girls” for the ways in which the radium they worked with made their clothes and hair glow. Workers were assured the radioactive element was entirely safe, and even encouraged to lick their brushes to make the points finer for painting clocks and watches. In real life, much as in the movie, it was the United States Radium Corp. that fought to keep the truth about the dangers of radium from coming out, blaming illnesses and deaths on syphilis long after it was clear what was happening. The back half of Radium Girls dives into the famous court case that resulted, one that wasn’t entirely a triumph at the time but that did pave the way for the creation of OSHA and other safety reforms that protected workers for decades—until very recently. You can rent Radium Girls on Prime Video.
A legal drama with a bit of extra swagger, Michael Clayton is from writer/director Tony Gilroy, the filmmaker who wrote and/or directed most of the Bourne movies. It manages to be just as thrilling, if in an entirely different way. George Clooney stars as the eponymous fixer, working at a major law firm finding legal loop holes that will benefit clients—until he starts to develop a conscience after discovering that his firm is working to clear a path for an agricultural chemical concern to escape the consequences of knowingly selling a cancer-causing weedkiller. The drama and action are on point, as following Clayton as he is hunted by chemical industry goons. It earned seven Academy Award nominations, including for one for Best Picture. You can stream Michael Clayton on Prime Video.
Filmed as its history unfolded, Barbara Kopple’s essential documentary chronicles what became known as the “Brookside Strike” against the owners of the Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, Kentucky. Kopple’s original intent was to create a film about efforts to unseat the wildly corrupt leader of the United Mine Workers of America union at the time, W.A. Boyle, who seemed to many to be in the pockets of the mine owners (he was later convicted of conspiracy in the murders of a reformist opponent’s entire family). That explosive story turned out to be a side-note to the brutal, bloody, violent opposition faced by the striking mineworkers and their families. These workers were no pushovers when it came to their rights and mine safety; nor were their wives and mothers. It’s a throwback to an era when what we might call the “white working class” (though it was not exclusively white) would still fight fiercely against government and corporate greed. You can stream Harlan County USA on Max and The Criterion Channel.
Though occasionally a bit formulaic, there’s no faulting North Country for its ability to rouse, at least in moments, nor for its acting: both Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand earned Oscar nominations for their roles. While fictionalized, the film is based on the nonfiction book Class Action, by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, which examines Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., the first-ever class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the U.S., which took place in 1989. Theron plays Josey Aimes, who moves back to her hometown in northern Minnesota and takes a well-paying job in the local iron mine at the behest of an old acquaintance (McDormand). No rabble-rouser, Aimes nonetheless immediately sees how women at the mine are treated: Their skills are dismissed, and they’re viewed as low-cost replacements for more deserving men. What’s more, sexual harassment and even sexual assault are daily occurrences. With the (initially reluctant) backing of the local union, Aimes takes the mine to court on behalf of all the women workers, facing down a massive company more than willing to make an issue of her own sex life. You can stream North Country on Hoopla or rent it from Prime Video.
Andrew Beckett isn’t a traditional “little guy,” instead a successful senior associate at a major corporate law firm in Philly. He’s also gay and closeted, and starts displaying lesions (Kaposi’s sarcoma, specifically) related to the AIDS diagnosis that he’s been concealing. When he’s fired with little reason given, he hires Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), one of the few lawyers who will take his wrongful termination suit. There were few mainstream films about about the darkest days of the first HIV/AIDS crisis (and we’re living through another, as effective treatments and miracle preventatives have become increasingly scarce and unaffordable), and none had more cultural impact than this all-star legal drama. It’s based loosely on the real-life case of attorney Geoffrey Bowers and his own lawyer, Clarence Cain, who took on the law firm Baker McKenzie under similar circumstances, though the Hollywood version has a somewhat happier end—Bowers’ own case wasn’t settled until eight years after his death. You can rent Philadelphia from Prime Video.
Matt Damon stars in this John Grisham adaptation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, as Rudy S. Baylor, a poor kid who just barely made it through law school only to find himself in a profession that mostly makes him uncomfortable—not helped by the fact that his first boss is a smarmy con man played by Mickey Rourke. Convinced by scrappy paralegal Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito) to join him in a little storefront operation, the two take on three cases around which the movie revolves, but the emotional core is in the one about a kid with cancer whose treatment his insurance company refuses to fund. It quickly becomes clear that Donny’s life can’t be saved, but there’s hope that the insurance company can be forced to treat him like a person and not a line item anyway. It’s still timely, except for the “hope” part. You can stream The Rainmaker on Pluto TV or rent it from Prime Video.
Once of the first films that we’d recognize as independent in the modern sense (the writer, director, and producer were all blacklisted), Salt of the Earth was suppressed and dismissed as propaganda for its wild, still controversial propositions that racism is bad, women should maybe have some rights, and working conditions ought not be awful. Commie nonsense, to be sure, but presented not without dramatic flair. Based on a real 1951 strike, the movie is set in “Zinc Town, New Mexico” among mostly Mexican-American miners who are agitating for better working conditions—at least as good as those of their white counterparts. The strikers are arrested and the strike is put down by use of the real, and then recent, Taft-Hartley Act, the nation’s most significant anti-union legislation (it’s still in force, by the way). A loophole allows the miners’ wives to march in their places, and the movement is lead by Esperanza Quintero (Rosaura Revueltas), the spouse of a jailed striker. You can stream Salt of the Earth on MGM+, Tubi, Pluto TV, and Prime Video.
The Meryl Streep-starring Silkwood, the acclaimed film based on the real-life case of a nuclear whistleblower, isn’t streaming or digitally rentable anywhere (conspiracy!), but The China Syndrome isn’t a terrible substitute. Jane Fonda plays a reporter who begins to smell something fishy at the Ventana nuclear power plant, the owners of which are handing out radiographs that don’t make much sense. It turns out there’s a leak that they can’t be bothered to fix, and rather than shelling out that money, they’re putting out faked test results suggesting that all is fine, and surely the tragic accidents that befall anyone who considers speaking up are mere coincidences. Nuclear industry executives were initially livid at the suggestion that anything could ever go wrong at one of their plants, but got much quieter 12 days later, when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in Pennsylvania. Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon both earned Oscar nominations for their performances. You can rent The China Syndrome from Prime Video.
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Like homeowners insurance, auto insurance is getting significantly more expensive: Data show that policy costs rose 11% last year, likely due to factors like climate change, rising accident rates, and higher repair costs. Under certain circumstances, you may be able to offset or at least keep your car insurance premium stable, if not reduce it.
If you go through any of the following life changes, it may be time to call your insurance company about lowering your policy premium.
A move is a major life transition—and one that could impact your auto insurance policy for the better in a few ways. First, insurers factor where you park your car into your rate, so living in a lower density or safer neighborhood can potentially save you some money. Moving also gives you the chance to bundle your renters or homeowners insurance policy with your auto policy if you haven’t already, which typically reduces the cost of both. Finally, moving can change your driving habits, which we’ll get into next.
Let’s say your move has put your closer to work, or you’ve changed jobs or begun working remotely more frequently, or another shift in your routine has cut the number of miles you drive on a regular basis. Insurance companies consider annual mileage when calculating premiums, so a significant drop could save you some money.
If you’ve had a teenager on your policy who now has their own vehicle or own policy and no longer lives at home, removing them from yours can save you a significant amount of money on your premiums (potentially cutting the cost by half). On the flip side, combining your policy with a new spouse’s could reduce the cost per person.
One of the many discounts available on auto insurance is for taking a defensive driving course—in fact, some states require insurers to offer this discount. Typically, these discounts are good for several years before you need to retake the class. Discounts range from 5% to 20% off your premium.
Re-upping your policy won’t save you money specifically, but it is a good time to call your current insurer about options for reducing your premium as well as to shop around for cheaper options.
Even if you don’t have a life change that could qualify you for a lower insurance premium, there are other ways to reduce the cost of your policy:
Increase your deductible: Raising your deductible (the amount you’ll pay out of pocket before your policy kicks in) can lower your premium. Most policies have a $500 deductible, but bumping that up to $1,000 can potentially save you 25% on your policy cost, according to Consumer Reports. However, you’ll want to consider whether you have an emergency fund to cover the added potential cost.
Decrease certain types of coverage: Collision and comprehensive coverage may be optional in your state, and dropping one or both can reduce your policy premium. Collision may be an unnecessary expense if your car’s value is especially low (and if your premium is more than 10% of that value).
Ask about discounts: Many insurers offer policy discounts for things like setting up autopay or paperless statements, paying your premium upfront, maintaining a clean driving record, and bundling with other policies.
Drive a cheaper car: This may not be a change you can make immediately, but when you’re in the market for a vehicle, consider a make and model that’s cheaper to insure.
Look for usage-based policies: Usage-based insurance calibrates your policy to your real-life driving habits, so low-risk drivers pay less. However, this typically requires you to have a tracking app that sends data to your insurance company, which raises privacy concerns, and risky driving can actually increase your policy cost.
Another day, another move from the Trump administration that will benefit Elon Musk — shocking. The US Department of Commerce has announced an overhaul of 2021’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program and its $42.5 billion that will funnel work to Musk’s Starlink.
The BEAD program was originally designed to give states funding for fiber-optic cable installation, increase Wi-Fi networks and free broadband internet access for some individuals. Fiber-optic broadband provides the fastest internet speeds, but the new mandate will get rid of BEAD’s preference for it.
“The Department is ripping out the Biden Administration’s pointless requirements,” said US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in a statement. “It is revamping the BEAD program to take a tech-neutral approach that is rigorously driven by outcomes, so states can provide internet access for the lowest cost.”
The writing on the wall is clear: Musk, the richest person in the world, leader of a department to reduce government waste (read: cut many critical jobs and programs) and an unelected right hand to what can best be described as an authoritarian government, is about to make even more money.
Under the Biden administration in 2023, Starlink received a rejection from the Federal Communications Commission for nearly $900 million in subsidies. The FCC stated that Starlink’s application, which was part of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program, failed to meet the program’s requirements.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/musks-starlink-stands-to-benefit-from-changes-to-a-broadband-equity-program-132521582.html?src=rss
A newly discovered network botnet comprising an estimated 30,000 webcams and video recorders—with the largest concentration in the US—has been delivering what is likely to be the biggest denial-of-service attack ever seen, a security researcher inside Nokia said.
The botnet, tracked under the name Eleven11bot, first came to light in late February when researchers inside Nokia’s Deepfield Emergency Response Team observed large numbers of geographically dispersed IP addresses delivering “hyper-volumetric attacks.” Eleven11bot has been delivering large-scale attacks ever since.
Volumetric DDoSes shut down services by consuming all available bandwidth either inside the targeted network or its connection to the Internet. This approach works differently than exhaustion DDoSes, which over-exert the computing resources of a server. Hypervolumetric attacks are volumetric DDoses that deliver staggering amounts of data, typically measured in the terabits per second.
