Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

IRS Warns Americans To Report Annual PayPal, Venmo Transactions Exceeding $600 Per Year   BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, NOV 27, 2022 - 06:00 PM   The Internal Revenue Service is warning Americans that  they need to prepare to report transactions of at least $600 per year  through 'third-party' payment processors such as Venmo and PayPal. In a notice posted Tuesday to  irs.gov , businesses and the self-employed are warned that cumulative income of at least $600 per year through apps - which also include Zelle and Cash App - will need to be reported on a tax form known as 1099-K, according to  Marketwatch . According to the agency, the notice is primarily aimed at part-time workers, those with side-gigs and people selling goods.  It does  not  apply to non-commercial transactions such as reimbursing people, or one-off transactions such as selling old furniture ,  Marketwatch  reports. That said -  considering that the ...

"This Is Appalling": Major Tax Filing Services Have Been Sending Financial Information To Facebook   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, NOV 25, 2022 - 05:30 PM   Major tax filing services, including H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer, have been  covertly sending Facebook sensitive financial  information   when Americans file their taxes online, according to  The Markup . The data includes names, email addresses, income, filing status, refund amounts and college scholarship information  - which is sent to Facebook regardless of whether a person even has a Facebook account - or with other platforms owned by Meta. The company can then be used to fine tune  advertising algorithms . It is sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel. Of note, Intuit-owned TurboTax  does  use Meta Pixel, however the company did not send financial information - just usernames and the last time a device signed in. Beyond that, they have kept Pixel entir...

MIT Reports Breakthrough In Solid-State Lithium Battery Development   By Brian Westenhaus of  OilPrice.com November 24, 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s  new discovery  could finally usher the development of solid-state lithium batteries, which would be more lightweight, compact, and safe than current lithium batteries.  The growth of metallic filaments called dendrites within the solid electrolyte has been a longstanding obstacle, but the new study explains how dendrites form and how to divert them. This is a goal that’s been pursued by labs around the world for years. The key to this potential leap in  battery technology  is replacing the liquid electrolyte that sits between the positive and negative electrodes with a much thinner, lighter layer of solid ceramic material, and replacing one of the electrodes with solid lithium metal. This would greatly reduce the overall size and weight of the battery and remove the safety risk asso...

Musk Tweets "Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta Now Available To Anyone" In US   BY TYLER DURDEN THURSDAY, NOV 24, 2022 - 01:05 PM   The wait is finally over for Tesla owners who paid $10,000, or as of recently $15,000, for the controversial driver-assistance system, also known as "Full Self-Driving."  Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday morning, "FSD Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option."   FSD is Tesla's upgraded "Autopilot" driver-assist feature that allows vehicles to navigate highways and city streets autonomously. Until now, some customers who paid the fee were blocked from using it "because they didn't score high enough on metrics Tesla uses to set insurance rates," explained  Bloomberg .  Over the last six months, about 100,000 drivers were granted access to FSB Beta. Musk has promised a broader roll-out...

"Users Have A Right To Know": Class Action Lawsuit Sheds Light Onto Google's Opaque Data-Mining Practices   BY TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, NOV 21, 2022 - 06:00 PM   It turns out that big tech companies  may not be  as committed to your privacy as their PR departments would have you believe - go figure. The latest example of this reality appears to be Google, who was  revealed last week by MarketWatch  to have data-mining practices that employees say that they sometimes “don’t understand and can’t describe”. The report cited a class action lawsuit alleging that Google "violated promises not to collect data of those using the browser without signing into their Google accounts". Documents recently became unsealed in the case, offering a look into how privacy is discussed internally at Google.  In the lawsuit, one unnamed employee seemed to make it clear that Google's privacy policies are opaque, stating: “I don’t have the faintest idea...

Amazon Unveils Warehouse Robot To Replace Human Pickers Amid Unionization Threats   BY TYLER DURDEN SATURDAY, NOV 12, 2022 - 10:30 AM   The rise of automation could be set to enter hyperdrive speed at Amazon warehouses nationwide in response to Covid lockdowns, unionization, and the drive to improve margins via reducing labor costs. Human order pickers could be replaced within this decade by a new robotic arm that relies entirely on artificial intelligence and suction cups to identify and fulfill customer orders.  Amazon unveiled the "Sparrow" robot on Thursday," which can detect, select, and handle millions of items in a warehouse to complete a customer order, rendering a human picker obsolete. "Leveraging computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI), Sparrow can recognize and handle millions of items. Last year, with the support of Amazon technologies, our employees around the world picked, stowed, or packed approximately 5 billion packages—or over 13 ...

If You Die in This Game, You Die in Real-Life: The VR Headset That Could Actually Kill You Shubhendu Vatsa – November 11, 2022 T hanks to Palmer Luckey, there’s a new way to die – by playing  video games . Luckey, founder of  Oculus VR  (he has since left the organisation) and creator of the Oculus Rift has come up with a brand new piece of  VR headset  that can actually kill you if you die in the video game. Yep, this bizarre story that reads like a budget ’80s horror movie is completely legit. As per the American entrepreneur , the inspiration behind this lethal  VR  device came from  Sword Art Online , a Japanese light novel series, whose story somewhat revolves around a similar concept. To kill the user, this new VR headset comes fitted with three embedded explosive charges, that are positioned above the forehead and can “instantly destroy the brain of the user.” The fatal explosion is initiated via “a narrow-band photosensor...

Chilling AI development means that robots can now talk to animals – and we might be able to next Callie Patteson 12:03 ET,  Oct 30 2022 Updated : 12:14 ET,  Oct 30 2022 HUMANS are one step closer to talking to animals as new technologies are allowing artificial intelligence-enabled robots to speak with different species.  Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, recently revealed this technology is being used to communicate with  honeybees, dolphins and elephants  and offered up a warning regarding the development.  “Now, this raises a very serious ethical question, because the ability to speak to other species sounds intriguing and fascinating, but it could be used either to create a deeper sense of kinship, or a sense of dominion and manipulative ability to domesticate wild species that we’ve never as humans been able to previously control,” Bakker said in an interview published with  Vox .  She pointed to the ...

  Lab-grown red blood cells transfused into people in first trial -NHS Two people have been given the lab-grown cells and have so far had no side effects.  By  JERUSALEM POST STAFF Published:  NOVEMBER 7, 2022 14:26 Updated:  NOVEMBER 7, 2022 15:19 Laboratory-grown  red blood cells  have been transfused into people in the first such clinical trial in the world, the United Kingdoms National Health Service announced on Sunday.  According to the University of Bristol, which worked on the RESTORE research initiative jointly with the NHS and the University of Cambridge, two people have been given the lab-grown cells and have so far had no side effects.  "This challenging and exciting trial is a huge stepping stone for manufacturing blood from stem cells," wrote co-chief investigator Ashley Toye, professor of Cell Biology at the University of Bristol. "This is the first-time lab-grown blood from an allogeneic donor has been transfused a...