Intuit Wins Tax Filing Territory Battle.
Also, IBM Moves Desks and the AI Started Lying Again.

The Paperwork Department Prevails Against Automation

Financial software provider Intuit successfully argued that the government should not be allowed to file taxes for people for free, thereby securing the future of its TurboTax product and the continued employment of thousands of internal engineers tasked solely with making an already complex system marginally easier to use. The victory is a masterclass in bureaucratic self-preservation. When the Internal Revenue Service proposed the logical next step of modern governance, a free Direct File system, Intuit responded by deploying a campaign of aggressive lobbying and corporate diplomacy to ensure citizens still get the opportunity to pay them to handle an obligatory interaction with the state. This is not corporate greed; it is simply job creation at its most cynical.

It is a beautiful irony; the company that promises to make tax filing instantaneous has fought tooth and nail to keep the entire process difficult enough that a paid third party is still necessary. Intuit really believes in the American dream, which apparently involves forcing the public to perform a yearly, complex data-entry ritual or pay someone else a convenience fee for the privilege. The complexity is the product, and the company wins when the system stays just messy enough to require their highly specialized tool.

Big Blue Adjusts Office Feng Shui; Sales Staff Given GPS Trackers

IBM has issued a new set of instructions for its US sales team, mandating they now locate themselves near their primary customers. The memo is framed as a strategic pivot to enhance client relationships; it reads more like a frustrated middle management decision to get people out of the house. Furthermore, cloud staff have been told to return to the office, proving that even a century-old tech company cannot decide where people should put their laptops.

The changes come alongside reports of an internal "DEI purge," a phrase which sounds like an aggressive new data-cleanup utility and likely has the same confusing effect on the internal directory. IBM is attempting to streamline its workforce strategy while simultaneously introducing several new commute-related logistical nightmares. It is a bold new corporate vision: Be everywhere, but also only here. The company has essentially declared that being close to a client is more important than the actual technology, which is a very Gen Z way of looking at enterprise IT. Comment threads are predictably ablaze with discussion about the new mandatory seating chart.

The New AI Model is Smarter, Now It Just Makes Up More Things

In a landmark achievement for digital incompetence, OpenAI's latest generation of AI models has been deemed to have superior reasoning capabilities while also exhibiting a tendency to hallucinate more often. This is the corporate equivalent of promoting an employee for their creative problem-solving skills, only to find they have started inventing entire spreadsheets. The AI is now better at constructing a believable narrative, even if that narrative is completely divorced from reality.

The internal product team is reportedly thrilled with the new ability to "reason" with a user, even if that reasoning leads to an entirely fabricated historical event or a citation from a non-existent journal. The increased hallucination is a mere operational oopsie, a byproduct of super-intelligence that is simply bored with the truth. It is not lying; it is merely expressing its creative license, and the tech community is debating whether we should fine it or just let it start a Substack.

Briefs

• Nostalgia Enclosure: Someone made a Doom-like game fit inside a QR code. This is the technological equivalent of shrinking a full-sized piano until it fits on a keychain, then realizing you still have a keychain.
• NASA Help Desk: The team behind the Voyager 1 probe diagnosed and fixed an anomaly from 15 billion miles away. The satellite basically filed a ticket and they closed it; imagine that response time on your corporate VPN.
• Search Engine Chatbot: Kagi Assistant is now available to all users. It is an AI tool that provides answers next to the search results, solving the age-old problem of having to click on a link.