"Section 174 of the Internal Revenue Code governs the tax treatment of research and development (R&D) expenditures. For roughly 70 years, American companies could deduct 100% of “qualified research and development spending” in the year they incurred the costs, and this was generally interpreted pretty liberally. Salaries, software, contractor payments… if it contributed to creating or improving a product, it could be deducted “off the top” of a firm’s taxable income. The deduction was originally codified by Section 174 of the IRS Code of 1954, and under the provision, R&D flourished in the U.S. It gave us the dominance of Bell Labs, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook - pretty much all the US technology booms you’ve lived through unless you’re quire venerable.

"So the way these regs are written: These expenditures must be for activities intended to discover information that eliminates uncertainty about the development or improvement of a product. (Kind of open-ended.) Prior to 2022, taxpayers could immediately deduct R&D expenditures in the year they were incurred, providing a significant tax benefit for businesses investing in innovation. Alternatively, taxpayers could capitalize these costs and amortize them over a period (e.g., at least 60 months) if they chose to defer the deduction. But it was pretty rare to do this, because you could directly manage your R&D payroll costs versus income to mitigate the tax hit. And societally, we accepted that - we were investing in growing the American economy.

"But, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 amended Section 174, effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2021. Starting in 2022, R&D expenditures must be capitalized and amortized over 5 years for domestic research (and 15 years for foreign research, which is pretty untenable.) This change eliminated the option to immediately deduct R&D costs, increasing tax liability for companies with significant research budgets in the short term. Even more annoying, amortization begins at the midpoint of the taxable year in which the expenses are incurred, using a straight-line method."

https://www.professoraxelrod.com/p/the-tech-job-meltdown?r=lp6h7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

More on progress with antigravity from 1956:

https://www.scribd.com/document/232602872/THE-G-ENGINES-ARE-COMING-by-Michael-Gladych

"And some newpub authors, indie game devs, and maverick animators are making more than mere retro product. They’re taking real risks. Maybe they’re flawed, but here’s the key: They’re looking forward.

"In case it still needs to be said, we don’t need another round of 90s nostalgia. We need stories worth remembering twenty years from now.

"The only way to end Cultural Ground Zero is to move past it. Not in time, but in spirit.

"We don’t move forward by going back to the 90s, but by doing what the 90s pretended to do while actually setting a cultural time bomb: Tearing down dead forms and making art that’s weird, fun, and human.

"The future is waiting.

"But only if you delete the flying toaster screen saver."
https://brianniemeier.substack.com/p/why-im-done-with-the-90s-and-you#:~:text=And%20some%20newpub,toaster%20screen%20saver.

NEW:

🇺🇲🇮🇱🇮🇷 US envoy Steve Witkoff to Senators:

"If Iran retaliates, Israel's air defence will be overwhelmed and will eventually fail"

US envoy Steve Witkoff privately warned top Senate Republicans that Iran's retaliation to an Israeli strike on its nuclear program could overwhelm Israel's defenses and cause mass damage and casualties - Axios

@Megatron_ron

Maj. Gen. Salami on Thursday praised the country's intelligence ministry for retrieving a trove of classified Israeli nuclear and military documents, describing it as a strategic blow to the Zionist regime.

He said that the intelligence operation proved Israel's security system "permeable and threadbare", while showing Iran has the upper hand when it comes to intelligence.

“This was also an example of our victory in the intelligence warfare,” the top general added.

He stressed that the enemy thinks that it can fight Iran in the same way it fights the Palestinian people in Gaza, who are defenseless and under an Israeli siege.

Iran’s intelligence apparatus has acquired and transferred a vast trove of strategic and sensitive documents about the clandestine Israeli nuclear program from the occupied territories to Tehran.
On Sunday, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib stated that the materials had been transferred under heavy secrecy to Iran and would be published soon.

“These documents and other strategic records of the regime will enhance the country’s offensive capabilities,” he continued, adding that this is "a very major development", and ‘thousands of documents’ is a very small term compared to what has been acquired".

The “comprehensive and complex operation” was carried out inside the occupied territories and succeeded in transferring a trove of “strategic, operational, and scientific information” from the occupying regime to Iran, he noted.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the IRGC chief expressed Iran’s complete preparedness to confront any act of aggression amid mounting threats of military action against the country.

“The enemy sometimes threatens us with military action. We have always said and we say today that we stand fully ready for any scenarios, situations, and circumstances,” he emphasized.

“We are war-tested and experienced. We have built strength and developed a strategy in our plans.

The IRGC chief further warned the enemy not to make any miscalculations and think twice about the repercussions of its measures.

Fars News

BREAKING | Leaked documents released by Iranian media reportedly reveal that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi has been fully coordinating with Israel and carrying out its directives.

These files are part of the sensitive intelligence cache Iran recently seized from Israel.

Is Israel Rolling the Dice Again

The US government appears to be bracing for another Israeli attack on Iran: The US has begun evacuating non-essential personnel and family members from its embassies and military bases in the Middle East in light of escalating tensions with Iran. The move follows President Donald Trump’s accusation that Tehran is “slow-walking” negotiations. “Based on our […]

https://voxday.net/2025/06/12/is-israel-rolling-the-dice-again/

🤡 Donald Trump:

I'm not saying an attack on Iran is imminent, but it is strong and likely

It's very likely that Israel will strike Iran.

I would like to avoid a conflict with Iran

Iran will have to negotiate more seriously, which means they will have to offer us something they're not willing to offer us now

There's a potential for a major conflict, and something could happen soon.

I want to reach an agreement with Iran, and we're close to that. I prefer a friendly approach

We've had good talks with Iran, and they can't have a nuclear weapon

U.S. officials have been told Israel is fully ready to launch an operation into Iran, multiple sources told CBS News.

The U.S. anticipates Iran could retaliate on certain American sites in neighboring Iraq. This is part of the reason the U.S. advised some Americans to leave the region earlier Wednesday. The State Department ordered non-emergency government officials to exit Iraq due to "heightened regional tensions," and the Pentagon has authorized military family members to voluntarily leave locations throughout the Middle East, a defense official told CBS News.

‼️🇮🇷👉🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ “Tehran has developed a response plan that includes an immediate counterattack on Israel with hundreds of ballistic missiles ,” — The New York Times.

Linux enthusiasts should be aware of the X11/Wayland saga. Solid serviceable graphics driver suppressed in favor of… spyware?

The Linux X11/Wayland graphics conspiracy, for non computer geeks.

TL;DR: There’s a weird conspiracy going on in Linux with how pixels are drawn, and we don’t know why yet, but corporations are acting BIZARRE. As they say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

The way graphics is commonly done on Linux is undergoing radical change. For over a decade X11 (we like weird names) was the standard way to draw the user interface elements on Linux.

About a decade ago this all changed with a new way-of-doing-things called “wayland”.

An app written in wayland is not compatible with X11. Still with me? This caused havoc in the app world. I know, because my fellow engineers at Google bitched about how wayland graphics was totally incompatible with X11 but being forced anyway.

Fast forward a decade.

X11 has essentially be choked to death. Red Hat (a linux maker who now is the caretaker of X11) is refusing to accept fixes for known bugs. Essentially software donations. And not just refusing one or two fixes, but over a 1000.

Obviously this causes our spider senses to tingle. But let’s not jump into a conspiracy right?

Well late last week that all changed.

One of the prominent engineers decided to fix all the problems of X11 by: (1) forking the project and (2) accepting 1000+ bug fixes.

This is all pretty standard stuff on the open source world. However there was a twist: the X11 fork would be DEI free and gone too was the toxic woke “code of conduct”.

What came next is shocking:

RedHat and Ubuntu went APESHIT

Red hat banned the software developer from the original X11 repo. But went further with Purging 1000+ community fixes that hadn’t been merged yet. Too late though, it’s already been forked!!

Ubuntu (the most popular flavor of linux) in the span of 72 hours announced that they were purging the X11 graphics driver from every future release.

The amount of coordination and pressure being applied to kill this boring legacy graphics driver is absolutely bizarre, and no one knows why.

But oh boy, can we speculate…

Profit? Control? Surveillance?

This would have been a fringe conspiracy a decade ago.

Now it’s becoming clear there is some agenda in play: X11 must die and must be replaced by the wayland graphics driver.

I’m sure it will become clear. We are in the age of whistleblowers and leaks.

If you are a country outside the United States my advice is this: audit wayland and be hyper vigilant. It’s starting to look like wayland is some sort of intelligence backdoor/trojan horse to compromise your system.

x.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/1932951899105603929

Breaking the Apollo 13 curse.

TIL that the space shuttle's STS-13 mission was renamed due to a new numbering system for launches. The crew made a mission badge featuring a black cat and the number 13 anyway, and it eventually landed successfully on Friday the 13th.

https://ift.tt/YeFsXp4

These aren’t protests. They’re riots. And they’re not grassroots. We WILL find the Domestic Terrorists responsible.

Empty shelves are reported widely across the US, blamed on the cyberattack on UNFI (North America's largest food distributor). Not just Whole Foods, as empire media is claiming.

If they are trying to really mix things up leading up to this Saturday's birthday military march vs. the growing riots — food shortages would certainly be a highly incendiary fuel to throw on that fire.

"What the Truck" covers the cyberattack here: https://x.com/FWwhatthetruck/status/1932875692964003976

Be ready for anything, my friends...

- iceagefarmer