In the early 2000s, the Swedish tax agency, Skatteverket, started a journey from “tax police” to service. This was a radical change that affected every aspect and function of the bureaucracy. It went from far down the list to the second most trusted agency (after the Swedish Armed Forces) in 2023 [1].

As a citizen, the differences are notable. I came to Sweden after the change, and my previous experiences in other countries were very similar to the friction-filled endeavor implied by the author. The people I dealt with were similarly unhelpful, unconcerned, if not downright undermining my efforts to comply.

This is all a result of a system that breeds friction. Citizens and bureaucrats alike simply play their part. Moving to Sweden was an otherworldly experience. My first mistake, and resulting interaction with the agency, was met with compassion and understanding from a bureaucrat who then made an effort to help put things right. It’s hard to describe how radically different the situation felt. Anger, frustration, and helplessness were gone. Instead, I felt like sending flowers to Karin, the bureaucrat (I really should have). I’ve become a better citizen, more likely to comply going forward.

I wish more agencies around the world would take note, especially now, in a world trending toward fewer human interactions and increasing digitalization. Bureaucracies and technology alike should continue to be built to improve collective human experiences, not break us apart.

[1] https://chef.se/artiklar/skatteverkets-forandringsresa-nagra...

Apologies for the poor quality link, my morning Googling wasn't very effective.

I'm a happy Firefox user since it showed up as an alternative to internet explorer. I tried Chrome once or twice but always came back and stuck with Firefox. I don't trust Google for anything and don't want them to rule over the web. Firefox works, it has worked for me all these years and continues to do so. I still believe in them and their mission even if they have to take Google money to exist.

I think that complaints here are just making things worse for Mozilla, how about helping out instead of whining about every little thing. They're trying, that's a lot more than can be said about a whole lot of other actors out there.

Firefox team, if you read this, you rock! Thank you for giving me a great browser.

I happen to work at a MS company, still we’ve been courageously holding Teams at bay, but Slack removed a key reason for us to push for keeping it around. If Slack listens here, reach out; you're about to lose another large customer.

[0] https://docs.slack.dev/changelog/2025/05/29/tos-updates/

I used:

"Extract the important dates and times from this pdf in Swedish"

[..]

"Great now generate the content of an ics formatted file, just the text, with the schedule above"

[..]

"Now use the code interpreter to create a file with the above content then save the file as an .ics extension"

I use ChatGPT, and while the article is correct to say that it will claim that it cannot generate .ics files directly in the code interpreter it is however very much capable of solving this particular problem. I did the following (all on my android phone):

1. Had it extract all the useful dates, times and comments from the pdf 2. Prompted it to generate the ics file formatted content as code output 3. Prompted it to use the code interpreter to put this content into a file and save it as a .ics extension

It complied through and through and I could download and open the file with the gcal app on my phone to import all appointments..

For completeness, the claim that the code interpreter cannot "generate" ics files is because the python environment in which it runs doesn't have a specific library for doing so. ICS files are just text files with a specific format, so definitely not out of reach.

So, to the question, what have you used them for, how and with what outcome? Curious to hear what the setups look like, what models and what considerations went in setting up these solutions.

Thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35981594

Points: 7

# Comments: 4

I know close to nothing about this domain but these two experiments sounds very similar except for the setup (fiber vs. communication with satellite).

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23675

So, you can probably imagine how strong your incentives are to get any positive review juice out there. What is shown in the tweet is actually against Amazon's terms[1] but there are more (and less) subtle ways to get what you need including things mentioned in comments around here and you really don't have that much of a choice if you want to stand out in the noise.

With all that being said, whatever you think of delivery related reviews for instance (especially in covid times which has added a lot of uncertainty to the whole thing), they hurt businesses exactly where it hurts. And that can be extended to negative reviews in general even when these are legitimate warnings for other potential buyers. Imagine now for a second that you rely on low volumes of orders, the number of potential genuine reviews is also low and with the Amazon thresholds you are therefore literally at the mercy of a few bad reviews without a cushion of positive reviews to fall on. So yeah there is a market for fake reviews, duh...

[1] not the best link but there is a screenshot showing the terms in the thread where it says that you can't ask for positive reviews or give something in exchange for it.. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/new-asking-for-rev...

Additionally, vitamin D in oil is literally handed over to parents for children up to 2 years. It is recommended to continue with supplements beyond that.[2] The recommendations are based on age groups, diet habits (including the above mentioned milk products) and sun exposure.

It's worth mentioning that this is the case since before COVID was even a thing. Vitamin D deficiency is recognized as a general health issue for its known relation to various sickness.

[1] in Swedish: https://www.livsmedelsforetagen.se/nya-obligatoriska-regler-...

[2] also in Swedish: https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/narin...

While there are some undeniable social (think multiple generations in a household), geographical and cultural (swedes are notorious in keeping their distance from other swedes) differences at play here, other European countries have gone for a "people can't be trusted so we must restrict individual freedom". While there is certainly some good reasons to think that this will work the means used to implement this have some really sad consequences. Look at France, people are getting fined and in some cases brutalized; protests are sparking in places where strict measures have been implemented, not because they are unfair but because they affect people unfairly! Easy for well-off people to "leave early, far and for a long time" but far from everyone has that luxury (oh if you understand French, check out Twitter on the "lockdown diaries" parodies and compare that to how people in the suburbs of Paris are being treated!). This is without even starting to talk about how the economic impacts will be spread amongst social classes. To me Sweden has chosen the most socially (in this case as opposed to morally) fair route to handle this crisis.

That being said, it's morally very difficult to defend this strategy in the face of a higher death toll amongst seniors in care homes. I cannot come up with a single argument that I don't know will get shot down immediately and that is a good sign that it's probably not morally optimal. We live in a time of humanism and human life comes first, rightly so but even with that said, it shouldn't hide the picture and justify every consequence out there. The approaches in many countries are incredibly reactive and short sighted in that regard.

I hear this for the first time; to me all the Amazon related interfaces I've used have resulted in poor user experience at best. This goes from the store to AWS and sellerscentral should really get a special mention. In AWS, I always felt that everything was super cluttered and important things hard to find, nowhere near intuitive. This goes for high level concepts as much as component behaviors like lists in s3... So, I'd be super curious to hear what you found that was so good. Care to share?