A poor man buys a cheap pair of boots for a few dollars. They fall apart within a year, so he buys another pair. And another. Over five years, he spends far more than the man who bought one expensive, well-made pair up front. A pair that's still going strong to this day.

And the lesson was simple: buying cheap is expensive. Buy quality, and you save money in the long run.

Now swap the boots for a jacket, a phone, a kitchen knife, whatever you like. In my experience, that used to be true. I have old clothing still hanging in my closet, and they still hold together. Price and quality were correlated. If a company was going to charge you more, it needed to justify that premium with better materials, better construction, better everything. The market punished brands that didn't.

But something changed along the way. This is just my own personal observation, but I'm sure you can relate: I pay too much for things that don't last.

When I was growing up, we separated the real from the knockoff with a simple test. You flipped the product over and checked the tag. If it said "Made in China," you knew it was a cheap knockoff.

Then, somewhat suddenly, that stopped working. Walk into almost any flagship store for almost any prestige brand today, and check the label. Chances are it says the same thing as the bargain version sitting in a discount bin three blocks away. They all come from the same factories, the same supply chains, and in some cases, the very same production line. It's not the quality of the product that determines the price. What determines whether a good sells for $30 or $300 depends entirely on the brand.

Right above the "Made in China," you'll now find another line: "Designed in [prestigious country here]."

The materials didn't necessarily get worse. But the price no longer tells you what it used to.

When you pay that premium now, the price covers the ad campaigns, the celebrity endorsements, the logo, the history, the feeling of exclusivity, and the envy from your friends.

Today, price is not a proxy for quality. Businesses are simply capitalizing on brand power, that's all. When you buy something expensive, you have no guarantee that it will last. Everything should be judged on a case-by-case basis. In fact, if you're looking for goods that last, one approach is to search for "cheap alternatives" online.

The story we were always told was really about information. The poor man didn't have the money to buy quality, so he used price as a signal to gauge quality, and maybe saved up to invest in a better product. That rule has changed. Price is now just a signal of a brand's power, nothing else. To find the better product, you'll have to rely on others who've tested it and can tell you how it holds up to time.

That's 2 GB for Windows 95, Office 95 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Encarta 95, all my father's work documents, and the million games I had installed.

I borrowed a disc from a friend that had a few dozen games on it. I installed them all. Before I knew it, I ran out of space. The computer became extremely slow, and I couldn't install any more games. I figured I needed to delete some games, but I was ten years old. I was not going to delete my games. I couldn't delete my father's stuff either, so I decided to explore the hard drive.

I noticed that in the Program Files folders, every application came with a bunch of text files. Some of them were large, and they didn't look that important to me, especially the ones ending in .ini.

So I went from one folder to the next, deleting those .ini files. There's satisfaction in gathering all those files in the recycle bin, emptying it, then watching your storage space increase. I deleted so many files that I was able to install an additional game on the computer.

It was one of my most satisfying accomplishments. I had a problem, I explored the computer, and I found a solution. I played the new game until I got tired of it. In the 90s, when you were done using the computer, you clicked Start → Shut Down → Confirm Shutdown. The computer would think for about two minutes, then display in big orange letters:

And I shut it down. You can imagine what happened next. The computer wouldn't boot again.

Those .ini files seemed unimportant to a child, but they are configuration files used by several applications, including the operating system. While the Windows Registry did exist in Windows 95, .ini files were still commonly used. When I deleted them, any application or process that relied on them failed to load and simply crashed.

Anyone who had anything of importance on that computer lost it. Everyone except my father, who carefully kept copies of his documents on floppy disks. He knew I was up to no good.

Throughout my career, I've seen many people make this same mistake. When something doesn't look important to them, they delete it. Whether it's a programmer deleting a function that "looks stupid," or a DBA dropping a table or a single field they assume no one will miss. It's all the result of the same mindset: "I don't think this is important."

It makes me think of DOGE, the real yet fictional Department of Government Efficiency. The team supposedly tasked with combing through government programs to find waste never looked deeper than the surface. Just like ten-year-old me, they looked at a department they didn't understand and decided it wasn't important. They uprooted how the entire country works just to save money, the same way I destroyed the family computer just to save storage space. Whether DOGE actually saved us any money is still hotly debated, especially when weighed against the pain and suffering it caused.

Anyone with half a brain could have seen their failure coming from a mile away. The same way anyone who understood how computers work could have told me those configuration files were important. At least, all we lost in our household was time and some saved games. The American people can't say the same.

There is a large class of apps that could be replaced by a simple website, especially those made for schools that only present information. The worst part is that in those apps, most of the things we take for granted on the web are blocked. You can't copy and paste, you can't open a link in a new app, and you have to update the entire app just to get new information. For someone like me, who never updates an app until it's necessary, I usually end up with broken applications.

But when I complain, I'm usually alone in those circles, because no one seems to know what a website is. The more I explain, the more I sound like a character from the 90s explaining how cool email is.

They don't know what a website is. Check their phones, they have a thousand apps.

The last time I blogged about just using websites, several people pointed out that they prefer using apps. My argument was that there is nothing the LinkedIn app does that necessitates an app. All its features are supported on the web. All but pervasive tracking. But I'm fighting a losing battle, because a large number of people have forgotten, or never knew, that LinkedIn is just a website. So is Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

They push you toward the app only so they can better harvest information from you.

So when we tell people to use the website instead of the app, they don't understand, because these services only push the app. A large number of the population has started to believe that a website is just a preview of an app, like a lightweight version.

While I'm here complaining about a single app displaying an unexpected notification, people in my circle have a thousand unread notifications. It's a surprise that they somehow respond to my messages in the midst of all those alerts. I've met people who have an app for every single restaurant they go to. While I'm reading the privacy policy of a single app, trying to determine if it's worth downloading to benefit from a 20% discount, my friends are already in the loyalty program of the juice bar that opened down the street less than a day ago.

People download apps, and they don't understand websites. They have a thousand apps on their screen and would rather swipe through it to find the one app they need for a single purpose.

When I read Dan Q's post a few days ago, I was relieved for a second, just to know that I'm not alone. We prefer using websites, and we know most apps are oversized wrappers around a website. But I have to remember that the people with a thousand apps are not the minority. We are. We are the few who would rather use a progressive web app than download a 300 MB wrapper.

I'm not prescribing a solution here, just want to remind the web community that outside of our circles, people happily download a 300 MB app that displays information already available on the web.

I'm not one to tell you that billionaires shouldn't exist, or what is or isn't fair in a system I don't control. But one thing I've come to see over the years is that public good deeds are rarely what they seem. Whether it's a feel-good story on the news, a TV show pimping your car, or another turning your house into a mansion, there's an underlying truth that often gets obscured by the appearance of a good deed.

Bill Gates, who was once the richest man in the world, pledged to leave almost all his money to charity. Over the years this story has been repeated, and I'm the last person to tell you how to feel about it. For me, it's a good thing to help a charitable organization that's trying to help others. Last year, Bill Gates renewed this pledge, stating that he would give away around $200 billion and keep less than 1% for himself. I mean, $200 billion? That's crazy. Any charitable organization receiving even a fraction of that money will be able to do a lot of good with it, especially when Elon Musk said he could end world hunger with just $6.6 billion.

But that's only part of his statement. He isn't leaving his money to any random organization that needs it. He's leaving it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That's a different thing. Not a bad thing, but it changes the statement from "I'm donating my money to charity" to "I'm going to use my money to do charity." The money moves from one pocket to another.

The point I'm trying to make is that good stories often come with a few asterisks. When I read the Evan Spiegel story, I was intrigued because, well, I'm Californian. I've been here for over 20 years, my kids were born and raised here, and so far I have no intention of going anywhere else. Oh, and I've had one of those surprising medical bills that nearly made me faint. (A story for another day)

Reading a story where a billionaire pays off people's medical debt makes you feel good. It made me feel good. But when I looked at the details, things didn't add up.

The language of billionaire philanthropy.

First of all, the title of the LA Times article said: "Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Miranda Kerr help erase $550 million in medical debt for Californians". Note that it says "help erase." The charitable interpretation is that they paid $550 million of our debts. But that's not what it says, it says "help erase."

Further into the article, it states:

The couple made a multimillion-dollar donation to Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that provides debt relief to people in financial need. The organization acquires medical debt in bulk from hospitals, physician groups, collection agencies and other groups for a fraction of the cost.

So rather than pay the debt directly, they made a donation to Undue Medical Debt, which had already acquired the debts. And the most interesting part of all this is that Undue Medical Debt acquires debts for "a fraction of the cost."

In the article, they admit that the actual amount the couple donated was not disclosed; however, they do explain how much the organization pays to acquire debt:

Every $10 donated to Undue Medical Debt relieves an average of $1,000 in medical debt.

In other words, they acquire debt for a hundredth of its original value, a penny on the dollar (1/100).

10 years ago, to the date, John Oliver aired an episode of his show where he bought $15 million of medical debt “from Texas at a cost of less than half a cent on the dollar, which is less than 60 grand”. He then paid it off, relieving 9,000 people of their medical debt. It’s a ripe business for anyone looking for a quick PR win.

Again, I'm not complaining about this, I'm just doing the math. It's a good thing that they're taking on people's debt and finding rich people to pay for it. That's a good thing for the person receiving the relief.

"No one should go bankrupt because of a cancer diagnosis and no family should have to choose between insulin and groceries."

It's a good thing:

San Diego County residents benefited the most from the donation, with total medical debt relief through the couple's gift totaling roughly $99 million and affecting 40,369 people. In Los Angeles County, the gift provided $26.7 million in medical debt relief to 17,466 people, according to the nonprofit.

That's close to 60,000 people benefiting from this relief. But the language keeps circling the drain instead of just telling us what they actually gave. It says "the donation with total medical debt relief through the couple's gift totaling roughly..." They never tell us how much they gave, just how much the medical debt is "roughly" worth.

But we can do the math. Undue Medical Debt purchases debt for a penny on the dollar. Evan and Miranda paid off $550 million in debt. At a penny on the dollar, or 1/100, that puts the purchase price at roughly $5.5 million. That's a huge difference in value. Evan and Miranda donated $5.5 million to Undue Medical Debt, "roughly". Why was that so hard to say? Is the value too low? Not good enough? I'd argue it's still very generous. But it doesn't generate the same amount of PR, does it?

It's one thing to say you've donated a quarter of your wealth, but a whole other thing to say you've donated 0.27% of your money.

I'm not trying to shame them really, I think they should just be honest. Either donate silently, or tell the truth. Why inflate it? It also tells us something about how inflated medical bills really are. If the debt only costs a hundredth of its face value, then patients should be able to pay it off themselves. When my children were in the NICU, we were charged "roughly" $20,000 a night for our two-month stay in the hospital, per child. I'll spare you the math for now. (Again that's a story for another day)

Here is how the Math makes this whole story completely ridiculous. With the original debt of $550 million for 60 thousand people, it comes down to $9,167 (550,000,000 / 60,000) per person. That's a steep price for anyone to pay. But for the price that Evan and his wife paid it's $5.5 million for 60 thousand people. We are down to just $91 per person. If that was your medical bill, there wouldn't be a need for an organization to offer any help.

There's always an angle to these charitable stories. We celebrated Bill Gates' pledges without questioning that he was funding his own foundation, and that it did more than just charitable work (like oil, fast food, or pharma). We celebrated Warren Buffett's pledges, while he quietly changed his tune in his last annual letter. Evan and Miranda boasted $550 million, while they actually donated only a hundredth of that amount.

I'm not saying the money they donated or actions these people took aren't commendable, it's just that it would have been better if they had been honest about it from the beginning. When the rich donate money or make a show of it, there is always more to the story.

Resources:

• NPR
• LA Times
• Yahoo

Update:

The LA Times only mentioned ~60,000 people in two Californian cities. However, on Undue medical website, the reported number is 260,000. If we update the math to 5.5M / 260k it comes back to $21 in average medical bill per person. I'm pretty sure the majority of people would be able to afford that without assistances.

A merchant, or anyone really, can create a product (or source it from China), then resell it on amazon. Amazon is the service provider, and hosts all the metrics concerning the products. If Amazon themselves were in the business of creating and selling products, then that creates a potential of conflict of interest. Because they have the data of all products that sell and sell well. They could replicate that success without doing any further research since the merchant has already confirmed the existence of demand.

It's not surprising that Amazon Basics quickly became the best selling "private-label brand" on Amazon. They already know what sells because they have access to the data. Yet they continued to deny it, and state that they only ever use publicly available data from sellers.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company believes the allegations are "factually incorrect and unsubstantiated," adding that Amazon strictly prohibits the "use or sharing of non-public, seller-specific data for the benefit of any seller, including sellers of private brands."

Yet the results are right there for all to see.

If you sell any product through Amazon, you are exposing your company's operations to them. If you want to keep that information to yourself, then you don't get to reach your customers, which in reality are Amazon's customers.

If you want to buy something online, and get it shipped as quickly as possible, then Amazon is a blessing. Most often than not, you are not buying the product directly from Amazon. An independent store or vendor with a presence on Amazon will fulfill your order. The seller only has minor identifying characteristics on the platform. On the search result page, the space designated to the seller is small and insignificant. The customer has very few reminders that products are offered by anyone but Amazon. (Although if you want to dispute a sale, you are starkly reminded that the item is from a 3rd party vendor.)

So there is no surprise when companies embrace AI internally, they are putting themselves at the risk of sharing their product with their competitors. Maybe the most obvious example is when Antropic came up with Claude Design. A tool to help users generate designs, wireframes, etc. Kinda like Figma.

That's not a problem on its own, but when Antropic's chief product officer sits on Figma's board of directors, you can't say that there isn't a conflict of interest there. In fact, the chief product officer resigned from the board merely days before Claude Design was announced. He basically extracted all value from Figma then resigned. Figma's AI features are built on top of Claude. So Anthropic literally pulled an Amazon Basic on Figma.

When companies force their own employees to use AI to do their day to day work, they are basically asking employees to upload company data to a 3rd party that may become a competitor. Sure something in the contract clause says that the AI company won't train on enterprise customer data, but nothing stops them from peaking at successful product data.

Whenever someone tells me that they used AI to build an app and boast of its values or uniqueness, I want to remind them that if you can just prompt-create a product, so can the AI provider. In fact, they might have better resources to create a competing product if it displays any sign of success (see Figma).

While it looks like plenty of people are benefitting from AI today, all this information is being shared with AI providers. We are giving them full access to our thought process. When you include them in your workflow, you are basically providing them with a step by step approach on how to do your job.

Don’t be surprised when you see a native Antropic/OpenAi project management application suite. Or a CRM, or any software that is trying to integrate with AI and may experience success.

A few years back, when I worked in Customer Service Automation, we discovered that most companies used Zendesk to manage their customer service. Since customers mainly contacted support via email, an intentional database had been built that tracked users through their shopping experience throughout the web.

While so much could be done with that data, like identifying “problematic” customers, or recommending products based on their history, we ended up finding something more helpful. We could easily detect a pattern of issues for certain shipping carriers. We could see when UPS was having delays in certain cities, or when Fedex was having technical issues when updating the last mile status. None of these things were features designed or provided by anyone. However, having access to businesses’ data gave us insight where we had none before.

That became a feature for us, only because we were not competitors to all these online retailers.

When you expose your company's internal data to a potential competitor, don’t be surprised when they build a competing business to rival you.

1. Help people find a match, and they will never come back
2. Make people pay and keep them on the platform as long as possible.

Let's pretend for a second that we actually want people to find love. Love is such a weird thing that we don't even know how to define it properly. Ask two people what it means, and you will get five plausible definitions. If you approach it programmatically, then you will likely look into some measurable metrics to match people and then hope that love emerges somehow.

In my quest to find what the ideal dating app would look like, I interviewed a couple of my friends that use those apps. I quickly gave up when I realized that I don't have a clue on how people actually use the apps. The first comment that threw me off was when my single friend told me of an app where she found some pretty good dates.

How can you find some good dates and remain single? And what made them good? The more questions I asked, the less I understood.

I guess I got lucky. I used a dating app for a brief time, and before I knew it I was married. I never got to experience "good dates". I thought when you found one, you were safe to delete the app. I never had to pay for super swipes, and other premium packages.

Anyway, I'm not trying to solve dating anymore but apparently whatever I thought I knew has once again changed. A friend described the experience in a way that I thought was profound.

In these apps:

Men are looking for a woman who doesn't exist anymore.

Women are looking for a man that never existed.

This must be peak monetization strategy. Dating apps don't create the perfect match, they pick from the same pool of people that they share with every other dating app. So to make it more appealing, you have to create the appearance of the perfect partner that may only exist in your garden.

Men are asked to look to the past, where women were like their grandmother. She was both strong and soft, in charge and submissive. A past that they never lived, but looks appealing through their minds' eyes. They were only toddlers when grandma took care of them. Who doesn't love grandma.

Women are looking for a tall rich guy who is both CEO and able to change diapers. He is at the grocery store, but he is also at the gym. He is at work, but is available at a moment's notice. At least that's how he is portrayed on social media.

The Giga family

Grandma, God rest her soul, has passed away. We don't know who she was and how she became the loving person we knew. Those rich gym CEO guys only exist on instagram. They are a convenient plot device that keeps you swiping and spending.

I don't know if there will ever be a better way to match people, but I think technology has already solved the connection problem. We can connect. But if we want to make those connections any stronger and fit into one of those loose definitions of love, then we have to put the device away and talk to one another.

Today's man-children, at the ripe old age of 40, still cannot afford a home. Yet they have no problem eating out every day, going to the movies, and buying popcorn and avocado toast. Add in subscriptions to ten different services they barely use, and that's money thrown out the window. They don't see the correlation between their spending habits and their inability to buy a home or save money in the first place.

I understand that my grandfather's house only cost $12,000, and my father bought his for $50,000. Mine was much more expensive, I paid $150,000, and that house is now worth a million. I understand that by the time my children are 26, it will probably be worth $10 million. If they start saving now, they'll have a shot. But I can tell they will choose reckless spending over saving, and I simply do not understand this generation.

/s

Last week I found a flyer wedged into my front door from a real estate agent in the neighborhood. On it was a list of homes she had sold, each entry showing a picture of the house and its sale price. The cheapest was $970k. For her, this was a record of her work. "Hire me and I'll sell your house," a calling card of bragging rights. For me, it was a nightmare.

I don't live in an affluent neighborhood, yet somehow all the homes are worth a million dollars. Thirteen years ago, a colleague of mine bought hers in this same neighborhood for around $200k. It was a savvy investment. If she sells now, she'll get at least five times what she paid.

While that price was reasonable at the time, meaning you could dedicate a third of your salary to your mortgage, at a million dollars, you're paying far more. That's between $7,000 and $10,000 per month. Good luck finding a job that pays three times that. To satisfy that requirement, you'd need to earn $250k to $360k a year.

Cutting back on avocado toast or prepping your own meals won't save you nearly enough. If you squint and stretch your imagination, maybe it's possible to afford these homes, not by cutting back, but by finding new sources of income.

But what about the next generation? My kids. When they're in their 20s and 30s, how much will houses cost? If we continue at this pace, the wooden houses in this neighborhood are going to cost at least $10 million each. And we'll call the next generation even lazier. Maybe we'll tell them they're splurging on water bottles. "Back in my day, we drank tap water." Or maybe they're not using Grok enough to come up with a smarter financial strategy.

I don't think this is sustainable. The only way forward may be for everything to collapse first. See you at the homeless camp where we'll all end up.

For all of Anthropic's doomsaying and propping up of their secret model Mythos, several open-weight models have proven capable of similar feats, and at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek rocked the AI world in December 2024 with their initial release, nearly sending shockwaves through American stock markets.

Last year, I looked into getting a BYD electric car. At the price they were selling for, I figured that even with a 100% tariff slapped on top, it would still be a bargain. Then I discovered that not only is there a steep import tariff, you simply cannot register the car in the United States. The car itself is illegal. According to reviews from people who actually own one, it's a fantastic vehicle that would outcompete most cars on the US market. Because of that, the US simply banned it.

So what does this mean for large language models? If we're now told that state-of-the-art LLMs are too dangerous for the general public, what happens to Chinese models that are equally powerful? People will start flocking to DeepSeek and zAI. The quality matches OpenAI and Anthropic, the models are open-weight, and the cost is dramatically lower. The logical next step, if you're a DC lobbyist on retainer for a San Francisco AI lab, is to ban them.

We don't live in rational times. The only path to an IPO for Anthropic and OpenAI is to kick the ladder out from under everyone else and get Washington to call it "safety policy." Download the models while you still can, because once the regulation drops, owning a local copy of DeepSeek might just make you a dissident.

- "Nods in agreement."

- "Proceeds to punch the man in the face."

That's how I feel whenever I hear the Miranda rights being read. It was designed specifically to scare anyone being read to, into silence. Don't incriminate yourself. If you are like me, guilty of watching those police bodycams videos on youtube, then you know that people proceed to talk right after they are read their rights, as if they heard absolutely nothing.

Those rights exist solely to protect you from the very authority addressing you. They have authority over you, so you need protection to balance the playing field. The perfect way to balance it, is by affording people the right to remain silent and not to be coerced into incriminating yourself.

We can all agree that the Miranda rights are a fundamental power we have and should exercise. The State reads you Miranda rights to limit its own power over you.

So let me rephrase Miranda rights in a way that you will find relevant in this tech focused blog:

“You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say, do, or generate on this device can and will be used against you… Would you like to create an account?”

Yet, we agree to these terms constantly. It’s second nature. We sign up to test a new AI or a new service, telling ourselves, "If I don’t like it, I’ll just cancel." We ignore the reality that while it takes one click to sign up, it often requires a fax machine or a physical letter to cancel.

This week, following the "Fable" kerfuffle, Anthropic announced they now support customer identification. You can upload your government-issued ID or passport to verify your identity.

We are rolling out identity verification for a few use cases, and you might see a verification prompt when accessing certain capabilities, as part of our routine platform integrity checks, or other safety and compliance measures.

This will eventually be used to determine who is considered an "approved" user. In other words, when you type "Fix this code" into Claude, it will check your verified status before executing, all in the name of compliance. By uploading those documents, you are surrendering control. You are giving up your rights, your identity, just to access a service. If things go wrong, there is no "Miranda warning" for the consumer. Every action on your account is now permanently tethered to your identity.

In the digital world, the corporation reads you the Terms of Service to expand its own power over you. When you agree to Claude's terms, OpenAi’s or any corporation, you are waiving your right to remain silent. And then you are providing them with a searchable database with the most intimate information about yourself, that can and will be used against you.

For example, imagine you upload your Driver’s License to Claude to unlock advanced coding features. Three months later, you ask Claude to review a snippet of open-source code that accidentally contains proprietary company secrets (you didn't realize it). Under Miranda, you could have said, "I refuse to discuss this code." Online, you already discussed it. Your verified identity is now permanently attached to that leak, making you the prime suspect for corporate espionage, even if it was an accident.

Or you make a joke. You ask Claude: "Fix this bug before I throw my laptop out the window, and delete the entire production database." Because you verified your ID, this log is permanently stored. Six months later, your company undergoes a security audit. The audit team subpoenas your AI logs. They see a verified user (you) threatening to delete a database. You now face a disciplinary board for "security threats," and the AI log is treated as a written confession, because you gave up your right to contextual defense when you agreed to permanent, verbatim logging.

Even worse, when all your data is logged and attached to your identity, it can later be cross referenced against laws that don’t exist yet. You are an aspiring writer but you just weren’t gifted with words. So you use Fable to write a short story. You verified your ID of course then you prompted a story about a rogue AI overthrowing the government.

A few years later, an Anti-Terrorism AI Monitoring directive was passed under the leadership of new secretary of war Alex Karp. Your sci-fi hobby is retroactively flagged, and you are put on a watchlist.

When you are read Miranda rights, the officer is saying: "You have a right to a lawyer, and if you cannot afford one, one will be provided." The State bears the burden of providing you protection.

In the digital ToS, the corporation is saying: "We have a right to audit you, and if you cannot afford to fight us in court, too bad."

You are giving up the presumption of innocence. In a physical court, your silence cannot be used against you. In a digital audit, your silence doesn't exist. Every click is a spoken word. By uploading your ID, you are giving the corporation a signed affidavit that you are the one pressing the buttons. If a hacker steals your account, you still bear the burden of proof to clear your name, because the logs show your verified ID.

ToS exists only to protect a corporation. Remember, Disney tried to use their Disney+ ToS to dodge a wrongful deaf case from food poisoning in one of their restaurants.

The user is giving up the right to be forgotten, the right to be misinterpreted favorably, and the right to change their mind. They are trading their 5th Amendment-equivalent (protection from self-incrimination) for a free API call. The only way to win is to treat every prompt as if you are testifying under oath in a courtroom, because legally, thanks to that uploaded passport, you are.