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I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

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Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#231

Post by midasuni »

prepend wrote: post #155
midasuni wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year internet experts were saying “real” inflation was high because lumber was up X% As of today, Lumber is down 30% year on year. Those same people seem to no longer talk about lumber as it doesn’t suit the narrative.

Well also because there are other factors that are high. Inflation is a basket of many goods. Just because lumber is up or down doesn’t mean inflation, overall, must be up or down. It’s not a conspiracy in this case or an official narrative. Inflation is high so reporters try to find examples. Instead of lumber, they now talk about groceries or whatever.

We know inflation is high. The conspiracy theorists are the ones who say it’s higher (20,30% etc) because their commodity of choice is up that much.

Last year that commodity was lumber. A couple of months ago it was oil.

It’s quite possible, likely even, that your personal inflation doesn’t match the official inflation, because you don’t have the same basket of goods. By all means if you want to present an alternate inflation with different weighting that’s fine, preferably show what the same weighting’s were over the last 20 years though and be transparent about the weightings like official ones

Or do a YouTube video showing different amounts of lumber and yell about how the lame stream media is lying to you.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#232

Post by LaMarseillaise »

I have learned the hard way that when dealing with government software (at least in the US), you must assume the least favorable/most unfavorable interpretation of any information given.

When I saw the email informing the author of the over-purchase, I knew there was no way out. Purchasing the difference, as the author did, would only cause more trouble. The questions now are how much will be refunded, whether any purchases will go through, and whether there will be a fine or legal action. Refer to the rule above for my guesses.

I think many people do not appreciate how devastating this is to public trust.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#233

Post by imranhou »

Someone1234 wrote: post #222
codedokode wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why keyloggers also log the title of an active window.

So the malware is running in the user's context, and has the browser's window handle and instead of using that to hook the child input elements directly, they're going to store an unintelligible stream of keystrokes then use the window handle to bundle that with the window's title? Is that a reasonable way to implement malware? Will it result in high quality data for resale? One of those "Things programmers believe a…

I think a simple keylogger that also reads window titles is much easier to build, than to read and control content inside a browser. This kind of technique would work really well if they are targeting a small group of users. One can argue that reading browser content through a browser extension would be equally easy to implement, but that's harder to hide and limits your scope to only browser activity.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#235

Post by stjohnswarts »

jrimbault wrote: post #88
jefftk wrote: post #62

> They require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard. This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript. I don't think this is generally worth it as a security measure, but the goal is not to protect against automation. Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.

But if there's a keylogger installed, why would the same keylogger not take regular screenshots ?

screenshots take up a LOT more data than text. seems unlikely unless you have an advanced script kiddie specifically targetting you.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#236

Post by otterley »

butlerm wrote: post #127
skeptikal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the US will de jure default on its obligations is risible. De facto its happened at least once before when Nixon closed the gold window overnight.

In 1933 Congress unilaterally devalued the dollar by nearly seventy percent, rewrote the gold clauses in private contracts, largely forbid the private possession of gold, and managed to get away with it. The Supreme Court conveniently decided to ignore the Constitution on that occasion.

Why do you believe this was unconstitutional?

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#237

Post by stjohnswarts »

vasco wrote: post #32

The venn diagram of internet users that read about super specific financial products, decide to buy them, while not even understanding the need to keep an emergency fund such that a move like this leaves them with under $200 in their account seems to be growing. It seems to be a weird mix of wall street cosplay and financial ineptitude.

well he knew that he had a paycheck coming up so he was probably good. I'm not nearly that brave myself but it wasn't a totally awful situation.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#238

Post by invokestatic »

bzxcvbn wrote: post #187
archhn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That money must go somewhere in the meantime and is probably earning interest.

Earning interest from whom? It's the US treasury, in the end they are the one that create money out of thin air. They don't need to swindle a few bucks here and there to invest in short term schemes.

The treasury does not create money. The treasury deposits its money at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#240

Post by adrianmonk »

msrenee wrote: post #13

I'm missing the logic of the second 10k. He had already exceeded the limit. Why did he think that doing it again would change the outcome? It looks to me like he was going to get the extra $25 returned to him and have 10k in bonds. It's definitely vague though.

They assumed the government's software would do this:

(1) Purchase #1 for $25 successful --> reduce remaining limit from $10000 to $9975.

(2) Purchase #2 for $10000 rejected and refund pending --> DO NOT reduce limit since you know the purchase didn't go through.

(3) Purchase #3 for $9975 within limit --> allow purchase, reduce limit to exactly $0.

Instead, at step 2, the software seems to handle the purchase by unconditionally taking $10000 off the limit at purchase time and putting $10000 back later when the refund is processed. (And consequently, at step 3, it failed the purchase.)

There isn't an obvious reason to do it this way, so it's surprising. It seems like if you can reduce the limit, you can check if you've exceeded it and just fail the purchase and never modify the limit (at purchase or refund time).

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