Why are you such an asshole?

Yeah, and the concern in the summary is just silly. What makes Xesdeeni think that Intuit's desktop software doesn't upload everything to the cloud anyway? For the last several years TurboTax has created cloud backups of your local files by default... and IIRC there doesn't even seem to be a way to tell it not to. As I recall you have a choice of protecting it with a password or not, but I don't think you can tell it not to upload... and even if you can, how would know know if the software is honoring your request?

In general "I don't trust company X with my data, but I use their software" makes no sense, unless you only use their software on an airgapped computer.

No, I don't recall any other discussions about SMRs. It's not something I've ever paid much attention to. If you don't want to explain, don't explain, no need to be touchy about it.

One man plus a few million jackbooted thugs.

What are they?

This has always been true, not just the last 15 years.

The 1935 Social Security Act did define a system that was designed as a pure pay-as-you-go system with the expectation that a large reserve would accumulate, but the 1937 recession convinced people to change that. Some believed that the SSA actually caused the recession because it collected a large pile of money ($2B; that's $48T in 2025 dollars) which was invested by the government, driving out private investment. Also, the recession created suffering among people who would soon be able to receive benefits, but couldn't yet because the benefits didn't start until 1942 and slated to start small. So in 1939 the SSA was amended to start paying out in 1940 and to make the benefits more generous and the contributions smaller. With those changes it was recognized that operating out of the general fund was risky, so the social security trust funds (two of them, one for old age and one for disability) were established. This theoretically turned it into sort of combined pay-as-you-go (for the early beneficiaries) and trust fund-based system (for everyone else). In practice, the social security surpluses were invested in treasuries which effectively returned it to a pay-as-you-go system, which it is today.

Your claim that it's neither pay-as-you-go nor fund-based doesn't make sense. It must be one or the other, or some mixture. Yes it's a safety net and a pension, but the money has to come from somewhere, which means it either comes from current revenues (pay as you go) or it comes from some saved-up fund (fund-based). Well, MMT proponents would argue that it could come from new-issue money, but they are clueless.

No, the trust fund (actually two funds, but those details don't matter) was created when Social Security was created, well before the Baby Boom started -- but it's really a fiction. When social security tax revenues exceed social security payments, the surplus is used to purchase T-bills, which the trust fund holds. When payments exceed revenues, the T-bills are sold to fund the difference. The trust fund will be bankrupt when there are no T-bills in it to be redeemed.

However, the money from T-bill purchases goes into the general fund for Congress to spend, and the money to redeem the T-bills comes from the general fund... so in reality social security revenues and payments are to/from the general federal pot, which is running deficits every year. This means that there will be no practical difference when the trust fund is bankrupt, though unless Congress changes the law (which they obviously will) the Social Security Administration will not legally be able to make social security payments from the general fund (meaning from deficits) when they have no more treasuries to sell.

Both of my Model S's (2020, just traded in for a 2025) came with run-flats. Maybe the Model 3/Ys don't?

ROTFLMAO

Absolutely true. Reduced (or in many cases halted) investment in business growth is likely the primary driver of the poor economic numbers we're seeing. It's probably also helping to reduce inflation, though that effect seems to be offset by the early impact of the tariffs. As the tariffs bite harder I expect inflation to go up significantly even with the slowdown in business. If Trump manages to force Powell out early and replace him with an ideologue who lowers interest rates, inflation will really skyrocket.

Monetary inflation and price inflation are different things, but monetary inflation (which is a measure of monetary supply) is basically irrelevant to anyone but a macroeconomist, and both CustomBuild and I are talking about price inflation. Monetary inflation is a red herring.

Food prices are not going up significantly faster than overall inflation. That would actually be strange, since food costs are a major component of the consumer price index; for food prices to to up more than overall inflation the other stuff in the CPI basket would have to go down (in relative terms), quite a lot.

That's very regional. Rents have actually declined a bit where I live, thanks to a massive construction boom. This is an area where red states do considerably better than blue ones, thanks to lighter (though still excessive, IMO) construction regulation. Nationally, housing prices are flat (inflation-adjusted) over the last six months. Also, there's basically no way Trump could affect housing prices in such a short timeframe. The effects of presidential decisions on the economy generally take 2+ years to even be measurable. Tariffs are an exception, but even tariffs take some time to have an effect, and housing prices are a long way downstream.

AFAICT, healthcare costs aren't tracked on a monthly or quarterly basis, so we don't really know how they've changed during Trump's presidency. Eventually I expect the tariffs to increase healthcare costs relative to what they would have been without the tariffs.

CustomBuild's claims that the economy is improving during Trump's presidency are false, and even if they weren't, his argument that economic improvement would make massive corruption acceptable is both offensive and sad. In fact the signs are generally negative, but let's not veer into fantasy or anecdata in the other direction either.

Though... knowing what the objective reality is may get a lot harder if Trump's strategy of firing statisticians for bad news has the predictable effect.

Ah, so you're one of those who believes it's fine for leaders to steal, as long as they do a good job otherwise? Kudos for admitting the corruption, at least.

But the jobs and inflation numbers aren't really good. We're gaining jobs, not losing them, but we're gaining them at the slowest rate since the pandemic. Inflation was trending down, but has stabilized and then ticked up the last couple of months. Also, manufacturing is down and manufacturing investment is way down, as is capex investment across all industries, and the tariffs -- which even with the "deals" reducing them are still at the highest level since the 1930s -- haven't really started to bite yet.

Fingers crossed that job creation ticks back up, inflation turns around and starts going back down (or holds steady), and that the business environment stabilizes enough for businesses to begin trying to grow again, but I'm not holding my breath. Randomly jerking the business environment one way and then another is not how you encourage a healthy economy.

LOL

It really isn't.

Because those recovery mechanisms have created account access attack vectors.

This is true for YouTube Music and other things where there are contractual limits they have to abide by. But outside of that, there is no limit on the number of devices you can have logged into a Google account.

There are really good account security reasons for this.

No, you can also set up other factors. Configure Google Authenticator (or another TOTP app; they're all the same) or, even better, get a USB or bluetooth security key. You can also generate backup codes and store them in a safe place.

All of this comes down to the simple fact that account hijacking is a huge problem, for Google as well as for users, though mostly for users, and passwords suck.

I know it's more fun to be cynical and assume it's all just BigCorp being nefarious, but it's not true. I know people in the Google account security teams and they're pulling their hair out. What they really want to do is deprecate phone numbers, too, because they're actually not a good authentication factor. But users aren't willing to use TOTP or security keys and while passkeys are great, if you lose your device, you lost your passkey. The least common denominator authenticator that provides some measure of security is the phone number.