Author admits they screwed up, decided to share the screwup, and who hasnt been trough that exact dunder blunder?
Fun short read 8/10.
From reading comments here it sounds like the author both misinterpreted things and also compulsively over deposited to test the governments software.
Testing government systems as an outsider is a really bad idea.
> Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
That is "post anything online and someone will point out you are doing it wrong"
People want to think it wouldn’t happen to them, so they go through all the reasons they would have been able to avoid the situation so that they don’t have to fear it happening to them.
People really don’t want to admit to themselves that there are a lot of things outside our control that can happen to us.
I’ve often wondered why some people can be so harsh towards those who’ve had something unfortunate happen to them. This makes a lot of sense.
It's so much more fun to pretend that everything good that's happened to you, you earned and deserved, rather than a lot of it just being random noise that compounded in the fortunate direction.
https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/the-fundamental-attribution...
It's not luck being born without birth defects, being healthy, and still being alive to this day?
Moving into the US - or being born there - really doesn't make you successful, you'll find yourself grinding daily if you want some success. Actually, you may find it's much harder for you there than elsewhere (where you might find less outrageous success, but with much less hard work).
> It's not luck being born without birth defects, being healthy, and still being alive to this day?
Exactly, that's modern medicine - thank scientists, doctors, engineers and insurance bankers for their hard work. Gods and fate have zero part in it.
It's hard to define just how much luck would matter in any given situation, but if you consider every aspect of our lives as part of luck, which I think is what people mean when they debate luck vs hard work, then I think it's a lot higher than 5% actually. That is, things like place/time of birth, parents, family, socioeconomic status at birth, schools, friends, teachers, health, timing of things, chance encounters - these things are all mostly outside of your control.
Someone on hacker news might be thinking how they worked hard for years to learn software engineering, spent time networking, practiced interview questions, applied to several places, performed well in the interviews, and landed a lucrative job. And that's all part of hard work and it's often a necessary part of success. It doesn't feel like you lucked into anything. But the lucky part was mostly all the stuff I mentioned before - things that happened at birth, or things that happened because of others' actions. If you're born an affluent white American, for example, your luck meter is highly filled from the start. Then maybe at some point you had a teacher that helped you in a meaningful way, or you met a friend that influenced your decision making. And let's not forget there are people who are just as qualified, who study hard, practice, do all the same things, and they don't get the job. Maybe because the interviewer had a hangover, or maybe it was just someone else got in before them and wowed the interview team and made up their mind before seeing them. That's luck.
I believe this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I&vl=en
They are so burdened with looking out for themselves they only see caring about anyone else as just another burden that they shouldn't have to bear, instead of seeing it as an avenue of shared and thus relieved burden.
So, any excuse to make it so they don't have to care about any other misfortune than their own.
If people did not care, they wouldn’t read and comment, would they? We can observe there is enough attention and salience for this other person’s situation to achieve some level of “care” in other people’s minds. Maybe the caring involved is a more distant and superficial sort? Maybe it is the kind of caring that comes out of avoiding one’s own cares.
I use this thought personally to observe when I care enough to type in a comment, and which of my own cares I am avoiding when I do so.
I didn't provide enough context to illustrate that my point was about selfishness and avoiding feelings of obligation or guilt?
I am not immune myself even though I levelled the charge. I only get through the day by generous application of denial.
If I can't avoid seeing someone hungry, then plan B is figure out a way to conclude that it is within their own power to feed themselves, and so not my problem.
Failing both of those, then I have to deal with it. I either have to share my food with them or I have to consciously decide I'm ok with keeping mine and ignore their misfortune.
Obviously, intellectually, academically, I know that the world is one big continuous stream of unbelievable tragedy, and I can't actually live even one second for myself if I were to try to treat all of that the same way I do when my own partner suffers so much as a headache. So I don't. I pretend everything is fine by arranging things so that mostly everything I see is fine, and when I see something else I mostly rationalize some sway to ignore it. I drive right by that guy standing at the intersection with the sign, etc.
I just at least try to be self aware that I'm doing that and not confuse a sanity/survival strategy, however justified and necessary, for reality.
I'm saying that a lot of people don't seem to do even that last little part.
I rationalize my choice of inaction when I feel obligation or guilt to take action. I am unable to observe the interior rationalizations of others' inaction.
If you don't mind getting analytical, what about today, in your life, is different about today than other days? Just curious. My day has been the same as others, good sleep, waking up easily, tasks in line for the day, no coffee, so I am willing to assume something about your life patterns today is bringing you under my nose.
It's boring, not even about the article, and barely accurate (only very few comments actually criticise the article's author), yet that's the first thing you read here.
This post is a fantastic example of the poverty trap. We design laws that, on paper, help the poor; and then we blame them for not taking advantage.
When in reality, they are poorly implemented, poorly advertised, and confusing.
With a $10k cap, this program is clearly intended to help people with low assets. How many people with a net worth under, say, $20k in the US? Tens of millions! How many of those would've really loved the extra $850 to offset this year's record inflation? Basically all of them! How many of them found this obscure website with awful UX and received the money? Approximately none!
I think it’s appropriate to say they made a stupid mistake and move on.
The author is likely a little frustrated so I can forgive their shade throwing at treasury.
He’s lucky to get 1% return on a high yield savings so he lost 1/12 = .08%/month so if it takes two months for a refund he lost $16.66 in interest from where he has it parked. My bank’s high yield interest only returns .05% so if I had acted stupidly and made the same mistake I would have missed out on 83 cents for the two months.
So he’s lucky it’s not a very expensive mistake.
To match inflation, all one has to do is to buy nonperishable components of the CPI: fuel, real estate (through a REIT), food, commodities, and so on.
If banking can't keep up with that, it speaks volumes about the competence of the financial system.
Savings accounts haven’t kept up with inflation for as long as I remember. So anyone with cash has plugged it into stuff other than mma. I think that’s why these Ibonds are so popular now.
Your pseudocode already failed the unit tests. The limit is 10k per year, and you can hold I bonds for 30 years. Someone can have 300k of I bonds in their account balance.
(Not that it would be hard to do it correctly.)
It’s 2022, not 1998.
I would expect a banking/payment UI to be very clear and foolproof.
As someone who has experience with savings bonds and Treasury Direct, I still have no clue how to interpret that phrase. Savings bonds are discrete things with discrete values, even though TD has worked to smooth over that quality with arbitrary purchase amounts and partial redemptions. "Excess purchase" may very well mean a refund of the entire singular $9,975 bond that was purchased.
The way to find out is to call TD or search around web forums, but it's understandable that OP reacted to one possible implication of the message rather than taking a few hours to find out what it means.
The website not stopping or warning you is one thing, though I think the real change needed here is on the backend: when executing the order it should check your limit before trying to transfer the money.
The way they're doing it is probably safer for them in terms of races or whatever, and who knows what ancient Treasury system it's probably interfacing with, but still.
Agreed, fun little article.
The author explicitly indicates that it is all of their savings:
> I sat there with my $173.12 of remaining savings and $25 in I-bonds, feeling like I had accomplished something truly remarkable.
I don't know, but I don't have a good feeling about that...