I enjoyed Moonwalking with Einstein, but I felt that it was more story than technique.

I found [Unlimited Memory](https://www.amazon.com/Unlimited-Memory-Advanced-Strategies-...) a nice follow-up to the former.

> WordPress itself is an inherently insecure platform.

Linking to regular security updates for a system is proof that that system takes security seriously, not that it is insecure. I'd worry about an open source project that didn't have regular security updates.

Also, "inherent" is silly to use in this context.

There is a link to the github repo in the footer of the site.

Still a work in progress, but I was itching to go live with it.

I look forward to your thoughts.

They need a good old war on drugs; pair that with privatization and they can rake in the money.

Looks like he read these comments, it seems to be resizable now (chrome). People can be pretty brutal here sometimes.

Why is pointing out that it is unreadable brutal? You know what's brutal? The h2 tag that covers half of my screen.

It isn't for me.

I love these initiatives. It does, though, need thorough testing in an office environment. Things that users, not developers, will come out. For example, I tried cutting and pasting from Word. Forget about formatting, none of the line breaks carried over. That's not to discount this. It'll be great in certain settings, but it has far to mature if it's goal is to compete with tinyMCE.

Totally agree to this.

And that's why, if you are investing in indices, it's important to continuously invest.

I tried most of the ones on the list. I'm currently using [Spark](https://sparkmailapp.com/) not as buggy as Airmail, mailbox many of the features I liked from both.

I've tried Spark too; I kind've slotted it under the "others" in the "needs Mac app" category. I didn't really feel it did anything better than EasilyDo Mail (which has more personal assistant type features) or Boxer (which is more customizable) if I was going to go for an app on iOS only.

I love Spark but they don't seem to have a clear way of making money so I'm concerned about its future.

My biggest gripe is that it doesn't integrate with their calendar app; which, I think is very silly.

Is it fair to say they're being paid if they paid into the system paying them for their entire working lives? Can someone please explain why people call Social Security an entitlement? Am I missing something?

In Germany at least, public retirement funds are "pay-as-you-go", i.e. you don't pay in to save up money for yourself, you pay in to finance the current payouts to other people who previously paid into the system (and so on). Of course nobody treats it that way -- you'll hear a lot of "my pension" talk especially from people close to retirement and those who are unaware of how low their pensions will be a the current rate.

Theoretically the system could be justifiably stopped at any second and simply drained by the current pensioners (which would probably happen almost instantly). But good luck explaining that to people raised under the false assumption that the public pensions are "safe" (as politicians like to announce so frequently).

Our best bet would probably be "universal basic income for everyone below retirement age" but pensions are "topped up" to parity with basic income. A not-insignificant portion of pensioners already gets pensions below social security levels (meaning it is topped up to social security levels -- not that they get welfare on top). You could then fade out the pension system and replace it with basic income.

Social security works basically the same way in the USA.

Once a system like that is in place, it's very hard to stop the pipeline.

I honestly don't see the purpose of that type of system either.

Why create this pipeline of money anyway? Why not just take the contributions that everyone makes and put them into individual retirement accounts?

Assuming the system is stable (which it's probably not), it seems there would be virtually no difference between me paying for the current retirees (and expecting my children to pay for my retirement) vs. me paying into my own retirement.

I'm not too familiar with these concepts, so maybe someone will school me.

> I honestly don't see the purpose of that type of system either. Why create this pipeline of money anyway? Why not just take the contributions that everyone makes and put them into individual retirement accounts?

Because after WWII, there were no retirement accounts in Germany (simplified and not completely correct, but you get the point). Should they have let old people starve?

Makes sense. And no, but a temporary program could have been put in place I guess.

It seems you're now stuck with a program that was designed to address a problem of 70 years ago.

I'm especially curious about the history of Social Security in the USA. I can read about this on my own time, though.

It does seem like it was a tool used for polotical gain.

I despise social security, mainly because it's a wealth transfer tool masquerading as retirement savings. I would love to eliminate it and have everyone just save their own money.

The reason that it's not done that way is three-fold:

(a) People's contributions are not enough to cover their social security. Instead, they depend on the current workers paying in more than the previous generation did (in a perpetual cycle).

(b) Liberals oppose the idea of personal responsibility. If you don't save any money for retirement, they think society still has an obligation to fund your retirement.

(c) It's a benefit which goes to old people and old people vote a lot.

In reality, it's just a cleverly marketed way of stealing money from the youth and giving it to old voters.

In reality it was a cleverly marketed way of ensuring old people did not continue to live in utter destitution, given that a substantial proportion of the population even of "wealthy" countries are unable - not unwilling - to save enough to retire without ending deep into poverty.

I think your point (b) is overly contentious and shows you don't really know much about Liberals.

In fact, most liberals I know are very much about personal responsibility - including towards society and the environment.

>I despise social security, mainly because it's a wealth transfer tool

Wealth transfer is not necessarily a bad thing.

I don't mind some wealth transfer from the rich to the poor. It's generational wealth transfer (including from poor youth to wealthy elderly) that I oppose.

Those systems were put in place when the population was robustly growing.

Also, the pay-as-you-go systems allows the politician to hand out money straight away. Making the programs instantly popular and entrenched.

SS provides a minimum guaranted pension, in large part as a safeguard against the failure of private pensions and retirement investments (adopted after a major financial collapse took out a lot of people's retirement investments); redirecting it into risk-exposed private retirement investments would rather miss the point.

Yes. The SS system is clever, but it required a lot of sleight of hand to get it into place -- but that approach has kept it alive for 80 years so far.

First, SS is universal rather than means tested in order to garner enough support to keep it in place. It's ridiculous that someone with millions in assets will receive a relatively small SS payment each month once they turn 70, but if the system had any decision making in it, it would eventually be gutted by those who "only want it to go to the deserving", with all the misty, hoop-jumping etc that you get with welfare assistance. Essentially money is wasted on the wealthy in order to make sure those who really need it get it.

Second: "they paid into the system" is deliberate propaganda. We all "pay into the system". Dollars are fungible -- one marked "social security" on your paystub is no different form the one marked "federal income tax" any more than the electrons in your GPU are the same as the ones in the CPU. And we are entitled to the benefits of air traffic control, food safety, schools etc. And in practice the SSN money does work that way: how do you think it's "invested"? It buys government bonds.

It's a cumbersome fiction, with rich kabuki elements (I myself appreciate the wasteful "statements" that some idiotic congressman decided should be sent to every recipient). Claiming you paid for it so you were entitled to it was a clever idea.

This crazy system arrived because the model people had was private pensions; many people didn't or couldn't invest in them so the Roosevelt administration developed "a pension fund for everyone" in the face of stiff opposition. It was very similar to the difficulty of implementing Obamacare: the whole ludicrous infrastructure was designed to bring insurance companies into the system rather than sit beside them. So SS is much more efficient than Obamacare because the opposition wasn't as effective back in the early 1930s.

This whole "you paid for it" scheme has other pathologies as well: the tax is regressive. The people who need it pay a higher proportion of their income than the people who don't. That's just cruel.

The reason why "You paid for it" is a valid argument is that Social Security is explicitly advertised as a forced retirement system.

Imagine if you put money into your 401k, and then the government came along and decided that you didn't need that money so they just took it all away from you. Do you believe THAT would be OK?

Because if SS is a retirement system, that's effectively what the government would be doing.

Your argument is circular: it was advertised as X so it is X.

I described why it was advertised that way and it is operated to resemble that, but that is not in fact how it operates.

In fact I do think it is ludicrous that the US government will pay me SS money when I get old, even through I certainly won't need it. But I am glad they will do so because people have a screwed up model of how things work, so if they have to pay a bunch of people who don't need it in order to make sure those who do need it get their money, well, it's worth the cost. But what a waste. How much better not pay Bill Gates an SS payment and give it to someone else who needs it more?

You should be more outraged that a huge chunk of your taxes is wasted on beating up random people in other countries rather than fixing the bridges or giving it to people who are suffering. You should be more outraged that you are told that ISIS is some sort of existential threat to the republic, which is of course absolute nonsense.

How about the fact that the US created and underwrites all the "conforming" mortgages (i.e. essentially all of them outside a few pockets like the Bay Area and Manhattan). Another program from the 1930s that is taken for granted today with a cover myth a private mortgage market.

Look, I'm no flat-earther, gold-standarder, or conspiracy theory loony. I am hugely in favor of SS payments, welfare, Obamacare, FDA, etc etc -- in fact I think they should be stronger. But if you read history and some of the original debates and documents from the Roosevelt administration it is clear they are good medicine wrapped in a sugar coating of fakery in propaganda in order to get them implemented.

The money you put into SS is used to pay the benefits of the people drawing on it today. Anything left over is loaned to the government (yes an IOU to itself). There is no account with your name on it that holds the dollars that have been taken from you all your life. There is no trust fund. It's a giant pyramid scheme.

It's language war. Entitlement spending is a great way to negatively frame social security.

To be clear, the money I'm paying into Social Security today is being consumed by current Social Security recipients.

It is not being set aside for me to use when I theoretically begin to draw Social Security in the future.

Well, now I understand why all those pesky employees of mine feel so entitled to getting their paychecks. It must be because they're millennials or something...

I'm not certain... My first job as a programmer my boss use to bust my balls and joke that I must not care about getting paid because I often let my checks pile up before asking for them... (and I wasn't exactly flush with cash from another source...)

I'm thinking from the government's perspective. It's still money that is being removed from the treasury that they have to factor into the budgets.

> Can someone please explain why people call Social Security an entitlement? Am I missing something?

Because it is. What you're missing is what the word entitlement means. They paid into the system, they are entitled to get those checks, i.e. they have a right to it. Calling it an entitlement is not an insult.

> For instance, adding a feature to perform a specific function means you will have the choice between literally thousands of plug-ins.

Therefore I prefer not having the option to add custom features.

What?