Still crippled. Just crippled x3 now.

Not a ridiculous question. It's actually a really smart one, and one that not enough partisan commentators are thinking through. There's a few things going on here.

1. We need to separate individuals from companies. Not all that many individuals have >$250K in a single bank account. LOTS of companies do. You don't need to be a particularly large company to need to have access to $1M+ for regular operations, e.g. payroll and supplies from vendors. Those small companies might not have particularly sophisticated finance or treasury folks on staff.

2. There are an increasing number of products that automate spreading deposits around. They're called sweep accounts/sweep networks. So that's getting more common. Mercury Bank seems to be stepping up in a big way, at least for tech startups.

3. Setting aside everything else, for anyone concerned about bank failure, the most obvious solution is to put your money into the biggest/most stable banks. So absent government intervention, everyone's going to go to Chase, Citi, etc. This would decimate smaller and regional banks. You can form your own opinion on whether or not that's a bad thing, but it's definitely a true thing. I can't wait to see published data on the inflows into the top 4 banks in the US from this last few days. To your question - the federal government _does_ want to encourage the survival of small banks, for various reasons - that seems to be policy right now.

4. Pre-FDIC, banks failed constantly and depositors lost money constantly. As I understand it, it's been 90+ years since any depositor actually lost money in a US bank failure. imho, this is a good thing. For people who are thinking that the fed's intervention on SVIB is a radical departure from the norm - it's really not. It's at worst a minor evolution of fundamental principles that have been in place for almost a century. Principles like - depositors should be protected as much as possible, and risk should be placed on the banks, not the US taxpayers. Which is exactly what's happening here.

5. One of the things that makes this feel like such a story is that the FDIC is _so bloody good_ at dealing with bank failures and protecting depositors that the notion that maybe they wouldn't be protected shocked a lot of people into some pretty extreme points of view. It caused a news cycle to a level I don't recall in my 40ish years on this planet. Even WaMu's much larger failure 15 years ago didn't cause this much consternation.

I won't even get into the narrative that this is a bailout for the rich, since you didn't put it in your question, except to say that that's such a ridiculously false claim on its face that it's annoying how much airtime it's getting.

There are - they're often referred to as sweep accounts. It's quite common - most offer between $1M and now up to $4M in FDIC insurance protection by basically acting as a financial UX layer on top of a complex system of where the money goes.

Now that said, there's a reason you mostly see these products coming from institutions that aren't technically banks - places like Wealthfront, Mercury, etc. Because a bank doing this is necessarily placing the capital in... another bank. So they can't loan it out.

I'm sure this is about to become a LOT more common, despite the FDIC having basically said that they'll step in and protect depositors in the case of a bank run on a fundamentally solvent bank.

... isn't mentioned nearly frequently enough in this discussion. Until we have a giant-ass globe-circling train for all of us elites to hide in, this pause is for the best.

FWIW, I find this to be just delightful. As a long time Android user I _love_ the idea that this finally works in both directions.

Now, of course Apple will just do what Google should have done years ago and auto translate those annoying SMS messages back into emojis - and maybe Google can do the same?? - but still, this is delightful.

Caveat that I don't know anything about maritime insurance, I would have thought prior to this article that almost all of the risk would have been insured. Which seems to also be what VW said in the article. So I'm confused about this headline.

I have to imagine that some folks are going to get in a LOT of trouble over this. I have no affiliation with the military, but surely it has to be against the rules to post photos of active operations and equipment to social media?

I know you're trolling, but I'm going to engage anyways.

"Responsible for" is the key phrase here.

There's a huge difference in responsibility between a serial liar & covid denier and a leader who has pleaded repeatedly with the population to take advantage of life-saving vaccines.

This is horrible to say and feel, but it's true - I'm just out of sympathy for the unvaccinated who catch and die from (with) COVID. Vaccines have been widely available in the US for almost a year, and most other developed countries for at least six months. This is one giant, un-funny Darwin Award playing out here, and it's a tragedy for all involved.

I'm seconding the thanks for that phrase. "strategic promotion of ignorance." that's utterly brilliant.

But yes, files are fundamental. I guess my relatively poorly articulated point is that for most people, they don't matter. If a metadata-driven search or auto-surface UX works better for them, I don't think it takes away from a _user's_ understanding of their compute environment to not have a concept of files and folders.

And for people who want to get into software and hardware engineering, I don't think these abstracted UX's are any real blocker.

My 2c.

This really isn't all that surprising. The whole POINT of modern search, discovery and recall tools is that you don't need to meticulously organize your stuff to find it again when you look at it. Most of these students grew up on Gmail, Google Docs/Drive, etc, which at the best of times barely have functioning folder constructs. Even iOS and photos, or Google Photos.

I think it's a credit to the evolution of technology that students are no longer forced to operate within one set of rules - rather, technology is evolving towards users' preferred methods of engagement.

That doesn't mean it's not going to be challenging. Folders and files have no bearing on "how computers work." They're just as much an artificial UX construct as a search box. But there are real issues in understanding the basics that are impacting computer science and engineering departments, and for everyone else - if the tool(s) that basically hold their entire lives are mysteries to them, then they're going to have something go horribly wrong in the future. It feels like the education system does need to teach the basics of cloud, privacy, security, data backups and access, etc - in the same way it needs to (but doesn't always/often) teach the basics of finance and credit, civil rights, property ownership, etc etc.

But the problem here isn't files and folders... that's just a problem for people who grew up on hierarchical organizational trees and can't work any other way. Hand up here, because I struggle with it too.

I fundamentally believe in the passwordless future, BUT - and this is a big but - I get 2-3 notifications per day in my Microsoft Authenticator app asking me to authorize a login.

It's not from me.

And the authorization requires nothing but me to say "yes."

This terrifies me. A slip of a thumb and they're in, without knowing my password.

There are ways around this - for instance, some prompts (but not others? I have no idea why) require me to match a number on both devices. But some do not, and I don't know why, and I have no control over that. Honestly this feels about as secure as a bad password I repeat on multiple sites.

This. This is exactly right - ideas are easy and cheap.

The only thing I'd add is whether or not Delta engaged in what appeared to be good-faith negotiations about licensing or acquiring his technology. A lot hinges on that statement that Delta "indicated they'd be willing to purchase on the same terms as a 3rd party vendor."

I mean, I agree with you, but I can't help pointing out that decimals exist and that most folks using Celsius at least break it into .5s. :D

The starting prices are very comparable. This is the first EV I've seen where the EV and ICE models cost essentially the same.

Especially as Ford still qualifies for the $7500 tax rebate (in the US) on EVs. That should make comparably trimmed EVs quite a bit cheaper.

There are a bunch of articles out there comparing the trims. There are differences. At the low end, the EVs can't carry quite as much (I think it's a 200lb difference vs ICE), but they have other capabilities the ICE models don't.

The net of it is... Ford is damned serious about this. Which is great.