@suchmoon seems to know a bit about this (disclaimer: anyone here can be anything or nothing so take none of this as formal advice, more enhanced bullshit) but if the 80k is based on *taxable* income then a really big question pops up:

How much should you "earn" (ha ha) each year and still keep the full 80k CG tax break?

Looks like you can do the full 401k contribution, that's 19.5k in the box (must be from slave wages).
Spouse don't work? IRA for them, 6k there (must be from slave wages)
Sounds like the personal deduction as well (so another 25k)
And if you have health care paid in part by the employer the employee part is covered. (Let's assume a 1.5k a month health plan with 1.2 paid by employer and 300 by you)

So hm. 50.5k earnings+80k CG=130.5k total with 105k in your pocket, 25.5k in your retirement plan and a fully legal and legit $0.00 paid in taxes*.

Hm...... Guess it's time to compute "fuck you" day.

* Note you would still have to pay FICA and Medicare taxes on that income, but I don't know if those taxes would be taken out of earnings before or after for the purposes of computing the full 80k CG tax break. Oddly enough you do not seem to have to pay FICA or Medicare taxes on CG.

Correct. So your 80k 0% CG tax applies to 80k if you don't work a day all year, but for every day you work that 0% is replaced by the income tax rate. So the best option is to be a complete louse, live off your LTCG and pay zero taxes on the first 80k. Which by the way is equal to a 100k "salary" because of all the taxes that cum out.

After that it's taxed at 15% up to a couple of hundred G (half million or so). That may seem a lot, but remember there is no Social Security "tax" nor is there any Medicare or employment taxes. So it's lower than you think. This is why it's good to be rich.

However you can't contribute to an IRA or 401k with CG money, you need to have income. Which leads to my real fun question:

If on Jan 1 you redirect 100% of your salary to a 401k, then quit once you hit $19500 (the 401k limits), do you still get the whole 80k CG at 0% rate because the 401k was a "top line" (before AGI) deduction or is it based on total income?

Is health insurance paid for by CG profits deductible? Since Health insurance is another top line deduction can you work an extra few weeks for that money and still get the 80k 0% CG tax rate?

Inquiring minds want to know. :-)

Not if your income (the stuff you get for being a wage slave) exceeds 80k. That is like the crappiest phase out ever. Unless I am wrong about that.

These dumb-ass 5% bitcoin sales are annoying: It's not worth cashing in coin to buy back lower as the ~21% Capital gains tax will wipe out any profit.

Oi.

Battery life on Lithium is based more on miles driven, number of charge cycles, and charging speed. Teslas using 6.6kw chargers will probably last a lot longer than ones that use superchargers on a regular basis. Leaf owners figured this out when they realized that the high power CHAMEDO charges were reducing pack life while the stock Leafs with 2.2kw chargers lasted damn near forever.


Yep, the 12v battery is used as a "bootstrap" starter to wake the computer up and do the checks before closing the HV packs. One problem is that since it's a pretty small draw then a traditional starter battery tends to die early. The proper answer is to use a NiCD battery as the starter battery as they last damn near forever, but they have toxic waste problems these days. Drat.


One of the big positives about electrics is that they just don't have mechanical problems. Motors are remarkably gentle on the drivetrain, no transmissions to deal with, and on my Prius the brake pads literally lasted well over 100,000 miles due to most braking being regen. Aside from the battery, they last pretty much forever.

I expect battery rebuild services to take off. If they can do it for 2k that's about the cost of a transmission rebuild which you have to do on a normal car every 100-150k miles anyway.

This is the big problem with electric cars: Once the powertrain warranty is out, the value of the car is pretty much zero. Gas engines can go 200k miles and can be fixed without a full replacement.

I remember in 2005 the roads were full of Gen 1 Priuses. Then they started to just disappear, and now I doubt anyone has seem one in years. Why? Battery pack blowing out and while you can swap it for a couple of thousand, most people just junked em.

It's a problem.

I'd say this was a joke, but after Phillip's report and the mass porting of numbers from that phone provider I'm not so sure. Stay vigilant....

Very interesting article Torque. It's one I will probably read twice because there is so much stuff in there.

I've been a bit of an audio junkie for years now, and still use a LaserDisc player with AC3 output to a 5.1 discrete decoder. The nice thing about Laserdisc for older movies is that the sound guys usually spent a lot of time getting it right for the 5.1 THX quality releases, much better than the junk on the standard VHS tracks or even most DVDs. So something like Titanic or Jurassic Park really explodes into life in my living room in a way that just doesn't happen on the Dolby Digital stereo matrix tracks.

And AC3 at its' core is a 5.1 mix encoded into a 320 (35mm)/384kbps (AC3-RF) analog bitstream. Which isn't much bandwidth to the modern home. Even a Blu-Ray quality audio is 600kbps so if streaming services are doing it slower then they are just plain ass lazy.

I think the other items identified, especially the annoying tendency of "star" actors to ignore a click beat and improvise their fucking lines has a lot more to do with them being unintelligible. The movies "Cats" and "Les Miserables" are both excellent examples of key characters ignoring the click beat so they can add their own special "spin" to their lines (which make the damn things mumble speak that they try to fix in post)

Fun stuff!

Well, if they port your phone they have your SMS number and can respond to challenge codes. However that doesn't give them access to your phone's memory and junk, and that's where the TOTP seed is kept. It's possible to hack your phone (here install this app my good fellow) but that's a bit more complex and more in your control.

The other thing they would need is the password, unless coinbase allows account access with only an SMS (which makes it a one factor auth system).

Well, it was acceptable under NIST 800-61 up until about 5 years ago. The complete uselessness of the major phone companies led to porting attacks being accomplished with relative ease (it's not free, so people typically target with it). You're basically trusting your security to AT&T, and more specifically the $5 buck an hour ex Pakistani bricklayer they have doing the porting of numbers.

Software based TOTP is much better, but I still would worry that the phone is hacked and the seed is gotten. A hardware based OTP would be optimal but is probably overkill unless you leave a lot on your exchange of choice (I'd recommend not doing this as all of the exchange hacks end with one solution: You lose your shit).

*nod* Thanks for the attack vector info. Nasty. SMS is no longer a secure MFA solution, even NIST has dropped it for AAC/AAL2 auth.

Anyone who is watching, be warned. Use a secure 2nd form of auth.

Wicked. Was it a MFA attack or an attack on the portable wallet?

I've been thinking about this. Back in the old days I did buy a 928 Porsche for 2btc (~5k) and to be honest I don't regret the choice: The car has brought me a lot of pleasure, it looks good, and those years were better with the car than without. Granted I could buy one now for .1btc but those 5 years of enjoyment are gone no matter what.

Truth be told, the movie "In Time" and thinking like this is making me realize that the true value *is* time. Every day you work in a job that sucks is another day shaved off your life. Items of shoddy quality that require your time to buy/use improperly/junk when they break really suck time. Lousy relationships suck time. Your time. The time that is draining away from you every day.

Like... tears in rain.

So if this guy spent some coins to make his life better and more worth living and leaving him with more quality to his time, then more power to him.

Hm.

Aw fuck. Another waste of film?

I never saw Matrix 2 or 3 and in a way I am glad. The Matrix was true lightning in a bottle and I feel if I watch the sequels I will somehow overwrite my memories.

Finally: A Train!

Man that 50k sized rock is just sitting on Bitcoin for some reason. Weird.

Just dig a moat along the property line and fill it with gasoline. This is Texas we're talking about.

I forgot I wrote this, but it does show just how far we have come. It also takes the issue of inflation of shit fiat our of the picture: It doesn't matter what the USD/BTC rate is, the only thing that matters is the BTC/Lambo rate.

Since Aug 2020 it's been doing.... well.

What is this "Full bag" that you speak of?

It's great in the way a 25% off sale is great.

Think about it: If you told one of us at $800 a coin that bitcoin would be crashing down to 53k I don't think they would have been too depressed.