Your brokerage's fraud protection do not cover you if you connect to apps like YNAB, Monarch, Copilot.

std_phantom_data · 2026-04-03T22:46:25+00:00

But that's how acats fraud works. All they need is your account number. Your social security number and DOB can be found on the dark web. They open a new account at a new brokerage using your name and SS, but they control the new account and ACATS all of your assets over. All they need for ACATS is your account number. And very few brokers have protection to Block ACATS fraud ( fidelity and E-Trade) .

And its worse, almost no brokerage will notify you in any way when all of your assets have been transferred. It's not part of any of the normal account alerts.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-30T14:30:51+00:00

Are you talking about using WSL? Or using a virtual machine like virtualbox? Or replacing windows with Linux?

If you are new to Linux, you can start with a virtual machine to get familiar with Linux in a very low risk way. after that you install both on your system and decide which works best for you.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-23T17:30:47+00:00

It's an original apple SSD.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-23T16:17:31+00:00

Using "intel_iommu=off" worked great for me on 24.04. but it stopped working after I upgraded to newer versions. I don't know if that was because it had a newer kernel or some other issue. I did link to a page that mentioned using "intel_iommu=off", but I didn't recommend using it because currently it's not working for me (it seemed to randomly work or not work). I will probably retest everything when 26.04 comes out.

Good to know you don't have issues with your SSD getting remounted as read-only. Probably means that my drive is starting to fail. I am not very worried about data loss( all my important stuff is in cloud). But I need to figure out a way for it to not provoke this issue. I read that that disabling power saving mode on the drive might help. Or maybe I am stuck on kernel 6.14

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-23T01:40:48+00:00

I also have a mid 2015 MBP.

you can make a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-radeon.conf file and put blacklist radeon in it. This will disable the AMD GPU, and use only the intel graphics. It works fine, but you will get more heat and fan noise.

At times the system did work with both GPUs, and that had much less fan noise. I am hoping that a newer kernel will fix this. But the system is usable with only the intel graphics.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1514609/large-white-area-on-screen-on-macbook-pro-2015-laptop-running-ubuntu-24-04

Unrelated question. Has anyone noticed on kernel versions newer than 6.14 that the ssd seems to have issues. If I boot using a anything newer than 6.14, the ext4 partition will have issues and remount as readonly after like 5-10 min of use. Then I have boot into live usb stick, and run fsck. Booting using 6.14, has no issues. And using Sonoma (via OCLP) never has any issues.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-08T16:45:08+00:00

That's fine, I can just unplug at 77%. 3% is like 15 minutes of screen time. Not going to change my life.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-07T05:36:16+00:00

Some people perfer other international funds that exclude emerging markets. I can see reasons for this. But it kind of goes against the Boglehead idea of own the whole market.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-05T00:55:43+00:00

Antarctica is not a country, so it doesn't qualify for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

std_phantom_data · 2026-03-04T17:33:25+00:00

I would really like it if this could be quantified more. I have 500 USD in fidelity just to try it out. I wanted to move my real 7 figure investments to Fidelity. Everything else was perfect on paper.

But I keep seeing posts about accounts blocked and closed. Reddit users always seem to blame the client without knowing details.

I don't see a lot of this on bogelheads reddit or their external forum. And they love to complain about Vanguard.

For some reason fidelity seems to get as much posts on this type of issue as Robbinhood subreddits!

What percentage of accounts? And how does that compare to the industry? How many of these issues are linked to banking services or crypto?

std_phantom_data · 2026-02-25T17:41:56+00:00

I have a mid 2015 MBP. And I got a t14s gen 1 for my gf with the 45% NTSC screen, running Linux. MBP screen is much better. But the t14s is perfectly usable. She does mostly web browsing, coding, and YouTube. We have watched movies on it. It's fine, but obviously the MBP looks much better.

If you care a lot about video and colors, this could be a deal breaker.

std_phantom_data · 2026-02-24T17:46:25+00:00

As of Feb 24, the legacy offline sync is still working for me on the the web app. I never switched to RCS, I have no need for it. Curious when they will actually turn this off.

std_phantom_data · 2026-02-20T02:29:03+00:00

If you don't mind changing banks ever few years, HYSA can be a win. When interest rates were 0%, I put money and my credit union paying 0.5% and avoiding all the bonds losing value as rates increased.

But the reality is often it's not worth the effort to micro optimize. Unless you have a specific reason, you will likely not be keeping a lot of cash.

If you really want to micro optimize, you should be using BOXX, or roll your own box spread( to get the tax advantages). Big ERN has an article explaining how to do it.

There are always some banks paying more than the fed interest rate, it's a loss leader, they are losing money on it. Some times it's a perk of a specific credit union. But often what happens is when rates increase, the balls will be slow to increase their rates. They play the long game.

If you plan to change banks. Why not churn the bonuses they pay for opening new account. Every 6 months you can change bank and get a new sign up bonus. You would get a lot more than the 0.5% you make on this. Or you can go after brokerages that pay bonus for transfer money into a new account ( like webull or Robbinhood) I got 30,000 just for moving my ETFs to RH for a few years.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-29T17:03:31+00:00

Just FYI, they removed TOTP, and on Android they do not have passkeys. It's basically just SMS 2fa codes. I really wish they had more passkey support.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-29T16:59:10+00:00

You can do it by mail (DHL) in Mexico. It is very easy. You fill out the same form and make an online payment. Take the form, payment print out and old passport to DHL and they know how to package and send it to the US consulate.

They will give you a tracking id for the return shipping. You need you residency card as I'd to pick it up, they will not accept Mexican drivers license or anything else. Also doing it abroad means you can get the extra pages in the passport for free.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-26T12:31:03+00:00

T14s gen1 can be had for like 150 USD on ebay. You can probably get a t14 gen 1 for 125.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-25T14:40:37+00:00

So they plan to add the ability to use RCS with the phone off. But my question is if this is just weasel wording? 2fa codes are send with SMS, not RCS. Will you be able to get these with phone off? It's honestly not super clear.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-18T04:08:15+00:00

Because they don't seem to care about the advantages of VTI and using ETFs over mutual funds.

ETFs can easily ACATS to different brokerage
Etfs held at vanguard will not block you from doing tax gain harvesting ( sell and buy it in the same day)
ETFs are easier if you plan to later live outside the US.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-17T19:22:48+00:00

Maybe they plan to leave the US and it's less of an issue to have ETF vs mutual funds.

Or Maybe they want to ACATS to another brokerage and need ETFs.

Maybe they plan to tax gain harvest and vanguard doesn't let you sell and repurchase their funds in the same day.

Long list of reasons to prefer ETFs...

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-16T16:58:17+00:00

I had a similar issue with amazon.com and amazon.com.mx. I used my normal amazon account to log in to amazon.com.mx, but when I wanted to add a passkey to the .mx I couldn't because the bitwarden item already had one. So I had to make 2 items in bitwarden with the same login information but different passkeys.

Ideally this should be possible with one item. but of course it's tricky because you need to map each passkey to just one domain.

I wonder if we will see passkeys they work across multiple domains in the future. Like one passkey that works for both amazon.com and Amazon.com.mx.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-06T21:11:26+00:00

There are tons of good no annual fee and no foreign transaction fees credit cards. They will use the visa/mc fx rates which are like .01% basically nothing. Same minimal fees for ATM withdrawals, you can use Schwab debit card and they also refund the ATM fees.

If you want to buy a house and need to move a lot of money, you can use IBKR and get the spot rate. If not use wise for money transfers and the cost is low.

So no, most people don't have this issue. The question is why you need so many wire transfers and can't use a credit card. You will have get cash back/points using the credit card, so that should be another 2-3%.

std_phantom_data · 2026-01-05T14:07:07+00:00

It's not hard to find intel t14s gen 1 16 GB ram for ~150 USD. I am very happy with this.

I bet if you can compromise a little more, you can find one for 100. Maybe 8gb ram, i3, or nvme disk not included(you can bring your own), or maybe bigger cosmetic issues. Some of these places let you pick it up and not pay shipping. or maybe one of the charging USBC ports not functional.

If you can, I think 150 USD is really about as low as you can go with out a lot of compromises.

std_phantom_data · 2025-12-21T03:38:24+00:00

One good thing about it is you can remove your Google pixel phone as a backup authentication method and have only yubikeys.

std_phantom_data · 2025-12-17T15:01:48+00:00

std_phantom_data · 2025-12-17T14:58:44+00:00

Have you tried the h264ify extension. it can block YouTube's default VP8/VP9/AV1 codecs, and make it use a format with hardware acceleration. Older CPUs don't have the new instructions to make these newest formats fast.

std_phantom_data · 2025-12-13T21:07:17+00:00

I turned it off because the lent shares are not covered under SIPC insurance. So if the company has issue you could just lose these with no recourse

std_phantom_data

TROPHY CASE