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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Seeing the same thing here. Apparently I’m scum because I’m renting my previous home for -10%/+10% of: mortgage on the lower price I paid 10 years ago, plus property taxes, plus home owners insurance, plus repairs and maintenance.

    Apparently I would no longer be scum if I stopped renting it and refused to renew my tenants lease, sold the house and made a huge profit now, and the next person will have to pay brand new closing costs plus a mortgage on double the home value and double the APR.

    I’m guessing most folks down-voting the sane responses saying rentals aren’t needed have never tried selling a house (and gone 6+ months paying the mortgage for a house you no longer live in) or don’t know there’s a “break even” calculation that tells you how many years you have to live in the same house before you’re better off than having just rented (realtor fees to sell the house, closing costs, time to sell the home where you’ll still be paying your mortgage + taxes + insurance, time to close, getting credit approval for a mortgage, etc).

    Hell, I did the calculation when I had to move to a new state and I was able to rent a house for less than it would have cost me to pay for closing costs and realtor fees when I would have sold the house 3 years later. Not to mention the time to come up with 20% down payment.

    But fuck me for not taking the easy way out, kicking out my tenants and cashing in on the current huge property values to sell my old home.


  • Yes, let’s pretend that housing prices haven’t gone up (lumber shortage, pandemic, what are those things?!)

    And let’s live in a world where interest rates haven’t changed in the same time period (2.75% APR should be about the same as a 7% APR mortgage!).

    Lastly, let’s ignore closing costs and the huge hunk of money realtors, banks, title companies, surveyors, and so on make every time a home is sold.

    The main issue folks have with those generic “fuck all landlords!” posts is that while yes, corporate landlords that monopolize housing and keep raising rents in lockstep and invent fees suck ass, there’s also folks who found it easier to rent right away vs keeping an empty house on the market. Those landlords are paying a 10 year old mortgage with 10 year old lower interest rates, but 2024 property taxes and home insurance.

    10 year old mortgage for a home at 2014 prices + current property taxes and insurance + 10% profit margin (the horror) << Brand new mortgage on the same home at 2024 prices and 2024 APR + insurance and property taxes.

    Oh and I forgot about mortgage insurance. The person renting their home likely has gotten their mortgage below the cutoff for requiring mortgage insurance.

    There are many situations where both the person renting their home and the renter come out way ahead.

    The only ones who win by forcing everyone to sell their homes and no longer rent are the banks (more closing costs, prey on folks who aren’t ready to buy a home with high APRs and mortgage insurance, get to close out low APR loans for new higher APR loans), real estate agents and everyone that gets a cut Everytime a home is bought and sold.

    That said there is something that can be done for the big investment groups that are buying up homes to jack up prices and corner local rental markets.


  • Buying house for say 100k at 3% APR, renting it because you were laid off and cant afford moving expenses, rent in a different city, plus paying a mortgage on an empty house for 6 months to a year while it sells. Then years later you still keep it because, while you could sell it and cash in, with the low APR you got on it you can afford to rent it for less than the corporate scum suckers who try to monopolize housing = Parasite

    Kicking out your renters and selling said house you bought at 100k for 200k to corporate scum suckers who will turn around and sell it at an even higher price or rent it at really high rates OR someone else who will end up paying way more than the rent I was asking for the place because interest rates are about double and the house has also doubled in price = internet hero

    No room for nuance, got it.



  • Are we talking about eliminating renting altogether?

    Cause that is what it sounds like in this thread. Folks wanting to completely eliminate renting and drive folks to buy a house Everytime they move.

    This ignores things like closing costs, realtor fees, really high property taxes, expensive home repairs, and temporary work assignments.

    Maybe you really need a job but don’t want to straight up buy a house and instead rent something until you can find a job back in your local area or you decide it’s time to take the plunge and move for good.

    Sure there are many a-hole companies and landlords that try to squeeze their tenants for every dime and treat their tenants like crap (lord knows I’ve run into those), but on the other hand there are folks who need a place to live but haven’t decided where they want to settle down and people who can rent their old property at a decent date based on the low interest they themselves were able to lock down.

    Some are folks (like me) who moved but couldn’t afford to keep their house empty for an extended period of time to put it on sale while they’re paying rent or a mortgage in another state. So renting, even if you’re barely breaking even, makes sense.

    Better to rent your old house for barely above the costs for the property taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage interest, and maintenance costs than to take a 6-12 month hit where you have to pay the above while not living in the house because your new job is in a different state. And that is if you sell in 12 months and don’t take a big hit on the sale.

    If you’re buying/selling a house every 3 years then you’re really going to get screwed. I personally went from living in a home I owned (and paying a mortgage on) to renting for 3 years just to understand where I wanted to live in a new state, which areas had the best employers, and wait out on a low APR and decent buyers market.

    If I had to buy a house instead of having the option to rent, then I would have ended up buying a house near that employer which would have been over an hour commute from the better job offers I got after I moved here.


  • Do a search for you server OS + STIG

    Then, for each service you’re hosting on that server, do a search for:

    Service/Program name + STIG/Benchmark

    There’s tons of work already done by the vendors in conjunction with the DoD (and CIS) to create lists of potential vulnerable settings that can be corrected before deploying the server.

    Along with this, you can usually find scripts and/or Ansible playbooks that will do most of the hardening for you. Though it’s a good Idea to understand what you do and do not need done.


  • Another reason for going with a swap file vs partition (if you need either) are nvme and SSD drives.

    A partition that’s only a few GB and written to constantly will wear out a solid state drive quickly.

    Using a swap file in a larger partition that has other data allows the drive to even out the wear across more storage cells.









  • I would check two things:

    1. Is it a QLED tv? Those are very efficient with the backlight power. QLED only have a blue led backlight and the “quantum dots” in the panel between the backlight and the LCD panel absorb the blue light and emit the red green and blue needed to create the full color spectrum.

    2. How many nits of brightness does it produce? I’d check for the specific model on RTINGS. It won’t help OP much if the TV is efficient, but so dim that it’s unusable in their case.

    Reflectivity also helps with brightness when viewed in a bright room. The less reflective (matte) the less brightness the TV needs to overcome distracting light sources reflecting on the screen.

    Edit: Had to look it up to be sure, normal LED panels use filters that filter red, green, and blue light from a white light source. This means roughly 1/3 of the light from the backlight is filtered away, hence the energy inefficiency vs QLED which uses the energy from the blue light to create the colors.

    Intestingly, some DLP projectors use alternating red, green, and blue light sources which strobe on the DLP chip which takes turns modulating the intensity of each color. Less efficient (and bright) DLPs use a single white light source and a color wheel (rotating color filter).


  • So the ones I’ve seen were a combination of social skills/ emotional intelligence tests and the same type of questions you’d find in an IQ test.

    So having a degree shows you have the dedication to see your education through. Having a high GPA can indicate you delivered a consistent and honest effort. But the extra test (especially if it’s timed) can show how good you are at quick thinking. One test I took for a job, you would have about 20 seconds to answer each question if you wanted to get through them all.

    It can also gauge if you’re lazy (you guess your way through most questions just to get through them) or dedicated (take your time to answer each question correctly even if that means you won’t get through all 60 or so questions before the 20 minutes are up).

    The social skills/emotional intelligence tests (if that’s the right name for them) I’ve seen were basically matching faces to emotions and trying to gauge reactions to events.

    So for the “IQ” tests, they want people who are not only educated but swift thinkers (more PC way to say it).

    For the social/emotion tests, I’ve seen where otherwise smart and educated candidates can be grating to other employees and even drive other talent away.

    I ran into that situation. I’ve even personally blacklisted jobs that might be in the same “team” with a specific person at a very big contractor because even if they’re brilliant, they’re frustrating to work with and have no gauge on how to treat fellow professionals.

    I use “team” in quotes because despite there being enough work for 3-4 full time developers, I’ve only ever seen that one person on that team. After having worked with them, I have a really good idea why.