More like a plague, on humanity

Not AliExpress, but fucking Samsung. They may appliances with all the cool smart features and they’re everywhere, but holy shit are they terrible for reliability (both per my own experience and according to repair people I’ve talked with).

Is it really that it worked for 30 years or just that the couple times it failed that actually got somebody to repair it?

I had my washer/dryer for 8+ years now. Actually got the extended warranty for sure reason and it covered having a repair when it started leaking, but given the cost of repairs hasn’t just elect to buy a new unit.

Hopefully he also makes more friends and helps gain momentum to get the rest of the goons out in other jurisdictions

They said much the same about Putin and - regardless him being in better initial shape than Trump - he’s still around.

Being old and unfit means less event you’ve got money for top-notch healthcare and people willing to ignore (or take advantage of) your physical and mental decline

Yeah that would be nice. I think the former are kind of a dying breed though (and those that still have them are holding on as tight as they can).

Honestly I tend to refer to the latter as “slumlords” as that tends to better reflect the actual fucks they give about the tenants in their properties. Even the corpos are often better, as at least they tend to be better informed/regulated about their legal obligations.

There’s cosmetic repairs and then there’s “making the place fit for Guinean habitation” repairs.

Now granted I’m a bit older and not renting now (and not a landlord, though I did share in my first place when I was a younger), but in that time a lot of better available places were people who’d bought a home, had kids, then had said kids grow up and move out. Given the free space but still wanting to keep with the family home they’d invested half their lives in, they’d rent out a basement suite or whatever (generally for a reasonable rate, at least compared to other places or the shit-show we see today). Some didn’t need the money, others found that rising property values also came with a rise in taxes and repair costs. Most were still not assholes though so if the stove or heating broke down they’d actually get a repair guy in fairly quickly or replace said appliance (often with a used but functional one).

Those are what you’d call the “mom and pop” landlords and they were a lot more prevalent. By the same token though, they weren’t making a lot - hell some were less interested in rents than not having an empty-feeling house - and all it took was one bad tenant to make it not worthwhile. It doesn’t take much either. Water damage and/or mould abatement, a kitchen fire, pet/drugs/smoking damage etc can all add up pretty quickly especially if they’re hiring somebody professional to do repair work which was certainly more than just cosmetic.

I don’t see a lot of those types now - I’d certainly not want to be one - but most I know cite that it would take them years to recoup the cost of damage from that one bad case and they just weren’t willing to deal with that plus the life-disruption anymore. So now all there pretty much is would be corporate landlords or the type that own several “rental properties” and consider painting the walls (and hinges, and light-switches, and plugs) or throwing down the cheapest carpet possible the extent of their actual “investment” in the property.

They didn’t know that it would probably become an airbnb, but the likelihood of such a place becoming one or being bought by somebody else wanting to charge higher rents isn’t exactly low either.

The whole “market rates” thing is used by corporate landlords to increase prices, and controlling available properties - including by leaving vacancies - is one way that do that. By the same token, charging below “market rates” could also help of enough did it, especially if the places are decent and money re-invested in proper upkeep. Many/most though are not even investing in proper maintenance/repairs while charging over an above the cost of entire mortgages, which IMO is just greedy bullshit

Because the last tenant put holes in the walls, their dog’s piss caused the floor to lift, and the shower they plugged then overflowed fucked up the bathroom?

So there are repairs to do in order to make the place livable and then time to find somebody else who won’t just wreck the place again?

Yeah there are lots of shit landlords but one of the continuing factors is the remaining good ones with a basement suite etc bailed after terrible tenants.

A vacancy tax is a good idea but there needs to be caveats for timelines especially if stuff like reasonable maintenance/repairs is taken into consideration.

Ironically my friends who bitched about “shit landlords” also happened to be the drinkin’ smokin’ big-dog-ownin’ types who were the worst type of tenants and ruined shit for everyone else

If you’re not sarcastic then I’m generally sorry to hear you’re stuck in that shitty situation.

You’re also welcome at my BBQ if you’re ever up here in Canada

I realize this is sarcasm but honestly: all of you/us are greater than all of them, if enough of us can actually unite on what we want and how to get it.

Unfortunately it’s also why there’s been a huge effort on dividing people by race/gender/religion/etc that might otherwise have been united in socio-economic struggles.

It also means that the people who need to give something to push for change are (deliberately) kept in situations where they have the least to do.

• Less time to organise because of working multiple jobs with little to no free time.
• Less money or resources to fight in courts.
• Less knowledge due to underfunded education.
• Less physical ability due to lack of healthcare or nutritional diet
• Less access to childcare or ability to afford such
• Etc

Which is why supporting community/network is important.

Having a politician that isn’t an evil fuck is good, but that politician isn’t going to watch your kids while you’re at a protest or in the hospital. They’re not going to help you get to work when your car breaks down, or help you fix it.

They might stand beside you at a protest or union meeting, but one or a handful of politicians says less than community of hundreds or thousands.

We need to rebuild communities and support networks. Yes we need the help of politicians - or at least less actively fighting against us - but we also need to rally with each other. The attacks on this guy reflect much of the same as those on our communities.

If somebody is a “gay Muslim trans-woman Iranian refugee amputee” who is willing to stand by me in times of need, I’m willing to stand by them and they’re welcome at my BBQ.

I run backups to a USB drive which is way to grab in the event of an emergency. Just make sure you test them every more and again, and possibly only connect it when needed if you’re at all worried about malware (a cryptolocker will happily take out any attached storage if your machine is infected).

A lot of that stack looks similar to mine, though I’m running bigger hardware for various reasons. You might want to go with something with more cores than an i5 depending on how much you find yourself utilizing.

Have you considered Nextcloud for documents and syncing functionality? I went through a few ways of running it before ended up with the Snap package which has been fairly solid for over a year now (Docker was good for setup, but upgrading was problematic if not kept up with religiously)

Vaultwarden is Excellent.

Calibre-Web is good, especially if paired with the application to “extract” books, and an app like Moon+ on mobiles

Audiobookshelf is pretty solid. Pairs well with Libation.

HASS I initially ran on my server in a container but moved to dedicated hardware so updating and reboots didn’t break automatons. Got a HASS Yellow for the PoE and Zigbee.

If you’re looking for audio/video library management, JellyFin is pretty easy to get running and has apps for phones plus many TVs. Finamp is a good mobile app for the music part

I’ve been migrating to Soverin and like it thus far. I’ve only done email and my calendaring though.

https://soverin.com/

It’s not free but it’s also not overly costly.

You can also use a router that can run wireguard/openvpn and have that run the tunnel back to home for you. I’ve got a portable GL-Inet router with OpenWRT that I use for this when I’m on the road

Matters little if that “very small group” has power and is getting away with it

Yeahhhhh. It used to be when we called the place McDick’s it was commentary on the food/service quality not the menu items

First time maybe, second term there is absolutely no excuse

A lot depends on the implementation rather than the idea itself. I’ve read plenty of stories of people stuck on hold with 9-1-1 - including deaths - as well as cases where they’ve been hung up on by shitty operators.

An AI system might be able to do some basic triage to prioritize calls for the human operators and actually result in faster access/response and saved lives. It might also be able to do things like transcribing information such as addresses or location for responders. If the AI is planned to be a replacement for humans rather than an augmentation though, lives will likely be lost

How about we just tell him it’s happened, hasten him to a bunker, and then let him take to some guy via radio that lets him think he’s one of the few survivors.

Hell, that’d be a good use for AI. Let it listen to his rambling and simulate a human response so nobody else needs to bother