Yeah I’ve got a P7 Pro and the battery is still fine. Adaptive charging enabled to help batter life.

Handed my P6 down to my daughter and it’s still fine for her too

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.

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

Yup. I use credit a lot but also pay off my cards every pay period. I get that it sucks for merchants, but you know what sucks worse: getting cheated like this on a debit/cash transaction, or worse having your debit card skimmed.

A relative of mine had the latter and the bank froze her account for weeks while investigating. If it was a credit card they’d just freeze the transaction and maybe send you a replacement card with different #

This does seem like an important step. Like yeah, absolutely report this to the vendor but a theft also occurred so at least get a file going. Providing a police file # might have been enough to get them to refund as well

Or if you’re in Canada: London Drugs actually has decent service in their computer dept

We should, but it’s also nice to hear about the people with money who aren’t complete assholes and actually do good things with their money.

It’s honestly weird to me to think how many don’t, as it has been shown that doing good deeds for others can result in a fairly strong dopamine reaction. Like why wouldn’t you want to get high by doing nice shit for others?

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

Regarding the deportations though, Canada really does have a problem with people abusing the immigration process. IMO fixing the corporate side of that would be a better start but we do also need to deal with people who fail to leave after their visas/appeals expire

When you think about it, a transition is kinda a patch to update object definitions

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

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

My kids will never understand why I’m excited about this, but I am