nerdawson

Why are landlords exploitative?

Nobody is being forced against their will to rent a property they don’t want.

Tenants already get plenty of protections that are only due to be strengthened.

Should choice really be limited to owning an expensive asset or accepting whatever the government is capable of providing (council houses aren’t looked upon fondly). What you refer to as exploitation I’d see as freedom of choice.

Cost of living increases primarily affect day-to-day spending while a PS5 is a luxury purchase.

If you can’t afford it at the new price, it probably wouldn’t have been a wise purchase at the original price.

Sony is a business. Their costs have gone up markedly and when the hardware is already subsidised, it’s unrealistic to not expect increased costs to be passed on.

Yes, it does.

I got all the information I need from the article in 60 seconds. The video is 12 minutes long.

That statement directly contradicts the article.

A number of accounts would have been accessed were it not for 2FA.

The best password won’t save you if a reset email is intercepted.

Something you have plus something you know should be what we cone to expect from any service that deals with anything of importance.

Mailgun was the service a number of my clients flocked to when Mandrill went paid-only.

Free options seem to be drying up.

You’re right, they mention Mandrill in the article.

I didn’t realise they’d discontinued it. I remember there being an uproar some years back when they ditched the free tier and made entry level pricing $20/mo.

It took two days for a company the size of DO to get an actionable response. What hope do the rest of us have?

Interesting write up and 2FA by default sounds like a sensible move.

If you’re the type of user to have a DO account, you should be perfectly capable of using 2FA.

> The house I bought in 2020 is worth $120k more today than what I paid for it.

You bought at just the right time. Would buying the same property at 95% LTV be a great decision today?

With potential for a major loss, where’s the asymmetric upside the OP asked about?

I bought 6 years ago and prices remained flat for the first 4 years. It wasn’t until the pandemic fuelled boom that I saw any meaningful growth.

Had I chosen to sell before 2020 it would have been a negative “investment” once costs had been factored in.

No, if the value doesn’t increase, you have to live there. You no longer have the option.

Find yourself at a peak and you could be stuck for years to come.

Again, this was all about asymmetric upside. Being unable to move even as life circumstances change seems like a pretty sharp downside.

> That’s huge upside.

That’s a big gamble. I thought this was about asymmetric upsides but here there’s a pretty huge downside.

Firstly, how do you realise the gain when you need somewhere to live? Primary residence != investment.

Secondly, 20x leverage shouldn’t be a selling point. A tiny dip in prices leaves you in negative equity and unable to move home. Less of an investment and more of a prison.

95% LTV mortgages tend to come with well above average rates to match the level of risk too. The gamble isn’t cheap.

Property can be a great investment but people are confusing buying a home with investing in property. They aren’t the same thing.

> I have friends whose parents left them their primary residence. Mine did not.

I fail to see how that factors in to buying a property. You have friends who benefited from an inheritance.

> Owning a house in San Francisco is like having a standing offer of a million dollars to move to the Midwest.

Owning a house in the Midwest is like having an $xyz offer to move to <area with even lower house prices>. The offer exists whether you take it or not.

You could sell up and live in a tent too.

I don’t believe most people are willing to uproot their lives simply because they can get cheaper housing elsewhere. I’m sure it factors in but it’s rarely the driving motivator.

I think some of the points you made were fair. As a homeowner for instance you do generally have access to cheaper capital.

> You can borrow against your equity.

What equity? You advocated for putting as little as 5% down. You’re already going to have a higher than average interest rate and with such a small deposit it’ll be easy to tip into negative equity.

You only see the benefit years down the line and that relies on house prices rising in the short term.

> Because you can buy with so little down, having a lot of equity means it's pretty easy to buy again,

I’m not really following this argument. You’re suggesting buying with a small downpayment. You don’t have a lot of equity.

Where’s the huge upside though? You need a roof over your head so if your property goes up 10%, so has every property you’re likely to want to move to when it comes time to sell.

You only really benefit if you’re investing outside of your primary residence.

What’s more, the risk is huge. In the AMD example, you could lose 100% of your investment. Get things wrong with a house and you’re going to be out way more than your initial investment.

I own a home because it’s the most comfortable option for me and my family. With that said, I view it as a utility and not an investment.

Are there any countries that have done that? It seems like you’ll have few case studies to choose from.

We know the harm this stuff causes and where viable alternatives exist, we should start to transition.

Asbestos was a wonder material too. We learn, we change.

Interesting, I'll have to look into that.

I think that's a fair point.

I don't cook anything that causes me a problem using stainless steel but I accept there may be cases where non-stick is essential.

My earlier point could be expanded to:

Make stainless steel your primary cookware and only fall back to a non-stick option when absolutely necessary. In doing so, you're risking far less exposure than someone who uses that stuff for everything they cook.

Why take the risk for a minor convenience?

Get stainless steel cookware and you’ll quickly learn how to avoid sticking by controlling temperature.

Yes, they should be rounded up and taught the right way to think. /s

> When is speech violence?

When you need to justify physical assault.

Speech is not violence. Silence is not violence. Using those terms is a convenient way to escalate a situation and rationalise an attack.

> You'd think they would have learned something from the current chaos, but the messaging coming out of Whitehall suggests that they're just waiting for the current storm to blow over while not looking over the horizon at how to stop the next time.

The civil service are utterly incapable of responding to any crisis. In fact, I’d argue that “Yes, Minister” was more documentary than satire.

Dominic Cummings’s breakdowns of COVID behind the scenes paint the picture of chaotic dysfunction back then. Hard to believe anything will have changed since.

You don’t think someone on a sanctions list attempting to transfer funds to an account holder is going to cause them a problem, regardless of whether it’s blocked?

I don't mind recommendations but the popup crosses a line. It's a first-party ad; no doubt Spotify get paid to promote certain music. If you're paying for an ad free experience, I can understand why it'd be frustrating.

> There is no mechanism in crypto to reject incoming funds

Couldn't the same be said of a regular bank account? This doesn't seem to be unique to crypto.

Targeting the most prominent wallets may garner a bit more attention but the end result seems the same. A large number of individuals can have tainted funds deposited in their accounts creating a logistical nightmare.

There will be members of staff who’s job depends on the value of the stock and countless more with total comp tied to it.

Wouldn’t the first count apply to anyone interested in buying shares in Twitter? Artificially inflating the mDAU figure makes the investment appear more attractive and valuable than it really is.

You can never really know who someone is. Only what they’ve chosen to share with you. With that in mind, this is just one more data point to form your own opinion around.

I’m usually wary when something is described as violent. Violent? It’s a letter with some caps.

Windows used to have an error message that read “This program has performed an illegal operation…”. Your suggestion would have fit in perfectly.

Having an emergency fund is basic financial planning that is too often neglected.

Even with a cushion to fall back on though, don’t discount how it’s going to feel seeing the balance fall month after month.

I expected a break when a company I worked for closed down. In fact, it was autumn and my original plan was to enjoy some time off and pick things up in the new year. Part of me regrets not doing that but I know at the time stress quickly set in.

I’m based in the UK but always worked for US companies.

Speaking to a British company recently and they were trying to hire for a senior web dev role at £40k (<$50,000)

I found that surprising to say the least given that even entry level dev roles in the US pay more than that.

Lesson of the story: embrace remote work.