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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Yeah, I’m generally ok if somebody is charging a reasonable rent which covers their reasonable mortgage, so long as they’re still taking care of all the other stuff (repairs, city taxes, etc).

    What burns me is people who either a) knowingly buy in a hot, excessively priced market with full intent to charge excessive rents while providing absolutely minimal service or support

    b) bought 10+ years ago but have pumped up rents to the same as those who bought at mortgages 2-3x the rate, citing “market rates” and often doing sketchy things to raise rents including renovictions etc, while being shitty - often absentee - slumlords

    Maybe I’m showing my age, but there did used to be quite a good number of mom & pop type landlords who weren’t shit, and while the commercial ones cost a bit more there was a decent mix.

    Now, the commercial ones are actually mostly a safer bet in small cities. They’ll raise rent every year but consistently, and the decent ones are pretty prompt about repairs and not fucking people over deposits etc. There are bad ones but it’s pretty easy to tell which are which. The problem is of course that availability at the good ones is lower and they do cost more.

    Good private landlords are increasingly hard to come by, as the best ones generally end up quitting after either getting too old or after a bad tenant experience, while the slumlords have leveraged their existing properties to finance buying more and more, leading to a market full of increasingly overpriced mould-monsters.


  • phx@lemmy.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzBurning Up
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    2 months ago

    Outdoor temperature in °C, unless you’re talking about an outdoor pool then it’s often enough °F :-)

    I think part of the reasons it’s so mixed might just be due to how many Amero-centric devices and parts are common between the two countries.

    Y’all can take your shitty Phillips screws though. Roberts is by far superior ;-)






  • Yeah, I’d tend to agree on that. Even beyond the security issues, nuclear has the potential to be a safe, but it also has the potential to be disastrous if mis-managed.

    We see plenty of issues like this already, including what occurred here: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident

    Now imagine a plant in Texas, where power companies response to winter outages has basically been “sucks to be you, winterizing is too costly”.

    Or maybe we’d like to go with a long-time trusted company, who totally wouldn’t throw away safety and their reputation for a few extra bucks. Boeing comes to mind.

    I like nuclear as a power source, but the absolutely needs to be immutable rules in place to ensure it is properly managed and that anyone attempting to cut corners to save costs gets slapped down immediately. Corporate culture in North America seems to indicate otherwise.







  • This is actually one thing I’ve been thinking AI and deepfake tech can potentially do good. Let’s say you have an idea and can code… You have an idea for music but no instrumental talent, so the best you can do is hum it. You can’t afford voice actors or other professionals.

    Or maybe you’re artist with an idea who can storyboard but not code. Maybe you can make 2d designs but not 3D models, or aren’t great at animate.

    But… there is software that can take what you say and change it to a different voice. It can animate a model to match the words. Similarly, software that could generate instrumental sounds from humming is possible. An AI can generate interactive dialog. It could also provide assistance in the generation of music, debugging of code, and eventually more advanced 3D modeling.

    A lot of game design software is much more a GUI to an environment/model and triggers etc than stuff like writing hardcore backend C++ code etc. AI could take that even further.

    Then add VR. Drop somebody into a blank-slate where they can create a whole world with a word, a gesture, and a great idea.

    One day, that might be a reality.