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.

Oh for sure. I’m not knocking those that can do it, just that my regular soldering skills are shit enough that I’d probably be hesitant to reball something more complicated even with the right gear :-)

Ah. Other than fixing the old Xbox360 RROD , I’ve never needed to do any BGA work, just circuit soldering

What’s the IR bottom heater for?

Insurance and ownership papers here generally require a primary owner here, at least on paper

Pretty much, unless he was planning to donate one of his existing illegitimate children to her.

“Hey, I’ve got a bunch extra of these and nobody’s answered my sale ad on X, you should take one”

Strange, the words i think of are more like: “narcissistic” “obnoxious” & “asshole” with a side of “moron” thrown in

“She makes some good points. I might vote for her if she wasn’t a Democrat” - Republicans

Or a voting scam

“Hmm, it says here that Sir Barkinwoof IV is a registered Republican. If there is some discrepancy out must be the fault of the former owner”

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 ;-)

Ok, so when the police use a young-appearing officer to nail somebody who is looking to hook up with what is listed as a 14yo… that’s just going to get dropped? Because it seems that’s a tactic that’s been used often enough and the actual age of the officer matters less than the intent of the perp to engage in sex with a minor.

The argument “I just thought we were role-playing” isn’t significantly different from “I totally know this ‘14yo giving a BJ to old man.mp4’ was AI generated and that’s just my fetish, not real kids”

“sink Twitter and we’ll give you some preferential deals”

Yeah, a lot of the stuff that the “Left” fails on seems to be because it hits “well it’s not exactly perfect and good for absolutely anybody do we’re not gonna do it”

Whereas the “Right” is basically ‘well it came from my guy so… seems good’

And if that video built to feature a child performing fellario, it would still be child pornography

When the “AI artwork” is made for the specific purpose of representing underage children and is indistinguishable from the real thing, that argument is going to get flattened pretty quickly.

Pretty easy to present a couple pages to a jury of kids pictures (not nude) and say “tell us which ones were AI”.

Does M365 not run on Linux?

Home Assistant, school gestapo edition?

In some cases a hobby becoming more “mainstream” can also find it being suddenly overwhelmed by those that make it less fun - or less affordable - for others. Sometimes more people can make it more affordable later on (mass production) but supply and demand is also a thing in the mid-term.

If a kinda niche hobby becomes more popular temporarily, there’s also the chance that waiting it out will score you some good barely-used gear for cheap as those that buy and try decide it’s not for them.

I try to find uses for ours where we can. I have a BBQ with a dead sparker so I usually use a half-tube which I light on fire and drop by the burner before turning on the gas

My doctor is a pretty cool guy and some of the banter during my visits has been fun. If there weren’t potential legal implications (for him) I’d totally be down with grabbing a drink after hours and shooting the shit.

Maybe I could invite the dentist that did my root canal too, he was going into the same industry as me before switching to dentistry and was also pretty savvy.