A programmer with an interest in transit, making music, and building things of all types.

I have dysgraphia which makes writing difficult for me. I hope you can figure out what I mean despite my issues.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • The other thing missing is you need to live somewhere now. You also have other considerations - if you are starting a family you typically will need to have a place for the family to live and that forces you to buy now. This is why most deflation arguments fail - people need to live, so they will buy food, and shelter (including clothing). People will replace their broken down car. People will buy toys if they can afford it.

    Even if you can buy the house for $200k next year, you don’t know that the price will go down - I’ve seen prices go down and then go back up more than once in my life. Maybe you get unlucky, but maybe you bought the bottom, you have no idea what inflation/deflation will do in 5 years and only educated guesses for next year.









  • I can pay my bill online. That means there is a connection between the systems. They need to add up all the water everyone in my neighborhood uses compared to how much they pumped into my neighborhood - if there is a difference there is a leak someplace. While each link only needs to be connected to the next, eventually there is a system that is connected to the internet, and so the whole cannot be air gaped. Not to mention the internet is a really easy place to connect everything to.

    Also, it is really nice if you work at the utility to be able to control the pumps and valved scattered all over the city without having to physically go to each one. Or better yet automatic control - which is only possible if all the systems are connected - see above about one of those systems leading to my bill and so must be connected.

    Air gap is useful for a few military systems. Everything else (including most military systems) are better off networked. However we do need to protect the network better.



  • They cannot legally do that in most areas. So long as you pay your actually bills they have to serve you. If you contest the bills and then never pay when the real bill is given they can disconnect you, but so long as you pay up they have to serve you. Where I live even if they disconnect you they have to reconnect you every winter.

    Note that if you contest bills that are correct they can sue you. It isn’t worth their time if it is just you (they would spend a million dollars in legal fees to get $1000), but if people start contesting legitimate bills they will start making examples of the loudest people. Pay your legitimate bills without complaint is the best advice here. Contest if they actually are wrong, this can happen, but it isn’t common.

    If you cannot pay your utility bills contact your utility - they are programs in place for the poor and they will guide you to them (they want their money, they don’t care where it comes from)


  • Irrelevant. If you have a business that owns property you should have two divisions for accounting reasons, one that runs the business and one that leases the property to the business. Both sides should be making money. This should just be an accounting trick but you need to watch it, if you can’t make money with either side alone that means you don’t have a good business.

    There are good reasons to own your own real estate, and good reasons to lease. However either way you need to make the accounting numbers work.