• 12 Posts
  • 471 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • When I think of “stuffing” I think of people creating wholly illegitimate ballots, which does not seem to be what happened here.

    That’s exactly what ballot stuffing is and why what these folks are charged with is not ballot stuffing:

    https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_stuffing

    Ballot stuffing or ballot box stuffing is a form of electoral fraud in which a greater number of ballots are cast than the number of people who legitimately voted. The term refers generally to the act of casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter when only one ballot per voter is permitted.[1]

    If the absentee ballots they handled were either fabricated or if the voters they were from already voted, then yes it would be “ballot stuffing” but I didn’t see that in the article. Just “mishandling”.

    Still best that absentee ballots are handled properly as to show the voter hasn’t voted in person.







  • Seeing the same thing here. Apparently I’m scum because I’m renting my previous home for -10%/+10% of: mortgage on the lower price I paid 10 years ago, plus property taxes, plus home owners insurance, plus repairs and maintenance.

    Apparently I would no longer be scum if I stopped renting it and refused to renew my tenants lease, sold the house and made a huge profit now, and the next person will have to pay brand new closing costs plus a mortgage on double the home value and double the APR.

    I’m guessing most folks down-voting the sane responses saying rentals aren’t needed have never tried selling a house (and gone 6+ months paying the mortgage for a house you no longer live in) or don’t know there’s a “break even” calculation that tells you how many years you have to live in the same house before you’re better off than having just rented (realtor fees to sell the house, closing costs, time to sell the home where you’ll still be paying your mortgage + taxes + insurance, time to close, getting credit approval for a mortgage, etc).

    Hell, I did the calculation when I had to move to a new state and I was able to rent a house for less than it would have cost me to pay for closing costs and realtor fees when I would have sold the house 3 years later. Not to mention the time to come up with 20% down payment.

    But fuck me for not taking the easy way out, kicking out my tenants and cashing in on the current huge property values to sell my old home.


  • Yes, let’s pretend that housing prices haven’t gone up (lumber shortage, pandemic, what are those things?!)

    And let’s live in a world where interest rates haven’t changed in the same time period (2.75% APR should be about the same as a 7% APR mortgage!).

    Lastly, let’s ignore closing costs and the huge hunk of money realtors, banks, title companies, surveyors, and so on make every time a home is sold.

    The main issue folks have with those generic “fuck all landlords!” posts is that while yes, corporate landlords that monopolize housing and keep raising rents in lockstep and invent fees suck ass, there’s also folks who found it easier to rent right away vs keeping an empty house on the market. Those landlords are paying a 10 year old mortgage with 10 year old lower interest rates, but 2024 property taxes and home insurance.

    10 year old mortgage for a home at 2014 prices + current property taxes and insurance + 10% profit margin (the horror) << Brand new mortgage on the same home at 2024 prices and 2024 APR + insurance and property taxes.

    Oh and I forgot about mortgage insurance. The person renting their home likely has gotten their mortgage below the cutoff for requiring mortgage insurance.

    There are many situations where both the person renting their home and the renter come out way ahead.

    The only ones who win by forcing everyone to sell their homes and no longer rent are the banks (more closing costs, prey on folks who aren’t ready to buy a home with high APRs and mortgage insurance, get to close out low APR loans for new higher APR loans), real estate agents and everyone that gets a cut Everytime a home is bought and sold.

    That said there is something that can be done for the big investment groups that are buying up homes to jack up prices and corner local rental markets.


  • Buying house for say 100k at 3% APR, renting it because you were laid off and cant afford moving expenses, rent in a different city, plus paying a mortgage on an empty house for 6 months to a year while it sells. Then years later you still keep it because, while you could sell it and cash in, with the low APR you got on it you can afford to rent it for less than the corporate scum suckers who try to monopolize housing = Parasite

    Kicking out your renters and selling said house you bought at 100k for 200k to corporate scum suckers who will turn around and sell it at an even higher price or rent it at really high rates OR someone else who will end up paying way more than the rent I was asking for the place because interest rates are about double and the house has also doubled in price = internet hero

    No room for nuance, got it.



  • Are we talking about eliminating renting altogether?

    Cause that is what it sounds like in this thread. Folks wanting to completely eliminate renting and drive folks to buy a house Everytime they move.

    This ignores things like closing costs, realtor fees, really high property taxes, expensive home repairs, and temporary work assignments.

    Maybe you really need a job but don’t want to straight up buy a house and instead rent something until you can find a job back in your local area or you decide it’s time to take the plunge and move for good.

    Sure there are many a-hole companies and landlords that try to squeeze their tenants for every dime and treat their tenants like crap (lord knows I’ve run into those), but on the other hand there are folks who need a place to live but haven’t decided where they want to settle down and people who can rent their old property at a decent date based on the low interest they themselves were able to lock down.

    Some are folks (like me) who moved but couldn’t afford to keep their house empty for an extended period of time to put it on sale while they’re paying rent or a mortgage in another state. So renting, even if you’re barely breaking even, makes sense.

    Better to rent your old house for barely above the costs for the property taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage interest, and maintenance costs than to take a 6-12 month hit where you have to pay the above while not living in the house because your new job is in a different state. And that is if you sell in 12 months and don’t take a big hit on the sale.

    If you’re buying/selling a house every 3 years then you’re really going to get screwed. I personally went from living in a home I owned (and paying a mortgage on) to renting for 3 years just to understand where I wanted to live in a new state, which areas had the best employers, and wait out on a low APR and decent buyers market.

    If I had to buy a house instead of having the option to rent, then I would have ended up buying a house near that employer which would have been over an hour commute from the better job offers I got after I moved here.



  • Do a search for you server OS + STIG

    Then, for each service you’re hosting on that server, do a search for:

    Service/Program name + STIG/Benchmark

    There’s tons of work already done by the vendors in conjunction with the DoD (and CIS) to create lists of potential vulnerable settings that can be corrected before deploying the server.

    Along with this, you can usually find scripts and/or Ansible playbooks that will do most of the hardening for you. Though it’s a good Idea to understand what you do and do not need done.






  • Another reason for going with a swap file vs partition (if you need either) are nvme and SSD drives.

    A partition that’s only a few GB and written to constantly will wear out a solid state drive quickly.

    Using a swap file in a larger partition that has other data allows the drive to even out the wear across more storage cells.