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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 10th, 2024

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  • 44.000 €/year is certainly decent money but definitely not “buy a (new) BMW” money. Many years ago I got a little promotional booklet from the guys at Car Talk, a public radio show in the USA. In it their conclusion was the best value for your money is to buy a used car that’s about 3-years-old and sell it after 6 years, assuming average driving (I think around 10.000 miles/year, or around 16.000 kilometers/year). The car will lose its most value in those first 3 years and lose value more slowly after that. The flip side is the car will have increasing maintenance costs and likely lose warranty coverage in that time, and if you have to finance the car the interest rates likely will be higher than buying new.




  • Typically somewhere between 15-20%. I do a rough mental calculation figuring out 10% by moving the decimal, then either double that or figure out what half of that is and roughly add that amount to the 10% amount, then go with a nice roundish number (to the nearest quarter) in that range. Usually a little higher than my rough estimate for 15% if I’m on that low end just so my rough math doesn’t inadvertently shortchange the server.

    I make my calculation based on the total with tax included. I know some people go on the pretax amount.

    BONUS: If I’m doing a delivery service like DoorDash, I look up my distance to the restaurant and make sure the tip is always at least equal to the mileage. I used to drive for them and $1/mile was always my minimum. DoorDash at least would typically only kick in $2/delivery, unless there were bonus promos. Since the driver might not be at the restaurant I figure that’s probably enough to get them to the restaurant, then the tip will get them from there to me. Actually, at home my house is several miles from any restaurants, so I usually go $4 above that to make sure the driver doesn’t lose money getting back to civilization. If I’m at a hotel close to restaurants I won’t necessarily do that. If it’s something where I’d like to try to get the best service I’ll go higher; they typically offer the highest pay orders to their top rated drivers first.


  • As a solid outsider, this whole Rust thing seems like it keeps simmering under the surface in a way that could one day boil over and seriously damage the entire Linux project.

    I don’t have a machine capable of running Asahi today, but I also don’t feel like I need it now. Reading this and reading marcan’s resignation makes me feel like I should find some way to chip in to Asahi now so that whenever Apple eventually stops supporting my hardware, Asahi will hopefully still be there and ready to keep the hardware going. I figure I probably have about 6 years of Apple support, but I’m also suspecting Apple might support the ARM hardware longer than they ever did Intel or PowerPC, so I might have even more time.


  • Wasn’t sure if that’s why you’re having trouble finding something that gives rewards.

    I wouldn’t expect too many ACH rewards to exist, though. ACH is lower cost than credit card fees but my understanding is it usually still isn’t free. Credit card fees paid by the merchant mostly go to the card issuer (bank) who in turn offers a portion of that fee to the card holder as a reward to incentivize them to use the card more. I think the ACH fees mostly go to the clearing house, usually the Federal Reserve in the U.S., so they’re not turning around and handing any portion of those fees to consumers. The fee can also be paid by the sender or the recipient, so that further reduces the opportunity to supply a reward incentive.






  • Maybe try a different password manager and see if its interface is easier for her to use? There are lots of options, not all of them FOSS but this might be a time to accept a well-regarded commercial solution. Or, since she has the iPhone, try using their password solution. They integrate that pretty thoroughly in their apps and OS, and I think with this year’s OS releases across the board they have turned it into more of a fully-fledged password manager with its own apps. I know very little about it, but there might be a way to integrate it with Firefox on desktop now.


  • Once a long time ago I had some problems after upgrading a computer from Windows 7 to Windows 8. I got on a chat with someone from Microsoft support and eventually started a remote session with them. The first thing he did was go into the chat app from my side and give himself 5-star ratings across the board and pasted in some feedback about being diligent and responsive. That whole part took less than 30 seconds.

    At the end of the day he couldn’t resolve the issues and we ultimately downgraded back to Windows 7.



  • There’s a highway that formed a loop around the city where I grew up and we used it pretty regularly, but mostly only the western half (since we lived on the west side of town). My parents explained the concept to me that it had “belt” in its name because it circled around the city like a belt goes around a person. This idea intrigued me and I eventually asked my parents if someday we could drive all the way around it. My dad seemed kind of surprised but said we could sometime. I got excited and started planning for things we would need, like a tent and food, since it would obviously take a long time.

    The highway’s only about 25 miles/40 kilometers long.