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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)JJ
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  • Could keep all of them that don't have annual fees, and spread out your purchasing. I have three cards, one that's 2% off everything, and one that's more off food, and another that's more off online purchases. My aggregate credit limit is pretty high even if each one were a bit modest (they aren't as modest as they used to be though)

    You can always pay off your balance more often than monthly. When I first opened my first card, I paid it off every Friday, to make sure the small limits were available if I needed them (I had a credit limit of $1,000 back then). Now I pay them off every payday, still multiple times a month. If you need to carry a large balance across payment cycles, you'll get stuck on a high interest rate treadmill you don't want to be on anyway.

    The credit limits increase with time. The $1,000 card I started with now has a $10,000 limit. Mostly the limits came automatically, but I did request an increase to be able to pay for a home repair in a single transaction. Now between the three cards I have a lot of limit.

    A fair number of places where you might want to spend a lot of money in a single transaction won't accept credit cards anyway over a threshold. Last time I bought a car after establishing the price I asked about just charging it to a credit card. They were willing to do it only for $2,000, so I had to cut a check for most of the car anyway.

  • Not only interest, but the transaction fees. The financial institutions make big money on the transaction fees, and generally the rewards are less than the transaction fees, so they can't even possibly lose money on the deal.

  • Interestingly, it may backfire on them. For example they cite Real Id or passport.

    So passport only people who travel internationally bother to get. The rural MAGAs are less likely to get this.

    For Real Id, it's more likely since that can be done with your license, however most people I know who do not fly have not bothered, because it's a hassle, they have to find DMV acceptable materials for a feature they don't even need (if you aren't flying, you still won't need real id for much of anything).

  • Whether it's hardwired or not, the answer is yes, but the mounting is generally protected by some awkwardness (a 'security' bit or a really unforgiving pinhole) which is enough to deter a casual theft, and for those that would actually make an effort, the risk and effort doesn't pay off because those things are relatively cheap nowadays (negligible resale value), record their own theft if it happens (uploading it on the way out, higher risk of being identified).

  • If it's hardwired in, it's not significantly harder to steal than otherwise. Clipping a couple of wires connected to a doorbell transformer is significantly easier than dealing with whatever mechanism is used to release the doorbell from it's attachment.

    Also, you would be stealing a camera that will film it's own theft and upload the footage on it's way out.

    Additionally, these devices aren't exactly expensive anymore, not a whole lot of value in stealing them. Even if stolen, not a huge setback to buy another one.

  • It's not that they would be dumbfounded like a caveman, it's that there would instantly be a lot of weird questions.

    Why do you bother to have electricity coming out of your couch? Why is a "doorbell" on battery, those are just buttons wired to a chime? Why did you call it a doorbell if it's an intercom with camera? What do you mean you answer the doorbell using your phone? Why do you call it a phone when it's a computer that you barely use to talk on it?

    Yes you could explain things and they would catch on, but the sentence would be odd, and not likely a trajectory for terminology and applications of technology they would have naturally expected.

    All sorts of times I reflect on how much I'd have to explain odd sentences to even how things were 30 years ago. Like using your phone to turn off the lights.

  • For the scope of WebEx and Zoom, it's.. fine... mostly. I mean I hate that I can't really full screen a remote screen share, so it could be better, but broadly speaking, video, audio, and screen sharing is fine. Not coincidentally, this is pretty much the only standalone stuff Teams bothered to uniquely implement, most everything else is built upon sharepoint...

    It starts getting annoying for chat platform. You want to scroll back, it's going to be painfully slow. You participate in cross-company conversations, oh boy you get to deal with the worst implementation of instancing to keep your activity segregated I have seen. Broadly speaking it just scales poorly at managing the sorts of conversations you have at a larger company. If your conversations are largely "forget it after a few hours", you may be fine.

    Then you get into what these platforms have been doing for ages, Lotus Notes and Sharepoint suggesting companies build workflows on top of their platform. Now the real pain and suffering begins.

  • His first term was pretty milquetoast during his term, at least in the ways that these stakeholders cared about. Yeah, he mucked with some trade relationships but largely backed down except for China, and China is a thorn in their side too. The economy basically looked similar to most presidential terms for the last 30 years (except for George W Bush, who had very subpar economic results). Yeah he did some horrible stuff and some incompetent stuff, but economically, his term was just fine (except for 2020, which derailed everyone).

    The 2020 election, January 6th, and Trump's continuing behavior in the wake of that, and the PJ2025 associates that swarmed around him should have been the sign that he was too dangerous to risk. However they could have still thought that Trump's behavior was more of a show for riling up a base, and his second term would still give them a chance to have him shuffle off to a golf course while the big boys got what they wanted like usual.

    This term, there just are no winners, at least domestically, and lots of losers.

  • People only like authoritarian when they get to be the authority. So these folks that are getting financially screwed also have no reason to believe they would get power in exchange.

    It's basically seeming like a bum deal all around.

  • Especially now, selling a Model 3 to get something cheaper is going to be in "car is probably falling apart" territory. Those things are relatively cheap on the used car market now, less than you'd expect a random 2020 sedan to cost.

  • There's a used car lot across the street from my neighborhood with like 3 or 4 Model 3s under $16k.

    The Model 3 has been around long enough and priced low enough for it to be in the realm of "boring option of a car", no more a status symbol than a Toyota Camry.

  • Only for those willing to risk violating tax law, and by extension mostly people who feel like they can afford enough accountant and lawyer time to evade consequences if they come.

    IRS also publicly said they would only be doing easy enforcement, i.e. only doing audits on lower income people who can't drag it out and make it expensive.

    So basically giving a green light for the rich and only the rich to keep the money they owe..

  • His wife even left him because he invested nearly all of the money from the PayPal IPO payout.

    No, he was the one who filed for divorce, to propose to a woman 13 years younger than his first wife (he at 37 wanted to trade his 36 year old wife for a 23 year old wife). From papers served to his then-current wife to having a 23 year old fiancee was about 6 weeks.

    Generally speaking, Musk's business success is marked by being in the right place and the right time with someone else making the actual substantive calls about exactly how the business is run. When he gets opinionated and have businesses yield to his specific desires, it tends to produce bad results.

  • The statement becomes hard to understand if you just censored Vivian's old name.

    If you replaced it with "Vivian", and "she", then you change it so much that it becomes confusing what point Musk was trying to drive at, and/or diminish exactly how vile his statement was.

  • Yeah, I couldn't imagine ever acting like that toward my child the way he acts toward her. Just flat out declaring your child dead to everyone and refusing to acknowledge who they are now, just because of what they chose to do with their own life... It's pretty heart breaking.

    He doesn't even have an excuse of losing his path to a genetic legacy, he's got a dozen living children who may still go on to have children. He's neglected all of them until Luigi killed a CEO and suddenly he's carrying one around like an ornament all the time, but still they got his genes, for better or worse.

    Maybe 1970s Elon could have used a few more hugs, but this century it's just too late.