737maxtw's comments

737maxtw | 4 years ago | on: Ketchum, Idaho, Has Plenty of Available Jobs, but Workers Can’t Afford Housing

While you are right in that we have not yet seen the foreclosure/eviction impact, I think not all of it is 'head in the sand'.

At least in the US, there are more systems in place to help people who are behind. Lenders are more apt to do a modification then risk another market collapse.

And, I would be willing to bet our current administration will be happy to do what they can. A failure to contain the situation will not be good for them -or- their donors.

One thing we are already seeing; the CFPB is putting in safeguards in that will likely delay a number of foreclosures even further [0]. Another change is FHFA loans being eligible for interest rate reductions that wouldn't be possible under the LTV.

How this 'smoothing' plays out remains to be seen.

[0] https://www.housingwire.com/articles/cfpbs-roadmap-for-the-f...

737maxtw | 4 years ago | on: Ohio GOP ends attempt to ban municipal broadband after protest from residents

It's more complicated than that.

- Many poles are owned by power companies, or telephone companies. You can absolutely get a JPA (joint pole attach) agreement with most of these companies in theory.

- In practice, your first problem is that most poles are horribly maintained. And if you are a new attachee, you will often find yourself having to share in the cost to make an already non-compliant pole compliant and with enough room for you to attach.

- If you are dealing with, say, Verizon poles and are trying to attach for a competing cell service, your make ready costs are oddly inflated, and they may go as far as expect you to split the cost 50/50 for a pole that is already out of spec.

- In many municipalities, the kickbacks of 'franchise agreements' cause a lot of inertia. This is mostly the case with CATV, the industry of 'how can we be minmax our monopoly'. Essentially, the cable provider pays the city X dollars per subscriber, gives them a couple public access channels, and in return gets exclusivity.

I used to do HFC design for Xfinity Fraudband, as well as fiber design/permitting for other CATV providers and cell carriers. Its a corrupt and abusive industry, the entire contractor/subcontractor system is made to shield the companies both from overall liability as well as prevent unionization.

Also, any of the SV folks speaking up about social injustice would have a heart attack in a week or two. Being in that climate for so long made me numb to a lot of injustice, and it took years to recover.

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Making Playstation 1 Modchips (2018)

At least in the USA, most drive failures of early models (the ones that the swap trick worked on) were due to poor quality plastic carriages. Flipping the system upside down would help... for a time.

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December

My understanding of at least the Pfizer vaccine was that it primarily lowered the risk of developing COVID from a COV-19 infection. Also if I read it properly that means you could/would wond up in the asymptomatic spreader category.

IF all of that is true (and if i misunderstood, please correct me!) It would make the most sense to give it to higher risk individuals first.

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Airbnb S-1

> While AirBnB has received a lot negative press for facilitating the letting of would-be residential property by large-scale professional landlords, the marketing from AirBnB's side has always favoured the "local guide, personal human experience" angle, an angle CouchSurfing has always tried to cover non-commercially.

Call me cynical, but "Advertise your product for a use that your core moneymaking market doesn't do" would be a good dark pattern to avoid scrutiny/regulation.

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Never Pay for Online Dating (2010)

Dating apps can't solve everything.

The upshot of this however is that, if you are being honest in your profile, these things are things that you want to do anyway.

If you still take the effort to talk to the person before going on a booked trip, it should be an experience you will enjoy.

Of course, things can go wrong. But part of any relationship is taking that risk.

I don't think this is a silver bullet, no, but I think it is a pretty good framework for people who are in a good place to find in a healthy relationship. I.e. comfortable and honest with themselves and looking for a partner to enrich their lives rather than just seeking 'a relationship' (i.e. trying to fill some other void in themselves).

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Mind-Melting Decision Proves a Dialer Can Never Be Too Old to Be an ATDS

Yeah but the slope gets slippery fast...

Because in the past, some courts have ruled that ADTS systems are in violation even if their qualifying functions are unused.

Iow even id a dependent manually entered numbers, it would still be illegal to make the call.

And yes, this has made TCPA rulings a subject worthy of its own blog, the situation is such a mess.

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Uber Engineer Quits over Pressure to Support Proposition 22

> Maybe both systems suck and fail when they become too successful / dominating?

They do, however this behavior has gone underchecked for so long; what we see today is often companies violating the spirit, but not the letter of the laws that stopped or were a result of practices of companies like Pullman, USS, etc

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Sierra was captured, then killed, by an accounting fraud

I think with Sierra you are right but it was a slower build up imo.

I remember KQ6 being a big bit of pomp and circumstance with its production values etc, more promotion than you would see for a computer game at the time.

And then KQ7 happened. A victim of a bit of overhypeing and a LOT of WinG pain. Could never get it running on a pc our family owned, even proper pentiums.

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: When is no-code useful?

Most low code tools I've seen companies drop 6-7 figures on would be worlds better if they had Excel's level of version control.

I've seen low code vendors claim you can do reviews in git... but its an experience not unlike reviewing changes to a generated hibernate or entity framework xml. Its not really reviewable

737maxtw | 5 years ago | on: Abusing Teams client protocol to bypass Teams security policies

You've never used the Cisco suite of alternatives, have you?

Teams is the Discord of integrated business chat from a usability perspective, at least if you want an integrated experience. Cisco's system last I was aware was a hodgepodge of applications, i.e. we had to have two separate Cisco chat applications running at all times.

Other players, its either one or both of: - a solution less kludgy than Cisco but still a hodgepodge of applications - a system that can't scale on one or more important axes - too specialized for a general use case

Remember, on one hand, Telcom uses erlang a lot. On the other hand THEY USE ERLANG A LOT. The sorts of stuff you see in phone systems is brilliant but archaic. And I bring that up because the voice integration in teams is really freaking nice and honestly the users are happier because its less integration hassle when moving numbers around, and that's a win for both IT and users.

Would I prefer discord had a competitive solution or Teams had a competitive UI? Yes. Or that Avaya would come blow everyone away with something amazing.

But part of me is also asking if teams has gotten so crappy lately because this year has likely resulted in them having to scramble on bugs and scaling issues in a way they didn't expect.

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