spoontoeat's comments

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: California’s housing crisis: how a bureaucrat pushed to build

I don't think you understand property ownership in CA. This is most definitely not what happens.

Also to add to this discussion is the various props and "tax treaties" between counties that allow old homeowners the ability to transfer tax basis from their old property to the new one they're buying. But this is a once or twice in a lifetime deal.

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: What to do when you don’t trust your data anymore

Agreed, this reads like a pretty serious indictment of Pruitt. It sounds like he had no spine when they went back with questions about the data he provided. There didn't seem to be pushback from him about why his data was correct, simply "it's good that you're retracting". Reading between the lines it seems like the author didn't get this answer easily.

Also curious, how did no one question the data earlier when some guy, albeit respected, sends you a data file and you write several papers on the matter? No one knew what sheet #2 was and we're writing scientific papers based on this excel file? I think we need to revisit correct data hygiene and reasonable suspicion.

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: Building personal search infrastructure for your knowledge and code

Thanks for making your notes public. It inspired some further thinking for my org-mode setup.

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: Uber's chief of scooters, bikes to depart

Not sure why you were downvoted, the geofencing was necessary because of the beach boardwalks which lead to at least one death: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/24/man-dies-san-diego-boa...

Also - last week Lime announced they were pulling out of SD: https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/jan/09/no-more-lime-scooters-...

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: We shouldn’t blame ourselves for the Linux desktop’s microscopic market share

Examples? For the curious.

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: A copy of your property deed costs $3 – this SoCal firm will do it for $89

I fell for this with "First Documents" for a total of almost $93 a year or so ago. Also received a solicitation from "Local Records Office" as stated in this article. When the second of the two arrived I knew I had been had.

I reported it to my Credit Card company as fraud given the official looking nature of everything, and they promptly refunded the purchase.

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

> Heads up then because Intuit is behind Free Fillable Forms.

Thank you for pointing this out, but yes I am aware. It is the only method to electronically file federal taxes for free. If FFF gets dropped due to Intuit's posturing then I will have to resort to paper filing.

spoontoeat | 6 years ago | on: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

Hats off to you, sir. Please don't stop the work you do. Thank you!

After college I quickly weaned myself off TurboTax in favor of filing taxes for free with CalFile & Free Fillable Forms with an occasional paper mailing of PDFs that I download and fill out. Much like my opposition to using proprietary word processors, my disdain of paid tax return services that own your data is deep and profound.

While a bit painful and limited in feature set, the mere existence of a free filing option is crucial to keeping Intuit from forcing me to pay to file my returns. I find Intuit to be a rather evil company. Filing a return is mandated by law with steep penalties. They intentionally keep the process complicated and convoluted. It's a plundering of everyone's time for unproductive work and overspending on something that should be quick and easy.