editengine

Also, it snowed. 6 inches of fluff. Other than a freakish November dusting this is the first bit of it this year.

My mom is a technically literate 70 year old but she has more issues with computers than any person I know. She buys a new one every 2-3 years because they "slow down" too much. The latest is a 2 day ordeal to update windows, that has resulted in her reinstalling windows after 4 hours on the phone with Microsoft 2nd level support. Part of her issue is a weird reliance in 3rd party anti-virus and backup programs that she doesn't need but feels are critical. I long ago swore off helping her because it means hours of mindless clicking around problems that would be solved with a clean reformat and google drive.

Yeah, and that makes sense a lot of the time. But when you have both a massive housing bubble and a rising rate environment it is a recipe for disaster. The 30 year FRM costs buyers more but its a hedge against this sort of thing. Unless the Canadian government steps in and forces investors to share the burden this could make the US foreclosure crisis look like a walk in the park.

werk stuff After years of warnings Canada is in the midst of a housing crash. https://www.macleans.ca/economy/realestateeconomy/this-is-how-canadas-housing-correction-begins/ [Canada now owes] $2.16 trillion in mortgage, credit card and other consumer debt—an 80 per cent jump from 2008, and an amount that now exceeds the value of the entire Canadian economy. Even Americans didn’t go that overboard during their housing bubble. Federally regulated lenders must ... determine [borrower's] ability to repay. The new mortgage rules have reduced the amount Canadians can afford to borrow by around 20 per cent, sending home sales tumbling across much of the country. This is already translating into thousands of dollars in extra debt payments each year for households. In Toronto and Vancouver, the average monthly mortgage payment increased by $102 and $113 respectively from 2017 to 2018 .... On an annual basis, that’s an additional $2,500. [One borrower saw the payment on her] line of credit climb by $200 a month. It was enough to decimate her finances. [Manny borrowers are] rejected for consolidation loans by their banks, even though they’d been loyal customers for 30 years. Banks and other lenders are also going after customers more aggressively when they miss payments. This will be a powerful symbol for why the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is important. In the U.S. the dominance of the fixed rate loan means that lenders must hedge against the interest rate increases that are triggering massive defaults among Canadian household today.

Apple is a company like any other. As soon as the economics favor selling your data they will find a way to do so. For now they find more value in a brand identity that features privacy, but with the recent hits to their profitability they may find mining such data to be too lucrative to ignore. But using a sep app for family messages also appeals to me for practical reasons. We lock down the Kid's phone pretty hard, and a family-only app that I can whitelist to message her any time could be practical in other ways.

I am 2 eps into Killing Zoe (which is NOT a serialized version of the excellent 1994 film) and loving it so far. Spies, Assassins, Europe, Sandra Oh WHAT ISN'T TO LOVE?? https://variety.com/2018/tv/reviews/killing-eve-review-sandra-oh-bbc-america-phoebe-waller-bridge-1202745151/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xZUr0BEfE

I am getting the Girl and the Kid on to signal to replace imessage for our family chats. In part this is security related, I am certain that Apple would have no issue with selling off content of text messages and I am not interested in offering them something of mine to sell. But also, I can set the Kid's phone to notify her of Signal messages while still blocking other content and texts. Does anybody else use signal? Opinions?

Oh my legs

On season 2 now, it reminds me a lot of Christopher Guest's psuedo documentaries. Really funny.

Back yesterday for a shit back workout, after 3 weeks I know not to push myself too hard mentally or physically. That goes double after 2 weeks in Florida abusing my body with booze and fatty foods. Legs today, feeling better but I still cut it short after squats and leg presses. I am not drinking through April 1 to try and cut my belly down a bit. That sucks though

I think the 3rd season of this show just dropped. I tried to watch but realized I was hopelessly lost in the plot. Also, it seems sillier than I remember it.

Good to hear it, very much the same here. If the US government shutdown doesn't end this week we can expect to start seeing some serious disruption. Mortgages won't close, infrastructure projects won't start, trade will slow. Too much of this and we won't be waiting until 2020 for a recession as we have kind of been expecting, it will happen this summer.

The Martian - Andy Weir After Artemis I realized that Weir had written this, which was made into a movie I have yet to see. Much better than Artemis, this is the Apollo 13-style story about a Martian expedition that suffers an accident and the year one of the crew is forced to endure on Mars while his plight becomes a world-wide reality show produced by NASA is really engaging. Like Artemis, the engineering-talk gets a bit in the weeds, I skimmed some parts of that without missing out on the story.