Will they train their shit to stop give spoilers as the top search result for everything related to any kind of media (games, tv shows, movies, books, etc.)?
Or will this be the current Google search shit but on steroids?
Alphabet has transitioned to a "mature" company business model: Milk your existing customers for all they're worth, while avoiding pissing them off enough all at once to convince them to jump ship.
They already announced dividends and stock buyback to shore up the stock price:
https://www.morningstar.com/ma...
I would avoid choosing Google as a vendor from this point forward. They've shown an inability to support any new markets they've entered, and they're not putting in the effort to hold on to the markets that they previously dominated (see the enshittification of Google Search.)
Not surprised, but disappointed certainly. I guess all good things do come to an end.
That there was a trove of e-mails that are now publicly available from executives at Google as a result of discovery? I mean, that's some pretty interesting stuff, if it does give a backstory for how Google search is pretty much useless now.
If only I could exclude search results from the last 5 years, it would be so much more useful...
Actually audit you and require proof? Both California and New York will do this.
https://www.latimes.com/busine...
"Answer: California, like other higher-tax states, has residency auditors whose specialty is asserting that affluent people who have left the state are still legal residents and thus are subject to its taxes. The audits can be stunningly thorough, looking at everything from the doctors you visit to where your artwork and other valuable possessions are stored.
If audited, you would need to prove that you have a fixed, permanent residence elsewhere and that it’s truly your home. And yes, it’s up to the taxpayer to prove this — there’s no presumption of innocence in tax audits, says tax attorney Mark Klein, chairman of Hodgson Russ LLP in New York City. (New York is another state with notoriously hard-nosed residency auditors.)"
https://www.sambrotman.com/per...
"If you have decided to relocate to another state to escape California’s high tax rate, then you need to do so with caution. Or, maybe you divide your time between California and another state(s).
The state is very aggressive about collecting state income tax they believe you owe, and trust me, they will track you down.
Many of our clients have had their residency challenged when it comes to filing their taxes. The Franchise Tax Board (FTB) will scrutinize your bank records, records of purchases and other transactions to make their case that you, indeed, are a resident of California. "
https://www.hodgsonruss.com/wh...
"HOW LIKELY IS IT THAT I WILL BE AUDITED?
Very likely. If you are a high-income taxpayer claiming a move into or out of New York, it’s a near certainty you will be audited. The Tax Department is sophisticated and aggressive. Consider some of the numbers:
The tax department has ten district offices located across the State (and in Chicago).
There are more than 300 auditors who focus on these
Over the past five years, the Tax Department has conducted over 15,000 of these
These audits have generated over $1 billion in revenue over this time
In short, there are a billion reasons why the New York Tax Department watches these issues carefully. If you claim a move from New York, expect to get audited."
Well, they used to, anyways.
How hard would it be to plant a few ringers in the employee directory for the next time someone makes a dump of the employee directory? Ringers who have for example a side gig wearing a badge and a gun...
Map publishers use this trick to catch copyright infringement. A
Also, when the heater core needs replacement.
Just give up and bypass it because you'll need to completely disassemble the dash. No reason to do it unless there are other components that need repair/replacement.
I've had mixed experiences with the "Amazon Warehouse" (presumably used and returned items), as well as 3rd party reseller items.
Most of the time, they're fine.
Occasionally, I encounter evidence of outright fraud, probably facilitated by complete lack of inspection. This unfortunately is much more prevalent with 3rd parties - I get the feeling they're buying shit from Amazon on pallets and then just shipping them right back into the Amazon product stream. Things like perishable items where the expiration date has been removed...
I no longer buy high value items (or items that might affect health and safety) that are not new off of Amazon.
And... April Fools! lol.
https://simpleflying.com/boein...
"The first aircraft launched was the 737-100. The launch customer was Germany's Lufthansa â" the first non-US based airlines to launch a Boeing aircraft. It first flew in February 1968."
Boeing has been milking this design for years with a progressively nasty set of hacks in order to fit more fuel efficient engines:
* The flat bottomed nacelle (to acommodate a larger engine in a plane designed for a time when passengers used stairs to descend to the tarmac instead of jetways)
* MCAS (a fly-by-wire hack to make the plane behave "the same" when mounting larger engines further forward to get them to fit, which unfortunately changed maneuvering characteristics. They did this in order to avoid having pilots retrain.)
https://www.latimes.com/local/...
Unfortunately it will still take them years to get a new design out the door and certified. There were articles talking about how Boeing had something in the wings as far back as 2020:
https://simpleflying.com/boein...
If they actually had something to ship, they would have already started selling pre-orders. Pre-announcing this in the middle of trying to clear out their 737 backlog sounds like corporate messaging to shareholders.
"San Francisco police make arrest in Tesla fires, not Waymo arson"
"The San Francisco police department has arrested a man in connection with the burning of two Teslas, but he is not a suspect in the torching of a Waymo robotaxi in Chinatown last month as the department initially said.
The Standard asked the department Monday morning whether an arrest had been made in the Feb. 10 Waymo incident in Chinatown. A public information officer responded with information about the arrest of a man on Feb. 27 near Union Square.
After the story was published, the department said it had confused the two vehicle arson cases, and that no arrest has been made in the Waymo case... "
"...Editor's note: This story has been revised to include updated information from the San Francisco Police Department about the arrest of a vehicle arson suspect clarifying that the man has not been linked to the Waymo burning."
To be more specific:
If there is a limited supply of high end homes, and the market is signalling high demand (because those homes are getting bid up for whatever reason), then there is an incentive for builders (not large builders working on tract housing, but spec builders doing individual projects) to buy up cheap land in those areas (which inevitably already have a house on them - likely a starter home), tear it down, and then convert it into higher end housing.
So, a starter home which might be 400k in a different jurisdiction is now worth 1.4M because of the land value, and after $300k worth of teardown and new construction, will be worth 2M, still enough for a spec builder to make this business model pay off.
I saw this happen often during the low interest rate period in Los Angeles, when low mortgage rates were spurring bidding wars and all-cash purchases. I have no idea if this is still a thing, but this might be one mechanism by which starter homes are being removed from the market and converted to homes which are "more valuable" - especially from a property tax perspective.
Or to put it another way - we might say that we value more affordable starter homes, but that's not how the current incentives are aligned in many places.
On the slightly less (or more, depending on which side of the fence you're on) pessimistic POV, I've also seen single neighborhoods (and former industrial/commercial sites) bought up and razed to produce higher density housing (1-4 condos on 1-2 lots, or apartment/condo complexes on blocks near a Metro station) - still on the high end, but at least there's theoretically more housing supply being produced at the end of the process. Some even have mixed use built in, which is encouraging.
Again, I don't know with the current interest rates if those projects are still being started. It could be that the buildings I'm currently seeing were all started before the current wave of rate hikes and/or covid-related issues with rent stabilization and eviction, and that investors have soured on building more high density housing with the possibility of dealing with those risks in the future.
In the meantime, collapsing financing from Chinese developers means we have several perfectly good (if unfinished) residential towers in LA!
https://www.cbsnews.com/losang...
Time to hold a tax lien sale?
Oof. The "homestead exemption" in California worth about $77 off your property tax bill each year (1.1% * the exempted value of $7000). I guess it is worth doing if you plan on staying in your place for a long time... you can save $770 after 10 years?
"I'd be very interested in downsizing but even if I buy a smaller house, my property tax is likely to go up so I'm not going anywhere."
So three assumptions I could infer from that under the old Prop 60/90 rules:
1. Not old enough to bring your current property tax with you. (https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/prop60-90_55over.htm)
2. Doesn't matter if you bring your current property tax with you, a smaller place would cost more than your current place, thereby negating some (all?) of the benefits of retaining your current tax assessment.
3. You want to buy in an area where this rule does not apply (in a county in California that does not have this transfer approved, or outside of California.)
Apparently Prop 19 changed some of the rules...
Correct. Institutional buyers use leverage. If rates are high, they can't use the cheap money conveyor belt to leverage up.
I suspect that criminals (like institutional buyers) buy where the return is higher. Instead of spreading their money out across the US, they're going to purchase in areas of high demand to make sure their "investment" doesn't go down. While I cannot give specific examples in the US real estate market, a similar market across the border in Vancouver gives one indication:
https://news.gov.bc.ca/release...
"More than $7 billion in dirty money was laundered in B.C. in 2018"
It could mean that B.C. is that more corrupt... or that Janet Yellen is dramatically underestimating how much dirty money is being moved into real estate in the US.
Either way, I think the impact on real estate prices is not negligible, but that's just my opinion.
"When anyone says `theoretically,' they really mean `not really.'" -- David Parnas
