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US Air Force awards $13 billion Doomsday plane contract to Sierra Nevada
  • Aerodynamics and metal fatigue hasn't changed much of any at all in a century.

    Once you have a good airframe design, it just becomes a matter of upgrading electronics, engines, regular repairs, and servicing parts that are known to be prone to metal fatigue.

    Hence why the B-52 which was first flown in 1952 will likely be in service until 2060!

  • Get rid of landlords...
  • Seeing the same thing here. Apparently I'm scum because I'm renting my previous home for -10%/+10% of: mortgage on the lower price I paid 10 years ago, plus property taxes, plus home owners insurance, plus repairs and maintenance.

    Apparently I would no longer be scum if I stopped renting it and refused to renew my tenants lease, sold the house and made a huge profit now, and the next person will have to pay brand new closing costs plus a mortgage on double the home value and double the APR.

    I'm guessing most folks down-voting the sane responses saying rentals aren't needed have never tried selling a house (and gone 6+ months paying the mortgage for a house you no longer live in) or don't know there's a "break even" calculation that tells you how many years you have to live in the same house before you're better off than having just rented (realtor fees to sell the house, closing costs, time to sell the home where you'll still be paying your mortgage + taxes + insurance, time to close, getting credit approval for a mortgage, etc).

    Hell, I did the calculation when I had to move to a new state and I was able to rent a house for less than it would have cost me to pay for closing costs and realtor fees when I would have sold the house 3 years later. Not to mention the time to come up with 20% down payment.

    But fuck me for not taking the easy way out, kicking out my tenants and cashing in on the current huge property values to sell my old home.

  • Get rid of landlords...
  • Yes, let's pretend that housing prices haven't gone up (lumber shortage, pandemic, what are those things?!)

    And let's live in a world where interest rates haven't changed in the same time period (2.75% APR should be about the same as a 7% APR mortgage!).

    Lastly, let's ignore closing costs and the huge hunk of money realtors, banks, title companies, surveyors, and so on make every time a home is sold.

    The main issue folks have with those generic "fuck all landlords!" posts is that while yes, corporate landlords that monopolize housing and keep raising rents in lockstep and invent fees suck ass, there's also folks who found it easier to rent right away vs keeping an empty house on the market. Those landlords are paying a 10 year old mortgage with 10 year old lower interest rates, but 2024 property taxes and home insurance.

    10 year old mortgage for a home at 2014 prices + current property taxes and insurance + 10% profit margin (the horror) << Brand new mortgage on the same home at 2024 prices and 2024 APR + insurance and property taxes.

    Oh and I forgot about mortgage insurance. The person renting their home likely has gotten their mortgage below the cutoff for requiring mortgage insurance.

    There are many situations where both the person renting their home and the renter come out way ahead.

    The only ones who win by forcing everyone to sell their homes and no longer rent are the banks (more closing costs, prey on folks who aren't ready to buy a home with high APRs and mortgage insurance, get to close out low APR loans for new higher APR loans), real estate agents and everyone that gets a cut Everytime a home is bought and sold.

    That said there is something that can be done for the big investment groups that are buying up homes to jack up prices and corner local rental markets.

  • Get rid of landlords...
  • Buying house for say 100k at 3% APR, renting it because you were laid off and cant afford moving expenses, rent in a different city, plus paying a mortgage on an empty house for 6 months to a year while it sells. Then years later you still keep it because, while you could sell it and cash in, with the low APR you got on it you can afford to rent it for less than the corporate scum suckers who try to monopolize housing = Parasite

    Kicking out your renters and selling said house you bought at 100k for 200k to corporate scum suckers who will turn around and sell it at an even higher price or rent it at really high rates OR someone else who will end up paying way more than the rent I was asking for the place because interest rates are about double and the house has also doubled in price = internet hero

    No room for nuance, got it.

  • Get rid of landlords...
  • Are we talking about eliminating renting altogether?

    Cause that is what it sounds like in this thread. Folks wanting to completely eliminate renting and drive folks to buy a house Everytime they move.

    This ignores things like closing costs, realtor fees, really high property taxes, expensive home repairs, and temporary work assignments.

    Maybe you really need a job but don't want to straight up buy a house and instead rent something until you can find a job back in your local area or you decide it's time to take the plunge and move for good.

    Sure there are many a-hole companies and landlords that try to squeeze their tenants for every dime and treat their tenants like crap (lord knows I've run into those), but on the other hand there are folks who need a place to live but haven't decided where they want to settle down and people who can rent their old property at a decent date based on the low interest they themselves were able to lock down.

    Some are folks (like me) who moved but couldn't afford to keep their house empty for an extended period of time to put it on sale while they're paying rent or a mortgage in another state. So renting, even if you're barely breaking even, makes sense.

    Better to rent your old house for barely above the costs for the property taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage interest, and maintenance costs than to take a 6-12 month hit where you have to pay the above while not living in the house because your new job is in a different state. And that is if you sell in 12 months and don't take a big hit on the sale.

    If you're buying/selling a house every 3 years then you're really going to get screwed. I personally went from living in a home I owned (and paying a mortgage on) to renting for 3 years just to understand where I wanted to live in a new state, which areas had the best employers, and wait out on a low APR and decent buyers market.

    If I had to buy a house instead of having the option to rent, then I would have ended up buying a house near that employer which would have been over an hour commute from the better job offers I got after I moved here.

  • What are common practice's for hardening/securing your server?
  • Do a search for you server OS + STIG

    Then, for each service you're hosting on that server, do a search for:

    Service/Program name + STIG/Benchmark

    There's tons of work already done by the vendors in conjunction with the DoD (and CIS) to create lists of potential vulnerable settings that can be corrected before deploying the server.

    Along with this, you can usually find scripts and/or Ansible playbooks that will do most of the hardening for you. Though it's a good Idea to understand what you do and do not need done.

  • Russian Air Force Has Lost 10 Percent of Fleet in Ukraine
  • There's a thing called organizational death spiral. You don't have to down 100% of aircraft to cripple the Russian Air Force.

    The less planes they have, the more they have to use the same aircraft, the more airframe stress that accumulates on those airframes, the fewer aircraft they have to rotate in during repairs and maintenance.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/29/shooting-down-11-russian-jets-in-11-days-ukraine-nudges-the-russian-air-force-closer-to-an-organizational-death-spiral/

    Also:

    https://breakingdefense.com/2023/10/russias-air-force-eating-into-aircraft-lifespans-with-no-easy-solution/

    Modern Russian aircraft are designed for a 3,500 and 4,500 flight hour service life, and some for as many as 6,000. But the Soviet-era platforms were designed for 2,000 to 3,500 hours. Some models, such as the MiG-31, have been upgraded to extend service life, but most of the older models are nearing the end of their service lives with only 500 to 1,000 hours remaining.

  • unused is wasted
  • Another reason for going with a swap file vs partition (if you need either) are nvme and SSD drives.

    A partition that's only a few GB and written to constantly will wear out a solid state drive quickly.

    Using a swap file in a larger partition that has other data allows the drive to even out the wear across more storage cells.

  • U.S. Approves $1.5 Billion Loan to Restart Michigan Nuclear Plant
  • Beyond replacing fossil fuels plants, nuclear plants can also help power atmospheric decarbonization (with their excess baseband power) as well as desalination plants if close enough to a coast.

    There's a lot of projects that depend on cheap and abundant energy that can further help undo some of the damage from a century of fossil fuels usage.

    While the design lifespan of nuclear plants might be 30-40 years, newer ones are designed for 40-60 years of operation right off the bat.

    So it's a bit of a sticker shock at first but even getting just 40 years of benefits from each plant is huge.

    A big part of the problem is we don't look at these longtime operation periods and we externalize (or just ignore) the CO2 emissions as costs of running cheaper gas and coal power plants.

  • What tax prep companies do you know that are non-scummy (don't lobby against the IRS making tax returns easier and/or free)?

    Intuit (Turbo Tax) and H&amp;R Block are the main lobby against easy tax prep (spent millions per year), then the other 12 members of the ACTR are:

    Tax Act

    OnLine Taxes

    Wolters Kluwer

    Tax Hawk

    Liberty Tax

    Drake Software

    Jackson Hewitt

    also the following financial institutions:

    Netspend

    Republic Bank

    TPG Santa Barbara

    pathward

    So who do you use that is not one of the 14 companies above (or owned/operated by them)?

    3
    Einhänder (1997 PS1) - Shudder

    Music that plays during one of the early boss fights.

    Piped link

    Composer: Kenichiro Fukui

    3
    Le Telepathé (Video) (NSFW)

    Piped Link: https://piped.video/05hTBAOnDQE

    0
    Distance - Stage 1 (Continuum) (Steam 2018)

    Piped Link: https://piped.video/watch?v=Vz-kU3vt4cI

    Soundtrack composers: Jordan Hemenway, Mark J Quigley

    1
    STAROMAIORS'KE IS LIBERATED
    mstdn.social NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@noelreports@mstdn.social)

    Attached: 1 video 🇺🇦🔥 STAROMAIORS'KE IS LIBERATED

    NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@noelreports@mstdn.social)

    BBC report

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66323354

    5
    U.S. Says Main Thrust of Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Begun
    www.nytimes.com U.S. Says Main Thrust of Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Begun

    Artillery duels flared along the southern front, as troops trained and equipped by the West pressed forward.

    U.S. Says Main Thrust of Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Has Begun
    • ‘This is the big test’: U.S. officials describe a new Ukrainian effort to sever Russia’s hold on the south.
    • U.S. officials describe a 3-point rationale for Ukraine’s new push.

    Archive.is mirror:

    https://archive.is/2023.07.26-224456/https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/07/26/world/russia-ukraine-news

    7
    Interview with one of the designers of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
    www.polygon.com How Sega built the Genesis

    Polygon presents an interview excerpt from Read-Only Memory’s Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works book.

    How Sega built the Genesis

    In late 2014, publisher Read-Only Memory released Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, a history book covering the hardware, games and legacy of Sega's 16-Bit system. Featuring console diagrams and translated design documents, it serves as part art book, part history lesson and part interview collection. And you can read one of those interviews below. Read-Only Memory has provided Polygon with an excerpt — an interview with product designer Masami Ishikawa on how the hardware came about.

    0
    GitLab down - Error 503
    status.gitlab.com GitLab System Status

    This status page is exclusively intended for monitoring GitLab.com and its associated services. If there are any performance or service interruptions, an update will be posted here. If you are encountering service interruptions on GitLab Dedicated, please submit a support request.

    Incident started at 1645 UTC. No resolution yet.

    0
    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/)LO
    LordOfTheChia @lemmy.world
    Posts 11
    Comments 398