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Hi friends!

I know part of the Pacific Highway are broken right now, but I was just wondering if there was any tips/places to stop at on a trip from San Fran to San Diego that I'm planning on next month. (More specifically for a motorcycle trip, which comes with it's own interesting routes and stuff)

I've always wanted to do the journey, so me and a friend are planning on going from SF -> LA over 2 days, and I'm planning on taking the bike down to SD after staying in LA for a couple of days by myself afterwards!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Wife and I are going through the home buying process in what most people would call a low cost of living area. For reference, homes are about 180-400k where I live in New York State.

I heard the horror stories but I had no idea how bad the issue is. I'll get to that in a minute.

I am curious what's going to happen with housing. Because on one hand, it seems like it's going to continue to rise until there is genuinely no such thing as middle-class home ownership. On the other hand, I see some troubling signs that remind me of a bubble.

The housing market will continue to be unaffordable
-I keep hearing that it's a supply issue. That we need to double the number of houses for things to get better. I also hear this isn't happening and that immigration is a factor. Sounds like a dog whistle but I'm curious if there is any truth to this.

-Other developed nations are worse. Many have 40-50 year mortgages and some countries even have multi-generational mortgages. This shows that it could get worse.

-Companies and wealthy individuals trying to make us all rent forever. Of course they would like nothing more and they'll probably keep working on this.

The current market is not sustainable

-There is a feeding frenzy on every single home that goes for sale in my area. Total shit boxes with sagging roofs are selling no problem and way above asking.

-The bank approved my wife and I for way too much money. We have student loans and daycare costs. The amount they approved us for would absolutely put us in the negatives every month. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen anymore. It feels strange and reckless for the banks to do that. For reference, we make about 100k/year combined but student loans and childcare take up a significant chunk of that. They approved us for $300k to get a home. We could get a $2400/mo* mortgage, which immediately wipes out 50% of our take-home pay. We ran a budget and even avoiding any purchases that aren't literal necessities, we would be running a deficit every month. We could never buy a shirt, a baby toy, a makeup product, a movie ticket, or even a pair of shoes and we would still be in the negative. Nevermind what would happen if one of our very modest, very used vehicles needed to be replaced or repaired. Obviously we didn't bid anything near 300k on any home. Wife's mom offered to front some inheritance money (give my wife some money now and then just leave the inheritance to her sister to make up for it) and we weren't even close still.

-When did a married nurse and teacher become completely priced out of the market? Is that a sign of a normal and healthy market? Now, to be fair, my wife could increase her salary if she wanted to go back to working in the emergency room. She doesn't want to do that while we have a baby at home and I understand that completely. But you would think we would be able to afford something.

I am clearly speaking from a position of relative privilege here. I recognize that. I grew up in a foreclosed and auctioned home that was old and small. My parents moved to an economically depressed town to get that house because they had no money and no help. There was no "borrowing a few grand from an inheritance" for them and if my wife wasn't in the picture that would never be an option for me either. I think my wife and I are doing a lot better than many other people in this area. What are couples who work at Amazon doing? Just saying fuck it and renting forever?

Anyway, I'm half venting and half asking. What is the actual endgame here for Americans? What happens next?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like winamp, pfas and baking. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bamboozled.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Now that there are some specs, development news, and Snapdragon X Elite vs Intel benchmarks from the past couple days to discuss (with the exception noted below), I thought I'd put together a few links for people. I'm curious how people feel about this iteration of technology in an ARM package for development, tinkering, or edge AI applications. And are folks enthused by the possibilities (Windows or otherwise), dislike the price points, or tired of the AI/CoPilot buzz?

Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows features Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Arm SoC for AI PC application development

New Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Benchmarks Show It's a Serious Contender

Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows is a tiny desktop PC with a focus on AI apps

Debian 12 and Linux upstreaming for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC (January, 2024)

Microsoft is already taking orders for both Surface Pro (11ᵗʰ Edition, $999+) and Surface Laptop (7ᵗʰ Edition, $999+)^[1] orders planned for shipping in June. Each can be bought in X Plus or X Elite flavors, though Wikipedia suggests there are several models of the X Elite so I'm curious which flavors we'll see in MS devices.

^[1] Note that I linked to the "business" versions of the MS Store listings because they get straight to the point with a tech overview, etc. The "business" versions are listed for $100 more than the consumer versions.

Sharing this in ~comp, but if there's a better place for this then I'm happy to see it moved to a more suitable location. Thanks!