Durallet's recent activity

  1. Comment on A case study in NIMBY entitlement: The former mayor of Beverly Hills is so mad about duplexes in ~life

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    The "Assessor" is the public official responsible for property taxes. Most states practice "mass appraisal", which is to say they use market data and statistical analysis to determine property tax...

    The "Assessor" is the public official responsible for property taxes. Most states practice "mass appraisal", which is to say they use market data and statistical analysis to determine property tax assessments. They do not base their property assessments on a random property owner's tirade about the presence of "undesirables". Tax payers who disagree can file an appeal with their county's Assessment Appeal Board to have their property value changed, but they need actual evidence (open market data) to get values revised.

    MetArtScroll is actually referring to private fee appraisers contracted to do appraisals for mortgages or refinancing. These appraisers are regulated by state agencies (e.g. Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers in California) and are bound by the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) in the United States.
    Yes, there are incredibly unprofessional appraisers who allow their biases to affect their judgments of property value, but it's pretty weird to single out the appraisal profession for systemic racism that has been embedded into the fabric of the US since its inception.

    5 votes
  2. Comment on My ex-father-in-law, the Japanese radical who opposed Narita Airport in ~humanities.history

    Durallet
    Link
    Article Excerpt Archive footage and video essays AP Archive historical report: THE BATTLE AGAINST NARITA AIRPORT Professor Jelkington: The Extremely Violent History Behind Tokyo's Narita...

    Article Excerpt

    Years before we met, I learned about my Japanese ex-father-in-law in a foreign newspaper. A story in the late 1990s reviewed the decades-long fight to shut down Japan’s main international airport. My ex-wife’s dad, Koji Kitahara, led the struggle, which was violent and bitter.

    It was waged with bulldozers, truncheons, sickles, and Molotov cocktails. Thousands of people were imprisoned or injured over the years and several–including local activists and policemen–were killed. Inflamed rhetoric and implacable opposition on both sides were features of the fight: if riot police surrounding Narita International Airport once let down their guard, my ex-father-in-law warned an American reporter, “not one single airplane” would take off.

    “Yep, that’s dad,” said my then-wife when I read out the story to her.

    Archive footage and video essays

    AP Archive historical report: THE BATTLE AGAINST NARITA AIRPORT
    Professor Jelkington: The Extremely Violent History Behind Tokyo's Narita International Airport
    MajorSamm: Summer in Sanrizuka - 1968

    1 vote
  3. Comment on Nissin to sell a fork specially designed for its cup ramen in ~design

    Durallet
    Link
    Looks like Nissin made the video private. Fortunately, nendo reuploaded it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B0ck9xyXTY

    Looks like Nissin made the video private. Fortunately, nendo reuploaded it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B0ck9xyXTY

    4 votes
  4. Comment on Two percent inflation over the next year: Should you take the over or the under? in ~finance

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    For people who haven't heard of Lifecycle Investing, the idea is to diversify across time and reduce the impact of sequence of return risk. John Williamson puts it pretty succinctly in his article...

    For people who haven't heard of Lifecycle Investing, the idea is to diversify across time and reduce the impact of sequence of return risk.
    John Williamson puts it pretty succinctly in his article about portfolio diversification: https://www.optimizedportfolio.com/diversification/#temporal-diversification-diversifying-across-time

    2 votes
  5. Comment on Two percent inflation over the next year: Should you take the over or the under? in ~finance

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    Agree that "Age in bonds" is very conservative. The asset allocation rule of thumb I've heard is usually given as Age - 20 in bonds, or 110 - Age in equities.

    Agree that "Age in bonds" is very conservative.
    The asset allocation rule of thumb I've heard is usually given as Age - 20 in bonds, or 110 - Age in equities.

    2 votes
  6. Comment on The gig economy is coming for millions of American jobs in ~life

  7. Comment on Robinhood gets $1 billion infusion, signaling cash crunch in ~finance

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    The customer's assets are held by a custodian (usually a bank). Robinhood's bankruptcy would not affect the assets of their retail customers. If anything happens during the failure of a broker,...

    The customer's assets are held by a custodian (usually a bank). Robinhood's bankruptcy would not affect the assets of their retail customers. If anything happens during the failure of a broker, the SIPC provides insurance for up to $500,000 of assets.

    8 votes
  8. Comment on Who's on the fediverse? in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    That instance is actually owned and operated by Pleroma project owner, @lain@pleroma.soykaf.com. If the remote follow button doesn't work, you can search the user's handle...

    That instance is actually owned and operated by Pleroma project owner, @lain@pleroma.soykaf.com.

    Sadly following from my mastodon account did not work :(

    If the remote follow button doesn't work, you can search the user's handle (@bendersteeed@pleroma.soykaf.com) from your local instance and you should be able to follow them from there.

  9. Comment on Happy New Years! Feliz Año! Guter Rutsch und Gutes Neues!! in ~talk

    Durallet
    Link
    In Japanese: 新年おめでとうございます。 Happy New Year!

    In Japanese: 新年おめでとうございます。
    Happy New Year!

    4 votes
  10. Comment on I'm thinking of getting a password manager. How does it work and any advice on transitioning to one? in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    With BitWarden, you don't need to do anything special to sync information across your different devices (phone, pc, browser extension etc), thus "cloud syncing". The app keeps a local encrypted...

    How meaningful is the difference?

    With BitWarden, you don't need to do anything special to sync information across your different devices (phone, pc, browser extension etc), thus "cloud syncing". The app keeps a local encrypted copy and regularly syncs the encrypted data with the central bitwarden server.

    And where are local copies stored exactly? Just in the phone's memory, just like any downloaded file?

    With Keepass XC, the encrypted password vault is specifically located in your device's storage (i.e. phone flash memory, so yes like a regular file) and you'll need to do some configuration with another app like SyncThing to sync with any other device.

    6 votes
  11. Comment on I'm thinking of getting a password manager. How does it work and any advice on transitioning to one? in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link
    Any good password manager will have the ability to import your existing passwords (whether it's from your desktop browser or another password manager). Privacytools.io recommendations for password...

    Any good password manager will have the ability to import your existing passwords (whether it's from your desktop browser or another password manager).

    Privacytools.io recommendations for password managers:
    For local only copies try Keepass XC. If you want a cloud syncing solution try BitWarden.

    Please note that the usage of a password manager does not automatically "improve your privacy", since privacy is an ongoing continuous process. You will need to fundamentally change your outlook on how to use everything/anything. That involves questioning the data collection practices of everybody (government, businesses, individuals, etc) and being overly aggressive about it will not make you any friends.

    23 votes
  12. Comment on This is neoliberalism in ~humanities.history

    Durallet
    Link

    If you've ever wanted to understand what neoliberalism is, this is the video series for you.

    Part 1: Introducing the Invisible Ideology (March 2018, 27min)
    Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism. Over four decades ago, neoliberalism became the dominant economic paradigm of global society. In this series, we'll trace the history of neoliberalism, starting with a survey of neoliberal philosophy and research, a historical reconstruction of the movement pushing for neoliberal policy solutions, witnessing the damage that neoliberalism did to its first victims in the developing world, and then charting neoliberalism's infiltration of the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Learn how neoliberalism is generating crises for humanity at an unprecedented rate.

    Part 2: Keynesian Embedded Liberalism (September 2018, 36min)
    Neoliberalism was a reaction. It was an effort to disassemble a previous vision of society that once held sway over most of the world. In order to understand neoliberalism, it’s important to first understand the world before neoliberalism; the world which neoliberalism considered unacceptable, and in need of urgent reconfiguration. In part two, learn about the world of embedded liberalism.

    Part 3: Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society I: 1918 - 1939 (April 2019, 40min)

    The story of neoliberalism is a story about the power of ideas. Embedded liberalism was in power, but it was not without resistance. Academics and businessmen who opposed the New Deal and British social democracy were only begrudgingly accepting of the situation at best, or on the warpath against government intervention in the economy at worst. These two factions allied with one another to create an idea so powerful that it would covertly undo their losses to embedded liberalism by supplanting it entirely. This is where the story of neoliberalism begins.

    Part 4: Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society II: 1939 - 1950 (December 2019, 43min)

    In 1939, a fragile world which had just begun to climb out of the depths of global economic depression, and ended the first truly global war in recorded history only 21 years earlier, peered downward into an abyss blacker than any it had ever glimpsed before. By the close of the 1940’s, global civilization was sitting on one of the most profound inflection points in all of human history. Much, but not all of the world, was about to experience unprecedented prosperity under embedded liberalism, and the ideals of social democracy had never been more ascendant. However, the truth was that the post-war consensus was far from safe. It was within this tension, between the magnificent gains of social democracy and the hostile road laid before it, that Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society were poised to begin dissolving the ground beneath all opponents of neoliberalism.

    Part 5: The Chicago School (October 2020, 47min)

    The world we live in today was born the moment World War II ended. But though it may be accurate to say that the modern world lives in the shadow of World War II, the more precise answer is that the modern world lives in the shadow of the decades immediately following World War II. These three decades - the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s - were the critical years that would determine the fate of Keynes’ evolution of liberalism, and the path leading away from a conflict whose devastation still remains unsurpassed to this day. In order to understand how neoliberalism supplanted the Postwar Consensus in the three decades immediately following World War II, we must investigate the evolution of neoliberal thought during the postwar period, which would one day achieve a neoliberal revolution in approximately 1981.

    8 votes
  13. Comment on Cover Your Tracks - A new EFF project designed to better uncover the tools and techniques of online trackers and test the efficacy of privacy add-ons (successor to Panopticlick) in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link
    Some more thoughts regarding fingerprinting. The purpose of browser fingerprinting techniques is to harvest as much identifying data about the user's browser, device, and behavior as possible....

    Some more thoughts regarding fingerprinting.

    The purpose of browser fingerprinting techniques is to harvest as much identifying data about the user's browser, device, and behavior as possible. Thanks to modern technology, it's possible to gather and correlate all these data points together to paint a picture of person behind the screen. This creates a situation where standardizing everything creates pseudo-anonymity as users of that setup are largely indistinguishable from each other (i.e. what Apple or TOR Browser do).

    • Devices which are tightly constrained in terms of specs are less identifiable. This means popular products from major brands make it easier to blend in with other users of the same device.
      ex. An iPhone 12 is more common than a custom built gaming pc tricked out with an ultrawide monitor
    • Using popular browsers makes it easier to blend in. Conversely, deliberately switching to anything besides Chrom(e|ium) makes you stand out like a sore thumb.
      ex. Nearly everyone using a mobile device uses the default browser. Picking up a third party browser app like Lighting or Kiwi Browser (or even Firefox) is not anything the multitudes do (or can even conceive of).
    • Extensions and tweaks affect browser and user behavior. Each additional change cumulatively adds to the amount of information ("bits") and makes an user unique.
      ex. The Privacy Badger extension works by examining all connections made during your regular browsing sessions. Everybody has different habits and hangouts, so naturally their browsing history will become unique as time goes on without resetting the Privacy Badger extension. This means that the persistent blocklist that Privacy Badger creates has become a proxy for that unique browsing history.
    • User behavior before and during the browsing session adds bits, especially if they are persistent habits.
      ex. Most people use their browser in maximized window mode. Anyone who resizes their window (e.g.a random resolution like 1207x988) and browses persistently without changing it again has just created a nearly unique data point.
    8 votes
  14. Comment on Cover Your Tracks - A new EFF project designed to better uncover the tools and techniques of online trackers and test the efficacy of privacy add-ons (successor to Panopticlick) in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    So I tried it with Chromium and Firefox on Linux, that part that I quoted appears to stay the same as far as bits of info are concerned. @Deimos' comment is right about needing to go further down...

    So I tried it with Chromium and Firefox on Linux, that part that I quoted appears to stay the same as far as bits of info are concerned. @Deimos' comment is right about needing to go further down to check each individual element of fingerprinting and seeing how unique each feature tested is.

    Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.121 Safari/537.36
    Bits of identifying information: 8.4
    One in x browsers have this value:337.37

    Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:83.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/83.0
    Bits of identifying information: 9.74
    One in x browsers have this value:853.24

    3 votes
  15. Comment on Cover Your Tracks - A new EFF project designed to better uncover the tools and techniques of online trackers and test the efficacy of privacy add-ons (successor to Panopticlick) in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    What are the actual results of the report? You want to read the line about the bits of identifying information. Higher = worse because it is easier to identify the user and correlate activity.

    What are the actual results of the report?

    You want to read the line about the bits of identifying information. Higher = worse because it is easier to identify the user and correlate activity.

    Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 277,992 tested in the past 45 days.

    Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least XX bits of identifying information.

    1 vote
  16. Comment on Cover Your Tracks - A new EFF project designed to better uncover the tools and techniques of online trackers and test the efficacy of privacy add-ons (successor to Panopticlick) in ~tech

    Durallet
    Link Parent
    This question is too vague and there's no information about your setup to give any meaningful advice/interpretation. Things to keep in mind: This tool is used by the privacy conscious, which will...

    This question is too vague and there's no information about your setup to give any meaningful advice/interpretation.

    Things to keep in mind:
    This tool is used by the privacy conscious, which will eventually skew the "uniqueness" results towards weird and highly profile-raising setups. i.e. "Hardened Firefox"
    More extensions = more fingerprinting opportunities since your browser will behave radically differently from the normal users. This includes ad blockers and especially using weird or regional blocklists.
    Use the default or popular browsers to blend in. i.e. Safari on MacOS/iOS, Chrome/Edge on Windows, Chromium/Firefox on Linux.

    2 votes
  17. Comment on Came across this: QotNews - Reddit, Hacker News, and Tildes combined, then pre-rendered in reader mode in ~tildes