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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • Well, you’re going to piss off the policyholders then. State Farm is a mutual insurance company. It’s owned by the policyholders. It’s essentially a non-profit, since profits go to reduce premiums or pay dividends to the policyholders.

    The thing is, the company isn’t turning a profit. When what fills the cup doesn’t match the hole in the bottom, at some point the cup will be empty. California has mismanaged the wilderness areas and allowed development without concern for potential fire danger. Climate change, high fuel loads after decades of suppressing natural fires, improperly maintained electrical infrastructure, and a lack of “Fire Wise” education are all contributing to huge wildfires and high property loss rates.

    If California were to seize every insurance company in the state, they would quickly be in the same predicament - needing to raise premiums to cover the losses.

    The only real solution is to reduce the risk. That’s why the NFPA came up with local Fire Safe Councils. We educate the homeowners about how to make our homes resistant to wildfire damage. Using grant money, we reduce the fire danger by clearing hazardous undergrowth. We provide resources for homeowners, like chipping programs, matching funds for tree removal, and other assistance in maintaining defensible space. We have successfully lobbied for insurance discounts when homeowners complete risk reduction measures.





  • Trump’s conviction isn’t going to be the big turning point of this election. What happens after his conviction will. If he continues to spew vitriol about the judge, prosecution, and jury, eventually one of his followers will commit an act of retribution. That puts Trump in a difficult spot, because his core likes this kind of stuff. He will want to show his support, but if he does, it will again show he encourages domestic terrorism. If he does anything other than condemn the attack, his support among moderates will fall away, just like it did after Jan. 6th. If he does condemn the attack, his core may protest, like they did when he changed his opinion on the COVID vaccines.










  • This might get voted down, but y’all should hear the counterpoint. My friend requires new hires to sign a NC that expires after 2 years. It basically says the employee may not work for another company using the same equipment unless they pay him the $3000 it costs him to get them certified. Before he did that, some employees would jump to a competitor shortly after completing the training. Now he’s wondering if he can make the $3000 an employee loan that will be forgiven after 2 years of employment.

    And no, he doesn’t do the NC if the new employee was already certified. He just wants to protect his investment in their training.

    This change in the law will have consequences in businesses where employees require special certifications or training for a high demand specialty. Will an auto repair shop be willing to train an employee to service EVs if they can’t guarantee the employee will remain with the shop?


  • If data reliability is high on your list, but speed is not, use a NAS running RAID 1 (mirrored drives), so one drive can fail without compromising the data.

    I used to do RAID 5 on an 8 drive array, but had a failure of the NAS motherboard. And wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t make that model anymore. No easy way to get the data back out of the RAID. I finally paid to recover the data, but learned my lesson. It’s MUCH cheaper to buy duplicate drives than it is to recover data later. If the RAID motherboard failed tomorrow, I would pop the working drive in my computer and it would just work.

    Using drive mirroring pretty much eliminates the concern over premature drive failure. If it’s in warranty, pop out the bad drive and send it in for repair/replacement. The NAS will still work. Buy another drive or wait with sweaty palms until the faulty drive is fixed. Rebuild the array.