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davidfischer

420 karma · joined August 2, 2010

Advertising, security, and privacy @ Read the Docs / EthicalAds

To contact me about Read the Docs or Ads, use my first name @ our domain names (either readthedocs.org or ethicalads.io).

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davidfischer··on How Property Taxes Shape Our Cities
> The tax system will always reward home ownership. By time you are on your third house you will be paying cash, so even mortgage issues will go away. I don't know anyone on their third property who has a huge mortgage...maybe a small supplemental one but that is about it.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Housing prices have risen faster than inflation in California over virtually any period ending today other than cherry picking the top of the housing bubble. Nothing says this will always be the case. Just ask the homeowners in Japan or in parts of the rust belt. I'm a homeowner in California but I also remember the last time everyone said housing prices only go up.

Furthermore, the tax system may not always reward home ownership. New caps on mortgage interest deductions are already affecting California houses although the effect is currently small. It used to be true that homeowners always itemized deductions. For 2018, it'll be about a wash for me as opposed to taking the standard.

davidfischer··on Families earning $117,000 now qualify as “low income” in California's Bay Area
This is not unique to San Francisco. https://www.10news.com/news/team-10/team-10-man-with-extensi...

> Partin's bus ticket cost $261.50. The receipt, dated February 2, 2015, is stamped with the name of a Nashville agency called Homeward Bound. Investigators at Team 10's sister station in Nashville, WTVF, learned the agency that has oversight of the Homeward Bound program is the Nashville Downtown Partnership (NDP), a group dedicated to making the city a great place to do business.

davidfischer··on Please Stop Using Adblock (But Not Why You Think)
> And for anyone that wants to run ads : just serve them locally in a sufficient format and you'll slip through blocks.

I thought so too. Once you reach a certain size, even 1st party ads get blocked.

davidfischer··on Please Stop Using Adblock (But Not Why You Think)
I ran Privacy Badger for a while. It is very good for finding out who is setting 3rd party cookies or using alternatives to cookies (eg. localstorage with unique identifiers). Rather than using a list, my understanding is it uses heuristics based on what cookies are set, whether they are 1st vs 3rd party, their expiry time and the like.
davidfischer··on Please Stop Using Adblock (But Not Why You Think)
> Before I wrote this post, I wasn't aware that eyeo served ads directly, which is what prompted me to write it.

I think they floated this idea but ended up nixing it after users weren't happy. I run ABP with "acceptable ads w/o 3rd party tracking" a subset of the acceptable ads list and have for the last couple years. I've never seen an ad they injected or I wasn't aware they injected it.

The ad-supported site I work on and who employs me was added to the acceptable ads list today. I'm not affiliated with eyeo in any other way. We did not have to pay them (yet?).

davidfischer··on Broadcom Offers $105B for Qualcomm in Landmark Deal
True.
davidfischer··on Broadcom Offers $105B for Qualcomm in Landmark Deal
For the record, Atheros is a subsidiary of Qualcomm.

Edit: wrong preposition

davidfischer··on Prop 13, Or, California's Progressive Blindspot Illuminated
Commercial property -- to which I'm including multi-family residential for this post -- is almost definitely the bigger problem. The reason arises from the fact that these properties very rarely trigger a reassessment of property taxes and as a result tons of commercial property owners are paying 1980s era property taxes. Firstly, commercial properties are often held by long time/indefinite property owners -- companies -- who rarely sell and don't "die" (deaths especially those involving split inheritances commonly cause property sales which trigger a reassessment). Secondly, in the event a company does sell, they can usually avoid triggering a reassessment by only selling a "stake" in the property. If that stake is below a certain threshold, there's no reassessment. You can read about this by googling "close the prop 13 loophole". Residential properties are very simply reassessed more frequently on average than commercial and this problem is going to get worse over time.

Oftentimes, properties in California (especially multi-family residential) are owned by a corp/LLC which owns nothing other than that single property. That corp is then owned by a larger company who can sell a stake in single property company if the right buyer comes around. The CPAs have avoiding a prop 13 reassessment down to a science. If you write a rent check to a company that has your street number or street name in the company name, that's why.

Much of valuable property in this state was developed before 1978 and as a result the owners are paying just a fraction of what their taxes would be after a assessment. Sales and income taxes are subsidizing this difference. Now, the counterpoint to this is that raising property taxes will result in some of those taxes being passed on to renters. While this is true, not all of it could be due to simple supply and demand. The worst offenders will be able to pass on the least of that difference. The state would also be able to lower corporate, sales or income taxes as a result of phasing in market property taxes too. Maybe that last part is just wishful thinking on my part.

Regardless of your take on residential vs commercial property and prop 13, this is a problem that is only going to get worse with time. With no changes, 50 years from now, there will literally be people and companies paying property taxes like it is 1990. The result is that in order to make up that difference, corporate, sales, income and "new" property taxes will have to be higher than they are today. If those other taxes rise enough, people leave the state for greener pastures and property values fall or stagnate which is another more painful way to equilibrium.

Significantly higher property/land taxes in this state than we have now would solve or curb a lot of problems. From housing bubbles (probably merely curbed) to encouraging cities like SF to build more densely to allowing lower income/sales/corp taxes to encourage investment, many of the states problems were created or exacerbated by prop 13. When Warren Buffett was Schwarzenegger's economic advisor during the campaign he said that prop 13 doesn't make sense. He was right.

davidfischer··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2015)
TapHunter - San Diego, CA

TapHunter helps people find their favorite craft beer, spirits and cocktails while helping bars and restaurants streamline their operations and market the great beverages they serve.

We are looking to add a junior developer to our two person development team. This person should have passion for their local craft breweries and distilleries and is interested in growing as our company grows. You will work on everything from our mobile application, operational tools for bars and our consumer website. Our stack is Python and Django on Appengine and our mobile app is written with JavaScript on Titanium.

This is an full-time onsite position in our downtown San Diego office.

For a view into our culture and team, see: https://gettaphunter.com/story/

Please apply for this job on Workable: http://taphunter.workable.com/jobs/31725

davidfischer··on Xamarin makes me sad, here is my message to them
Titanium isn't horribly slow, but it isn't some cross-platform panacea either. Building an app that supports iOS and Android well is still a big task. You don't just build one app and get the second platform for free. Lots of the APIs, methods and properties are platform specific or function quite differently platform to platform. Most of this is documented but some of it isn't. I don't want to be overly critical of Titanium as I think it has its place but I think your post was a bit optimistic.

BTW, the OP's original rant reminds me of a similar rant for Titanium: http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/why-you-should-sta... That rant is a few years old and Titanium has made a lot of progress since then. However, some of the points still hold true.

davidfischer··on Where do Github users live? WebGL visualization
My GitHub data challenge entry was along a similar vein. The data is stale now, but it does break it down by project and language which can form some interesting hotspots.

The globe is a really nice touch and you did a good job on canonicalization/grouping/binning.

http://davidfischer.github.io/gdc2/

davidfischer··on OpenBSD removes Rails from the ports tree
I realize this response is a bit late. However, it's worth mentioning that there's been quite a bit of movement here from the Python community in the past two weeks. No doubt this is a response to what happened with Ruby. A proper cert for pypi.python.org is being rolled out this week and pip should shortly have cert checking.

https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/425

davidfischer··on Why Google should just shut up and buy T-Mobile
While I can't completely rule it out since I have no inside knowledge, this sounds like a terrible move. T-Mobile is in a commodity business and they aren't particularly successful at it. While the author tries to make the argument that Google needs retail help (recency bias, methinks), Google could put together a vastly better retail experience for far cheaper than it would take to buy T-Mobile. Unlike Moto, I don't think T-Mobile has any significant IP. Lastly, I don't think Verizon, Sprint and AT&T would be thrilled to now be in direct competition with their largest smartphone OS vendor?
davidfischer··on Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots
Goldsberry was great at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference[1]. The charts really highlight a player's strengths and weaknesses. A quick look at Ray Allen's chart (in Goldsberry's conference paper) shows how much better he is when he goes to his right. Kobe really needs to cut down on those 12-15' baseline jumpers that he seems to favor.

When I look at the graphics from the NYT article, the player whose chart really sticks out is James Harden. His efficiency this year is amazing and a lot of it has to do with shot selection. Most of his shots are 3-pointers or within 8' which are considered the two highest value shots on the court. Some team with a Moneyball style general manager (somewhat common in the NBA from my understanding) will pay him handsomely yet probably still not what his contribution merits.

[1] http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=6132

Edit: trivial edit for small error

davidfischer··on Cache on Delivery (Mining random people's memcached)
This was one of my favorite briefings at Blackhat.
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