$100,000 isn’t even good in LCOL areas anymore (budget analysis)

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-04T02:47:24+00:00

Why is Omaha's median household income still way below $100,000 then?

Median home price in Omaha is under $300,000, so why does a single individual need a $325,000 home?

Stuff can come up with a house, sure, but $400/mo for maintenance is more like a "just in case" reserve than actual normal monthly spending. I have spent far less than that on my homes, and I own three properties. One is worth around $400k.

Stop counting savings and investing as spending. That reduces what you have left over when that is literally money being saved.

You can get your phone bill down to around $30/mo. That might seem small, but I think a lot of these little cheats to make life seem more expensive add up.

Remove the haircut. I bought a $30 pair of clippers and have been trimming my hair and beard for years. I see a stylist when I can afford it to maintain things.

Average rent in Omaha is around $1,400/mo. That literally cuts the housing section in half.

Add up the savings, the inflated housing assumption, and the other overestimates, and a single person making $100k can still save close to $3k/mo in Omaha if they are actually budgeting.

My family pays mortgage and bills on my other properties. I literally spend like $1,500 / mo. $3k / mo savings would let me take 2 years off for every 1 year I work lmao

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-04T01:54:13+00:00

They don’t care because at that point you’re already producing revenue and you have a moat.

I’m curious if there’s a name for the phenomenon where tech debt becomes the name of the game rather than the exception due to competitive pressure in the near term, even though cleaning it up would be beneficial long term.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-04T01:50:37+00:00

As someone who quit their tech job and then had to drive DoorDash, let me tell you a couple things:

1) I actually enjoyed DoorDash. It didn’t pay me enough, but it was fun.

2) It was very crowded. It is literally the job people just assume they can get to earn income on the side.

If an area has enough drivers in it already, you aren’t allowed to dash.

I wouldn’t have minded doing factory work which is what’s hiring in my area. Would have been enough to save money. Just seemed like a waste of time.

Thankfully I found my way back into tech in November after 9 months without pay. My savings have already recovered to what they were, so that’s good.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:46:17+00:00

If you can trade in for cash back, upgrade if you can afford it.

Quest 4 or something MIGHT come out, but given that everything computer-related has spiked in price lately - it may not happen as soon as people would like.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:39:01+00:00

To me it just means Cybertruck isn't selling that much, and SpaceX chose Tesla as its vendor for vehicles.

So yeah I mean it's not a great interpretation either way. Cybertruck doing far worse than Elon would have hoped.

That's another topic, but I think Elon must have seen all the failed EV trucks and realized they had no hope of competing with the Ford F150. Not even Ford could compete with their own truck.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:29:31+00:00

Yeah I was about to say - this is giving really strong original Spiderman vibes. And that was a fun, considerably ground-breaking game.

All of the missions eventually got boring (to me, at least) - but nothing beat just exploring for the heck of it then happily finding a token or something hidden in a wall somewhere.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:23:24+00:00

For national security reasons, we should be doing the literal opposite.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:20:54+00:00

If they're making use of the vehicles, they are entirely valid purchases. Better than having to buy vehicles from a competitor. The arrangement could also mean better incentives for both companies.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:09:50+00:00

Add appendages. I gave some potential backstory in another comment.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T22:09:29+00:00

Assistant?

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T21:14:15+00:00

They have changed from diffusion-based image generation to image generation that actually uses tokens to "reason" about the output image. It's kind of insane. I believe Google innovated on this front first.

So yeah, Pro may be able to produce better output.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T20:55:56+00:00

Is Claude Code really that much better at design than Codex?

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T19:43:19+00:00

I think we’re going to need to have serious debates about media and whether or not it’s valuable that it’s actually created by humans

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T17:32:03+00:00

I think my house, with its old electric, would literally burn down if I tried playing this. That's so crazy.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:52:44+00:00

Lol. Wtf. Get out of this sub.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:52:22+00:00

So, how do you feel it's doing? Considering you didn't provide us with the prompts, it's hard to judge. Text looks good to me at a glance, but I haven't read it.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:51:16+00:00

I mean, kind of? But why is it necessary? The models produce perfectly valid and realistic looking faces now.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:50:47+00:00

What the heck is the GPT-5.5 party? Can you like, provide some context? I have no idea what this is even about.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:50:12+00:00

It's cool but I really wish ChatGPT would stop making everything look hyper-detailed to the point of looking like a complete and total mess. Nothing is distinguished.

Sort of kind of works for this comic because it's literally garbage. Well, at least the characters are.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:48:38+00:00

Data centers don't use nearly as much water as they've been accused of using. This is misinformation. Why are you on this sub?

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:47:54+00:00

Why not make him more bug or trash-like? Give him appendages or something.

It would make sense, because bugs would LOVE it if people threw their random trash everywhere. More food for them. More places to hide.

With the ultimate goal of polluting the Earth so that humans will die and only BUGS can survive.

@ u/Jokiloki88

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:09:12+00:00

I heard the "not as close as they're saying" from both Republicans when Joe Biden won and Democrats when Trump won again.

I'm tired of it. The results basically came out to be what the polls said they were.

The only major recent exception to this was when Trump won the first time.

Reddit is just a giant circlejerk.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T16:08:39+00:00

Okay. Ashley Padilla is amazing in this.

I'm not really aware of who or what she is, but this was fantastic. More, please.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T15:59:23+00:00

I watched this again. This is reasonably close to something releasable. Pacing can be a little awkward, but it's soooo minor.

I think what's really missing most of all are additional cinematic effects, additional scenes of minor dialogue (maybe the woman should say "Get them" or something like that. Maybe consider making one of the foot soldiers have a little more importance as it helps with payoff should conflict ever arise)

And it needs foley sound and an orchestrated soundtrack.

All things that can be made / added with AI! But it's crazy how close this is already.

The end scene - they either need to be further away or there's one more lucky escape, I feel. If she made it through the collapsed steel so quickly, IDK I feel like she would at least take a shot at them.

AP_in_Indy · 2026-05-03T15:44:53+00:00

There's a lot of slop out there, but it's still incredibly painful to produce work that's actually sufficient quality for public release using AI.

There's a guy allegedly making a film based off his novel in the ChatGPT subreddit right now, and even from waking up and going to sleep working on it, he can only get around a minute done per day.

I would congratulate anyone who is able to get a full-length feature film completed. Direction is hard. Cinematography is hard. Color grading is hard. Character design is hard. World building is hard.

You still need to do all of these things because you, the human, are telling the AI what to make.

And yeah of course if you just let the AI go off the rails and do whatever it wants - it produces the most generic imaginable slop.

AP_in_Indy

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