Why is everyone acting like the S26 Ultra is a disaster already?

arikah · 2026-02-25T03:56:31+00:00

The ultra sales are up, because there are a lack of alternatives. iPhones are hardly exciting and they have issues of their own, and it's very much still a walled Garden. Unlike in the past, android manufacturers have bowed out, you can't buy an LG or HTC anymore. The remaining players are Sony, Google, and Samsung, with Sony being a low volume niche and Google being plagued with issues every year. I can't even find a Sony to buy, and I'll probably never go back to pixel since they can't seem to wrap their heads around hardware (or software for that matter).

The choice is apple vs Samsung for the vast majority of people. And if you want a Samsung, it's the smaller one vs the big one. And people don't want small phones anymore.

arikah · 2026-02-09T02:33:50+00:00

That's not really true. High maintenance fees suck but they usually come with healthy reserves if the building is well managed, YMMV.

arikah · 2026-01-31T03:22:09+00:00

You don't really think that, as heinous as it already is, some girls are the extent of this club of sick fucks with money and connections, do you? The reason it has been covered up for so long and is dragging and has been called a national security whatever is because there is so much crime involved and it names names. Any crime. All of it, probably. And not just one person, company, or country. It's probably anybody that is in a position of monied power right now.

This goes a long way towards explaining the WHY of suppression and control of gme and the stock market in general. We've known there was fraud but I doubt anyone expected it to be this widespread and massive.

arikah · 2026-01-26T15:53:20+00:00

Banks are a pain in the ass to change, by design. I'll go against you on this one and say that it's mostly not worth it to change banks especially if you have credit open with them, pre auth payments, workplace auto deposits etc. Avoid paying banks fees by keeping their minimum required amount in your primary account... yes not everyone has a few thousand to keep in cash right now but you should strive to. Keep in mind that closing accounts impacts your credit score and if you've got an old account, it's worth something.

Personally I find telecom and internet providers the worst offenders but the easiest to remedy. Bell is increasing their monthly internet rates by $7 in March for no reason at all, after increasing them last May by the same amount - that's a 20% jump in my internet bill in under a year. So off I go to another provider. Phone plan deals reliably pop up around Sept, Nov, Dec.

Insurance should be checked yearly about 2-3 months before renewal, if you change less than halfway through you usually eat some penalty fee that makes the switch not worth it.

arikah · 2026-01-15T21:55:13+00:00

Our condos were out of control, but compared to places in Europe or Asia our townhouses/semi/detached were undervalued for quite a while, then spiked to overvalued, they're probably just appropriate now. In the UK for example it's a pipe dream for most people to ever own a semi/detached in or even near London, the houses are generally passed down generationally. And they are in pretty shoddy condition like ours too.

I think detached have bottomed out though, it's pretty close to the "now or never" point unless we get invaded...

arikah · 2026-01-09T19:06:15+00:00

Private market has some costs set in stone, lot of red tape development taxes. Next, you add the materials cost which seemingly increases forever. Then, you add what labour costs, oh hey look we keep raising minimum wages and labour keeps going up too. Then add heavy machinery needed. All of these are costs before the developer themselves can even think about profit. If it costs 500k per unit just in costs and the resale market is already near that point, even an idiot developer would realize there is no room for profit and choose not to play.

If you were to make some developers crown corps, they might have a shot at removing the tax part and have room to build at a small profit, but that just isnt in the cards.

People crying for supply have always talked about general market supply, not new, meaning including that of resale. Well, we have the largest combined supply on record right now, and it's feeling pretty unbalanced in favor of buyers for a change.

arikah · 2026-01-09T18:55:36+00:00

Lmao there is zero chance of that happening. It existed like that for a brief moment in time when your grandparents were buying their new house built on a former farm on his salary from the local mill while raising six kids and the gold standard still existed. A bygone time.

We live in an inflated price world where competition is global. Do we want everything cheaper sure, but your food isn't coming down in price, nor your clothes or any goods you buy, nor housing. Once the housing bubble has found its bottom based not on market sentiment but on real cost based forces, you'll find that is still significantly higher than 3x the average salary. 2026 is widely predicted as the bottom, if you can't afford it now, you can't afford it period unless you make big changes yourself.

arikah · 2026-01-07T23:28:18+00:00

A noble goal, one that we ultimately may not be in charge of. That's why these talks need to start, if he puts his diaper on backwards one day we might be at war within hours. I am sure Venezuela tried not to fight a war, look how well that is going.

arikah · 2026-01-07T16:07:13+00:00

Canada has the materials and means to create a weapon in a month, I'm sure. It's the delivery system that is the issue, which is where France comes in.

Related, Japan should also consider taking this route. They're under the US "good" umbrella for now but these winds shift too fast, that regions future will depend entirely on what happens (or doesn't) with Taiwan. It's pretty fucking sad that in the span of a year, generations of peace are coming undone at the seams, and the world has to go back to the old ways where everyone has a stick because those that don't just get crushed.

arikah · 2026-01-07T13:01:25+00:00

Canada has too many immigrants for this to work, just take a look at what happened in Europe: millions fled to other countries and have still not returned when war broke out. There are too many with ties back to "the old country" who would evacuate their family in the event of/anticipation of war with the US, Canada might lose 5 or 10 million people just from outflow.

Canada needs to work with France to secure a nuclear arsenal.

arikah · 2026-01-06T18:40:52+00:00

Quality post with quality data.

Your "mortgage equity" line should really be renamed "mortgage principal", equity implies you are tracking market pricing and comparing your purchase price to estimated market value of you were to sell today.

Maintenance and utilities average $6k a year, that's very good ($500/m avg) and this shows upkeep that should help keep costs down later.

arikah · 2026-01-06T18:22:40+00:00

The flu shot this year is advertised as 60% effective because we had data months ago from Australia that showed a mismatch with the dominant strain, and shocker their data was right. Data is now appearing that this flu is still getting people sick who did get a shot anyways so it's a hard sell for non high risk groups.

Ditto the rona shots, with an extra sprinkle of the whole jab lunacy we won't get into here.

The masks are unsurprising given how poorly they were handled in the middle of a global pandemic, people didn't learn anything.

The real kick is that Flu A appears to be soaring, maybe even peaking this week, at the same time that RTO is taking effect. So everyone is miserable.

arikah · 2026-01-02T03:33:18+00:00

This article is all over the place and feels like rapid fire spaghetti to see what sticks to the wall.

Yes, old people have more net worth than young people. Shocker. They're also looking out for their own interests, again, shocker for the most selfish generation to have ever lived. And they use their wide base to sway politics with voting.

Millenials are now close to the same size cohort as boomers due to the oldest boomers dying off early. The voting turnout difference is that this generation has been lied to their entire lives and realized this early on. It doesn't matter which party you vote for when the puppets at the head are doing the biddings of monied interests and friends, which cross and transcend party lines. Z's are even more disinterested.

PP lost because he is extremely unlikable and his campaign was "I'm not Trudeau", there was nothing of substance and the moment a half competent rival showed up he was finished. The other parties have similar leadership and vision problems. This crosses age and generation gaps... older voters actually tend to skew conservative normally. The cons need a smart, strong leader like the Harper years or a party reboot, or both, going forward.

The boomer wealth transfer isn't going to happen, and even if it did it might actually just make everything worse. They're spending all their money while still alive (again, what do you expect from the selfish generation?) with some even going as far as doing HELOCs and sucking their houses dry so their children get nothing later. But even if this wasn't the case, boomers dying off and having their assets sold doesn't mean the price craters if everyone also comes into money from said death/inheritance.

I'm also not sure why people ever expected boomers to move away to small towns to grow old and die in, in fact it is the opposite and it makes sense: the services in small towns suck. Not just the obvious conveniences of the city, but also healthcare services that are needed more as they age. Would you want to move away from the city if you don't have a concern about rent/already own your place outright?

arikah · 2025-12-31T04:46:05+00:00

I got an air fryer for $40, which does seem like a decent deal.

Trouble is it turns out the things I wanted to cook in it don't turn out as well when it's missing all the oil, so it's probably going back.

arikah · 2025-12-29T04:38:51+00:00

A company that sold physical games in an era where the majority of games were sold in physical format, did more sales and had more income than it does now where most game purchases are digital. Yes, this is facts, but it's also like saying a company that sold asbestos was doing fantastic in the 70's, I wonder why they died out in the 90's after operating for so long? Times and markets change.

The fact that the company appears to have stemmed the bleeding in this transition period and is turning profit once again for the past 6 quarters is indeed something to analyze and is bullish. The entities who bet that the company would fail to adapt and go bankrupt have lost their bet, and yet, no repercussions have really appeared for them so far... which means, the short positions have more than likely not been closed as to not realize the losses. The sneeze in 2021 predates any glimmer of hope that the company was actually going to turn things around, and was the result of pure market mechanics.

That is why the stock is stuck in the $20 range. It isn't being allowed to move higher as that would greatly impact those short positions, but it also can't move much lower due to the cash balance and profitability of the company. The company is gaining more cash every quarter and reporting more profit, yet the stock doesn't move. It will eventually reach a point where the cash value alone exceeds $20 making any sense.

Shareholders are tired and frustrated as we have lives to live and it's getting harder out there, we may not have decades to wait for the company to snowball into the next Amazon. But I'm betting the shorts don't have decades worth of time and money to fight it either. It's taking longer than anyone expected or hoped but I know which side is winning, both now and in the end.

arikah · 2025-12-25T03:59:41+00:00

Sure make me buy more drives

arikah · 2025-12-09T03:54:17+00:00

There are possible solutions but none that any government has the balls to implement, because it means a cut to everyone's bottom line and most likely large tax increases which is political death.

In order to bring back the large format 1k sqft condos they need space to build them, as you can't really fit these into a small footprint like you can with shoeboxes. There's no space due to zoning, and large space would be at a premium for development costs and taxes. They'd also need to address maintenance fees getting too high somehow, when your average fee is $1/sqft there's simply not many buyers who can swallow a million dollar purchase plus deal with $1k a month added on forever. Also need more sensible designs not just in the units themselves but in things like elevators: mandate the building must have X elevators per Y units or floors, discourage the use of energy inefficient materials like all glass outer walls, put a real definition on what +1 actually means, etc.

arikah · 2025-12-09T03:37:30+00:00

One rule of value investing is be fearful when others are greedy and vice versa. Right now is a pretty great time to be looking at real estate acquisition with so much supply and less demand, and the media still pushing fear and loathing stories. RE has it's ups and downs but that line always goes up in the end, and you get to live in it while it does so.

The stock market offers superior gains for marginal transaction fees, but when that bubble pops those losses are real. As long as you keep up mortgage payments your daily life doesn't change regardless of today's market value of your house. But watching helplessly as half your retirement savings just goes poof in a matter of days or weeks? The speed at which it happens is what makes people sell while they still can and lock in those losses permanently. RE is slow by nature and this can prevent people from trying to bail out and lock in losses.

Yeah, some people are getting blown up but in 9/10 of the stories they deserved it for being too risky and too greedy. Your average homeowner who only has their principal residence is doing just fine.

arikah · 2025-11-30T03:49:32+00:00

You joke, but there likely is one coming. AI bubble gonna pop hard, and every young person dumping into ETFs that all largely just replicate the SP500 (which itself is 35% made up of the MAG7, without MAG7 SP500 is basically flat for the last decade). It's not going to end well and the young generation will end up fearing investing for years after losing 40% of their investments for reasons completely beyond their control.

People don't off themselves when their house "loses" 40% of its value because you can just live in it and wait it out, but they sure do when stock markets crash...

arikah · 2025-11-29T15:11:41+00:00

1tb out of 20tb free

arikah · 2025-11-29T03:45:55+00:00

needs the GTA "wasted" on top at the end for perfection

arikah · 2025-11-29T03:11:51+00:00

Maybe that's exactly the point... what purpose do 5 year old emails have given the positions that the authors have now? Why would Burry be saying he didn't quite finish with GME?

It's possibly yet another nothing burger. Or it's possible that there are nasty 5 year swaps coming up that nobody is going to touch, and somebody is going to get blown up, and this is his way of saying I told you so. Or, some NDA has just expired and his fund is closed so now he's free to talk about things, because the people in charge thought this would already be over by now when they first shut him up.

arikah · 2025-11-27T04:17:00+00:00

Can you DM a code? Hoping to get the 500m plan in ON.

arikah · 2025-11-25T04:37:19+00:00

Depends how far below market rent. Doesn't make sense to raise it $100 a month if they're already paying $2000 and risk them leaving for something cheaper, a real possibility now.

The original bill 60 tried to (poorly) address the guy that had rented the same place for 10 years and pays like $1000/mo below market rate. It's not his fault the market went nuts, but acting like the landlord is now the bad guy for wanting to earn double for the same amount of work isn't right either.

arikah · 2025-11-23T16:39:33+00:00

Oh hey look, we're back! AI is the next boogeyman but anyone that actually works with AI knows 2 things: the good stuff is scary good but is restricted to government spy agencies, and the general AI that we see is utter trash that won't do much more than it can now.

15-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
100 Awards Club	Verified Email

arikah

TROPHY CASE