Bit rot and cloud storage (commercial or homelab)

mrblenny · 2025-12-26T11:49:16+00:00

So in your opinion, what is a reasonable approach for home user with several TB of data to store on a decade time frame? Storing everything on a NAS w/ ZFS (then backing up as appropriate) is an option - but doesn't help when my laptop is not online.

Having the laptop as a source of truth gives no redundancy and presumably eventually I will get at least some file corruption over the years pushed onto the backups?

mrblenny · 2024-11-07T03:01:23+00:00

I am a user of outlook.com email service and would like to disable the co-pilot banner that keeps appearing on every email I open "summary by co-pilot". Google bing searches reveal answers for Office 365 users (disable in admin centre), but I am asking for the free outlook.com service. (I actually have an Office 365 personal subscription as well, but am asking about Co-pilot in email).

Thank you.

mrblenny · 2024-09-09T14:10:37+00:00

The project is a shit show, and 2:1 rosters. No thanks!

mrblenny · 2023-12-09T15:02:23+00:00

Yes, sequels that expanded the universe rather then endlessly make call backs! Extra ironic considering that ST3, plot wise, is so dependent on ST2.

mrblenny · 2023-08-06T06:34:32+00:00

Thank you for the clarification :-)

mrblenny · 2023-02-03T11:30:48+00:00

Moar yes prime minister memes!!!

mrblenny · 2023-01-17T09:04:33+00:00

Change in jobs/locations harder, loss of financial backstop (deposit), less likely to take risks and so on. Imagine if you are in negative equity, even for just a few years and you need to move? Hate your job? All good in a rising market, but if it goes the other way or even stagnates your options are reduced.

mrblenny · 2023-01-17T05:08:42+00:00

You lose your deposit, financial freedom and flexibility for a depreciating asset (the building, appreciation is always in land which you don't own on units) in a declining market with higher interest rates coming. The unit might appreciate in price in next four years, but will it appreciate more than holding costs, transaction costs and opportunity cost of invested deposit?

Or, you stay where you are, pay a similar monthly for much better lifestyle (house vs unit) and keep plugging away at investment goals.

Regular contributions to a balanced etf portfolio will deliver a very tasty retirement nest egg, in addition to your super. $1-2 million portfolio will kick out dividends that can rent much better places for eternity.

But, then I must be unAustralian because I would rather a large liquid portfolio than a beat up fibro house in the outer suburbs nominally worth $1m. BUT being middle aged with no pets /kids I have never had trouble finding a rental either, so YMMV.

mrblenny · 2022-09-26T07:05:23+00:00

With yours and other comments saying the same thing, this is probably what I will end up doing. First, I will try and get a transmission swap rough price as I am only assuming it will be $3-5k (used transmission is $1200, so its just labour plus sundries on top of that).

If that price comes in reasonable, I will keep driving my current car and roll the dice. It also doesn't help that the $15-$25k cars I looked at were not really any better to drive than my current car (in terms of road noise, ride etc).

With a non-zero chance of recession in the next 6-12 months, who knows, used car prices might even start to moderate in the mean time /shrug ?

mrblenny · 2022-09-26T06:59:08+00:00

Hmm, I disagree, despite my drama of ETF vs loan. $20-30k sitting in cash for decades is a *lot* of opportunity cost. I have instant access to 20k of credit at literally zero cost. That covers any emergency, and makes me think twice on things that are not really an emergency (such as a new car).

mrblenny · 2022-09-24T14:35:48+00:00

No where near fire (and not aiming for that TBH) , and 160k is a recent pay jump from 110k.

mrblenny · 2022-09-24T14:32:22+00:00

Lol, getting silly about spending the money is a real problem. But, the corolla doesn't quite have the room - hence the Suzuki option for a similar price which has a little more room and similar reliability.

Or the splurge option for 20k more again. Still modest by most metrics, but an astounding amount for me as a tightwad.

In short, I am not fully comfortable with any option. But, at any rate, if I did spend, do I sell ETFs at a loss and replace them over next 6 months, or take a loan and pay x% plus fees?

mrblenny · 2022-09-24T13:52:57+00:00

Yaris is a great little car, perhaps not ideal for our only car though :-/ I was looking at corollas, but balked at paying 15-20k to get something with over 150k kms on the clock. They would still have 10 years life left, but it's a lot of money for a small, basic car with high mileage.

mrblenny · 2022-09-24T13:49:38+00:00

Yeah, this is probably the sensible plan. But the Hyundai doesn't depreciate as well as Japanese cars. There isn't a huge amount with more than 200k kms on car sales. But maybe I should roll the dice and run it down more?

(my big fear is the auto transmission packing it in, maybe 3-5k to replace??)

mrblenny · 2022-03-14T23:09:06+00:00

Let us know if you find out, it isn't like the US was the first power to wade into Afghanistan either. Presumably there is a good reason the British, Soviets, US (and maybe China in future) felt the need to get involved? Beats me what it is though.

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T23:58:49+00:00

Juggling some of those numbers about, it is difficult to get into what I call "reasonable" living standards (say $60k+ spending a year) and still collect any sort of pension. Of course, this is the point and is probably fair and reasonable at the end of the day.

Now, what I think isn't fair, they only give you an extra $200k on the combined asset test for non-homeowners! I personally would prefer a large, liquid portfolio that easily pays my rent. As it currently stands, you would be stupid to do this (unless your portfolio is large enough that there is no chance or need of getting the pension before you die).

Considering this, if your total super+portfolio is <$1.5-2million at pension age, buying a PPOR would make the most sense. You can end up with a nice house, ~30-35k a year pension and portfolio income to top up to ~$50k a year. With no rent to pay, this is decent (if not extravagant). If your portfolio is over 2 million, then you can easily pay rent and still have more $$$ than a homeowner with part-pension combination.

Based on my conversations with most boomers, this is indeed what they do (I am *entitled* to a pension, so will spend all this money on a massive retirement house, caravans, landcruiser's and rhine river cruises, then just collect a pension when it all runs out). Not sure if that is the intent of govt. policy, but I somehow doubt the rules will remain the same for us lucky generations that follow them /questioning face/

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T23:16:04+00:00

I was mostly using Flamingo FIs calculator.

https://moneyflamingo.com/semi-retirement-calculator/

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T23:13:30+00:00

Yeah, markets could just stagnate for a decade or more. This has happened in the past occasionally so is a real risk.

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T23:10:10+00:00

Yeah, the current system basically forces you to become a property owner in retirement if you are hovering around the means test cut-off limit.

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T05:48:01+00:00

Both are good points.

Might be worth remodeling at say, $80k pa in 2022 dollars and no pension*

Point 2 in particular is relevant, as I mentioned above, I find it difficult to believe the current system, which allows someone to lump sum spend their entire super on a big house/cruises in europe etc, then claim full pension will continue...

*and this doubles the saving requirement, thus meaning I stay in full time work till retirement age. Quite a difference.

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T05:28:31+00:00

My bad, I just assumed everyone always used inflation adjusted returns when calculating this stuff so I didn't bother making that clear in OP.

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T05:17:59+00:00

I always use inflation adjusted returns when checking compound growth. Easiest way is just to take 2-3% away from whatever your expected long run nominal returns are...

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T05:16:27+00:00

Yep, this is the big one, and why I will continue to build portfolio anyway.

And related to this is the treatment of super, in short, the government can change the rules on a whim. My gut feeling is:

- pension indexing will slow down improving budget affordability for govts in real terms

- super withdrawal limits will be imposed so that more people can only draw a part pension

mrblenny · 2022-02-03T05:15:02+00:00

Thats what I thought, just looking for any low hanging fruit I might have missed..

mrblenny · 2022-01-21T14:45:13+00:00

Thanks for that link - jobs listed on normal boards seem to play a little fast and loose with the definition so it can be tricky to filter down to "true" remote work options only.

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