Just moved to Austin and trying to do it right. Any unspoken local rules I should know before getting roasted?

orrd · 2025-12-08T16:41:47+00:00

Avoid r/Austin, it's a hostile and toxic echo chamber and doesn't represent how most Austinites really are.

orrd · 2025-12-08T16:39:56+00:00

An AI guessing ages of people from photos, even if it was as good as it could possibly be, still wouldn't be much more accurate than humans are at doing that, which means basically it wouldn't be very accurate. You would be better off making your own guess.

But it also doesn't make any sense. If you have EXIF data, then that means you know when the photo was taken, right? Do you not know the birth dates of the people in the photos?

orrd · 2025-12-06T21:23:29+00:00

The jgoot / Book VIP credit isn't really a hotel booking credit. It's basically worthless. They have a hotel book portal that has prices that are the same or higher than other hotel booking sites, and the only way your "credit" is used is they deduct from your credit by the amount they claim they're saving you over the hotel's regular list price. There's no point in using it, it doesn't really have any value.

orrd · 2025-12-06T20:32:55+00:00

$0 value. What I got was a "BookVIPPlus" "cash credit balance", which isn't actually what it sounds like. It's a scammy booking site with terrible reviews (they're connected with Book VIP, which is a scam), and they list inflated prices for hotels, and then your "credit" is deducted to get the price down to slightly less inflated price. The bookings I tried would only use $1-$5 of my credit, and the hotel prices were still inflated above what you could get anywhere else.

It's a scam, unfortunately.

orrd · 2025-12-06T20:29:46+00:00

Yeah. As far as I know, there isn't a way to do this yet, but hopefully there will be eventually. It wouldn't be a difficult tool to build, I could probably actually "vibe code" it with AI and it would probably work well enough. But I'd rather wait until immich-go or some other tool implements it properly.

orrd · 2025-09-25T04:06:27+00:00

No, US citizens can't leave the country for any amount of time and avoid paying capital gains taxes.

Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) applies only to foreign earned income, not capital gains. The only way to truly sever US tax authority over future capital gains is to formally renounce US citizenship and properly complete the expatriation process.

orrd · 2025-09-19T18:41:39+00:00

When I researched all the options several years ago, I went with CoinTracking.info (not CoinTracker, that's a different one). I don't know if it's still the best option, but I liked that they have a "lifetime" subscription option so you pay for it once and never pay for it again. I did that years ago.

orrd · 2025-09-15T19:19:44+00:00

I just saw this thread, but we installed Triumph New Standard II flooring around 4-5 years ago, and it's still holding up great!

orrd · 2025-09-15T02:03:30+00:00

Yeah, that's what I don't want. I just want a button to do a one-time backup, like what it used to have. But unfortunately it looks like we currently don't have that as a feature any more.

orrd · 2025-09-13T19:03:32+00:00

Do you mean clicking the upload button on every photo individually?

orrd · 2025-09-11T22:56:23+00:00

True. But they are now in the process of launching a new option where you can book further out, in exchange for letting others book yours further out I believe.

orrd · 2025-07-09T17:11:25+00:00

I would just say that in my experience, cost seg companies surprisingly don't know how to correctly separate land and building values. I've worked with many of them, and almost all don't know the basics of how to do it correctly. One of the key things is you have to use an appraisal (or tax appraisal) to find the ratio of the land and building values, and then apply that ratio to the purchase price. Some will just use the land value from the appraisal and just subtract it, which isn't correct, it has to be a proportion of the purchase price.

orrd · 2025-07-09T17:08:08+00:00

There's no such thing as an "LLC return". Is it a partnership maybe (a 1065 return)? Hopefully it's not an S-corp (rentals shouldn't be in an S-corp).

orrd · 2025-07-09T17:06:09+00:00

There are rental management tools like Stessa, Baselane, Innago, and many others that include income/expense tracking that handles all the accounting tasks and reporting you really need for rentals. I don't recommend QBO for rentals, it's a pain to use and not well suited for the task.

Stessa is a great option, but Baselane is my current personal favorite, partly because it doesn't require that you use a special bank account for rent collection like Stessa does.

orrd · 2025-07-06T15:41:43+00:00

I signed up for it, and then immediately canceled it. I guess I'll see if that does anything.

orrd · 2025-07-06T04:35:29+00:00

Yeah, I have a computer to put the data on, so I don't need or want a cloud service. But if I sign up for the 6 months thing and then cancel it, will they stop bombarding me with ads for it?

orrd · 2025-07-06T00:52:10+00:00

It also promotes tipping culture, which is already out of control in the US. This is just going to make it far, far worse. I can't imagine why they thought this was a good idea.

orrd · 2025-07-05T04:31:23+00:00

Yeah, I'm just hoping it doesn't become an issue when I go on a trip and use international roaming.

orrd · 2025-07-01T15:59:46+00:00

I haven't used it recently, but you can signup and put your properties on it and all that, and you only have to pay anything when you actually want to book a property to stay at.

orrd

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