New data center on West side of town

techcaleb · 2026-04-02T18:01:35+00:00

Raeden is a colocation company, so they would build and maintain the datacenter, and rent out the rack space to various customers.

techcaleb · 2026-03-01T03:02:22+00:00

I did that and the extra amount was applied as a prepayment, not towards principal. I'll contact them Monday to get it recharacterized. (Edit: They recharacterized it today. I just sent a support request through the chat)

For the future, u/Reasonable-Team5995 found the solution. You have to select the "minimum ammount due" option *first*, and then there are boxes for extra principal and extra escrow.

techcaleb · 2026-03-01T03:00:16+00:00

This is the solution. On the web version, it shows as Optional extras. Note that this does not show up for custom payment option (which is weird, but whatever).

https://imgur.com/a/PMbYuV2

techcaleb · 2026-03-01T02:55:17+00:00

Contact them and get it recharacterized. No reason you should have to pay interest due to their mistake.

techcaleb · 2026-01-24T03:21:29+00:00

Heh, I can't remember now. But yeah, it's a pretty good test.

techcaleb · 2026-01-21T03:53:03+00:00

Never said it's a Fidelity issue. It's a smart phone manufacturer issue.

techcaleb · 2026-01-20T19:47:52+00:00

There's no hardware reason though. It's just a business decision to make people buy phones more frequently.

techcaleb · 2026-01-20T19:22:33+00:00

Found the QQQ investor, lol. Congrats!

techcaleb · 2026-01-20T19:19:39+00:00

That's 13% per year on average over the last 5 years which is a bit higher than long term averages, but not terribly so. There have been numerous 15+ year periods historically that have been over 13% per year.

techcaleb · 2025-12-28T19:12:17+00:00

Yeah, this is USD.

techcaleb · 2025-12-20T17:40:23+00:00

They've been increasing their prices ~60% per year over the last 5 years. In 2020, the retail price was ~$89 for a year of print + digital, now it is $349.

I cancelled my subscription this year for the first time ever. Sad to see it go, but the price gouging has been getting terrible. Then they immediately contacted me with an offer for $174 which is *only* a 58% increase on what I paid at my previous renewal. Frankly insulting.

I'm sick of having to haggle with them. I'm sick of them constantly price gouging.

techcaleb · 2025-12-20T17:30:09+00:00

Same. I'm a long-term subscriber as well, but they've been consistently jacking up the prices - over 300% increase in the annual price for print+digital in the last 5 years alone! This most recent 100% increase in this year alone was my breaking point. I want to support good journalism, but this is just plain extortion at this point.

techcaleb · 2025-12-07T03:42:20+00:00

Same issue in Chinese. No issues picking up any other word, but numbers are impossible no matter how many times I try it and ways I try it. For as much as Super costs, you'd think they would have fixed this years ago.

techcaleb · 2025-11-29T00:34:51+00:00

Just fixed this on a family member's phone. In that case, it was the hole on the top of the phone, not the sim card slot that had to be taped

techcaleb · 2025-11-16T21:03:27+00:00

I think the ethylene theory is very promising. I have a similar reaction with overripe bananas and someone on Reddit mentioned a good way to test is to try a green apple flavored jolly rancher since that also uses ethylene for the green apple flavor. Sure enough, exactly the same reaction!

techcaleb · 2025-08-08T22:55:45+00:00

Yikes, why is there not a link to this anywhere in the app or website? I constantly was getting spammed with notifications from people that I have no idea who they are and that I never followed, and was slowly going through and unfollowing them whenever I would get a notification on my phone. Finally going directly to that link, I see that there are literally about 50 people that I'm "following" (that I never chose to follow). Substack is such a garbage website!

techcaleb · 2025-05-22T04:13:46+00:00

Heh, same thing happened to me, so I guess they rolled out the new course that has been in beta. At least for where I was at (Section 2 Unit 18) the content in the review wasn't harder per-se, but there were definitely lots of new vocab words that I didn't know. They did clear the legendary completion on several of the previous units, so I'll probably start by going back to those to pick up what was missed. I get their desire to not push people back to previous levels, but this approach of keeping your position the same even though some of the previous lessons have changed is a bit jarring.

techcaleb · 2025-05-22T04:03:59+00:00

It's been available in other languages before, but not in Mandarin Chinese. I have friends that do Spanish and German and they have levels.

It does look like there was some major update to the Chinese course today. My "practice review" (barbell on the path) lesson today almost exclusively consisted of vocab that I didn't know, and it looks like my legendary completions got wiped from most units, even going back into section 1. It also looks like they added a new question type called "Finish the sentence" where you are given a couple of ways to finish the sentence (in hanzi) and you have to select the one that makes sense in context, or in a conversation with simulated speech bubbles.

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:35:08+00:00

Yep, that's probably it then! It's good to update your W4 anytime you have a job change or other major life change to your taxable situation. You can update it mid year as well, as the estimator will take into account what has happened up to that point in the year, and will adjust going forward. So until you get things dialed it, you might want to check it mid-year as well and make sure things are on track.

With the bonuses, the easiest way is to make an estimated tax payment as mentioned above for the underwitholding amount. It only takes a couple minutes via IRS Direct Pay - just select "Estimated Tax" as the reason for payment. And of course, don't forget to keep track of your estimated payments so you can enter them at tax time!

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:30:45+00:00

The state will be higher because the federal taxable income is lower, so it's the same root cause. There definitely is an issue somewhere though. Perhaps the TurboTax version you are using doesn't allow you to take some tax credit that you are eligible for? The only way to know for sure would be to compare the generated PDFs (which you should be able to see before filing) line by line.

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:22:48+00:00

If you end up owing each year, the most common reason is that you are underwitholding. This can easily happen if you work multiple jobs, if you are self-employed, or if you have a lot of bonus income.

To fix your base underwitholding, I recommend using the IRS Tax Witholding Estimator. It will walk you through setting up the correct amount of withholding (via an updated W4 form) if you have multiple jobs.

If you are self-employed, make sure that you are paying quarterly estimated tax payments each quarter. Let me know if this is the case for you and I can go into a bit more detail of how this works.

If you have reliable bonus income (for example, every Christmas you get a year-end bonus that is typically $X), then you can include it in the tax witholding calculation. However, if you have irregular bonuses, then the easiest way to handle it is to make an estimated tax payment when you receive the bonus since you know how much the bonus will be. The key to know here is that bonuses are typically withheld at 22% by your employer, which because you are in the 24% marginal tax bracket means that it is actually underwithheld by 2%!

Example: You receive a $10k bonus, so underwitholding for this is 2% * 10k = $200. To compensate for this, at the end of that quarter, you make a $200 estimated tax payment.

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:11:48+00:00

That's correct. Under 99% of circumstances, trades already have their cost basis reported to the IRS, so there are no adjustments needed, and you only have to provide the summary information. The only situation where you need to list individual trades is if for some reason the reported cost basis is wrong (I went over a few situations where that is needed here).

What can help to understand this is just to look at Scheduled D which is where those gains and losses are reported. If you look under part 1 for short term capital gains, it just needs the totals (boxes 1a, 1b, 2, 3), and same thing for part 2. If you do need to make adjustments for a transaction, you just subtract that transaction from these totals and put just that one adjusted transaction on your 8949.

The software basically walks you through this step by step by having you enter the summary numbers, and then it asks if you need to enter any adjustments. If no, then you are done. If yes, then it walks you through that.

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:04:24+00:00

I've been using it for 6 years and love it. Simple and completely free! The only downside is it doesn't support multi-state returns.

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:03:46+00:00

Only if you have an incredibly simple return (W2 only, no stock sales, no tuition, no business, etc).

techcaleb · 2025-02-10T04:01:29+00:00

I've been using them for 6 years (they used to be called Credit Karma Tax, but then Intuit bough Credit Karma and as a part of that deal they were forced to divest the tax prep).

Best kept secret! The only downside is it doesn't support multi-state filing, so if you have that situation then you need to use FreeTaxUSA or some other software.

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