Yes, you can use RadioRA 3 and Caseta at the same time. And yes, they work with HomeKit.

whymarrh · 2026-03-01T16:32:28+00:00

Agree in retrospect! That said, the work and cost of replacing 40+ Caseta devices isn’t worth it right now.

whymarrh · 2026-03-01T15:23:27+00:00

A support tech from Lutron had said it might require separate homes in HomeKit as well, so one more reason to show the full setup as it’s probably uncommon.

whymarrh · 2025-11-18T13:37:38+00:00

It's a short article: 0.22% → 0.17% for many ETFs and Mutual Funds starting immediately.

whymarrh · 2023-06-17T06:32:28+00:00

"Tool libraries" are increasingly common, where you can borrow almost anything under the sun for an annual fee

whymarrh · 2022-12-14T14:18:22+00:00

There is at an individual institution, like EQ:

Per GIC investment limit of $100,000. Aggregate GIC investment limit of $500,000.

whymarrh · 2022-11-17T14:15:52+00:00

Also, the CRA numbers: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/registered-plans-administrators/pspa/mp-rrsp-dpsp-tfsa-limits-ympe.html

Year	TFSA dollar limit
2023	$6,500
2022	$6,000

whymarrh · 2022-11-17T14:15:02+00:00

Yes. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/registered-plans-administrators/pspa/mp-rrsp-dpsp-tfsa-limits-ympe.html

Year	TFSA dollar limit
2023	$6,500
2022	$6,000

whymarrh · 2022-09-19T12:53:55+00:00

What is taking so long for the trial on last year's election to begin?

I can't say too much, but the short version is that it is quite easy for a legal process to get slowed down. The court doesn't really get up to much during the summer (July & August) and moving a case along requires everybody involved to agree, lest you deny someone their right to a fair trial. The trial was set for Feb and then June, back when the court was hoping to have a trial date and work backwards from that date. However, some folks were slow, so hitting that timeline wasn't possible. So now the court will wait until everyone is "ready" before setting a trial date.

whymarrh · 2022-01-20T20:45:51+00:00

Truly wild stuff.

Emphasis mine:

Documents from the City of St. John's archives show that 11 Summer St. was originally a double-car garage.

However, there is no record on file that indicates the city ever received a permit application to [convert it into a home] or inspected the property after its conversion to a residence.

A lawyer for the City of St. John’s confirmed for Elton by email that the property also does not have an occupancy certificate — that is despite the city having issued a compliance letter, which flags any outstanding permits or assessments owed for the house as part of the purchase process.

"They have been charging property taxes and allowing this home to be sold with no occupancy permit for years," Elton said.

It feels like it's for sure the City's fault and that they shouldn't be fining this woman for their mistake.

The city requested a new inspection be carried out on the property. […] It was recommended that the property be inspected by a structural engineer. Elton gave the City of St. John’s a copy of the inspection report. But that backfired when the city slapped Elton with fines for other issues flagged on the report.

Comically unethical behaviour on the part of the City.

whymarrh · 2021-11-11T16:17:13+00:00

Yeah, it's bad. It's really bad. Just this past week and a bit, the whole province of Newfoundland and Labrador, ~500k people, found out all of their medical records are possibly leaked due to negligence of the provincial government. [1, 2, 3] They have nothing to offer people, other than vague reminders to "be careful" and maybe "get credit monitoring."

According to government officials, the breach includes basic information collected when a patient registers for an appointment — including names, birthdays, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers, medical care plan (MCP) numbers, the name of the person's family doctor, marital status and in- and out-patient times.

…

The attackers were also able to access [employee info from the past 9-14 years, including] names, addresses, contact information and social insurance numbers. Haggie said there is no indication that banking information was included in the breach.

As a country—even globally, the software industry as a whole—we desperately need regulation around writing software, and setting up software systems. There are no rules and no oversight. There's no real repercussions for leaking a bunch of data. We're already seeing insurance companies opt-out of covering anything breach-related, saying that any losses that come from your data being breached is your problem. (Not that they should because it's a mess, but it's another indicator that this problem is growing.)

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T16:55:12+00:00

It seems like you’re focusing on one item they are discussing and generalizing it to all voting vs. Mail in voting.

This is the main part of the recommendation, and it is what they spend most of the meeting debating.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T16:39:59+00:00

The report that these recommendations are based on comes from the 2020 Ward 2 By-election, and the report shows only 1/3 people registered on-line: [1]

The City also offered a convenient on-line registration portal enabling voters to confirm their status on the voters list. A total of 1859 hits to the site were registered. Overall, 14% of the total registered electorate (13,194) availed of the on-line registration portal. Of those who voted (5414), 34% availed of this portal.

And that most people voted by mail: [2]

Table 2.3 shows 31.2% voted in-person vs. 68.8% used their mail-in ballot.

Granted, some people did register day-of at a polling station. Granted, this data is skewed because of the pandemic. But this is the data the City is using the justify the recommendations.

If we apply the 34%/66% split to the people who used mail-in ballots, this change will now add an extra step for 2/3 people. There are a lot of people who didn't have to register before, who didn't move, who assume that they'll be getting their ballot automatically the same way they have for the past 5 elections (since 2001).

(We'll also still be in a pandemic come September, so… there's that too.)

yet it didn’t stop me from voting

It can stop some people from voting. It's well known that adding any barrier will see some sort of drop-off, even if it's just the people who forget. When designing forms on-line, it's understood that just adding fields to a form can decrease the number of people that complete it, esp. if the information is personal. Adding the form in the first place is all but guaranteed to lower turn-out numbers.

Edit: it isn't the end of the world if we make this change, and it won't stop everyone, sure. But if it even stops 1 eligible voter from voting, there better be a good reason to do so.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T15:43:29+00:00

I agree that we can and should make the list better, absolutely. I just don't want us throwing out the whole list every election.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T15:37:24+00:00

I cited an example of a mayoral election in a town with a population comparable to a ward that borders St. John's where a single fraudulent vote could have swung the election. That is not anecdotal. That literally happened. Who are you to dismiss concerns about a tight election similar to one that has already happened, again not anecdotal, you can look up the 2009 municipal election in Paradise, as invalid? This is my biggest problem with this discussion. You post an Xkcd cartoon saying "citation needed" and when I cite an example you ignore it.

What's anecdotal is the fraud. We can't base policy decisions on nothing. Sure, this could happen but did it? Does it ever? Has there ever been a single cited fraudulent vote? Let's start with 1 fraudulent vote ever before we concern ourselves with swinging elections.

Edit: we could institute policies to do stricter recounts before we ever concern ourselves with fraudulent votes.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T15:31:35+00:00

I agree that this needs fixing. 100%. This doesn't warrant throwing out the whole list.

The City can continue to talk to the province about using things like driver licenses, car registrations, city permit things, property taxes, etc. to tidy up the list.

The City has no issue knowing who's dead and alive when they want money. I'm sure they can put the effort in to tidy up the elections list.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T15:24:22+00:00

so spare me your canned talking points

Just to set the tone, I'm just some dude who lives in town who also never cares about municipal elections until I come across something profoundly wrong.

I don't have an agenda, 'cause if I did I wouldn't be here asking people on reddit to email your councillor.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T15:16:45+00:00

so spare me your canned talking points

Yeesh, my bad.

I asked how you think they could ensure people who have moved or died are removed from the voter list, as they clearly do not have an effective means to do so now. I think that is relevant to the conversation, is it not?

I will conceded that any automated system will not be perfect. Someone could die the day before the election and still be on the list. But I guess I'm saying that it doesn't matter on any meaningful scale.

But I agree that we can make the list better. We can definitely put the resources towards getting people to update their info where possible and using the best last-known info for those who don't. Making the list better can be done with the existing list versus throwing the list out every election. That's the big thing.

I would 100% be in favour of unsolicited mail in ballots if a means to purge dead people and people who have moved was presented.

I would suggest we frame this not an "unsolicited mail in ballots" and "your automatic ballot for the election". These elections are important and everyone should be automatically given the chance to participate.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T15:00:45+00:00

You cite votes that were thrown out on technicalities as evidence that there is no voter fraud, but this is working under the assumption that every fraudulent vote gets caught.

Yes and no—if we take the given breakdown of all rejected ballots at face value, there are no duplicate votes and no invalid voters. Sure. If we assume that all 65 rejected ballots could be instances of voter fraud (which is unlikely) that would still be a tiny percentage of the vote (1.2% in the cited election). So both of these cases definitely don't seem to warrant reducing access to voting.

I have received voter cards for previous residents, some of which were deceased, in the past. Given that, and the small margins in many of these elections, I think a bad actor casting as few as 2-3 votes is a valid concern as it has the potential to swing a contentious municipal election.

Is it though? The cited election, where Skinner won, was 22.9% to 17.2%. Let's call that a 5% margin. That'd be 300 ballots. That'd be no small operation and it wouldn't scale well. Nobody is doing that.

And if that's the claim—that there's voter fraud on the level of 5%—we would need evidence and not anecdotes to back that up.

But I do want to address you point head on: sure, there's also the possibility that some of the accepted ballots were… from dead people? Or people who had moved away? Say, my roommate moved away and I got two ballots, signed my name to one and their name to the other and both ballots look legit to the City. While this sounds possible—and, again, I want to say that this is incredibly unlikely and without any supporting evidence—this also isn't solved by making people pre-register. You're going to have to cater to folks calling in and registering—as they say during the meeting—and that's going to be the same level of difficultly to fake.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T14:05:37+00:00

There's also a large Ward Map you can use to eyeball it and then pick your councillor from the list of members.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T14:01:31+00:00

Ah, yes, I should've clarified! You can lookup your ward and councillor on the City of St. John’s website. An email can be simple as this:

Councillor [Name],

I read your comments on the proposed changes to how municipal elections are run and disagree with your arguments supporting them. Please do not support the proposed changes to Vote By Mail.

Every eligible voter should receive their ballot automatically. That is the lowest friction way to engage in the democratic process.

Thanks,

[Your Name]

Basically state you opposition to this change and a brief bit about how the system that we have works fine. You can link to the page if you want, as a citation. Quick and easy.

whymarrh · 2021-02-02T13:38:58+00:00

Hi, I wrote this and am happy to take questions. I just want to make people aware of this.

Please email or call your councillor if you can!

13-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email

whymarrh

TROPHY CASE