Художник
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What Facebook knows about you everytime you visit:
- Your IP address
- Your location via GPS
- The type of browser you use
- The webpages you visit
- When and where you took the photos or videos you post
Anyone, including people off of Facebook, can see the following information about you:
- Name
- Profile photo
- Your network
- Your username
With your username, someone can find out:
- Your age range
- Your location
- Your gender
“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon”
~James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Text of Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University.
October 4, 2011
David M. Hardy
Section Chief, Record/Information Dissemination Section
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attn: FOI/PA Request
170 Marcel Drive
Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Dear Mr. Hardy:
This letter constitutes a request (“Request”) pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. subsection 552.
I am requesting a copy of all records or information concerning ANWAR AL-AWLAKI (aka Anwar al-Aulaqi).
Mr. Awlaki was born in 1971 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was killed in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011, according to a statement President Barack Obama made the same day. I trust the attached statement of the president will serve as the proof of death you require for this request.
Awlaki was a leader in al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. He was the subject of numerous investigations by the FBI for more than a decade.
If you deny all or any part of this request, please cite each specific exemption you think justifies your refusal to release the information and notify me of appeal procedures available under the law. I expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material.
I look forward to your reply to this Request within twenty (20) business days as required by 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(6)(A)(i).
Thank you for your assistance.
Sincerely,
Seth Hettena
I’ve been getting way into fitness lately. Here’s what I’ve learned so far in about 100 words:
- You can change your life without changing your body. But not the other way around.
- You don’t need strength until you realize you don’t have it and you wish you did.
- Eat food that comes from living things.
- Don’t copy people in the gym. Most don’t know what they’re doing.
- Don’t just sit there.
- Fitness is strength, yes, but it’s also balance, flexibility, agility, power and endurance.
- There is no substitute for hard work.
- True fitness is beautiful movement. See gymnastics, dancing and martial arts.
- If your core is weak, you’re weak.
- Avoid routine. Try everything.
икониLove this sentence in today’s Union-Tribune story on AEG saying the days of publicly-financed sports stadiums are at an end:
From his office in San Diego, Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said he doesn’t share that view.
For seven years starting in 2002, Fabiani said the Chargers would construct a new stadium without taxpayer support. Then for the past 16 months, he has maintained the opposite — that one couldn’t be built in downtown San Diego without a public subsidy.
Jeremy Yohe of The American Land Title Association, the industry’s mouthpiece, has written a lengthy response to my earlier post about title insurance being a scam.
You can read the original post here and Jeremy’s comment appears here.
In his comments, Jeremy has addressed some of the concerns I raised in my piece, but did not address the well-established inefficiencies and structural flaws in the multi-billion title insurance industry.
Jeremy wrote, “A homeowner’s title insurance protects the owner for as long as they or their heirs on the property. And only need to be paid for once.”
- Why then was my $625 title insurance fee necessary on my refinance? Chain-of-title, the major service provided by title insurance, was previously established in my case. A Lexis search would have turned up a lien or a judgment. Interestingly, though, according to CTLA’s Title Wizard, I would have paid LESS in title insurance if I had purchased my home instead of refinancing it.
- How does ALTA explain the findings of “reverse competition” in the mortgage industry that date back to the 1980 Peat Marwick study for HUD? (Also see Consumer Federation of America, 2006 testimony before Congress; California insurance commission study on title insurance)
- If title insurance is performing a valuable service and the “preventive measures” are keeping the title insurance industry’s loss ratio low as Jeremy suggests, why weren’t these savings passed along to me and others in the form of lower fees? Are title insurers colluding to keep prices high?
- How is it that only one company, Entitle Direct, markets title insurance directly to consumers and, as a result, is able to offer me and many other the same service for 35 percent less? Why does Entitle Direct have such a small share of the industry? Am I a customer or merely a fee payer?
- Why shouldn’t California copy Iowa and just put an end to the title insurance racket?
Curious to hear the answers.
San Diego’s housing market may have much further to fall.
So says a new report from the NY Federal Reserve that calculates how many homeowners will become renters over the next few years.
In San Diego, 16 percent of homeowners will become renters, according to the study
This measure assumes that homeowners who owe more than their homes are worth — i.e. negative equity — are in effect renters.
Since the homeownership gap reflects the extent of negative equity in the housing market, it is also a gauge of the potential downward pressure on the offcial homeownership rate. Assuming that house prices do not appreciate over the next several years, negative equity households will very likely convert to renters when they move out of their current homes because they will be unable to save enough to cover the negative equity, the transaction costs of selling their existing home, and a down payment on another home. As these transitions from owning to renting take place, the homeownership gap will narrow, with the offcial homeownership rate dropping toward the effective rate.
The official rate of homeownership in San Diego is 55 percent. But the Fed’s analysis of federal loan data shows that only 39 percent of homeowners will get some money back when they sell.
The difference between these two numbers yields the homeownership gap. And barring a huge rise in prices, that’s where we are headed.
It’s bad, and it may even be worse. According to the paper, these numbers may actually understate the extent of the problem.If you use Case-Shiller’s numbers, only 35 percent of San Diego homeowners have positive equity. So the gap grows to 20 percentage points.
This has far-reaching implications:
Consider, for example, that the Case-Shiller-based effective homeownership rates for … Detroit, New York City, San Diego, and San Francisco are all under 50 percent. That is, the median household in these areas is in a negative equity position and no longer has strong financial incentives to behave as an owner. While the effects will vary with the distribution of negative equity households across the municipalities within these metro areas, a high share of these households could result in reduced maintenance of the housing stock, an increased risk of housing vacancies, and less stable neighborhoods over time—developments that could have repercussions for local law enforcement. Moreover, the predominance of “non-homeowners” in these metropolitan areas could lead to a decline in citizen participation in local affairs, with a concomitant loss of vigilance over the quality and ef?ciency of public services and institutions.
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