Comments

Episode-479- Listener Feedback 7-21-10 — 19 Comments

  1. Hey Jack,

    Heard about this kid just yesterday on the morning commute which brought me to the OneRedPaperclip site yesterday.

    17-Year-Old Craigslist-Swapped An Old Phone For A Porsche:

    http://foreign.peacefmonline.com/news/201007/61528.php

    The story goes that he quickly found out that a oil change and tune up on average run around $150 and $1000 respectively and is now looking to trade the car.

  2. I think the take-away point is that this concept we call “value” is always subjective and that if we can learn the art of “thinking in someone else’s shoes” and see what is valuable to THEM and what WE can provide, we can become very wealthy.

    And this is especially true in these Interesting Times where everything in the human condition seems to be multiplying and leveraging faster than ever. It used to take decades to get rich, now people are doing it faster than ever. If we can learn to tap into that, we are onto something big. Incidentally, that is also pretty much the theme of the upcoming issue of my magazine 🙂

  3. Just throwing this out… if anyone here wants to review Gary Vaynerchuk’s book for the upcoming issue, I have a slot open. But I’m gonna need it ASAP. Reason is that the dude who was supposed to do it has bailed on me suddenly.

    I would normally send you a free copy to review, but I already sent it out to aforementioned guy. So if you are in a writing mood, own the book “Crush it!”, and want to help us out, email me at editor at interestingtimesmagazine dot com

    (If anyone has watched “Get Altitude” by Eben Pagan, we are looking to review that as well)

    We are going to send some print copies of Interesting Times to among others Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk. I can’t guarantee that they will read it, but there’s a chance at least… might be a good way to get your name on their radar 🙂

  4. Jack,

    I often develop websites which use facebook API

    I wanted to let you know what was up with the “facebook” simulation for “the colony”. I had happened to check this site out last week.

    You can always edit your apps under account > application settings.. Then select “extended pemissions” and you can see apps that can post to your wall, etc. “Join the Colony” was not listed as an app that could post status updates or post to my wall. In fact it was not listed under “extended permissions” at all.

    Here are the extended permissions that apps can be granted
    http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions

    It did not contact any of my friends or family at all or post anything to my facebook wall. In fact. The only thing it can get right now is my friends names and profile picture. If you read on you will see how that is used. I’m going out on a limb and assuming that they aren’t building a massive name/picture database for future extermination efforts.

    Posting to your wall is something it can request, however as I already stated this particular app does not request that privilege.

    Once you have given this particular app access: what it does is setup a fake “social media” website that is supposed to be basically facebook after the collapse of society, except instead of seeding it with random data it is made to look like a lot of the posts are from your actual friends and family.

    Also at the top there is a timeline you can slide through to see their posts at various times throughout the disaster. Mixed in with your actual friends are fake friends which have posted videos, etc.

    Your friends who are among the infected get like a bio-hazard symbol stuck over their photo. It is kind of stupid, but sort of amusing to see a picture of your mom complaining about having to eat a rat or whatever. HA HA

    I made a screenshot of the entire thing here
    http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9152/thecolony.jpg

    I blanked out my friends names, but you can see my name “nick ladieu” and my facebook profile picture at the top… this will give you an idea of what it is all about.

    All in all I thought this was a fun application and I would recommend checking it out.

    Anyway I just wanted to clear the air about that particular facebook issue. Facebook API is pretty good about not allowing apps to randomly spam your wall or contact your friends without the user being an active participant in the spamming.

  5. I’m curious, did the red paper clip guy have to pay taxes on each trade-up? If not, good for him! I see that he is Canadian. Man, the I.R.S. would be all over him if he was an American.

  6. Oh, i thought it also might be helpful for the audience to know how emailing works within facebook api.

    If an application gets access to send you email it gets a “proxy” emailed address. This is not your email. So basically it is an email address that only works as long as you have given that application permission to email you. Once you yank that permission that email address they requested stops working

    People were freaking out in January that facebook apps would start harvesting emails and the end of the world was here finally. I think it is mostly a lack of understanding for how it all works.

    It is against TOS with facebook for them to distribute that email, of course ultimately you have the control via the account settings to remove the app that is emailing you.

    http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Proxied_Email

    Facebook apps won’t EVER get your actual email address (to my knowledge… please correct me if I am wrong)

  7. Sorry to keep posting… another comment on the proxy email thing.. this is why facebook connect sites like digg.com have to request your actual email address after you connect… they can’t get it from FB

    -Nick

  8. LOL, sorry I can’t help myself. I wanted to clarify… when I said that it could only access your friends name and profile pic that isn’t 100% accurate.. it can also get any information that your friends have marked as being 100% public… so this would be the same as if I viewed your page and I wasn’t your friend I might see your political leanings or whatever… You can hide all of this stuff under the Account menu if you so choose.

  9. @nick don’t apologize thanks for the information. I may have to give this thing a chance, everything you said makes perfect sense.

  10. Reboundpodcast.com gave Jack a nice plug. They are a couple fighting to get out of debt. If you want to see how it is done on a day to day basis, listen to their podcast… pretty neat stuff.

    As far as pulling retirement funds early, there is something called 72t

    Something I clipped and posted from another source…

    Section 72(t)(2)(A)(iv) provides an exception to the early distribution penalty. This exception is for payments that are part of a series of substantially equal periodic payments made for the life (or life expectancy) of the individual or the joint lives (or joint life expectancy) of the individual and his or her designated beneficiary.

    The series of payments may not be modified (other than by reason of death or disability) within a five-year period beginning on the date of the first payment or, if later, age 59½. This series of payments has become known as 72(t) payments.

  11. Loved this show, lots of info.
    We prep because it has become a way of life & less government interference. Great to always have items on hand instead of running to the store which is not close. Check us out on youtube: “hawk hill farm off the grid” it has taken us 10 years to get to this point.
    I barter dog services, I have 7 dogs & I house/pet sit for a gal who does likewise for me when I have to go away. I love barter!

  12. I heard about the kid who traded for a Porsche as well. Good on him for making it happen; the problem is that from the looks of it that car has been ridden hard and put away wet. If you look at pictures, it’s got a lousy front-end fit and still has damage on the front driver’s quarter. It’s probably been in an accident, and if it was “valued at $9000” as some articles are claiming, it’s probably on the edge of a very expensive crankshaft failure.

    Nonetheless an impressive series of events, but hopefully the Boxster is just more one stop on the trading route to something better. Go for the house! 😀

  13. Jack… update on the Colony/Facebook thing:

    On the Discovery Channel intro-video page (http://thecolony.discovery.com/#fbid=fVU7uDBERGv) there’s a “No Facebook account? Click here to skip personalization” button that will allow you to see all of these pages without having them linked in to your Facebook account or friends.

    Link to non-Facebook page: (http://thecolony.discovery.com/outbreak#fbid=fVU7uDBERGv)

    Looks interesting, and the videos are pretty neat, but most of the comments are the same random, mindless crap you’re going to find all over Facebook anyway.

    I’ve never seen an episode from the original season, but this definitely looks interesting enough to set up on the DVR.

  14. I can confirm that ROTH contributions may be withdrawn without penalty – had to do it last year.

    The 1099-R showed a distribution code of “J” which means “Early distribution of ROTH IRA, no known exception (in mode cases, under age 59 1/2).”

    There were a couple of additional questions generated on my tax return that required affirmation of non-taxable distribution (aka Are you really sure you don’t owe us anything?).

    That said, it’s monumentally important to track to the penny how much you contribute. One cent over and it could be a different story. I left $100 of the original principal in the account to be on the safe side.

  15. traded a cook tripod i made for a beautiful laminate longbow at spring thing. shoots like a dream!