tumult

Not in my experience. I see it almost every time I end up in a reddit thread from search results. I've recently started demoting it in Kagi. It's just not as good as it used to be. Newer threads tend to be full of junk and bots.

No, that’s describing permanent DST, which was tried and failed, not lack of DST. Most people in the world live without DST and it’s fine. (The article also mentions this.)

This increase in capital requirements stamps out the visa mills.

No, it doesn't. The rich people abusing the system just deposit more money and get their checkmark. Small businesses cannot raise and float this kind of cash quickly.

Also, the policy change is being applied retroactively to visa renewal applications that had already been filed, before the policy change was even announced. So if you filed a few months ago, before any of this was announced, now you're getting rejected and sent home. If the govt was actually interesting in getting rid of illegitimate businesses, they could just go to them and see if they're real or not. All businesses that qualify someone to get a business manager visa have to be in commercial spaces, with signs with their name on it, and accessible.

No, that's not required for this visa. The capital requirement is the major change. Also, foreign restaurant owners are already fluent in Japanese, because they deal with Japanese customers every day. The language requirement change is for other visa types.

The rich people abusing this visa as second home have no trouble depositing a bit more money to meet the requirement. It only affects legitimate businesses that can't raise and float that kind of cash. It's performative punishment to appease the growing far-right sentiment. If they wanted to verify businesses were real, they can go there and foot and inspect. (They already have the right to do this, and all businesses that qualify for this visa must have a public office or commercial space with a clearly listed sign that can be accessed easily.)

Also, they enacted the change and applied it retroactively to existing visa holders who were waiting to have their visa updated. So people are now being rejected on new rules that were announced and enacted after they had filed to update their visa (which you must do every 1-3 years.)

Japan is not a theme park for foreign tourists to gawk at. It's a real place where people live and work.

So sad to see the comments here from people who don't know any better cheering this on. They don't know what is actually happening. The rules change was applied retroactively to people who already had renewals filed (which you have to do frequently) but not yet approved, and are being rejected based on the rules change that was announced after having already filed. The new rules are being used as a way to visibly punish the (already very small, 3%) immigrant population in Japan to appease the growing number of people with far-right anti-immigration sentiment.

There is a Japanese-led movement attempting to raise awareness of this issue, at least as far as it affects ethnic restaurants, which I suppose is the most visible effect of it to regular Japanese people: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260529/p2a/00m/0na/00... As they point out, the stated goal of this policy change was to clamp down on rich people from other countries buying a "second home" with a visa in Japan. But the policy change to increase the capital requirement does not stop this. It only affects legitimate business. Because the rich people just deposit more money and meet the requirement. As the people in the link above point out, if the government was actually serious about this, they could instead verify the businesses are real by going there.

The people running small businesses, especially restaurants, cannot raise that kind of cash very quickly. And floating that amount of money in cash is just a bad idea.

More: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16536637 More: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16615301 Example: https://www.ndtv.com/feature/japan-deportation-threat-leaves...

The people here cheering this on, saying "Japan should throw out more foreigners to preserve Japan" need to realize that Japan is not a theme park. It's a real place that people live and work. And this policy change doesn't even do what it claims to do.

You have to do it ahead of time. The airline won't let you board at your departure city without it.

Would this be a national border? I haven't traveled internationally for a while, but this would be quite troubling.

Yes.

Is there no option to pay without an app?

No option.

Surely the government also allows you to just call and get an update?

The time I saw this, the non-app option was waiting in line for several hours.

More and more things require having a smartphone. Scan this QR code to install the app to cross the border. Install the app to use the street parking in this city. Install the app to board the bus. Install the app to get your filing status with department xyz. I admire your spirit of rebellion, but avoiding using a smartphone in daily life in most places will result in a lifestyle contorted specifically to avoid using a smartphone, and will cut you off from activities that were previously doable without smartphones 20 years ago.

I agree with you that the PHP forum software is not fast at all. But, try hundreds of requests per second, including requests that require text searches.

Also, uh, how does speeding it up that help with the AI spam? (Sorry, I should have emphasized that part of my most more, since that's mostly the topic of this sub-thread I was replying to.)

Not true at all. Even small, insular, just-a-few-hundred users PHPBB-style forums have to run Cloudflare or Anubis to try to stem DDoS-style scraping, and have a constant patrol of moderators to stop AI spam posts.

They did once try forcing macOS 12 users to update to macOS 14, without asking for permission, and overriding any security prompts: https://eclecticlight.co/2024/02/12/can-you-avoid-a-forced-u...

This happened to me. I was able to notice it from network activity lights and stop it by disconnecting the network. Other people I know weren't so lucky.

I can't take anything seriously that talks about AI while also inserting needless AI generated images every few paragraphs.

This is an AI generated article, with AI generated images, claiming that AI isn't a resource problem.

Probably not, and I've never used any of those, and never will. X used to, and then stopped, so I left. Not interested in using a service that asks you to put your effort into it and then tries to turn its control against you. Especially when there are other options.

Banned third party clients and interoperability. Use their software to access your data on their servers, on their terms, or get shut down. Hard to think of anything more anti-internet freedom. I left when they did that, years ago.

They would not be able to enforce it on desktop computers, short of banning every user one-at-a-time, but they can easily blanket-ban it on mobile phones by requesting Apple and Google remove unauthorized third-party clients from their app stores. (Which they will do. Apple even lists unauthorized clients for services controlled by other parties as against the rules. Whatever that means.)

No evidence was ever presented and nobody ever found anything, as far as I can tell?

I disagree. 120hz makes typing, mousing, etc. noticeably more responsive. I never stop noticing it. I never liked having to use 60hz all the time once LCDs were replacing CRTs. The original iMac didn't even let you choose 60hz to run the desktop at -- it only offered higher refresh rates in the menus. (Games could set the display to 60hz if they really wanted to.)

Oracle lost Google v. Oracle.

That's from Arnold Henry Savage Landor and I suspect it was fabricated or exaggerated, like many Victorian era British tales of savages abroad.

No. There is a lot more than that. The AI stuff appears in places in the UI where other things used to, like in right-click menus and when you are entering text into fields. And it's not opt-in. It's on by default. Unless you are willing to search for how to turn it off and open the non-GUI about:config stuff and modify raw settings in a text table (with no descriptions or help text next to them) then you can't even turn it off. Also, the AI stuff takes up disk space.

Disabling malware via hash or signature doesn't require the Notarization step at all. Server can tell clients to not run anything with hash xxyyzz and delete it. I mean, just think about it. If disabling stuff required the Notarization step beforehand, no anti-malware would have existed before Notarization. Nonsense.

Nope. Notarization is not code signing. It’s an extra step, after code signing, where you upload your software to Apple’s servers and wait for their system to approve it. It’s more onerous than code signing alone and, with hindsight, doesn’t seem to have been offering any extra protection.

The indoor level of radon isn't going to be lower than outdoors. Indoors is either the same or higher than outdoors. Your level of exposure to radon will not go up by going outside. That's your background exposure level, and is already baked into the calculation of how much an effect an elevated exposure to radon in your home will have on you. Radon is a serious thing to consider, especially if your home has a basement. Radon mitigation is not a scam conspiracy.

Quick appeal grant of course, because it was more about sending a message and making people who want to talk about that kind of software think twice before the next video.

That was talking about a previous video, not the one that is the main subject of this blog post. For the video that is the subject of this blog post, which is just about running your own software to watch media you legally own, the appeal was apparently denied.

The pre-compressed and compressed versions were loudness matched to be the same overall loudness, according to the description. My guess is that they set the compressor to actually make the waveform spikier, without fully understanding what’s going on. Just a guess, though. I can’t check to find out.

Lookhead limiting is more commonly used to sound louder, not compression. Compression is usually done for flavor. It’s not that great at making things louder, because traditional compression actually exaggerated the spikes in amplitude at the start of percussive sounds, which pop and dance music has a lot of, requiring additional work to tame. Modern drum processing usually uses a combination of compression (sometimes with upwards compression), lookahead limiting, and saturation.

It’s possible their compression settings were actually exaggerating the peaks instead of compressing them, and then they did nothing to control those peaks afterwards. This is a really common thing that can happen with a superficial use of compressors. Especially if you did averaged loudness-matching of the compressed signal with the uncompressed signal. It ends up being spikier than before compression. I would entirely believe a waveform with those added spikes would be more damaging than a controlled waveform that had been saturated or limited after compression. I don’t have access to the original publication, so I can’t check and find out.

68% is horrible

I am a resident of Japan. This is extremely bad advice. Do not follow this advice.

To csomar: you are willingly spreading harmful advice. Stop it. Stop making people reply to clean up your mess.

I see this is your first rodeo.