methou

My high school years were plagued by anxiety. My cousin knew a psychiatrist and convinced my family to at least see what he had to say. After diagnosing me, the doctor prescribed lorazepam and an SSRI. According to the doctor, it was just like having a small cold and would eventually go away after a while. At his office, he also told me that lorazepam should only be taken as needed because it can lead to psychological dependence.

Many years have passed. Every time I feel I’m losing control because of anxiety, I imagine taking a lorazepam pill or having one within reach. Even these imaginings bring me some peace. But I still know it’s a bit dangerous, even though it’s not technically addictive.

That’s how “good” the stuff is. And you should be careful with it.

Sharing this because I thought this was the end.

When I heard the squealing dolphin sound from multiple phones, saying “earthquake” and “jishin” all the time, I wasn’t that worried.

I clicked into the alert in the NERV app, which gave more information, like the predicted intensity and time of arrival. I wasn’t able to comprehend what I saw:

The entire upper half of Japan was painted red. Does red mean affected?

The expected intensity is 7. That’s a huge one; I should seek shelter. Wait...

The time until arrival was three digits in seconds. That’s strange. But I still had time.

So I grabbed my mini getaway pouch (ID/passport, cash and cards), quickly went downstairs, and got out of my home.

I was on the street and still had a bit over 100 seconds. Should I avoid being next to the tall buildings and utility poles? I gave it a quick assessment and decided to trust reinforced concrete.

Next, I wasn’t sure where to go. There was a park across the road I could go to, and another park a bit further away that didn’t require crossing any roads. But in the end, I decided to walk to my friend’s home first and see if I could get him.

So I walked to his home. The countdown hit 0 halfway there. I was expecting strong shaking or a seasick feeling. Nothing happened.

I looked around. The sun was bright, and I was wearing black. The ojisan who was sitting in a car looked chill, listening to FM. A few people were on the street, but no one was in a hurry. No one showed any visible fear.

So I stood there, waited and waited. Nothing happened.

I pulled out my phone and opened X.com. It wasn’t helpful at all. I could see M9.9 trending among other earthquake-related keywords, but the server was really having difficulties returning anything.

I opened Telegram. Thank God it was still working. My friends were all chill: “They must be testing in production,” “Someone fat-fingered it,” “Data error.” I calmed down and walked back home.

Three minutes after I’d sat down, the dolphin on my phone squealed again. Same drill: I grabbed my pouch and phone, rushed out of my home, and started looking at the screen.

The Japanese version said the alert had been canceled.

The English version showed the same alert again.

And my friends said it must be really rare for things like this to happen. They must have forgotten how to properly cancel an alert.

I came back, sat down, and started waiting for my meeting with a recruiter.

> They can’t get a visa. They live in another city. The contract terms don’t work for them.

I have to share my stories. For a position I’m a really good fit for at a company I’m familiar with, I asked a guy to ask a guy, and they said they would only hire in the US because the team is in the US.

For another position, they reached out to me. They can’t hire in Japan but offered relocation.

In both cases, I’m super grateful that people are willing to help, but I could sense that times have changed since 2023. Globalization is no longer that strong; many, many jobs are restricted to certain locations, such as certain cities in the US or India. I don’t know about the EU, though.

This gives me some hope that if I’m willing to leave Japan, I can get a good job.

Exactly, I canceled my $20/mo Emby subscription the morning after I lost my job.

There’s an unofficial Garmin connect Home Assistant extension, playing along with Prometheus exporter you can get a quite impressive dashboard. That’s what I did.

This does not translate into better jobs, if you’re wondering. The main complaint inside China is still fair pay for fair hours.

> Their models have strict guardrails,

This is what bothers me most, and it's getting increasingly frustrating. With the recent development of PS4/5 emulation and game porting, it will only get worse (back snatching or lawsuits).

I'm using IDA Pro's MCP (Well worth of money in the past), it may hit the infamous artificial cyber wall at any time.

Try GLM-5.3, it worked pretty for me. It also worked well with Radare2 or binary ninja if you don't have the muscle memory for idapro.

The interaction is beautiful, reminds me of Brilliant.

That's a long article about just DNS.

I'd expect mentioning of the good old Xposed framework.

A friend of mine tried, no signal.

RIP

His songs helped me through so many difficult times.

JWTs are just too fat, and JS users often forgets encoding is not encryption.

I've seen some news site trackers send JWT in url/header to some 3rd party tracker. Content is no surprise, my full name, and email address, violates its own privacy policy.

Otherwise it's very open and handy, from inspecting a jwt token I can learn a lot about the architectural design of many sites.