I appreciate these comments saying the tech hasn’t degraded and it’s been standstill, or that it was never great in the first place, all of which is true but I would like to interject my own Model 3 experience. When we first bought the Tesla in 2019 the self driving functionality on the highway felt safe and functional in nominal conditions. When we sold the Tesla 2 years ago (2022) the self driving felt noticably more finicky. It struggled to switch lanes, recognize when lanes started and ended, and had noticably more issues with maintaining proper speed and distance with other cars.

It probably wasn’t significantly more dangerous, but it felt like it was. What was a feature we used for the first year or two without much complaint turned into something we never used and our driving time when down in that third year not up so it wasn’t exposure time I don’t think.

It’s worth it. I’m almost two years in Germany. Wouldn’t move back for a million dollars (although at 3 I could be bought). Work on the local language, volunteer or other community involvement activities, treat it like the new home it is. We’re fortunate to be able to move to a new country, try to be a part of improving it and earning your spot there. I’m even more fortunate to be white, male, straight etc - assuming you’re at least some of those things, do your best to counter the anti-immigration fear mongering that comes out of the political right. It effects you now, but more importantly it’s ramping up and it’ll effect people less fortunate far worse.

Hope you love it and welcome to Europe.

Ergodox EZ has my whole hearted recommendation. Their keyboards are amazing and the only thing better for ergonomics would be a more custom curved piece.

They’re a good company, I would recommend anyone checking them out.

I’ve read it, I read the discussion around it, idk man. One guy’s thoughts on a company and it’s founder isn’t enough to move me off of something without better proof, better alternatives, and worse crimes than maybe having a bad long term vision.

Hopefully every company outgrows it’s founder and becomes a system. We’ll have to see, right now I’m satisfied and that gets me off Google and signals to others I’m willing to pay.

I recommend Kagi, I’ve been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.

Yes it’s paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn’t a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I’m either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I’m paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.

Now it’s up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.

Kagi seems to surface great independent content and I’ve been loving it.

He’s saying what you’re attributing to “a specific lack of willpower” now has scientific backing that disagrees. Your take is old school and misinformed if the current science is correct. I personally haven’t done research on the subject or read many studies but Adam Ragusea, a YouTube food science journalist covers this concept in one of his vids and several podcasts surrounding food science and (in my case) the drugs coming down the pipeline to regulate body weight touch on the research as well.

I think this is an immature understanding of how free markets work, how they slowly destroy themselves, and the problems at hand. Housing, like healthcare, isn’t a market where choice is always possible, rational, or meaningful. And the “government” who imposes density restrictions are in place because of the people who vote in that government - a large portion of those restrictions are not the product of the past and an immovable system but because the owning class actively want them to remain in place. The incentive of the current system is to minimize housing access to maximize investment profit.

No one, or very few people, should profit from housing as an investment. Landlords produce nearly no benefit once a person is in the house and I would argue every other (or most other) benefit they produce only exist because the system caters to housing as an investment vehicle.

Anyone defending landlords is defending their own self-interest at the cost of the greater good, at the cost of their neighbors, and the generations to come. It’s a parasitic job meant to transfer wealth from the poor to the wealthy.

It’s fuckin crazy that we live in a society where someone is forced to pay into a richer person’s networth instead of their own and we think it’s okay.

Landlords should be illegal, housing is a right and an affordable one if we outlaw or heavily regulate landlords.

Is there a guide or any educational material on this? I’m about to swap to Linux (some fedora distro focused on gaming) and I’m interested in potentially one day swapping to arch after I’ve gotten my toes wet. Doing a bit of extra work and planning ahead to make that easier sounds nice.

I just switched to Kagi because I liked the idea of a paid search engine who’s aim was to remove the internet’s clutter, not use any profile besides the one I create to show me results, and where I could weight certain sites that produce good content.

Reading the blog post the issues allegedly are:

1. Privacy is not guaranteed, like with a 3rd party audit
2. AI usage is growing not shrinking
3. The business seems to be poorly run and could have a short lifespan

Is this correct?

#atetheonion

My last Japan trip was 4 or 5 years back and spent time in multiple big cities with an express train pass. I think I budgeted a grand for the flight, a grand in food and hotel and spending a week. But with inflation being what it is I’d want to rerun the numbers based off of what flights and hotel/hostels I could find and assume 1k for just food and fun per week. I think there are active data sheets online that talk about the average cost of eating out in Japan right now.

You want to visit for “a few weeks” so I’d say plan for 2k + flight + hotel/hostel + train tickets/pass. I’d bet you spend less than 4k total for that time.

I like to visit 1 major city every 4-7 days, I normally do travel in, 5 days, travel out. So two weeks would let me see 2 major cities and a couple day trips or 3 shorter stays at 3 major places. Some cities are cheaper than others which is something to consider and how you eat out also dictates your budget more than anything. You could eat in Tokyo for dollars a day at gas stations or you could splurge on sashimi every night and find yourself burning money by the fist full.

I’m a big foodie so that’s where the 1k per week comes from.

Without data, take media reports as sensational by necessity. France’s problems may not be as bad as they seem (I would assume they’re not) and France’s problems don’t automatically translate to other countries like Japan.

To wrap this back around to your main post, travelling to Japan shouldn’t induce fear at any step. It’s a safe country with low crime rates and few health problems for tourists.

This is a great write up, thanks for sharing!

Again, don’t be. I don’t have data off the top of my head, but I’d wager Japan has shockingly few cases of bed bugs in their tourist sector.

“Most countries” is a hell of a stretch in my opinion. I’ve traveled to something close to 20 popular countries and only needed a visa for China when visiting, Singapore when studying, and Germany when moving there.

Here’s the official list and I’d wager a guess that more than 75% of native US Tourist Traffic goes to these countries.

You shouldn’t be scared of hotels. If you’re getting a reasonable room you’ll have an entirely normal experience. If you cheap out, then you are taking a risk in exchange for money.

But if you’re going to travel internationally, you should default to not afraid. It is by and large safe out there. Be smart, but not media-sensitized.

Like I said, it’s got pros and cons. Hotels are good too.

Hey, this is an exciting first step in planning your trip. I’m 27 and have traveled a lot on my own and with friends, if you need any advice or have any questions feel free to PM me.

1. Get your passport - this let’s you leave your country and enter others. Depending on your country you may need to get a visa but assuming you come from the US you don’t need a Visa (if a passport let’s you enter into your native country, a Visa let’s you enter and stay in a foreign country under certain conditions).
2. Book a flight through something like Google flights, no need to go through any company besides the airline’s.
3. Book housing - if you’re going alone and packing light I would highly recommend a hostel. Hostels are shared rooms where you sleep in the same room, share bathrooms, etc. If you’re a light sleeper you may not like this, it will cause you to interact with other tourists which can be a pro or a con, and when you leave stuff in your room It’ll need a lock (no issues in my experience but I also wouldn’t bring 2 grand of electronics and lock them in the room). The main benefit is it’s cheaper for individuals. Eastern hostel culture is way better than western, and Japan has some of the best in my experience.
4. Pack your stuff. You need clothes, but you can do laundry there if that interests you so you don’t need too many clothes. You need a way to get japanese currency. My card let’s me pull money out of international ATMs, you can also bring US dollars and convert it there in the airport, but Japan mostly takes card in my experience.

That’s the bare necessity. I got to stop now but like I said, I’d love to help past that.

Depending on where you’re going transportation can be handled entirely by public transit. Don’t get a car.