> The Sake Viva! campaign, which is being run by the National Tax Agency (NTA), asks 20- to 39-year-olds to come up with proposals to help revitalise the popularity of alcoholic drinks, which have fallen out of favour because of lifestyle changes during the coronavirus pandemic and among young people.

> Taxes on alcohol accounted for 1.7% of Japan’s tax revenue in 2020, down from 3% in 2011 and 5% in 1980.

> There was a particularly steep decline in beer consumption, with sales volume down 20% to less than 1.8bn litres.

Night vs day. Day: People everywhere, nowhere to be alone. The roads are full, more than they should be. You can always hear them, and I am sure smell, and almost taste them too. Oh, look, but the sun is shining strong, the beautiful yellow... piece of shit that burns my eyes full-time, making me see so much I cannot see anymore. Imagine snow, nice, fluffy, cold, yes, but in daylight, a reflector, a mirror of pain, when will that liquefy? And in summer time, when there is no snow, you might feel positive, look at the sun how it paints the grass and flowers, but it paints you too. You're red, you're hot, you're sweating, there's nowhere to hide, the rays shine everywhere. When did you last drink? Who knows, but it feels like a drop of water landing on your tongue could somehow erase this misery. The more you think about it, the thirstier you get.

Night: Walking through the city, alone. Cool breeze hitting the face, the city lit dim by sodium street lights, but I still wish I could dial them down. There's some white LED lights too, I can see how they're more useful to others, but for me it's a night, I want a night, crave it. In the past they were operated by simple light sensors, you could turn off entire streets by shining a flashlight at them, or so I was told. Not the case anymore. If only they could all die out. Whether it's orange sodium lights or sharp white LED lights, they're still just trying to bring the day into the night. The stars. Can't see the stars. Light pollution. Who are the lamps shining for? There's no one anymore. What a waste of power. But there's still some dark areas. When my eyes adjust to it, that's great. They feel rested, almost like my eyelids are shut, but I see. I see just enough. With the lack of light, you realize what it meant. It's not a friend, it's a noise. Loud, persistent distracting noise, whispering right into your brain through the eyes. It whispers, it talks, you step out of the shade it screams, you look at the snow - it shrieks in your brain painfully. Moon reflects just enough. I can walk comfortably, see the hedgehog and not step on it, yet not enough to see and read the ads. The light doesn't whisper, I can hear. I can hear the breeze moving leafs, I can hear it move across the fields of grass long overdue for cutting. It was there during the day, but so was the sun, and people and the cars. I was deaf, but now I am not. And I am alone. Alone in a good way. It feels like the space is mine, the air is mine, it smells better... maybe it's the (lack of) cars.

It gets best when the morning just starts turning up. Still dark, still quiet, still empty and comfortable, but things are starting up at the train station. I can hear a faint soothing roar of idling train long in the distance. I can hear it across the otherwise quiet city. The sun has risen somewhat, it's illuminating... not yet this part of the planet, but the space above it. Space where the satellites orbit and they reflect the light back down. I can watch the so many dots moving across the still dark sky. I am looking up at them, nobody out to think I am dumb staring at the sky for minutes, of which I am only reminded by the neck pain. Whistle! The morning train is ready for departure. The engine sound gets nicer as the train speeds up, then fades away. But it's also a reminder... the day. It's coming, slowly murdering the night. Light, people, noise, smells... a misery. It's here again, and you are supposed to be happy about it.

Some more pictures: ! ! !

Support will be removed on both client and server side.

>The process of removing OpenVPN from our app starts today and may be completed much earlier.

I always see laptops come with larger bricks that have separate mains cable which plugs into the brick. Even if the adapter has some low power rating.

Example for comparison: ! On the right is a standard laptop adapter. Same price, same connector, same protocol, same power rating, far different size.

Why is that so?

Actually, the GaN adapter on the left also advertises itself as being meant for laptops, but by default, almost all laptops will come with something like the one on the right.

Or is it simply cheaper to manufacture while being sold for the same price?

They're custom stickers from StickerMule, which is not quite a nice company, but they have some deals they almost surely loose money on. I've put these together:

$1 for 10: https://www.stickermule.com/deals/4b02bdaf

$0.80 for 10: https://www.stickermule.com/deals/f167bd20

$1.25 for 10: https://www.stickermule.com/deals/fcde0915

$1.11 for 10: https://www.stickermule.com/deals/66a85adf

$1.11 for 10 (Italian): https://www.stickermule.com/deals/88e0209a

$9 for 50: https://www.stickermule.com/deals/ee2c2ae3

Yes, that includes worldwide shipping. Each of those can be ordered just once, but somewhere I heard a legend they don't check for duplicate accounts, but I haven't tried that myself. There's also a $1 Unixstickers pro pack (account not required)

Edit!!:

After 2 such orders they almost charged me EUR 18 on that $1.25 for 10, even though the checkout page did say $1.25 when paying. So choose the option with proof if given option to skip it. (It will let you cancel before approving the proof.)

Edit 2: I see the problem. If choosing different currency (EUR in my case) the deal price will be converted correctly in checkout page, but not be valid. So just pay in the default currency (USD).

Edit: It seems kiwix-serve once again supports splitted ZIM. So I may have a workaround for FAT32.

As usual, I once again can't decide between something. I am deciding between Ulefone Armor 24 and Motorola G54 5G. I did get to play around with both, and I feel like that just made the decision harder.

I first got the Ulefone. Finally some exciting smartphone, massive battery, thick, heavy, with IR night vision camera, strong light and FM radio that works without earphones as it has integrated antenna, and it has an IR blaster. I actually like it being that large and heavy (647g - 1.43lbs). It feels like a serious device. I always slap the thickest case I can find on a phone for this reason anyway. (Yes, I was also excited by Energizer P28K and earlier P18K). I immediately loved it, but unfortunately found it only supports FAT32 for SD card. As I also have Kiwix archives on it, I decided on returning it. It also had some more minor issues like headphone jack cover getting in the way and a mono speaker that is... present at most, and only supporting 4G.

Then instead I ordered the Motorola, which I still posses. It's just safely in a box at home, I am not going to return an actually used device. It does support exFAT, it has great stereo speakers, camera with OIS, supports 5G and has eSIM functionality. BUT, after finally setting it up, I realized it has no support for 4K video playback. I didn't even realize I should check for that, just like support for exFAT, as even my 2 prior, cheaper devices supported both. SW decoder in VLC seems to work with 4K h.264, but HEVC is a no-go. Can't blame it though, my i5-8365U powered ThinkPad can't handle 4K HEVC either. The 3 button navigation also dies when I set minimum width to >= 600dp.

Both support band-locking which I want too.

The Ulefone's Helio G96 may or may not support 4K. Even info from MediaTek itself is conflicting between 2K and 4K max. I wanted to test it with a displayed device in that shop, but was told they aren't allowed to put anything into display pieces, and to just order it again like I did, and then return it possibly.

I don't know what I could put up with better. 4GB file size limit or no 4K video. Workaround for the former would be putting .zim files onto internal storage, effectively halving it, and passing Termux backups through split and cat. Workaround for the latter is... I guess there isn't. There will always be that functionality loss. Only 4K@30fps H.264 can be passed to VLC. AV1 doesn't cut it either.

That aside, 5G may be important soon, but for now my carrier only covers a few cities. eSIM is cool, too, as are stereo speakers. On the other hand, that Ulefone is just something else. A very unconventional smartphone, finally something else than a glass slab with different SoC, and the 3 button navigation doesn't break at high dp. Actually, it even improves, adding app icons and app tray. I hate gesture navigation.

Also... maybe it sounds important, Ulefone is known to have shipped their phones with irremovable malware in 2017, ...and possibly in 2020, also detected by different user. I did scan the phone with Hypatia, and tried Calculator, FM radio and sound recorder APKs on VirusTotal too. Though I am not sure how much access Hypatia has, I know APK extractors didn't work for me. I had to use ADB.

Test test test

My phone died a few days ago, and the Cisco Duo app overwrote 2FA key backup after connecting my old phone to the internet. Lemmy has no backup codes, nor can you disable 2FA even while logged in without a valid token.

Anyway, I noticed there's no rate limiting on 2FA attempts. So following Lemmy API docs I wrote this exceptionally stupid script (look at my foolish way of parallelization and no auto-stop).

I got the JWT token from logged-in Firefox session, using cookies.txt extension to export it.

Anyway, just make sure your password is secure enough, It's obviously (potentially) better than 6 digits, probably with 3 valid combinations at each time (current 30s, past 30s, future 30s windows), if I am guessing how it works right.

My attempt also clearly involved a lot of luck with just 21,830 attempts (less than 5 minutes). But, if you're lucky enough, you may guess it on first attempt, or never if you aren't.

My phone with 2FA codes has died... again... for the 3rd time in something over 2 years (average Poco X3 Pro experience).

I've used the Cisco Duo app, mainly for the convenience of automatic backups. After all, this has saved me the last time my main phone died. Connect GDrive, download DB, enter passphrase to decrypt, there you go.

I've turned on my still barely functioning 2017 Moto G5s Plus. There I had the Duo app. Upon opening it says something along the lines of "Device offline, showing on-device accounts only." How does that read to you? Auto-sync, I thought. I connected to the internet, refreshed the app, nothing. I go to settings, check the backup... horror! "Last backup: October 6th 12:06" I opened the app at 12:06.

Why would you update the backup if it has more recent timestamp than current version? "Hmm... this phone last backed up in 2023, most recent backup on cloud is 2024, yep, OVERWRITE IT WITH 2023 VERSION!!"

Hmm... this also means I've lost access to my Cisco NetAcad school account...

Welp, lesson learned, switching to Aegis.

Since disabling TOTP requires TOTP token, I have no way to disable it. I hope the instance admin can, but SDF has far more important shit to care about.

-------------

I am thinking on getting something crazy like Ulefone Armor 24 brick. Though it lacks things like 5G, stereo speakers, and 4K video recording, but I can afford it and have it shipped tomorrow morning.

Just bought a pineapple for the first time. Checked a few videos and posts on internet to see how I am supposed to cut it up, everyone said to throw the core away or use it in a smoothie at best. Even my mom said to throw it away.

Anyway, I tried to eat a small amount of it, and then ate the entire core. It's pretty edible, feels like throwing out pizza crust.

Much more chewable than celeriac. Though I would label it as "Dental floss mandatory" type of food, but so is anything with poppy seeds.

So how do you use it? Do you eat it, throw it out, something else?

They clearly show wear. ! I am not sure if they were replaced from another older device, or the entire cover is from L390, but that one would have a plastic cover for where this one has a stylus. It doesn't seem like anything was snapped out of there.

I couldn't find replacement ones online, and I am not sure if contacting the shop is a good idea. See, the L390 Yoga has a touchscreen with better colors and seems to be a bit more expensive (but not much). However, I bought this as "L390". I noticed the description said "Touchscreen: yes", which I realized meant they likely mistook the Yoga version for the base version. Indeed, that is the case. Currently they have one L390 Yoga in similar condition and same configuration, but the screen has some white spots (this one is flawless), ...and it's €46 more expensive.

If you're curious, i5 8365U, 16GB RAM (single-channel), used 256GB Samsung SSD (I don't remember if SATA or NVME), €180 and 2 year warranty.

Also, if you're wondering what that port with network symbol is, it appears to be a proprietary connector used on ThinkPads requiring an "Ethernet Extension" adapter to be usable.

Note: Newly loaded community

Probably dust particles and slight rotation while in the backpack.

Just from "a quick query" by the admin.

>there'll be a better one later, this is just a quick query

Sorry, not sure if there's a more fitting community for discussions, but 196 doesn't have specific required content ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

So, last Sunday I suddenly got high-pitched tinnitus, mostly in my left ear. I thought it would be gone when I wake up next day, but it was still there. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday I had some pain and pressure in both ears. Unfortunately, I'd need to get referred to ENT by my GP, and she was on vacation. The substitute was there for "acute cases only".

So far this was just... quite annoying. I tested for possible changes I haven't noticed with frequency generator on my phone. With medium volume, both ears went to 19.5kHz just fine.

Thursday it improved. Or so I thought. The tinnitus got quieter. Later during the day I went to check again. I started with 16kHz at lowest volume. Suddenly, I could only hear it on my right ear, so I started panicking. Left ear fell from 19.5kHz to 15.5kHz in just 1 day. This was a fairly sudden change, and I am not exactly emotionally strong. I panicked and was crying and hyperventilating for about an hour.

!

So I decided I'll go to the substitute doctor next day to get referred to ENT. I set up alarm for the morning, but I didn't need it. I was too anxious too sleep much anyway.

So I got to the ENT right that day.

She visually inspected my ears and throat finding no signs of inflammation. Tympanometry OK. Audiogram just confirmed my feeling of right ear being muffled with slight low frequency hearing loss, but nothing for my left ear, primary source of my concern. I explained the loss occurred in higher frequencies than I heard during the test. I asked what frequency they tested up to as it sounded fairly low. "6kHz." Apparently, even 8kHz (worldwide standard) is considered "experimental" in my country... I hoped for possibility of EHF audiometry (9 - 20kHz).

Back to talking with ENT, I said that I could hear up to 19.5kHz on both ears ereyesterday, yet yesterday I couldn't even hear 16kHz on my left ear. She re-assured me that we normally loose ability to hear these frequencies with age (I am 18). I further explained that my concern is rather the sudden unilateral loss as opposed to gradual bilateral loss over longer timespan as it could continue worsening further.

She replied with "Hearing above 6kHz is not important to humans." I wanted to tell her to resample all her music to 12kHz, then tell me how useless it was, but I didn't want to be rude. At last, I asked "What about the tinnitus?" with response being "Nothing."

So, she just prescribed me vitamins B1, B12 and some Ginko extract pills for increasing blood flow to ears for 1 month which I still had to pay €30 for even with insurance.

Welp, I just apologized for bothering them (non-sarcastically) as they had more patients and left no less concerned.

_____________

I am pretty worried about this. I've been careful with my ears. I don't listen to music loudly, I don't go to concerts, hell, I didn't even have to go to theatre with school the last time as my current class teacher noticed I wasn't exactly OK with being in a room with lots of people, especially with loud noise.

I can only suspect some issue with inner ear, perhaps inflammation. That wouldn't even be noticeable with just visual examination. However, I suppose that would also be accompanied by dizziness and vertigo. So I have no idea what's going on.

At least I distracted myself while typing this.

"at least"

Image on left is from 4 days ago, but the pimple was slowly forming over around 2 weeks.

The goop was sticky, not oily. Earphones are Panasonic RP-TCM130.

I was not able to find an explanation. Something to increase cable lifespan, lubrication, rubber disintegrating, sweat and earwax that somehow got into the cable, dielectric grease, SCP-1407, no clear answer.

At first I thought the wires just somehow twisted. Nope.