litmus-pit-git

Thank you. Is there a framework or some methodology about finding the right instrument for one? Or let the instrument find you? How does it work? The only thing I get attracted to are the sound of it and when I name my choices everyone scares me that those are one of the toughest.

I am thinking of picking up a musical instrument. But I am afraid that I will miserably. That I may be the oldest person in the class. It's not a country for solo old men and women, even in their late 30s.

There's something that happened to some people with this virus and around this virus. It's not even the DNA/internal changes. It's how to world suddenly shifted around all of us and some people just changed in a way that later they couldn't make any sense of it. Some people's age band shifted drastically and it felt like, and yeah it sounds silly, that I should be refunded those years. I didn't spend them, they just stayed where they were but everything else and everyone else changed. I am not sure PC is going through that but it's not merely the fear of the virus (at least in my case that's zero). No wonder a lot of introverts thrived in the pandemic and a whole lot of them turned their lives around for the better :)

(this is not a comment on you, or anyone, rather rant, or a comment on myself)

> but not sure what's going to happen next.

You don't know that.

I'd suggest start doing it ASAP. I lost so many previous years of my 30s due to COVID and the avalanche of fear and anxiety and isolation that came with it. A breakup that happened literally days before the first lockdown didn't help. But then I put myself in a shell and kept increasing the size of that shell. Not just personally, but professionally as well. Today it feels like I just transitioned into my very late 30s from my early 30s. Everything in between - these 5-6 years - almost completely lost.

You know, what will be the worst thing? That nothing happened and you stayed closed - like I have been so far. I am myself trying struggling, often I don't see any point in all this effort, but still…

If it will help me search (or rather "comb") through rental posts on the trillions Facebook groups (that Facebook spent years making in unsearchable sanely) I have to subscribe to (just for my city) and make it even 10% better for me, I might as well pay a bit for this tool. Why? Because I like it or hate it - that's where the rental posts live (and very little elsewhere - and even those are on Facebook).

Thank you. Very kind of you. Be well

There are vague dreams of some sort of professional fulfilment (call it success as society calls it; monetary gains again ie an income stream; the feeling of making something that is tangible at some level - it might be a software; and definitely not feeling almost obsolete and this time for no fault of mine at all) and all of them get checked by non-vague wish/dream/yearning for personal fulfilment - a partner, a family, possibly a child, a simple house et cetera. The pain is I might already have the money, had I been younger, and if I fight enough might get more. But the rest? Well, the 6-7 years just wiped a lot of things. A lot of these things are not feasible for me now. Not in a setup, or a partner who I'd have wanted to be with - that combo just doesn't exist anymore. That's gone for my existence in this world at this point in time at this age and at this professional and financial status.

This is getting muddled. The pain is the time is lost and there were certain fulfilments I'd have wanted to have in this period and that's gone for me.

Hah. 20 years later? I'd advise myself to try and go back to 25-28 again and think seriously about getting married or actively date while there was still time and work strictly for money because later either that changes or that'd mean remain stuck in same orgs for long and for what - low salaries and a good team/work? See, I right now want satisfaction and bit of money but I want to tell my younger self to just earn filthy amount of money one way or the other. I can see that disconnect. But had I had "that kind of money" and that could just be, let's just talk numbers for a moment, 2-3x of what I've right now and I could have sped up and make better efforts at getting what I want from my personal life.

I am scared I have lost hope for good but if there's something there left I want to try and get that. I am trying everyday. Maybe that's what hope is, or maybe just the meaningless struggle.

Hey, thanks again. You too, take care.

I know where you are coming from. I do engage with the society while not in the way you've mentioned. Very regularly attend plays, meet a few friends (the number has reduced but these few have been regular), play team/group sports every day. There's place I go to teach twice a week. There are few other things. But let's not get into that. It all feels empty now. Motions. The hope of a personal and intimate future is just gone.

See, the personal life is dead to me (I've not given up, no. It's not just there!). At least what and who would have been accessible to me in 2020 and it was. I spent quite some time to bring my physical fitness, health, got back to sports and I was so happy. There was that glimmer. Then a mass layoff and sadly at the same time the burnout meant I was not ready to look again but I kept on rest of the things. And when I tried to get back to things it was evident that the ground beneath shifted entirely. Now, it seems, there's no point. Not in the defeatist way, because I've seen that "there's no point" before, but in the sense that there is really no point. I am about to be 40 in a few months time and almost every venues are closed to me to explore social life in any meaningful way I'd find desirable. In some settings the fact that I have financially independent and have decades of runaway for my currency and lifestyle doesn't matter. Everything gets tied to employment and even then when you look around, whether it's finding a group or exploring looking for a partner (especially this!), it all feels bizarre and completely alien. It's not only the double whammy of two events that wiped out my early and mid 30s, but it also depends on what society and culture I am in at this juncture. And no it's not my fault or anyone's but this happened, and not being alone in it doesn't make it any better.

Do I feel fortunate? Well, that's the wrong question, because when you are unhappy with your pair of shoes, you can always find someone without any shoes and I wish we functioned that way, with that arithmetic rationality, but we don't; at least I don't.

The biggest problem is - the wish to live this life (I don't even have any doubt there, because if I had it would have been simpler) and wish to do something and dreams of a fulfilling, exciting, and passionate personal life hasn't diminished a bit, but, at the same time it is clear that there's no more of that - most of that. That's the gripe - this tug.

(Hey, thank you for engaging with me. This was very kind of you. Even though this is not really hn discussion material so I can't even explain what I am going through. I might even make it look like everything is fine, and even hunky dory for me, and I am just whining. Or maybe I am).

Well, that's a way to look at it :)

This is a bit of tangent and more of a rant. (and please don't suggest intervention of any kind)

> superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity seems to have no flaw

For a section of population who were in a certain age-range when the pandemic hit and that derailed their certain kinds of plans/hopes/dreams in personal life and then this LLM/agentic world moved in, especially if they are in an industry directly and most affected this, this has been a surreal and slow Kafkaesque nightmare for a few years. The thing is with time and age passing hope keeps getting lost inch by inch and every lost bit of hope aids in killing the next bit. Then comes the sense of dread - the unchangeable reality that age passed passing means there are certain experiences and milestones that are essentially out of reach because there's no going back of this clock.

So I feel a strange kind of relief about this possibility of doom. I am just sharing what I feel, and I don't feel good about feeling this sense of relief that after all it might end for us all and not just an unlucky few. This feeling and the calmness about it saddens me.

A recruiter in India was talking to me about some roles for some time and then disappeared. After a few weeks, when I was ready for interviews, I reached back. I was informed that those roles didn't exist anymore. I enquired further asking wahether those roles were filled, and the reply was something on the lines that no, they didn't exist anymore. Bit of a bummer because Google was one of the very few companies here that actually interviewed you pretty fairly even after a considerable employment gap. Those were L7 roles (not sure whether those are around TLM).

It is for me as well. It's an obscene plan. They should have plans for us normal humans :)

But having burnt my fingers couple of times I need to be with a provider who has some sort of "real" and responsive support (and accountable) and that costs money so there's that. For me EU is not a condition, neither is e2ee (as long as it's E at Rest), but I understand it might be for others. I hope mailbox is good for you and unless you need some support it will good. There were no outages or any general things breaking during my usage of many years.

Good luck.

Does Immich read real file names of photos from iOS Photos metadata? I don't even know whether Apple preserves it and exposes to other apps?

I used Ente and I learned all the files I had "added/uploaded" to iCloud photos had lost their real names (that I had painstakingly given them over the years/decades) when ente exported to those photos back on my laptop via their desktop app and were these long random uuid strings kinda names. That was my yikes moment and I was glad I had still kept my photos outside of iCloud and Ente. And it is not even Ente's fault. Apple does this skullbuggery.

Are there PAYG hosted instanes of Immich?

My friend uses a pretty hardened (as per him; I didn't indulge him when he wanted to give me the gory details) Graphene setup on his few years old Pixel.

Bank apps - as per him none work. Uber (no Lyft here; other taxi apps) work flawless. Payment apps, he said is a coin toss. On his phone even WhatsApp doesn't work. He anyway prefers Signal (which prob. nobody else uses in his circle except maybe me who has it installed on a secondary phone) or plain SMS. Basically most of the "normal" apps that add integrity checks don't work but he is fine with that.

How's migadu's email ip reputation? Also do you have to create these identities in that admin panel to use or you can use it on the go like duck.com or Apple's hide my email?

This way - many different providers either lock that username away and throw the key (even you can't get it again; some give you the key instead of throwing away but no space in their home until you pay again) and some just graciously offer a free plan with that address whith little or barely any resources (which is actually great and very generious of them). Which ones? Google around and you shall find.

You don't have reserved/registered post bags (with a identifier at a certain post office) in your country? Or not available to individual users?

Yes, I use Google (that's rare; when I 'must' must) with a icloud.com temp hidemyemail address created Google a/c.

The trick is in never ever touching the username@paid-main-provider.tld to give out to anyone. It's just for logging in.

My mailbox.org username is literally three random short Engish dict words concatnated by underscores (e.g jet_sit_gill@mailbox.org) just to ensure I'd never share that email with anyone. I only use my domain's email addresses. This way there's ZERO lock, zero fear of them giving my email to someone else and staying with the domain provider for a day longer than I have to.

For email addresses on others' domains here

- icloud.com came with the devices (I honestly have not thought about what happens to these if I have zero Apple device at one point in future :D)

- tutanota(barely ever used; just to support them I paid until they removed the 12/year plan)

- protonmail, and sdf.org (ARPA)

All of these at least let me hold on to the email address even with little resources when I stop paying or have an unpaid a/c. So little risk of email goign to someone else. And I never use these for anything important anyway.

For temp emails - duck.com, HideMyEmail (stopped using this one for new accounts though).

I did. Their 20 out/day (soft limit) had me concerned. While many weeks I might send less than 7 emails I still feel uncomfortable with those limits.

And I will be leaving Mailbox.org for Runbox, or Purelymail, or Fastmail. I have a few more months' credit remaining on Mailbox, besides I am yet to try the trials.

(This is for the author and anyone else) If you are looking for responsive (or even barely responsive) and responsible support responses whenever you need it, weigh your options very carefully about which mail host you want to move to. You might need it once or twice a year, but that might be crucial.

Edit: And if you can help it, and have your own domain, never use a mail host's domain-based email address (no matter how catchy and short that is) because it will be a headache switching away from it if you want to change your host.

Hey. Do you folks have office in India or are you hiring remote for Kotlin? (esp. someone from Android bg but pretty decent at general Kotlin; and also at Java)

Sources on this thing/news?

I had made a post recently which didn't see any traction https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398136 maybe it can be a pointer

Not related directly and not related to subscription — a recent case of Apple’s anticompetitive and user hostile policies is Apple essentially locking down email push notifications and essentially forcing everyone to use fetch. They had given a way via some signing and now they just shut it down or it broke and they didn’t fix it. Now if every mail provider have their own app then they can circumvent via some shenanigans of non mail push notifications and then fetch mail or some circus. My mail provider doesn’t have their own app so I am stuck with third party apps where push stopped working.

We can play technical gymnastics around this but this just sucks!

It doesn't happen in my country and the charge is from sometimes back. I kept looking for records of that transaction but could not find it.

Google had banned (years ago) my secondary Google a/c that at best I used once in a few months - never even browed from a browser with that a/c logged in, never ever used it for anything other than Gmail - I doubt YT etc was even activated on that. The reason given was a kind of porn that I can't bring myself to type the name of. I didn't even think of appealing - I was so fucking scared and ashamed without ever indulging in that.

But that was when I bought my domain and mail hosting service and few months later I had moved my email to my domain almost everywhere.

Years later Google also killed my primary Gmail (i.e what was primary email earlier) Google Play a/c (for lack of use; true I had never published an app) and didn't refund the $25 USD even though I had finished all the tasks needed to keep the a/c alive 3 days before deadline and I had also requested them to tell me "how to add the bank a/c" to get the refund (asked at least 5 times over a span of 40 days) - because they kept telling me "add the bank a/c for refund" and never telling me "how" or sharing an article or page that told me how. I could never find out how.

They kept the $25 - not even appeals were allowed/entertained. I got "final.. no further response" and that was it, literally no further response on it.

I stop to think sometimes why.. just why we gave these trillion dollar companies this much power - the likes of Apple, Google, AMZN, Meta, MSFT.. why?? Now we literally can't fight them - not legally, not with anything else. It seems we just can't.

Result might not be as expected ;-)

A much younger cousin used to do that — sans the camera or photo taking part in my village. He could barely talk. When asked around that time and a bit later as well, because it continued, he said something that spooked some in the family. He let us know that she was playing with someone in the large courtyard. Some women in the family (at night after dinner they would all socialise away from work and male intervention relaxed; a very South Asian thing) would remark the way he would sometimes play away in a corner in the gigantic courtyard in the evening (evenings in the city — in a lot of villages 7-8pm is quite the night) - as if he was playing with someone. Something, at least two more toddlers in the family had attested to before him. They all were teens/adults later at that time. Even the description matched. I was a teen, who stayed in boarding schools, and had been bullied too much and sadly bullied others too much in the guise of ghosts and what not so I didn’t believe it, I don’t believe it now. But it was weird. I think it is some kind of family memory or shit. My later explanation is/was — someone scared those kids with such stories so that they won’t wander around alone at night and they kind of started living it.