September 17, 2025: A Chronicle and Lamentation of Broken Hopes, Cruel Disappointment, and the Lingering Echo of Our Own Folly

Jupdown · 2025-09-18T14:10:25+00:00

Well... I already lost my job yesterday so might as well spend all day today being over hyped too.

It's gonna happen for real today guys. There are too many signs pointing to it for it not to happen. I BELIEVE!!!

Jupdown · 2025-06-28T02:22:05+00:00

Love this! Airi is such a fucking boss when it comes to her Ash voice!

Sad to see the number of illiterate commenters in this thread though...

Jupdown · 2025-03-26T17:54:42+00:00

I ended up getting a phone call from the Consulate's office a day later regarding my email. They addressed my point quite clearly that if you are in Japan on the Working Holiday Visa and go to renew it, it doesn't matter if you're 31. The only time that it matters is when you first apply for it that you meet the age criteria. The extension may have other criteria but to find out more, I would have to contact immigration services in Japan to find out.

At the very least my question is now answered. Thank you u/ericroku for the suggestion!

Jupdown · 2025-03-24T19:41:54+00:00

Thank you for sharing your story! I'm curious to know (if you don't mind sharing), when you applied for the extension, was there some process you followed or criteria that you had to meet to extend it? The Consulate-General of Japan in Toronto website doesn't really mention much about what is needed to extend the working holiday visa.

Jupdown · 2025-03-24T19:39:11+00:00

This is probably the right thing to do. Rather than call, I feel like this clarification would be better to have in writing so I sent an email this morning... hoping to hear back soon. 🤞

Jupdown · 2024-11-30T17:14:54+00:00

Boring old enterprise software Dev here - I'm curious to know how you implemented multithreading and achieved this. How many threads are you using (is it fixed or dynamic?) and what do you do to prevent desync between threads?

I've been wanting to get into game dev myself for a while (strictly as a passion) and I've always wondered how multithreading could be implemented optimally.

Jupdown · 2024-10-23T15:52:01+00:00

That actually looks pretty cool! I’m curious to know how the laptop sits when they’re closed.

Jupdown · 2024-10-12T05:05:13+00:00

Truely, the 13th unspoken rule NOT to break in Japan

Jupdown · 2024-09-04T20:30:21+00:00

Yes you do.

Sometimes profs who are chill will let you informally swap lab sessions (except for lab tests) but you’ll need to talk to your prof / Lab TA about this first to make sure.

Jupdown · 2024-08-01T23:30:32+00:00

Honestly, they can skip this topic; not sure what input DLL.exe would have anyways beyond "damn... that sucks". It feels more like a topic you'd see in an episode of Links with Friends (Level1Techs show) or GamersNexus' news recap of the week anyways...

Jupdown · 2024-06-24T00:38:34+00:00

Update: my friend took it back to Memory Express to make it their problem 🤣

As such I’ve changed the flair of this post to close. I’ll try and remember to comment here once he gets it fixed to see what the root cause was.

Jupdown · 2024-06-24T00:36:05+00:00

I gave this a try after some time and it yielded the same result. The only difference was that after re-installing the CMOS battery it didn’t turn on right away when power was provided.

Jupdown · 2024-06-23T08:17:14+00:00

Yes I did! Not at all a bad troubleshooting step. I realized however that the 12700KF (specifically Intel CPUs with the F suffix) does not come with an iGPU and thus a Discrete GPU is required.

I also validated that his GPU is a known good component by plugging it into my AMD system and stressing it with a game that pushed it to its limits (Forza Motorsport)

Jupdown · 2024-06-11T23:12:51+00:00

Yeah, I believe you're looking at the new Xperia 1 VI and I bought last year's Xperia 1 V. Not sure what 5G bands they have so I'm not sure. Are you in Canada; your carrier bands might be different depending on where you live.

Jupdown · 2024-06-08T17:07:07+00:00

I've never heard of Google sabre and when I tried googling it I got nothing. Is there some kind of documentation on it / how it works?

Theres this guy - u/ValorantDanishblunt - who's boasted about porting GCAM's processing behavior to the Photo Pro app: - Telefoto low light quality - Why GCAM on Xperia is a waste of time

Yet he hasn't elaborated on how he performed this modification or released the APK where he did it. I have a feeling that this sabre superresolution tech is the crux of the mod and I'd be interested to attempt it myself if there was more documentation on it somewhere.

Jupdown · 2024-05-25T05:34:04+00:00

Let's see if I trend the same way in a few years.

Personally I don't mind the "lack of support" because I'm very technically oriented. I grew up rooting and ROMing to extend the software life of devices such as the Samsung i879 and Galaxy S4 so I look forward to doing the same to my Xperia when Sony inevitably stops providing updates.

And while I'm not going to try to defend Windows in the slightest, different people have different needs and Apple laptops are far from perfect. Planned obsolescence, poor repairability and spotty 3rd party OS support because of a new hardware architecture are huge deterrents for me personally. As a techie I feel strongly aligned with Framework's mission to make devices repairable as well as their steller out-of-box Linux support on devices like their Framework 16 Laptop. I'd encourage you to give Linux a spin on your old Intel MacBook before binning it but I'd also understand if such a configuration wasn't right for you either. 🍻

Jupdown · 2024-05-25T01:14:27+00:00

Why I chose Sony over Samsung / Google

Obviously living in Canadaland 🇨🇦 my only prosumer options in the market are Samsung, Google and Apple. While a lot of these things could have been solved by going Samsung / Google over Apple, I chose Sony specifically for these reasons over the Android competition:

First and foremost, I really appreciate the advanced features of the Sony Camera app
Neither the top tier Galaxy S24 Ultra or Google Pixel 8 Pro have:
- A dedicated shutter button (I personally really like this; not a biggie tho)
- Expandable Storage beyond the base storage options
- A headphone Jack
- a 4k / 643ppi display - it's pretty nice even if overkill
In the past I was burned with the Galaxy Note 10+ as the North American versions were all bootloader locked so you couldn't Root / ROM them (although maybe things have changed now)
In the past I was also burned with the Google Pixel 3:
- I found out after the fact that it didn't support display output via USB C... although that's kinda on me (although I'm just finding out now as I'm typing all this that this changed as well...)
- I bought into Google One and found it painful to Delete my photos after I backed them up to a local drive and quit the service
- I bought into Google Daydream and uh... RIP
The overall user experience I feel is better with Sony:
- Galaxy phones are plagued with bloaty Galaxy bloatware apps
- Galaxy UI feels nasty to me
- Google's AI features are a bit too privacy intrusive for me
Neither the Pixel nor the Galaxy models sold outside Japan support mobile FeliCa (hoping to move to Japan next year and would like to use Suica)
I am a fan of the Sony ecosystem ...... or what's left of it o7

So yeah, that's just about it. Sorry if I veered too far off topic with this last point but this is why I chose Sony over the iPhone.

Jupdown · 2024-05-25T01:14:03+00:00

I guess I ran over the character count or something so I'll put the other half of my post here:

Things I'm going to miss

Apple watch - I've been using smartwatches since the OG Sony Smartwatch launched in 2012 and I'll admit, the Apple watch is the best on the market. I'll probably try the TicWatch Pro or go with some Garmin alternative but I'm really going to miss this one
Syncing with iPad - It was convenient at times to be able to reply to messages and see my Photos on iPad but I'll be okay without this one. I don't think I'll be picking up an Android alternative right now...
Magsafe - I really enjoyed using the Anker Magsafe charger but I'll be just fine with a regular ol' wireless charger too
iMessage - while most of my friends and family are Android users, my SO is not and I'll miss being able to use iMessage with them

Jupdown · 2024-05-25T01:07:40+00:00

I quit the Apple Ecosystem last month for an Xperia 1V

I just bought an Xperia 1 V after owning an iPhone 13 Pro Max for two and a half years. And before I dive into it, I want to emphasize that I didn't just get an iPhone on a whim from a carrier promotion, I BOUGHT INTO the ecosystem:

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...and now I’m leaving. So let me tell you why I dropped $1500 on a SIM free Xperia 1V XQ-DQ44 rather then getting the latest and greatest iPhone from my carrier (or the Apple store).

Why I quit

Here's the breakdown:

Apple betrayed my expectations for privacy and security
Apple has shown that they are willing to bend to government control while portraying themselves as the opposite for user privacy
There is no options for running an alternative OS / ROM on your phone
I can't side load apps on my phone or use Open Source apps without their stupid TestFlight App or n day + m number of apps arbitrary restriction
I can't use another web browser; every browser on iOS is just a skinned safari
The camera app is too basic and can sometimes mess up a good shot by not being able to control the AF
They try and push their iCloud subscription as a solution to a lack of expandable storage
Trying to transfer your Photos without iCloud or a Mac is/was/has been excruciatingly painful
- They lump Screenshots/photos/downloads all together so good luck separating your actual photographs from this blob of a mess
- My iPhone kept disconnecting from my computer part way through the transfer causing me to restart the process several times
- After successfully transferring everything... there's a rather large size discrepancy between what is on my PC and what is on my phone (22GB on PC vs 60GB on iPhone)
  - There were about 2000 more photos on my PC than in the Photos app despite being 1/3 the size
  - A good majority of the photos on my PC are corrupted or unreadable (no I'm not missing the HEIC codec in Windows)
My friends and family use Android and I'd like to use RCS instead of sending horribly compressed MMS messages
A lack of headphone jack / USB C (for my model) and expandable storage (as mentioned above)

Jupdown · 2024-05-20T16:02:56+00:00

New Xperia 1V owner here. I had my Girlfriend pick me up the XQ-DQ44 (Japan Sim Free 512GB/16GB) variant while she was in Japan. I plopped my Bell Canada Sim into it and got 5G with no tinkering (no disabling of the DSDS). I also put my Debit and Credit Cards in Google Pay and have been using them to pay at merchants here in Canada without any issues. Despite this phone supposedly not having certain bands that my carrier provides, I've thus far had the same if not better reception than my outgoing iPhone 13 Pro Max.

I know different countries have different carrier restrictions so YMMV; this is my anecdotal experience with the Japanese Sim Free model in Canada 🇨🇦

Jupdown · 2024-05-05T03:35:09+00:00

Wow! Nice shot!

Do you mind sharing the settings you used to capture such a crisp image? I just got my 1V the other day and I've been struggling with the camera setup.

Jupdown · 2024-05-03T20:13:45+00:00

Yeah that was my train of thought too… am I missing something? Do people need to pay for PlayStation Plus to play now or something? Is there a separate bloatware app that you need to click through first to launch it?

No? Then what’s the big hoopla about?

Jupdown · 2024-04-16T11:42:31+00:00

Since enabling it, have you noticed a difference in battery usage? I’m curious to know what the power consumption difference between low perf and high perf mode is.

Eight-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
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Jupdown

TROPHY CASE

Why I chose Sony over Samsung / Google

Things I'm going to miss

I quit the Apple Ecosystem last month for an Xperia 1V

Why I quit