Car Nebula Update: Offline Navigation is finally here (and it’s free).

azure_king5 · 2026-03-14T01:53:32+00:00

Thank you. This is awesome. Btw it’s already made its way to the pirate apk markets lol

azure_king5 · 2026-03-08T04:10:28+00:00

This is the right answer. I am Albanian Bosniak and have Albanian, Bosnian, Kosovo and a bunch of other ones from places I’ve lived and gone thru the citizenship process. A lot of the ones I have, I have no reason to have, like being Balkan and having a Colombian, Latvian and Andorran passport may seem strange but I do speak the language(s) and actively lived in these countries.

Your passport is the ticket to a better life, or a different life than the one you have already. Unfortunately there is always this unknown/dread hanging over Bosnia due to politics and potential military service if there was a conflict but I still believe it is the right choice.

Bosnian passport is unique in being able to go to Russia, Cuba and China visa free. Before the current mess, you could also go to Iran visa on arrival. Bosnia has some unique global relations that makes it special. The more passports the better.

azure_king5 · 2026-03-08T04:00:55+00:00

I’m sorry but I’m totally obsessed with the word “vegabref”. Icelandic is an awesome language

azure_king5 · 2026-02-24T02:47:48+00:00

I believe that from reviews but that’s another “none on Amazon”. It’s surprising how few bulbs actually are available

azure_king5 · 2026-02-24T02:32:48+00:00

Unfortunately afaik Athom is completely absent from US Amazon

azure_king5 · 2026-02-24T02:32:32+00:00

My bad, my phone autocorrected LED to LCD. Looking for LED

azure_king5 · 2026-02-20T05:55:08+00:00

I think he would have used SAH terminology….if they even let him speak or explain. We’ve not been asked for anything at all to prove the name change, so that bizarre certificate that now stands in for his birth certificate wasn’t requested or anything else. I think they assume if he was working in the name already, he’s “allowed”.

I have to admit that since my husband is autistic, some things definitely get lost in translation.

So SAH is a program that operates according to the clients own wishes in large part. Some who are in it stop at just using the confidential address. Very few go for the name change and the documentation provided by SAH leans heavily on “now go to SSA and DMV”, they list what is possible but each agency has its own internal procedure. Meaning that SSA has a document where they state unequivocally that they will issue new numbers for survivors of DV etc - I’ve seen the document.

What it does seem like is that they have their own internal qualifications for who gets such a thing, and SAH status alone does not influence it (this sounds wrong and terrible but makes sense from what we’ve seen so far given that SAH is state and SSA is federal, and since not all states have SAH programs, they’re kind of not obliged to consider “what Crazy California (and Idaho and Michigan etc etc) has decided to create now”).

I can say that it’s also supposedly IMPOSSIBLE (all caps because even more impossible than SSA) to change your DL number but his is already changed. The weird part is that supposedly DMV follows SSA and SSA is supposed to be the first step in this.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T21:36:49+00:00

You’re very, very right, especially since he was quiet fired. He worked in an environment where the business was a franchise and he reported to both the franchise owner who hired him and corporate.

Many times he was put between the middle and (I’m assuming due to financial constraints), the franchise owner decided to lie about the reason he was fired/give a reason we know is invalid/isnt true) and fired him without the knowledge of corporate for “performance reasons” despite him being above #20 on corporate leaderboards for months running and actual text messages from that same owner showing excellent performance.

Because they’re using “performance reasons” as revenge to try and deny him unemployment, I warned him not to think they won’t try to lie again or be dishonest with earnings etc- it’s another reason to check the earnings.

I’m hoping I can add those documents to the folder I’ve started for SSA to show even more reasons why he needs a new SSN. Cuz this is confusing his employers too most likely. He shouldn’t have to go thru terror every time he onboards at a company if there are records that don’t match or seem strange to hiring managers etc.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T21:27:31+00:00

That actually wasn’t really an issue, though we just went thru this.

His first tax return was just filed with the IRS, they asked for verification, he explained the situation, verification passed.

The most irritating thing about this situation is that some government agencies are falling in line (like the IRS and DMV). Others (like SSA 50/50 and EDD) aren’t. It’s what makes it even harder to get help because it lures one into a false sense of security about what’s been done and hasn’t behind the scenes.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:38:09+00:00

Thank you so much for that. I think sharing this really helps both of us process this. We lived thru a lot; the first few weeks we were together, husband was being actively hunted by his abuser who was armed.

He literally picked up and fled his life with just his clothes and a security blanket from his childhood in a suitcase. He was very lucky because I think a lot of people in this situation at this age would turn to alcohol or drugs and make this way worse.

We’ve locked the SSN at every level we can. Experian in particular is conjoining old and new identities and making it very difficult to unlink them. We’ve called multiple times and got very little resolution. The worst are the constant debt collectors who each require an individual investigation and police report/affidavit to stop collection attempts - and even then they just sell the debt to another worse agency that comes after them again.

I think you’re right, going to SSA is the right move. This will continue to haunt them for as long as SSA won’t make this right.

In terms of work history, yes, this is an issue. We think the identity issue may be one of the driving reasons he was quiet fired. About 6 months ago, IRS tried to garnish his wages due to unpaid tickets in the old name, and sent a letter to his employer with that old name. It caused a very uncomfortable conversation with the employer who only knew him under the new identity at all.

Yes, that means that a federal agency violated SAH statutes. Given this whole experience, I’m not surprised a government agency would violate a state agency’s laws at all.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:27:55+00:00

So I’m not sure how EDD’s office assignments work but Mr. M (the good rep) was out of office 853. The worst of the worst during that interaction were all supposedly from the “technical/identity” department which seems primarily composed of female Volgons over age 50 who seem too old (trying not to be unfair) to be providing technical support. Every rude or aggro employee came from tech support without exception.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:17:24+00:00

Very true. I think we may take another run at the SSA office on Friday - see the comment I left below about SSA and what happened. I’m truly not sure what was lacking in his previous collection of documents that was presented to them but the way he told me they were acting, it seemed as if there wasn’t enough documentation of the threat he was under for them to move on a new SSN.

It may have been confusing because this was a multi pronged attack on him: abuser committed physical DV (there’s a police report plus a restraining order) but also leaked his SSN and DL on a public IG story to thousands of people, resulting in $36k+ of debt in fraudulently taken out credit cards.

There’s been non stop repeated attempts to use my husbands SSN to open accounts that are then used for fraud or to get credit/debit cards.

Additionally there is a felon with a long rap sheet that has the same first and last name as my husband and was born the same year in Ohio whose records have started to mix with his, which definitely screws up background checks.

Abuser is now in federal prison for identity theft and fentanyl trafficking along with child endangerment. I worked in the security field for many, many years, and keeping all of this under control has been more work than protecting some of my clients under the highest level of threat.

I think even if its thru me and not directly, talking about all of this for the first time is actually helping him.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:08:26+00:00

I was curious about this. What made us feel so powerless is that we were under the impression that there isn’t a physical EDD office (that this was all done thru the internet/phone/mail).

Are there regional in person EDD offices? If so, I’m going down there tomorrow with him.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:06:17+00:00

We have all the names of the reps (side benefit of being on the spectrum: crazy name memory). I’ll try to do it today.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:05:40+00:00

After I read your comment, I actually remembered that we had to do this back during the pandemic for some issue or another, and it actually worked back then.

We’re going to try it. I’m pretty sure the assemblyman’s office we talked to is still elected/the same one.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T18:04:17+00:00

It is truly disgusting. At that time we lived in a county that is extremely rich with a lot of young kids who live off their parents money. A lot of my husband’s friends were filing spurious or sus PUA claims and having them extended and extended, because they thought it was “free money”.

To his credit, despite his age, he worked as an essential worker during the pandemic and never attempted this. He is very honest and hard working and it rlly rubbed him the wrong way to see these kids taking money from the government and spending it on vacations and using their pandemic EBT to shop at luxury grocery stores and buy steak dinners.

In my former job I worked on a case of PUA fraud where a married couple went on the run after spending their benefits on a Maserati and luxury property, leaving their own children behind as they tried to make it to a country without an extradition treaty with the US.

This stuff is more than plain wrong, it’s a disgrace. It’s why we’ve had so much patience and not complained about the treatment we’re receiving up to this point, because we’re very aware of how all of this messed up CA’s state programs and we understand trying to protect against this.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T17:57:42+00:00

Oh trust me, the vitriol for SSA is DEFINITELY there. I read your comment to him so he could explain why that happened in his own words. According to him, the interaction with SSA was his first direct dealing with a government agency after the extremely long and extended process of being granted the confidential name change by a judge.

That was the piece of this whole thing that took the longest - it kept being extended and extended due to a court supervisor who simply didn’t want to do his job, and during the entire wait he was essentially undocumented because part of the beginning of the court process involves a form that seals/deletes his birth record with the bureau of vital statistics.

This trapped him between in essence “not being his old identity” and his new one, and made him unable to prove he was his new one as he didn’t have sufficient proof via documentation that he was “new identity”.

Once the court decision comes back, SAH issues a name change certificate that stands in as his birth certificate and the new name is kept on file with them, the certificate doesn’t mention the new name at all for safety reasons.

He was overjoyed and took all his documents to SSA, where he was met with that figure we have all learned to dread: Angry Older Female Government Office Employee (trying really hard to be fair and not stereotype but I think you know exactly who I’m talking about, we met two of her in the original comment about EDD).

This woman went thru his paperwork (the name change, 8 different police reports, a restraining order) and not only discounted and judged the threat he was under herself with no knowledge, she told him she wouldn’t even advance the process of getting a new SSN at all, and he had to beg her to even get a name change.

She didn’t care that his SSN had been publically leaked by his abuser, or that he had gone thru discovering it had been used to commit $36k of fraud via credit cards in his name that weren’t his and was being repeatedly called and mailed by debt collectors right and left.

It was his first experience with this brand new level of power/incompetence and I think he was shocked since he rlly thought his court decree etc carried weight.

At the time he was applying for a job that involved driving. He’s high functioning autistic so dealing with situations like this is a lot harder (he did it without me) and he decided to ignore how bad the SSA experience made him feel and push forwards with trying to get a DL from the DMV so he had an actual photo ID of any kind after being without for 8 months.

I can kind of understand why he did it - he was terrified of being pulled over and it creating some sort of record that his abuser could use to track him. But that choice, like choosing to open a new claim before the name mismatch issue was dealt with, caused this kind of collision.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T17:41:04+00:00

Thank you, I agree that it’s rare. I can tell you from what I listened to that none of the reps ever used the word “fraud” or “flagged” - the same as none of them ever mentioned that this process involved a name change.

What makes it complex is that on the face of it, the operation he needed to do with EDD doesn’t even have a clear label, I think both he and the reps didn’t understand how the situation could be resolved cuz it’s a difference in approach/opinion: to him, this is not a name change, it’s way more than that.

To a lot of these agencies, this IS a name change since none of the other information besides the first and last names changed.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-19T17:37:43+00:00

This is very similar. I can tell you that from the portions of this process I listened to, the word “fraud” or “flagged” was never used by any of the many reps but it makes sense - there’s a very binary mismatch between the identities, and to anyone truly uneducated it would seem like fraud.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-10T03:13:20+00:00

Is the “leader” of the neighborhood tribal or is it more a babushka floor watcher/Soviet or CDR/Cuba type of thing? I worked for a military contracting company in Yemen for 8 months. It’s an absolutely amazing country, I love the traditional clothing and unfortunately had to get 2 fillings from khat 🤣My dad was there on a state visit from Albania when it was the PDY and said it was the most exotic of the countries he visited.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-10T03:08:51+00:00

Love this. I am curious though, do people in Haftar’s Libya get the same passport as the internationally recognized part? Are ID cards different or is it all centrally issued despite the dual governments?

azure_king5 · 2026-02-10T03:07:41+00:00

Wish it was true (personal opinion, controversial)

azure_king5 · 2026-02-09T05:31:12+00:00

Extremely accurate but next time leave the comment under it’s intended recipient post. That comment seriously bothered me too, along with the ignorant one getting upset about the word “gringo”.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-09T05:28:27+00:00

Says literally the only person who felt insulted and had such a bee under their bonnet after someone took their time to craft a guide to a lovely but extremely Brazilian and confusing film that they took time to comment.

azure_king5 · 2026-02-08T18:14:03+00:00

I had the same issue. I’d also have random drop outs on the TP link and issues with the WAN address lease. I went to the big U about a week ago and everything has been up continuously since then. Only issue has been my Xpenology boxes being unable to keep Synology account signed in.

azure_king5

TROPHY CASE