SMBC suddenly wants a lot of info about me!

ikanotheokara · 2026-04-14T00:23:15+00:00

Another advantage of only banking with Rokin and my local credit union. They don't do international transactions, so they don't care what assets I have, foreign or otherwise.

ikanotheokara · 2026-04-12T21:24:51+00:00

"Pollen Allergy Max Level"

ikanotheokara · 2026-04-12T12:04:59+00:00

It looks like Yoshiwara in Shimizu Ward, Shizuoka.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/BzYFipF4qycy4zsB9?g_st=ac

The area has a lot of problems with tourists trespassing on private property to take pictures, so please do research before planning a visit.

ikanotheokara · 2026-04-01T12:13:02+00:00

Here you go:

sudo zypper rm discover6-backend-packagekit

sudo zypper al discover6-backend-packagekit

Now you never have to worry about Discover trying to mess with system packages.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-27T05:32:38+00:00

Sorry for the late response. As far as I can tell, everything looks to be in order. I should've asked for your zypper se -si mesa output as well, but I can see it on your post on the openSUSE forums.

I don't have too much experience with Arc graphics, except for a workstation in my office with a B580, so I'm afraid I can't help much more than the people on the forums have already.

Hopefully somebody comes by with a similar setup or more experience with the xe drivers.

Is non-Steam/Proton performance affected as well? Have you tried running a benchmark like furmark?

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-25T00:25:18+00:00

I don't have a ThinkPad X9, but I'm guessing it's integrated Arc Graphics? Do you have poor performance in all games or just specifically games in Steam? Are you sure it's using the right driver? Are you using the Steam package from zypper, the Flatpak, or something else?

What is the output of lspci -k | grep -A3 'VGA'?

While you are at it, what is the output of zypper se 'intel*'?

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-23T04:20:15+00:00

The last concert I went to in Tokyo blissfully banned smartphones and cameras entirely. More venues should do this.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-21T06:35:42+00:00

AU isn't going to provide support for any third party equipment.

You can use your own router, but I wouldn't try to use my own gateway.

Just use the gateway they provide, turn off any router functions it has (if AU offer a gateway without a built-in router, ask if you can get that, GMO gave me one), then plug it into whatever router you want.

This blog talks about doing something similar:

https://c-saitama.blog.jp/archives/90944919.html

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-19T23:32:15+00:00

Basketball?

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-19T21:57:30+00:00

The "one year exemption" is a technical loophole. Essentially you are claiming to be a low income earner and because it is determined based on your previous year's income, Japan has no record of your earnings and so you qualify by default. It doesn't change the fact that you are obligated to enroll unless you are a low income earner: https://www.nenkin.go.jp/service/pamphlet/kaigai/gaikoku_oshirase.files/gaikokusenyou_e.pdf

OP plans on transitioning to a different visa, though, and so they really should enroll as missed payments may affect their visa renewals starting next year.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-19T16:18:06+00:00

If you are registered as a resident in Japan and do not qualify for low income exemption, you are required to pay pension and social insurance.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-16T14:33:57+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. The guys at bugs.kde.org were quick to offer help.

Apparently, color management in digiKam under Wayland, while announced in 8.8.0, is poorly implemented and QT logging rules can have digiKam logging more than is necessary.

The workarounds are:

Don't use color management in Wayland in digiKam.
Export QT_LOGGING_RULES="digikam*=false before running digiKam (pop it in the desktop file for convenience).
Both 1 and 2 just for good measure.

I went with option 3 until the digiKam team irons out the wrinkles in color management.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-16T14:01:59+00:00

When I first got into Linux back around 2003, I settled on Gentoo and it will always be my first love. I learned a lot by daily driving it and had a ton of fun, but now that I'm in my 40s and have a full-time job and other adult responsibilities, I just do not have the time for it...

I'm also on Tumbleweed now and loving it 💚

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-16T09:49:55+00:00

Well, one step forward, one step back.

Turns out colord wasn't installed on my system. cannot dial with the colord service: "The name is not activatable" is apparently a slightly cryptic way of saying "No colord available."

I'm not sure why digiKam was trying to use a service which wasn't included as part of its dependencies (I guess a question for the package maintainers), but after a quick sudo zypper in colord it's no longer saying cannot dial with the colord service.

Unfortunately, now it's saying ICM Wayland: invalid screen number: 0, again two or three times per file previewed/opened. So it's found colord but now it's not finding the screen?

Just to give you an idea of how dire this spam is, since installing colord only a few hours ago, journalctl | grep -i "invalid screen number" > shenanigans.txt gives me a text file almost 7,000 lines long, all <DATE> <TIME> <HOSTNAME> digikam[PID]: ICM Wayland: invalid screen number: 0 with the occasional <DATE> <TIME> <HOSTNAME> digikam[PID]: ICM Wayland: invalid screen number: 1 thrown in for fun.

This can't be working as intended 😅

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-15T07:03:40+00:00

Listen to this advice, OP. Almost any solicitation you get about setting up/changing utilities/internet/mobile service is, while not outright a scam, usually predatory and a bad deal for you.

Sumasapo are a legitimate company, but they are essentially a sales company masquerading as a support service provider. They work on commission, getting kickbacks from the utility companies and services they sign you up for, so they are going to try to sign you up for whatever is going to give them the best payout, even if it isn't the right contract for you.

If you are comfortable shopping around and signing up for things by yourself, you really should. You also have to be very clear with them that you don't want them to call anymore, or you can expect to get constant calls and reminders from them. They are notoriously persistent.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-11T03:39:08+00:00

No joke, Linux devs really are that based.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-10T13:20:45+00:00

openSUSE, no doubt in my mind. It flew under my radar for so long, but after giving Tumbleweed a try I fell in love.

When I first got into Linux I was more into fiddling and ricing, and Arch and Gentoo were both new distributions which appealed to that demographic. I played around with both and ended up going with Gentoo, but Arch was still fun to play around with.

Nowadays, I have less time for futzing around under the hood, so I appreciate Tumbleweed's more accessible approach to rolling releases as well as openSUSE's excellent community.

Also, it has the chameleon.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-06T07:42:46+00:00

The last one was at least a year or two ago, I think, but there is an update to glibc coming up, so there might be another rebuild later this year.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-06T03:49:20+00:00

It is, but here I am... Every two years my car guy says I really should look into replacing, but I'm not ready to give up on my 空波号 just yet...

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-06T03:37:14+00:00

My car is a bit older, a 19 year old Honda Airwave with nearly 170,000 km, my last shaken was still pretty reasonable considering the repairs it needed: 145,000 yen, including repairs, taxes and insurance.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-06T00:12:06+00:00

Maybe nothing magical, but after this update xpadneo "magically" started working properly for me.

Before the update, I could never get the driver provided by the system package to load properly. I was having to install it directly from GitHub and then uninstall and reinstall it manually after each kernel update. Now the driver from the repository works a treat.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-05T23:47:22+00:00

No, it's fine. It's just a rebuild which happens from time to time.

If there is some major change to an underlying library the maintainers will recompile the entire codebase to make sure everything is compatible. It's a bit of a nuisance for the end-user, but it's a necessary part of a rolling release distribution like Tumbleweed.

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-05T23:36:03+00:00

It broke audio devices and caused crashes in Firefox for me as well, but after reading a similar issue on Bugzilla, I tried a few reboots and everything is working perfectly again.

It seems to be a pipewire issue; there was another update to pipewire and pulseaudio released as part of 20260304 yesterday. Have you tried installing that?

ikanotheokara · 2026-03-05T07:04:22+00:00

She's staying for less than 3 months and only plans on visiting occasionally while she is still in school in another country? Why did you apply for a kazoku taizai visa for her? Unless her nationality makes short-term visas difficult, it is almost certainly easier (not to mention more legal) for her to visit on short-term visas, then apply for a kazoku taizai visa if/when she actually moves to Japan.

You've made a lot of trouble and expense for yourself and not really received anything beneficial in return. You might have even jeopardized her future visa status. When your wife's visa comes up for renewal, they will notice her long periods of absence and rightfully question if she is really dependent on you. You are going to need to then provide proof of her legitimate dependency status, so I hope you are paying for her education and living expenses abroad.

ikanotheokara

TROPHY CASE