I went like 6 or 7 years ago. Basically no knowledge of Japanese. I used Google translate quite a bit. And yeah it was hit or miss, but generally worked well enough. Is there a better translater?

Besides that, you’ll encounter English a fair bit. Store names, brand names, signage, menus. Not the norn, but not uncommon. And plenty of information out there in English of how to get around.

Relative to other countries where both the spoken language and writing are foreign to me, my subjective opinion I found it easier. Not easy, easier.

Edit: oh and similarly not uncommon to encounter people who speak at least a little English.

I feel like if it ever was, it was back when their logo looked like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP2Shell

This, I’m guessing. A couple of new high impact vulnerabilities.

Answering on the idea of port forwarding. Though like others have said, tailscale or similar is a better option.

Opening an ssh port would allow file transfer. You could also so remote desktop with port forwarding over ssh and vnc (or some other more modern protocol, haven’t futzed with anything like that in a long time).

Probably doesn’t need saying but make sure your system is up to date. Also using a nonstandard port and using key based authentication and disallowing password authentication and good security measures. If the device you’re connecting from isn’t something you’re bringing with you, you’d also need a copy of your private key.

DIY Phone

Use the Comet and the Linux stack for calling*, messaging and mobile data as an alternate to your walled and closed smartphone. Contribute to the Linux ecosystem for mobiles.

• No earpiece but the front speaker can do the trick.

Limited to speakerphone, as it stands. Maybe someone will make an attachment that uses the GPIO pins to add an earpiece. Since the GPIO pins are on the bottom guessing that might be a little unwieldy though.

I like that. Now I want an open air case.

LFS + twm FTW.

You seem to have a good sense of what disros are out there. I think any beginner friendly distro with wherever user friendly DE it comes with will probably be fine.

I’d say maybe stick with a deb or rpm one which most are anyway, for the compatibility point you already made. If you/they need something that’s otherwise not available in your distro’s repos, there’s probably already packages or third party repos available.

But the ask is a recommendation. I find myself generally recommending Fedora, despite not having used it myself for years. It’s easy to install, you can choose your DE, it’s stable, has a good release cadence, and is easy to upgrade and maintain.

TIL about Citizen Eco-Drive watches. Looked them up. I like them!

I’ll try living that mechanical watch life first, but if I have the same irritations, could see me going the same route.

I just ordered a mechanical watch. Primarily because I think they’re cool, but it not even having a battery feels as far away from a smartwatch as you can get to me, and I like that too.

I met my soon to be wife on a dating app. You might think from that opening sentence that I’m about to extol the virtues of dating apps. I am not. They are garbage, so I agree the trash can is the best place.

This was during covid lockdowns, so no social opportunities, and I had recently moved to a new area and didn’t know anyone nearby. So seemed the only option, terrible as it is. And yeah it worked out for me, but that’s beating the odds. It was an unpleasant experience and was thrilled to be done with it. But, it might be a similar situation for others. No better option seemingly available.

That said, prior to that, I attended a lot of meetups via meetup.com and had a fair bit of luck dating through that. And regardless of if I met someone or not at any given thing, I had fun.