_fb8a's comments

Again my point with Aum is that, like NSU, they're microscopic in terms of percentage of population (NSU membership being 0.0002% of Germany, Aum being 0.001% of Japan) so it's missing the point of discussing behaviours that may encompass a more substantial percentage of each society.

The bar example is way worse than the train example, to the point I already mentioned that said behaviour is illegal in the European countries I've lived in; and I only described two examples as I didn't feel like writing a whole essay on the good and bad, but those certainly weren't the only issues we faced (nothing as severe as death threats or whatever, but enough to make me not want to settle there).

Anyway, I'm pausing this here; hopefully you're not arguing on bad faith, but it's clear this conversation isn't going anywhere productive anymore...

I mean, Germany is not void of issues, or the UK, where I currently reside, or any other country really...

But comparing my example with the NSU makes no sense to me, the NSU is comparable with Aum Shinrikyo (the Japanese cult that caused the sarin attack back in the 90s) in the sense that they both have/had negligible memberships compared to the countries population, i.e., a few hundreds or couple thousands members, so I don't think in either case you can generalise the behaviour of German or Japanese citizens from the existence of 100 or 1000 pieces of shit human beings.

Japan's immigration percentage is also massively different (~2%) from that of Germany, Spain, UK, or USA (each ~15%) and I'm sure that has an impact on the attitude towards foreigners too.

I completely agree though that the issues I may run into in Japan are probably going to be different and possibly less severe than those that eastern/southeastern asian people or dark-skinned people may face.

I believe we are interpreting hostile differently because for me it doesn't necessarily imply actively antagonistic or harmful, it can simply mean inhospitable/unfriendly and that to me is a textbook situation.

Here there are also situations where they can refuse entry/service, e.g., you're not wearing tshirt and shoes, or you're drunk and belligerent, but certainly not because of your race, sex, gender, etc.

In any case, to avoid going back and forth on the same topic, I reiterate that my personal experience (and my 2 friends from the first trip, and my partner from the second) was that although we had wonderful experiences with Japanese people that made us feel generally welcome as tourists, we were left with the impression that if we already had issues like those I wrote about what other problems someone living there permanently could encounter (maybe problems when renting, dating, etc.)

I loved visiting Japan, it's the most unique/different of all countries I've been to, but the bittersweet taste it left in me took away any desire to look for jobs there when I left Germany (not my country of origin either).

The train situation is not "we were sat down --> he entered the train --> he decided not to sit down next to us and sat elsewhere", but "he was sat down --> we entered the train and sat close to him (not literally next to him, just close) --> he stood up, exited the train through the closest door, entered the train again through a different door and sat further away from us" which is a WTF situation in my opinion.

The bar banning foreigners is not just hostile but also illegal in many other countries, if you try that shit in the UK, Germany, or Spain (I can speak from experience having lived there, but I guess it wouldn't fly in the US either?) they'll shut down your venue and possibly fine you.

Not the person you replied to but I've been to Japan twice, with different people, each for a month across Honshu/Kyushu and can definitely say there's a duality in how they behave towards foreigners...

On one hand, as you mention, we experienced lots of acts of politeness, as I would put it, e.g., being helped to find some location as in your example, being helped to understand some menu dishes when I couldn't decipher them (I had at most intermediate level of Japanese), being bowed to upon entering hotels, ryokans, etc.

On the other hand, we also experienced straight up nasty behaviour, e.g., someone standing up and leaving the train wagon when we sat next to him (and then reentering through the next door and sitting far away from us), being forbidden from entering a bar because of being foreigners (despite the fact I can speak Japanese, not great admittedly, but more than sufficient to order, pay, etc.).

When talking with people from my country settled there the common negative theme is "you'll never be accepted/treated as one of them".

Oh I definitely agree with you, I just found that workaround above because I was really frustrated as I don't see any advantage to having javascript enabled on my searches and was used to not needing it in Google, Duckduckgo, Ecosia, and other search engines...

As I posted on another comment I think that happens because you have disabled Javascript and there seems to be a bug for English. If you use JS (as done for your Google search) it returns results as expected.

That also happens to me if I disable javascript (and therefore get their Qwant Lite page).

However, it works if you use a non-English language:

https://lite.qwant.com/?l=de&q=foobar

https://lite.qwant.com/?l=en&q=foobar <-- this won't work (or omitting l=en)

https://lite.qwant.com/?l=es&q=foobar

https://lite.qwant.com/?l=fr&q=foobar

I completely agree with you, especially considering that comment was posted in reply to the maintainer's also dismissive comment "this patch is boring", which to me makes it seem not as bad as if it were out of the blue...

I agree that the comment is in bad taste but what I don't see this being considered a "far, far, far over the line." comment when I take into consideration that it had been posted in reply to the maintainer's also dismissive comment "this patch is boring" so, yes, the user has definitely been rude, but chances are it's a visceral response too.

Otherwise if that event is far far over the line I wonder what out of the blue insults or death threats qualify as.

I think it's again to mitigate against potential bad actors attempting to access legitimate users' accounts.

You could use other methods but there's always tradeoffs, e.g., let's say that instead of using a captcha you just temporarily block login attempts to some account after X failed login attempts. This has the advantage that it's faster for legitimate users as you don't need to complete the captcha; however, the main disadvantage is that you can then get an attacker brute-forcing logins (even if they don't really care about getting users' credentials) which can disrupt your website by preventing potentially thousands of users from signing in.

In my opinion the captcha is the least bad option from a security point of view, as long as it has an alternative accessible mechanism for example for blind users.

I don't use or even like Slack, but what is the problem with that?

I mean they are already giving you the oppportunity to use a limited version for free, you can't expect them to give you one of the most useful features imho when you are just using their resources and infrastructure in exchange for nothing; it doesn't make any business sense.

If I'm a non-paying user of Slack (or whatever other SaaS with a free tier) I am not entitled to anything whatsoever, I'd be grateful for the fact that they allow me partial functionality at all.