If most of you are aware, I've resumed applying to jobs. Well, most of them were rejections, but today, I got a response. The pay of the job is ₹60,000 per annum. Yes, you read it right.

And what's the message I've received?

Hi /c/velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml,

Are you flexible on your salary?

Is ₹5,000 per month not already low enough? Even school-dropout blue-collar workers make more than me at ₹25,000 per month. Rent of a room alone costs around ₹7,000-9,000. I am so done with this.

I had to replace the display cable from another broken laptop, and thankfully, it was compatible with mine. Also changed the screen from AUO to Innolux, so I'm loving the matt display - but the tint is now a little yellowish. I would've increased the RAM, if not for the DDR3L vs DDR4 modules not being compatible to each other, so I'm suck with just 4GB. And also switched from normal swap to zswap with lz0 compression and zpool of type zsmalloc. I can't fold the laptop anymore, but well, it works decently for now.

Pardon me if I get this wrong - but I'd assume that if one were to return packages back to a online shop (Amazon, Ebay, etc), they would have to:

• print a label, package the box and then return to a post office, right - maybe also pay a little fee?

• return to a designated locker/warehouse

• initiate a label-free return to a nearby supermarket

Perhaps this is how it works in North America and maybe Europe, right?

Well, I wanted to talk about the system set in India used by every online shops (including Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Puma, etc). Here's how it goes:

• if you want to return the product, you access the homepage, and initiate a return

• you'll get a message ensuring that a delivery agent (assigned by logistic companies like DTDC, Blue Dart or Delhivery) will be by your house by tomorrow, or day after tomorrow

• you're not supposed to re-package the delivery box, because the agent will come to your door, check the contents briefly, and then carry the product with them

• after a few days, or maybe a week, the team at the warehouse will inspect the product properly, and then immediately initiate a refund

Sure, it is convenient, but I can't help and think of how exploitative this is to gig-workers. Am I in the wrong to feel this way?

I've been looking to buy a Thinkpad from Ebay. Compared to the refurbished market in India, the prices are really low, even after the addition of shipping costs.

For example, consider a Thinkpad X13 Gen 1 with i7-10510U/10610U (6c, 12t, I believe), 16GB onboard RAM and 512TB storage being sold for ₹12,000-₹18,000, plus ₹6,000 for shipping, versus paying ₹35,000-₹65,000 overall when buying from a refurbished laptop seller locally.

Are there addition expenses to pay - like for example, import duty? What other stuff should I take into consideration?

Ever since I've graduated on September 2022, I've not had a job. Maybe a crappy internship, but I wasn't provided with a 'certificate', or letter that proves if I've worked for them. That was around October 2022, and I quit voluntarily at the end of January 2023. Since then, I've not worked anywhere as a software dev, be it internship or full-time, because the job market is so fucked up in India.

Now, how do I explain this to avail scholarship? I have yet to read other scholarship docs from other countries in Europe, and I'm already shitting solidified blood-clots reading this from the DAAD Helmut-Schmidt announcement document:

a curriculum vitae in reverse chronological order including the date of issue (format: europass, please note: the europass template does not include a date, please add it yourself) with exact information about your studies and practical experience; gaps of three months or more must be explained

(Update: And I just realized that I am an idiot for not reading that this is only for non-STEM folks. Well, it looks to me that DAAD for STEM is also almost the same, with more stringent requirements.)

In my college, there was no research programs - I mean, you know the typical 'Indian colleges encouraging academic plagiarism', so I didn't learn or do shit. And obviously, I have no job experience. I did contribute to open-source from GitLab, a few Ruby gems, a new unknown front-end framework for JS, then Nixpkgs and now Guix, but that's it. Honestly, I wouldn't even call it contribution, because only a few patches were merged - most of it was just me interacting with those folks. After that, I've done nothing since September 2023, because my laptop broke and there were no spare parts. Maybe a little bit of playing around with Nix and Guix, writing package expressions and that's it.

How do I explain this? CVs are supposed to be at least 2-3 pages, but this? I can't even write half a page with this.

CS degree is kinda useless, right? I haven't slept the whole night applying and thinking about this...

This beef is related to XScreensaver being forced to make a privacy policy, but this list is pretty fucking based.

I under-estimated comb size 21 on my Braun trimmer (still can't figure out if it's millimeters or freedom units), and used it to trim my head. I was also under the assumption that using size 13 on the sides would give a fade.

Well, turns out that there's really not a lot of difference between 21 and 13, at least to the visible eye - so there's no 'fade', and me being at at Norwood scale 3 makes it even more worse, almost like a Tonsure Mini Pro ™.

Now I look like Jason Statham if he was a pedophile monk. Kids will look at my franken-hair fuckery and piss off their pants.