Nostr notes by Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸

Skill issue ...

2026-05-02T14:40:50Z

Skill issue

> Friedrich Merz has also added that Germans should not rely ...

2026-03-14T16:29:28Z

> Friedrich Merz has also added that Germans should not rely on heat pumps in the winter, because heat pumps cannot efficiently operate under the extreme weather conditions of the blocked Strait of Hormuz

> a 100 Wh battery in 1 ℓ of water might bring it to a boil, ...

2026-03-01T13:37:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…5zmt
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> a 100 Wh battery in 1 ℓ of water might bring it to a boil, depending on how warm the water was to start with, but not much further

But that's assuming a battery fire is just a very rapid discharge, and afaik battery fires release more energy than just rapid discharges?

it's large in terms of money, not in terms of the numbers of ...

2026-01-26T23:53:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…spvx
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it's large in terms of money, not in terms of the numbers of these GPUs.

Apparently the latest generation costs six digit amount per GPU; selling just a million of them would already make Nvidia one of the largest companies in the world by revenue and not just by valuation.

> those servers still aren't exactly available at ...

2026-01-26T23:48:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…2ze2
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> those servers still aren't exactly available at pocket-money kind of prices

But they literally are?
Just a random example from ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/226945580797 ("HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8 Xeon E5-2630 v2 2.60GHz 192GB RAM 8x 2.5 SFF P420i iLo4" for 180€); another example from another seller: https://www.ebay.com/itm/376838993431 ("Dell PowerEdge R610 Rack Server 2x Xeon X5560 4-Core 2.8GHz 192GB RAM IDRAC" for 150€).
Or https://www.ebay.com/itm/297919718270 ("HP ProLiant DL380p G8 GEN8 Server Motherboard 662530-001 622217-001 + 384GB RAM" for 300€).

even if they give them away for free, it will still not result in ...

2026-01-26T23:36:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…2ze2
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even if they give them away for free, it will still not result in any qualitative difference with the current situation where everybody who wants a lot of RAM and can afford an iphone already has a lot of RAM.
It's not like Nvidia is making these GPUs in the billions.

yeah I was saying this in the context of that "Cambrian ...

2026-01-26T23:26:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…6kj0
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yeah I was saying this in the context of that "Cambrian explosion" post.
Like, if tens of thousands of enthusiasts having access to 144GB RAM could cause any Cambrian explosion, such an explosion would already be here, because enthusiasts already have access to more than tens of thousands of used servers with more than 144GB of RAM.

and not even a lot of memory; extremely expensive B300 only have ...

2026-01-26T23:18:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…cacw
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and not even a lot of memory; extremely expensive B300 only have 144GB of it, many servers sold on used goods market have more than that.

Who called it "switching to Linux" when ...

2026-01-20T10:01:46Z

Who called it "switching to Linux" when "defenestrating" is right here?

As Josef Prusa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found ...

2026-01-14T01:28:50Z

As Josef Prusa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic 3D printer

Turns out German farmers grew too much potatoes last year, so now ...

2026-01-10T14:37:33Z

Turns out German farmers grew too much potatoes last year, so now all the extra potatoes have to be consumed (the alternative is just burning them for biodiesel).
This means **free potatoes for everyone in Berlin**! :boost_ok:
They accept applications for batches over 1 ton until Monday; and also on Thursday and Friday there will be multiple distribution points across Berlin for picking up smaller amounts for personal consumption, measured in kilos.
https://www.4000-tonnen.de

Ah yes, the three genders ...

2026-01-07T12:23:40Z

Ah yes, the three genders

the problem is that it's not going to be general-purpose ...

2026-01-01T14:27:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…wam2
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the problem is that it's not going to be general-purpose memory; it's going to be soldered chips in these GPUs.

And that these GPUs are completely impractical to run at home scale, with them having TDP measured in kilowatts.

At least these 8-bit chips were general purpose afaik?

you should read The Last Ringbearer then! ...

2025-09-06T11:27:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…yfn7
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you should read The Last Ringbearer then! https://archive.org/details/pdfy-YPwhs65jU7BR5hOx/page/n245/mode/2up

Maybe starting with Appendix 2 (on page 246 in that edition, especially from page 249 onwards) :)
(There is also way more on that in his articles, but these are not translated into English.)

actually it's funny that in Russia in 1990s (probably because ...

2025-09-06T10:44:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…9h5v
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actually it's funny that in Russia in 1990s (probably because that was the time when we have all questioned authority) there was not one but _multiple_ books by different authors examining this in different ways, and writing apocryphal books set in the same universe.
E.g. where Eru is the baddy and the bully, and so are some of the Valar (up to doing multiple genocides), while Melcor was the one who gave dwarves consciousness and elves and humans freedom of will, and just wanted to be left alone with his disciples and other folks who flocked to his commune, to just grow flowers and vegetables and dance with friends under the moon in his tiny corner of the world, but of course those Valar who were the bullied couldn't stand that.
Or where elves are (mostly) the baddies and hobbits are just a propaganda trick by Aragorn to help him strengthen his claim on a throne he doesn't actually have any relation to, while Mordor is actually the country where enlightenment started and which at the time of events described in LoTR (which was just a history written by the victors) was starting an inclusive industrial revolution while e.g. Gondor was a feudal state; and of course orcs are just darker-skinned people dehumanized by propaganda.
And the first book was so popular that it gave birth to its own huge fandom, up to the point where we got e.g. a retelling of Beren and Luthien story set in that alternative view on the history, selling like 100k copies.

Also: https://embracing.space/@IngaLovinde/112994172731489072

it only looks like this, because it's kinda obfuscated (or ...

2025-08-25T12:12:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…hesl
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it only looks like this, because it's kinda obfuscated (or maybe it looks obfuscated to me).
Once you visualize the left side, it's obvious that it's just (n-1)/2 times sum from i=1 to n-1 of sin(i*pi/n)^4 (e.g. for large n you get n-2 parts where j-i = 1 and 1 part where j-i = n-1, which produce n-1 times the same value; n-3 parts where j-1 = 2 and 2 parts where j-i = n-2, which too produce n-1 times the next value; etc), which doesn't look _that_ intimidating anymore.
Now expand sin(i*pi/n)^4 as (6 + e^(4i*pi/n) + e^(-4i*pi^n) - 4*(e^(2i*pi/n) + e^(-2i*pi/n)))/16 (by substituting sin(i*pi/n) = (e^(i*pi/n) - e^(-i*pi/n))/2), and I think you'll be halfway there. I'd say that the first (constant) component gives you almost the result, the second (quadrupled angles) gives you the remainder, and the third (doubled angles) sums up to zero, but I'm literally writing this in new post composition box without any paper, so I probably made some mistakes here.

Game where you try to guess whether the application with this ...

2025-08-06T19:53:16Z

Game where you try to guess whether the application with this name is a part of KDE ecosystem or a part of Kubernetes ecosystem.

fwiw I sent an email on March 28 👀

2025-04-22T07:00:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…gpgr
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fwiw I sent an email on March 28 👀

...or maybe you just got accustomed to the smell and stopped ...

2025-02-15T11:17:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…n97r
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...or maybe you just got accustomed to the smell and stopped noticing :blobcatthinking:

But also I think it depends on the fabric, maybe cat breeds are done in such a way that they don't soak much, as opposed to fabric soft couches for humans.

this cat cleans up regularly / quite often, and yet.

2025-02-15T11:13:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…s6dz
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this cat cleans up regularly / quite often, and yet.

> Cats tend not to leach sweat and other bodily fluids into ...

2025-02-15T11:11:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…xf2g
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> Cats tend not to leach sweat and other bodily fluids into sofas

After a cat lies somewhere for a month (or a year), the spot it lied on gets this characteristic cat smell with strong undertones of cat piss (even if the cat did not explicitly pee or poo or puke there; the effect is achieved solely by lying).
Rumors of cat cleanliness are greatly exaggerated.

cats lying on sofas are no less disgusting then, and don't ...

2025-02-15T09:39:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…n8qg
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cats lying on sofas are no less disgusting then, and don't even get me started about dogs :blobcatthinking:

how would electrical be different, except for introducing many ...

2025-02-14T20:26:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…ssq0
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how would electrical be different, except for introducing many more modes of failure and more debugging / fixing complexity?

note though that LLM does not actually summarize: ...

2025-01-22T11:18:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…66jy
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note though that LLM does not actually summarize: https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actually-does-nothing-of-the-kind/

also do you mean the observable universe or the entire universe? ...

2025-01-04T23:30:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…yqgx
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also do you mean the observable universe or the entire universe?
AFAIK we don't really know if the universe is finite. And if it's not, then there might (should?) be some near-identical but different version of Earth, some Graham's number of light years away, or maybe even much closer.
Now _that_ would be weird!

now ask whether π is closer to very small positive numbers or ...

2024-12-02T16:59:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…59r0
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now ask whether π is closer to very small positive numbers or very large

even earth plants exist in three space dimensions (plus one time ...

2024-12-02T00:07:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…m4fg
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even earth plants exist in three space dimensions (plus one time dimension), not two; and also even these three space dimensions are curved (and even "three space dimensions with curvature" is one way of interpreting the world); and also it takes a certain kind of perception and of cognition to go from the real world as we perceive and interpret it, to idealized R³×R.

The reason why humans discovered/invented "ratio of circumference to radius" even before discovering/inventing formalized euclidean geometry is because (1) humans until very recently perceived two of the space dimensions differently from the third; and (2) they had reasonably "flat" surfaces and understanding of "flatness"; and (3) they had notions of "length" and "measurements" and were into measuring lengths.

I do not think that other sentient beings necessarily have to ...

2024-12-01T23:01:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…tyl3
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I do not think that other sentient beings necessarily have to develop notions of geometric zero-curvature plane and "circle" and "circumference" in order to have "progress"; or that even if they will, that it will be a "basic" thing for them and not as esoteric and inapplicable to real world as obscure branches of algebraic topology are for us.

what I'm trying to say is: what we call "the basic laws ...

2024-12-01T22:53:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…csgs
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what I'm trying to say is: what we call "the basic laws of nature" are not necessarily actual basic laws of nature. They're just patterns we discovered in how we perceive our version of the world according to our consciousness. It could well be that the reasoning here is backwards, and that the "laws" we discover are necessarily governed by "a very simple math" (according to our definition of "math") because otherwise we wouldn't even recognize these "laws".
"Building" and "significance" and "cities" are all very human concepts too.
But yes, "capable of communicating with us" is a pretty strong restriction. After all, we're barely capable of communicating with cats and dogs, and basically incapable of communicating with dolphins, let alone octopuses or ants, and that's despite being very similar biologically, and despite sharing our perception of the world to a significant degree.
Everything that we say is very anthropocentric just because of who we are. A hundred of years ago people thought that there are humans just like us on Mars. Fifty years ago people imagined aliens as little green men, with two legs and two arms and more or less our biology. Now people imagine aliens as beings who are either primitive or city-building, and whose cities must resemble ours, and who necessarily need the same math and the same laws of physics to build these cities. Ah yes, human math where number like 9^(9^9) exists and makes total sense and is just a regular large number 🙃

it's weird to refer to chemistry as an argument when ...

2024-12-01T18:51:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…7jf0
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it's weird to refer to chemistry as an argument when discussing whether physics is created or discovered.
If the concepts and the laws of physics just reflect the way how we, humans, interact with the world (and the aliens do not necessarily have to look at it the same way from the same perspective), then for chemistry is even more so.

it's the way _we_ think nature works, because we look at it ...

2024-12-01T17:27:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…sxcy
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it's the way _we_ think nature works, because we look at it by counting things, because counting things is something very basic for _us_.
I'm very unconvinced that aliens would see things the same way.

> If we meet aliens, we'll have one-to-one analogues to ...

2024-12-01T14:58:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…5uhr
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> If we meet aliens, we'll have one-to-one analogues to their notation.

You assume that aliens will have concepts of merchants, of owing something measurable to someone, and of tallness of trees (and the urge to measure them).
These are very bold assumptions!

And going from addition to multiplication and from multiplication to exponents and even having natural numbers is even bolder.
We have them because of the way how we look at the world, because of what meanings we put into it. Aliens might have completely different worldview and completely different meanings.

Or not even space aliens; if octopuses or ants had math (and who is there to say that they don't?), it probably would be very different from ours too. And that's despite them being almost indistinguishable from humans, on global scale of things.

but consider this: Is physics created, or is it discovered?

2024-12-01T12:43:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…xv0p
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but consider this:
Is physics created, or is it discovered?

that's probably just because Russia doesn't generally ...

2024-10-26T23:45:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…qwp9
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that's probably just because Russia doesn't generally destroy stuff in this specific way. If they captured a town, then for them there is no point in destroying intact buildings (and afaik damaged buildings are destroyed in controlled way when it's easier to rebuild than to repair).
Israel wants to flatten Gaza and then develop it from scratch; but for Russia, the existing buildings are good enough (not like an average Ukrainian house is any worse than the average Russian house, not like they want to redevelop the entire area into shiny 5-star beach resorts). Russia doesn't even actively bomb buildings on the frontline just for the sake of destruction; it bombs buildings (like it did in Mariupol or Bakhmut) in order to get rid of Ukrainian combatants (and of course it also bombs buildings in the rear just to instill terror, but that's another story).
So there is just no scenario when a "civilian" could just press a button and destroy an empty building.

Doesn't mean Russian military journalists are better than Israeli military journalists. I can easily imagine a prominent host of a mainstream tv channel in Russia doing such a thing live on tv and this not raising any eyebrows in Russia, I think most people in Russia wouldn't even consider this as anything similar to "combatant" status, just because it's so removed from combat.

Every time I see a clickbait headline like "scientists ...

2024-09-21T08:34:51Z

Every time I see a clickbait headline like "scientists discovered a new way to extend life", "scientists discovered a way for us to keep healthier for longer", "another step in conquering death", I cannot help but think it's going to be about masks.
It's never about masks.
Come on, it's 2024, respirators are a single most impactful way to extend life and to keep healthier for longer, unless you invented an affordable pill that cures cancer immediately after being swallowed. And even then.

Nostr event nevent1qqsrfmg7jsarxup4d2mmdafk7ugxjulndd3hshuc3hueqtr2exwkd9qzyq6rxreramqu3uym8gklk2jvfhfdhkgtdarjfk3r8g3xzm9ssyr0wltf7kg

2024-08-24T12:47:29Z

I wonder how things are for people on here in 2024

the four key / mainstream derivative books on Middle-Earth in ...

2024-08-20T11:44:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…yx8y
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the four key / mainstream derivative books on Middle-Earth in Russia are:

1. "The Last Ringbearer" ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer , the book is translated into English, and is also published in German as "Der letzte Ringträger"). While Tolkien built the world from languages, Eskov, as a paleontologist, tried to build it from geology, and geology of Middle-Earth didn't make a lot of sense on its own but made perfect sense if it's just a tiny corner of a vast world (that's beyond the eastern and southern edges of official maps). And then from that geology various climate features are reconstructed, and from that, the societies... and from that, the most realistic hypothesis is that the events described in LotR are a myth, an origin story (and history written by victors) for the totalitarian ethnofascist state Aragorn was trying to build, and that dehumanizing Mordor ("the first democracy (parliamentary constitutional monarchy) in Middle-Earth") and its people (and treating everybody living to the east and south as lesser people and savages) was an essential part of this fascist project. So the book tells the story of events that happened immediately after the defeat of Mordor, occasionally also describing some key events from that war and from the backstory the way they "actually were" (as opposed to LotR).

2. "The Ring of Darkness" ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Perumov#Middle-earth , and it was translated into Swedish apparently (published as "Mörkrets Ring" / "Alvklingan"), but not to English or German). The description in Wikipedia is mostly complete, it's a story set in Middle-Earth 300 years after LotR events, and also Middle-Earth turns out to be much larger and weirder than in LotR, and also people there are much more shades of gray than LotR's clearer black-and-white.

2a. "The Adamant of Henna", a sequel to The Ring of Darkness from the same author, set 10 years later and focused mostly on a shard of Silmarill and includes a bit Valinor.

(But later this author was writing increasingly fash books, and the author himself is very vocally fash in the recent years; last time I've read these books was 20 years ago (they were written 30 years ago) so I'm not really sure how bad they are.)

3. "The Hobbit who knew too much" (and two sequels), it starts as yet another story set in LotR future, and then the protagonist figures out that they're just a character in a game (in a computer RPG) who is for some reason self-conscious, and then the plot becomes much more interesting.

4. Last but most definitely not least, "Black Book of Arda", sadly apparently it wasn't translated into other languages besides one unofficial and seemingly incomplete translation into Portuguese ("O Livro Negro de Arda"). Highly poetic set of short stories, later assembled into two books with continuous plots. It describes "what really happened" in the early eras, starting with Ainulindalë. The main idea being that Eru was an abusive father/creator who created some children for himself to follow his orders, and Melkor was the one among them who wouldn't bend, who stood up for himself, and who actually _created_... like, the reason Arda was so diverse and dynamic and with life in it? That's Melkor's "discordant note". The reason dwarves got souls? Aulë was unhappy about how dwarves turned out, so Melkor came to him as a sibling and a friend and supported him and helped imbue them with souls and Aulë was so grateful (and of course had to keep it secret from others). Mortality? That's gift of Melkor, so that the people (and elves who chose so) can go elsewhere; while short lifespan and nonconsensual death is a petty revenge from Eru. A lot of the first elves to wake up went with Melkor and, like, built farms and grew beautiful flowers and watched stars and helped creatures and loved and were loved, and Melkor lived along them not as a ruler but more like a very caring and loving grandfather; later, Valinor forces hunted and murdered them all (and kidnapped some children to brainwash them and raise them as proper Valinorian elves), not because these elves harmed anybody but, like, just because. The similar situation repeated later with humans. And of course there was a lot of torture and trauma because that's what abusers and bullies do. The story doesn't really cover the Third Age, but it's implied that, while what Sauron did was terrible and unforgivable, it was terrible unimaginable trauma that made him what he became. This is a description of the worldbuilding, but the actual stories are just stories of ordinary people.
And "Black Book of Arda" itself inspired a lot of other writers, so we also have a bunch of books set in its interpretation of the world:

4a. "On the other (/ far / that) side of sunrise", a very long-form story of Lúthien and Beren (it's like over 1k pages long);

4b. "After Flame", the premise is that Fëanor didn't actually die and ended up meeting Melkor who he used to hate, and then gradually realized that Melkor is not actually the enemy;

4c. "The Ninth Ring", the story of the ninth nazgul who wanted and tried to destroy his ring;

4d. "The Great Game", the stories of these nine good people and how they accepted their rings out of very good intentions, and wanted to win that game against Sauron, but in the end of course learned that they lost and didn't even stand a chance in the first place.

...and many many more, the ones above are just the most well-known novels, each published with hundreds of thousands of copies and then reprinted and republished many more times.

but then we have like a dozen of officially published mainstream ...

2024-08-19T21:31:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…9uvl
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but then we have like a dozen of officially published mainstream apocryphal / alternative history books on Middle-Earth too, while Germany has what, one collection of short stories (Das Vermächtnis des Rings), most of which are not even set in Middle-Earth?

@npub1z7k…g643 @npub1fgr…w57q all the mainstream translations ...

2024-08-19T21:20:43Z

schratze (npub1z7k…g643) uggla (npub1fgr…w57q) all the mainstream translations to Russian were made around 90s: 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 2000, 2002.
(There are also less popular translations, but they're mostly from 90s too.)

A lot of people are looking for a job right now, and I've ...

2024-08-02T12:48:52Z

A lot of people are looking for a job right now, and I've seen many of them on fedi taking the automated messages from recruiters at face value and questioning why exactly are they not a good fit for this role. Especially when the role still stays open for a while.

The rejections come in multitude of different wordings.
"You already possess a lot of important skills for this position but unfortunately, we have other candidates who are a closer match overall."
"Although your background is impressive, we regret to inform you that we have decided to pursue other candidates for the position at this time. At this stage, we have decided to move forward with candidates that have more experience as fullstack developers and more experience with our tech stack."
"Even though your profile seems very exciting, we decided to shortlist other candidates who match our qualification profile for the advertised job even better."

This all is bullshit.

All these texts are just a part of a standard template not even for rejection; the messages that you're getting are the messages sent automatically after recruiter clicks on "end the process for this candidate" button.
They're not even sent at that moment; instead, often they're sent by a cron job that fires, say, precisely at 8:00 on every day Mon-Fri (even when that's a public holiday) and send rejection messages to all the candidates who are no longer in hiring process but didn't receive the rejection message yet.

I've had a couple of recruiters later telling me this explicitly (when the rejection with this reason just didn't make any sense not just because of my profile).

And on this screenshot, the most recent case in point.
This company felt that I match their requirements very closely. So closely, that I passed all five interview stages successfully and they made me a job offer.
For reasons outside the scope of this post, the conditions the offer came with really didn't suit me. We discussed this for a few more days, they decided that they won't compromise on these conditions, and gave me time to think if I'm going to accept their offer.
I thought about it for a few days and eventually had to reject the offer. They personally thanked me for the information, wished me good luck... and the next day, exactly at 8:00, I'm getting this automated message. It's beyond ridiculous.

So whenever you get a bullshit message telling you that your profile is very exciting but they decided to move forward with other candidates whose profiles are even more exciting but you should not hesitate and please contact them whenever there is another role... it's just a very elaborate way of saying "your application process for this role is over". It doesn't mean that they found your profile exciting, or that they even looked at your profile. It doesn't mean that profiles of other candidates are now exciting, or that there even are any other candidates. It doesn't mean that they rejected you because you're not a good fit, or that they rejected you at all (as opposed to, say, you rejecting them, or them restructuring the company and cancelling the job opening). It doesn't mean that they want you to apply to them in the future. It only means one thing: that you won't be getting the job you applied to, period. Nothing more.