The US Foreign Services Institute releases their learning materials, so if you’re okay with a lack of structure I hear they can be very useful, including both reading and listening.
It can be accessed on several different sites. Here’s one that came up, but you can find a few more with some searching: www.livelingua.com/fsi/
Did some listening on the Norwegian one, no errors per se…
Just quite old fashioned. This was how people spoke in the the 70’s and 80’s. If I met a person talking like that I’d insist they’d show me the time portal. Seriously, I want to get away from this decade. Help.
Same for Polish. One funny thing I’ve noticed is that in one of the examples, the person tries to stay at a hotel, and the price is clearly in the old currency, which has not been used since 1997.
"Quick, it made into the news! Damage control, damage control! Reinstate his account, otherwise people will notice the censorship! Let's pretend that it was a mistake!"
"Quick, it made into the news! Damage control, damage control! Reinstate his account, otherwise people will notice the censorship! Let's pretend that it was a mistake!"
Why does this sound so accurate 😭💀
I'm eager to see your guide.
Appreciate the enthusiasm man! Will do my best, and if y'all have ANY tips, shoot em up.
For the guide, I needed an explanation on how to subscribe to local vs. not local communities. Also, the difference in subscribing to a federated community that is already linked to your instance, vs linking it the first time (by copy pasting it's address into the search bar). Especially note that you might have to wait a few minutes after searching it the first time, refresh, then search again to be able to sub. That was really confusing. Also that process doesn't seem to work at all if you're in jerboa, at least for me.
Also, how to sub in jerboa: you probably have to open the sidebar.
Those have been most confusing so far. I didn't really need a guide on "this is how federated systems work", as much as a step by step guide for finding and subscribing to communities of interest. Honestly, an mspaint/screenshot idiot's guide with "click here first" level instructions would go a really long way in helping people figure it out, then we could copypasta it easily as well.
either you are paid by google to make accounts seem like real people behind them, and spread propaganda for google, or you are a young kid who has yet to grasp the reality of what google is telling you they do vs what they actually do.
Do you think the tobacco producers are spouting how great their product is at giving folks cancer? you must be too young to remember cigarette ads, and how 9 out of 10 Dr.'s recommend a particular brand of smokes.
Google wants your information, they want to sell you shit, that is all. They will make it easier to get that data, and easier to buy from them, but dont for one second think they give one ounce of a shit about you, or your life as long as you stay on their platform and spend money on them
I understand your point of view, but I believe that unlike smokes, Google software doesn’t biologically harm you, and by the way… it’s a nuanced conversation, there are layers to be talked about!! I’m very sorry but I understand.
look, im not trying to be a dick, honestly. but ive seen some of your posts here and there, and it really seems like you have a big hard on for google, like you capitalize the name and everything. someone under contract would do something like that, however auto correct will as well, but im on pc…so im bias. some of the other things you say…ok more how, but to me sounds like someone under contract.
yeah, i could be wrong and im sorry for being a dick about it. if thats the case, you should have a look as some of the evil shit they have done, look at project dragonfly and tell me they have the users best interest at heart. I was a big google fan for many years, bought nexus phones before they changed name to pixel, was among the early adopters of gmail, (public) beta tested lots of shit. hell, i remember when the front page said “ad free”. so this isnt coming out of nowhere, i have reasons, and you should do a little research, but dont search it ON google
Edit: deleted the shortcut for ‘ad free’, was the wrong one. will update when/if i find it…maybe Mandela effect?
I like Google but I capitalize all names… and anyway I use Firefox sometimes too!! I think Google does make very nice things. And about the Dragonfly project… well, they were honestly just trying to give the chinese market a better search engine, but it was a good action of Google to stop it because it would have been used badly!! n.n By the way, I use Duckduckgo on Chrome.
I wish I was paid, why would they pay me?? I’m not a popular person, and either way, while I do enjoy and I’m a fan of Google, my main stuff is software and technology, and Python :3
of course someone who is under contract is legally obligated to deny getting paid. maybe just a NDA, but either way
and dude, not even the kid i went to school with, who invented ‘bumptop’ and sold that shit to google, eats as much of the propaganda as you have and puked it up in such perfect form. just send me a link to your handler or whatever, I can make a much more convincing account. not looking to take over your job, but i can do it better
excuse me?? I’m being honest and truthful, I’m not being paid, and if I ever get paid by Google, it will be because I’ll be working in their offices!! By the way I also have Mastodon, Telegram, and Matrix. So I can’t be paid… And by the way that kid has achieved great things!! That’s very good for that person.
im done after this, but dont matter how many accounts you have, someone paid by google to spew their propaganda would have to have a lot of accounts, on many platforms. Now i almost want to peek around and find out just what you are really up to
you are a fraud, i wont block you, but ill be ignoring you from now on
That's unfortunate because your posts make you look very dishonest. In one post you are unfamiliar with basic topics and in the next you seem to be well informed about some of their obscure failed projects.
If you're not a paid actor then you're someone who just likes to provoke people online which makes you an asshole as well.
I’m very sorry if my impression was that one :c I don’t want to harm or offend anyone, and yes, I do know some of their obscure projects but that doesn’t mean that I also have to know everything about other stuff. But thank you for that criticism n.n
Better auto-handling of subtitles, including automatically downloading them
VLC can do that too as far as I know. I haven’t used it in a while since I use the default media player on Arch and MXExplorer on Android and for my Movies/Series I use Jellyfin
Windows Media Player wrecked its own dumb self. It was good right up to Windows 2000 and Windows ME (which is a whole other kettle of fish), and then it got bloated, unintuitive and it kept nagging you for random shit. VLC is a great app, don’t get me wrong, the bar was not all that high is what I’m saying.
I have still yet to see any other media library handle so many tens of thousands of audio files of varying encoding & naming conventions, so smoothly; “Media Monkey” etc were oft recommended but never once up to the task. Until just a few years ago, it was remarkably convenient for ripping a CD, too; correct metadata & all.
For a short while, WMP was to music files, as Calibre is to ebooks.
Unless something has changed recently, that’s not exactly true. They charge 99c for the distribution of it through the windows store (or whatever it’s called) but you can install them the traditional way no problem
I think it’s still dumb but it’s a distinction worth making. I think the description even links the website where you can download it
Great suggestions in this discussion! Rather than adding my favourites, I will add some resources that list more games.
Libregamewiki: it is really comprehensive (sometimes too much, including even not-so-good-games). They care about licencing and is is very easy to browse, top-notch for me.
Open source games: a more relaxed repository, with lots of material.
bobeff open source list: this is curated, which means that there are not so many games but each and every one is stable, good, maintained.
Arcane Cache: a fantastic blog with reviews of libre games — or more precisely, underground games, there is a lot of discussion on how gamedevving philosophy too. The reviews are always in-depth and allow you to experience the games on another level, and each game is a small jewel in its category. Strongly recommended!
It's because Chrome is so ubiquitous. You go to any Google site, particularly search, in a browser other than Chrome and you're presented with notifications to install Chrome. Plus, its integration with Google accounts presents a great value proposition for many users.
Personally, I was on Firefox for years until I got a MacBook Pro in 2014. For whatever reason, Firefox would constantly crash, so I switched to Chrome. I only went back to Firefox in about... 2019(?) when they released Quantum and I've been on it since. It's really the perfect browser, particularly with extension support. I also like how on Android you can install uBlock Origin.
With Google's impending Manifest V3 looming on the horizon for all Chromium-based browsers, it just further cements my decision to remain on Firefox. I do keep Brave around as backup for the extremely rare situations where something for whatever reason doesn't work in Firefox, but that's becoming exceedingly unnecessary.
I ditched Firefox when they fucked up and forgot to renew an SSL cert and caused all my extensions to stop working. The internet without adblock is not worth using.
Either way, it seems (to me) like it's such a petty thing to switch browsers permanently. I wouldn't switch forever because of a simple bug that it looks like it was solved pretty quickly. Besides, don't use Adblock Plus people. Use Ublock Origin. Much better.
Yeah that's it. Obviously it was fixed after a couple days but the fact that it happened at all was the final straw for me. I was already pretty annoyed by pocket and the sponsored links.
Over the years I always found something wrong with Firefox until I moved abruptly to it about 1 year ago. It's not that bad and I don't miss Chrome at all. Might be worth to try it these days
Same here. I think Firefox is great but it seems that, for whatever reason, it is unpopular as a base for alternative browsers (although one of my favourites is https://pulsebrowser.app/) and Gecko also seems unpopular as an engine, not even their own Positron project went anywhere although GeckoView seems to be maintained but I'm not familiar with it or projects using it.
I have heard that Gecko is harder to reimplement in a new browser. Probably Mozilla prefers people contributing to Firefox instead of making new browsers.
In fact, I have seen GNOME Web migrate from Gecko to Webkit, the Safari engine.
They've done an amazing job at burning their community. They think 3rd party apps are only used by super nerds (or at least many of the people I've talked to do), but I think they forgot who provides most of the content.
Well, bots now, but good content usually came from the super nerds
I have a feeling that if you really crunch Reddit's numbers, the content that provides the most engagement and revenue is NSFW content. Reddit is one of the only large social media websites that allows NSFW and the subreddit system makes it much easier to categorize and find content than Twitter, so there are a massive number of invisible users who do not use the site for anything except NSFW, which is also why it's specifically targeted in the new API policy. Long-term, technically knowledgeable users who produce high-quality content are not nearly as financially exploitable as the mass of users who use Reddit as a NSFW directory and who have no alternative to migrate to.
Plus, the majority of active Reddit users are non-technical "normies" who joined Reddit after hearing about it from trends like the GameStop stock. Those users use the official app and have no idea what an API is, so they don't care and will continue to use Reddit.
Sometimes I do get a bit doomerist about it. If reddit is to be believed, they claim something like < 20% of people use old.reddit, or mobile apps. That seems incredibly low to me, but I must admit most of the people who I encounter IRL that use reddit don't know about old reddit, RES, or other apps.
You'd be surprised. For example, on r/electricvehicles, one of the subs I used to moderate, the majority of our community members were on mobile platforms, more than those on PC even though I am personally more on PC.
The reality is, third party users and old.reddit.com users are a minority and are easiest to ditch for Reddit as a company. And they will no longer care for us, so its best to prioritise our interests just like they are.
They could be pulling something sneaky here. The vast majority of people lurk, and most people who lurk probably don't even have accounts. If you haven't bothered to sign up, you probably haven't bothered to use the old interface or a third party application. It wouldn't surprise me if the vast majority of their traffic comes through the standard web interface, even if the stats for user activity paint a different picture.
Plus a lot of the things they have been doing recently are dark patterns to get the visitor to make an account or even force it. Google a thing not logged in and they will force you to log in.
Which is why they've been waiting, I'm sure they kept the numbers updated to know what critical mass they thought they needed to be able to chop off this part of their userbase. Ignoring that this part was also the ones who are their most dedicated users, there for the longest amount of time.
I think it has more to do with timing on business/IPO decisions. They've decided their plan forward, and they've decided that they can afford to lose some users.
I think they've also convinced themselves that most people using 3rd party apps or old.reddit will just get in line, because they won't want to actually leave the platform.
I'm sure there's a report in someone's email of the psychology behind it, projected people who will comply and how many people will be projected to actually leave.
Reddit is so damn hypocritical here. They are successful because Digg buried itself doing shit like this. They literally got success as a result of another company doing the speedrun-your-platform-into-oblivion playbook that they are now following themselves. Look in a mirror, idiots, you've become exactly that which was the downfall of your competition some 13 years ago.
Reddit has been going downhill for ages. They stopped listening to the users, its customers, years ago. They started becoming more 'Social' as they put it. Adding chat features, and other useless features. All the time ignoring important things like stopping spam, decent moderation tools, blocking people, etc... I have been using Old.Reddit with Reddit Enhancement Suite for years to make the site usable. I will miss Reddit, but I have been missing it for quite some time.
As for people who put effort into apps, subreddits, etc... Yes, it's a shame, but the internet evolves and moves on. Harsh but true. Hopefully, these people will see a future elsewhere. Because a good portion of those people are talented. Maybe one of them can produce apps for Kbin.social? Who knows what they will find to put their energy into, maybe one such person leaving Reddit will create a new social media site we all flock too?
I will be watching to see what happens. Yes I support those fighting to keep 3rd party access, specially as it means some with certain needs (Like the blind) will have no access at all to Reddit. I also think this shake-up is needed. I will be using the Fediverse.
I wrote this on another instance but will paste it here as adds to your first paragraph
and the original founders would have never allowed Reddit to get to this point.
Unfortunately, at least one of the original founders has allowed, quite possibly even driven this policy. Steve Huffman is still very much at the helm and what he has exposed of himself in interviews, he doesn’t sound like a very nice person (re: post apocalypse, he sees himself being on top and having slaves)
It’s great that subs and users are organising to fight this but maybe Reddit should be allowed to carry out this change and metaphorically shoot itself in the face? This is just the latest in a long horrifying series of policies that the admins have pushed through, actions they have failed to take, or when they finally did, it was long after the horse had bolted.
Remember the jailbait (and worse) subs that they allowed for so long (and were rumoured to have participated in) and when they finally did something after Anderson Cooper shone a light under that dark, seedy rock, they picked their sacrificial lamb and blamed it all on him? Remember the secret santa parallel site someone set up that Reddit then forcibly absorbed and let wilt? Remember how they dealt with Victoria who arranged all the celebrity IAMA’s? Remember how they brought in Ellen Pao (with her own set of issues) to deal with horrific amount of far right and misogynist subs that were actively calling for peoples and groups deaths, and then threw her under the bus once they got what they needed? Remember how they were banning people and deleting posts when it was revealed that 5 mod accounts were basically controlling the top 100 subs? Remember how they appointed to the admins a person who was found to be grooming teens and was supportive of their father who was convicted of serious sexual assault of a child?
The list is never-ending…
The sad fact of the matter is that centralised social medias one driving factor is money. They acquire that via data points collection from engagement. They dont care what kind of engagement as long as theres plenty of it and hateful content drives engagement.
There is no sense of community among the admins and execs of Reddit. It is entirely from the users.
The original founders allowed this to happen, if they didn’t drive this. Many similar times previously, and undoubtedly, many more times to come.
Maybe Reddit, just like every other centralised, corporate owned social media sites time is over?
I just dont believe its something worth fighting for, despite how commendable the actions of all those subs is.
Yeah with old.reddit and the usability of RES going away my desire to use the site will completely evaporate. Agreed on that I mostly use it for niche interest and specific game subreddits.
For their own sake, hope they don’t kill old.reddit.
Never used their official app but only used one 3rd party app, Bacon Reader. I’m not one who likes staring and posting/commenting from my mobile so didn’t use that for long.
@Warped@bitman09 right there with you.
I really started to notice it when they just ignored for months the hate subreddit theDonald, right before the 2016 election.
It was a year after they started banning subreddits for hate speech, but not this one. Not after the election was done and dealt with, after thousands of reports to admins, news articles, printscreens of hate speech, because money...
Nothing short of heroic - too many people in a similar situation find themselves saying that it's awful what's happening, but there's nothing they can do about it.
I hope if the law passes, that the Linux Foundation immediately would jump on putting a patent on Linux/whatever else needed just to keep those pesky patent mongoloids from trying to kill Linux. Assuming that Linux would become patentable.
What would you patent? “A program which handles low level functionality and manages other programs?” I suppose what I mean is that there is “prior art”. You can’t patent something if it isn’t new and the concept of Linux isn’t. Linux isn’t the first kernel. This law wouldn’t change that. The first person to create a kernel though, under this law that might perhaps (?) have been patentable. Which would’ve crippled the entire software industry in it’s infancy. Yay patents!
Patents have been an issue for Linux before. For example, memory deduplication (KSM) was delayed and modified to avoid a patent on using hashes for this purpose, resulting in a potentially inferior implementation due to patents.
I’ve seen many references to TCP/IP as meaning IP + everything-on-top, usually when talking about other networking technologies like UUnet, OSI, etc. Also as the TCP/IP stack, usually meaning the (Free)BSD networking code used in other systems.
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP).
For that matter, the classic networking text by Douglas Comer is Internetworking with TCP/IP and it does cover UDP, ICMP, ARP, DHCP, DNS, etc.
elementaryOS has tried so hard to fill that niche, and they got so far. I just always run into the weirdest issues when I try and daily drive their distro.
I just installed Ubuntu server on my little home server which has faithfully run Windows 10 Pro since it came out. I didn’t want to deal with the ads on Windows 11. I ssh into the Ubuntu install and there is an ad in the terminal!
“ Strictly confined Kubernetes makes edge and IoT secure. Learn how MicroK8s just raised the bar for easy, resilient and secure K8s cluster deployment. ubuntu.com/engage/secure-kubernetes-at-the-edge”
opensource
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.