Language Learning Apps Harvest Data
Erika2rsis @ Erika2rsis @lemmy.blahaj.zone Posts 0Comments 137Joined 2 yr. ago

Also, like, language learning apps suffer from the same problem as dating apps: if these apps could actually teach you a language, you'd eventually get proficient enough at the language to no longer need the app — and if you no longer need the app, then it can't harvest your data or subscription money anymore, and line goes down. So the app always needs to give you the impression that you're making progress, while actually sabotaging your learning at every step.
This isn't to say that these apps don't have a place in the language learning process, but rather I'm saying that you need to be incredibly wary not just of the privacy issues, but of how to actually use these apps effectively. If you're aware of their tricks, then they become less effective.
got sold to Microsoft while Newell still lives.
Surely you mean while he's "Still Alive", right?
Jan Misali's 2022 Toki Pona language cover of the Symphogear "Beef Stroganoff" song is nearing its 40,000th view on YouTube. Whether this entertaining deconstruction of a beef Stroganoff recipe will reach this milestone of popularity this year or next remains to be seen. "Moku Sutolokanopu" is the most popular song about beef Stroganoff of the 2020s thus far, and the most popular song about beef Stroganoff in the Toki Pona language of all time.
That concludes this year's big Stroganews. Thank you for your attention.
- United Kingdom (or Liechtenstein, whose anthem uses the same melody)
- United States of America
- Dunno
- People's Republic of China
- Canada
- Dunno
Hopefully number 3 and 6 will come to me later!
STOP POSTING ABOUT POLITICS. I'M TIRED OF SEEING IT. MY FRIENDS ON LEMMY SEND ME MEMES. ON KBIN IT'S FUCKIN' MEMES. I WAS ON AN INSTANCE, RIGHT, AND AAAAAAALLLL OF THE COMMUNITIES ARE JUST POLITICS STUFF. I- I SHOWED MY CHAMPION UNDERWEAR TO MY GIRLFRIEND, AND THE LOGO, I LOOKED AT IT, AND I SAID, "HEY BABE, WHEN THE COMMODITY IS FETISHIZED" [ding-ding-dings to the tune of The Internationale] I FUCKIN' LOOKED AT A TRASH CAN, I SAID, "UNDER CAPITALISM, WASTE PLAYS A VITAL ROLE IN THE ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY THAT UNDERPINS THE ENTIRE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM". I LOOK AT MY PENIS, I THINK OF THE OMNIPRESENT PHALLOCENTRISM IN OUR PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY, AND I GO, "POLITICS? MORE LIKE POLY-DICKS!"
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
The Lemmy experience
"You know, that 1% of annoying radical leftists will drive away the rest of Lemmy's user base."
"YES, IT'S BRILLIANT, KATHLEEN, AND FAIR PLAY TO THEM! GREAT LADS!"
Columbo addressing his ancestor, lol
Meanwhile, deaf-blind people:
"What is or isn't politics is itself a political question" mfers when my politic is that nothing is political, there is only what the Irish call craic
Thoughts on George Habash? —He was a good doctor innit
Thoughts on the GERD? —It's a marvel of engineering innit
Thoughts on indigenous language education? —I like flicking through the Dakota dictionary sometimes. I don't understand any of it but yeah
Thoughts on the South China Sea? —yummy fishies there innit
Thoughts on trans people using public restrooms? —I'll answer your question with another question: why's it called a "public" restroom when you aren't shitting out in the open?
Thoughts on the world's interlocking systems of marginalization, exploitation, and oppression, including the core contradiction between the working and owning class, causing the slow demise of the planet under a world order which can only justify itself through unsustainable constant growth? —Them systems can't be reformed innit (※this opinion is apolitical because I have declared it to be common sense.)
For me, when a picture doesn't load on my Lemmy app (Liftoff), if I go back to the post about an hour or so later, it loads just fine. And as said, clicking on "view post in browser", then the picture will load just fine there, too. So it's a really weird problem that in my impression is specific to Lemmy apps.
This happens sometimes for me too. You can try opening it in browser, but I'll write a transcription for our screen-reader-using friends, too.
Transcription:
tlirsgender | Nov 6, 2020
Weird peeve time. Calling lab grown gemstones "fake" is stupid because it's the same shit just not formed naturally. An artificially grown diamond is the same shit as a natural diamond it is the exact same material bro it's all fuckign carbon
spacefroggity | 45m ago
It's carbon it's pretty and it didn't involve slave labor what's not to love??? Hi I'm having geology opinions tonight apparently. And I'm right
spacefroggity | 45m ago
There is so much bullshit in the diamonds industry to be mad about tbh. It also ties into the bullshit of the wedding industry as a whole but we don't have the time to unpack all that
val-ritz | Nov 29, 2020
not even going to lie, the day i learned i could get like 15 lab grown rubies the size of dimes for $20 is the day i spent $20 on rubies, and i have never once said to myself "man, i wish this cost $1,600 and the lives of eight children to produce
fuckyeahmineralogy | Dec 8, 2020
We are a pro-lab-grown mineral blog here, not only is it massively cheaper but massively more ethical as well in many cases.
thegreenpea | Mar 8, 2021
another very cool lab grown gem is Moissanite. It has a 9.25 on the mohs hardness scale where diamond is a 10. Moissanote also has a 2.69 refractive index in comparison to diamond's 2.419 and here is the difference
and the best thing about moissanite? It is all lab grown and it costs only a fraction of what diamond costs. So fuck the diamond indsutry and buy lab grown gems which cost significantly less
rubixpsyche | Aug 6, 2021
Also it's just cool to think of some mad scientist lookin person doing shit against the law of the universe and making pretty gems for you. Like cmon. This shouldnt be allowed probably. But humans really be like on gOD i want some shiny an just started MAKIN em
dadzathechaosgod | 46m ago
for years people wanted alchemy, well now we have alchemy and we're making gemstones out of it and suddenly "it doesn't count" anymore
And you don't seem to understaaa-aaand
I guess another way to put it is that "i.e." is more specific while "e.g." is more general. So "i.e." carries an energy of "I am referring very specifically to the following" while "e.g." means "there are other things that I'm not mentioning". So the use of "i.e." in the Tumblr post would imply that "tattoo", "sushi", and "guillotine" are the only loanwords in the English language.
Anyone looking to remember the difference: "id est" (that is) vs "exemplī grātiā" (for the sake of an example). You use the first to clarify meaning, and the second to begin a non-exhaustive list of examples.
What matters is ultimately if you can convey your ideas, so using the wrong term is fine when people can still figure out what you meant. But it's still a good idea to learn the difference, because there will be times when mixing up "i.e." and "e.g." will create ambiguity or misunderstanding.
The best idea is maybe to use "for example" or "that is to say". The former could be abbreviated to "f.ex." like in Norwegian, and the latter could be abbreviated "t.i.t.s."
...Alright, on second thought maybe don't abbreviate that one.
In any case, the Wikipedia Manual of Style recommends avoiding use of "e.g." and "i.e." in regular running text altogether, saying that these abbreviations are better fit for parentheticals, quotations, citations, tables, and lists. This is because there is no word or character limit on Wikipedia, nor is there on Tumblr, and so the language is more clear when abbreviations are avoided. Even when someone is using "i.e." and "e.g." in the prescribed way, that doesn't guarantee that the reader knows the distinction.
Honestly? Based. I've always thought that the idea of building a car at home sounded kick-ass.
Yyyyyyou have a point.
But at the same time, there are also a lot more people on Lemmy now who came from Reddit and aren't communists, right? So maybe it isn't pushing leftwards so much as it's trying to prevent a push rightwards. Does that sound more correct?
Also, regarding "a material analysis that pig poop balls advances the cause somehow" — basically ever since I first started seeing this sort of stuff coming from Hexbear in the brief time when they federated with Blåhaj Lemmy, I thought of stuff like pig poop balls in kind of the same way as, like, the climate/vegan activists who throw soup cans at paintings or pour milk jugs in stores or trespass F1 races or break fuel pumps or so forth. A lot of people express a lot of anger and frustration and annoyance at these sorts of things and say "How can these activists be so stupid‽ Don't they know that this hurts support for their cause‽", but... ehhhh, being goddamn annoying as all Hell is honestly a more effective form of political action than a lot of people consciously believe it to be. The video essayist Ponderful once said about this,
People criticize actions like milk pours and soup…chucks? Because it “gives the right something to criticize”…but it seems like that's the point! And at the same time, it makes other climate activists look extremely reasonable and "good, actually" in comparison! If pouring some milk on the ground will mean that Daily Mail readers might hear some messages about how messed-up the dairy industry is, and then also maybe even consider old enemies like our Greta as good in comparison, then…yay! Yay, I say! And if it makes the public look kinder upon activists who actually target oil infrastructure, in comparison to what they see as random and annoying publicity stunts, then f*ck!gn ay!
Whether all of this applies in the case of Hexbear is something that people can argue about — it feels like kind of a silly comparison given that Lemmy is just an obscure social media platform, which doesn't exactly seem like the type of place where meaningful praxis can happen... But it's at least a thought that we can keep in mind. Hexbear has certainly succeeded in getting people on Lemmy talking and thinking about them and their beliefs, pushing the Overton window leftwards — especially if other, less annoying leftists look "good in comparison". I'm kind of reminded of my own path towards leftism, honestly: I'd certainly been annoyed by communist interlocutors plenty of times over the years, but I think that without that annoyance, I probably wouldn't agree with those selfsame interlocutors on so much today. That was just one of the many tactics that collectively led me down that path.
I don't think that this is necessarily Hexbear's intentional strategy in the same way as those aforementioned climate/vegan activists, but nevertheless, this is at least my spitball of a material analysis of why Pig Poop Balls actually does advance the cause. This is just a little advocacy for the devil, as it were.
I hadn't heard of that, but you're probably right. It's still mighty coincidental that 3/4 of the admins have Cuban or Soviet historical figures as their profile pictures.
I'm just saying that if one wishes to be defederated from Hexbear, then one should migrate off of lemmy.ml first. The admins of that instance are not going to be open to defederating Hexbear.
That is part of the business model, actually: if these apps absolutely never work, then there will be no word of mouth, no success stories to use in promotional material, and users would pretty quickly figure out that it isn't entirely their own fault that they haven't made the progress that they're expecting.