Duolingo got me enough vocabulary in Spanish to put the simplest sentences together, and then follow more robust lessons. I still think it was a good starting point, but I won’t use it anymore on principle.

You might possibly be interested in checking out the YouTube channel MyDeepGuide. Guy does in-depth reviews ofbmostly e-ink writing tablets, which perhaps is more functionality than you’re looking for, but some of those manufacturers also do standalone “just” readers. Or maybe you’ll be convinced to get a writing tablet :p

A little over a year ago, a guy tried to ask me out and I’m the process said a few dumb things in an attempt to impress me. The dumbest of them all was that he was planning to buy a Cybertruck as his next vehicle. By the time he’d said this, I’d already long made up my mind about this guy. Mind, this was the period of time when Elon was just an asshole and hadn’t gone full Nazi yet, but even then, this dude’s choice of vehicle told me I’d made the right choice.

Theseadays I wonder if that guy ever got his idiot truck, and, whether he did or not, if he’s changed his mind about it.

Librarians go to school to learn how to manage information, whether it is in book format or otherwise. (We tend to think of libraries as places with books because, for so much of human history, that’s how information was stored.)

They are not supposed to have more information in their heads, they are supposed to know how to find (source) information, catalogue and categorize it, identify good information from bad information, good information sources from bad ones, and teach others how to do so as well.

I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are supposed to be “information professionals”. If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don’t know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.

The best use, for me, is asking ChatGPT to give me five (or however many) scholarly, peer-reviewed articles on a topic. Then I search for said articles by title and author name on my school library database.

It saves me so much time compared to doing a keyword search on said same database and reading a ton of abstracts to find a few articles. I can get to actually reading them and working on my assignment way faster.

AI is a great tool for people who use it properly.

I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.

The thing that I can’t understand about this product is why they didn’t cover the function keys. They are literally functional.

BBC series Merlin was a little like this. King Uther hated magic, Prince Arthur was kinda against it because he was told it was dangerous, but didn’t exactly hate it himself. Meanwhile Merlin took a job as a servant, doing magic-y things to protect him. Wasn’t a great series (writing), but it had enjoyable aspects.

You can download Signal APK directly from their website.

In some different countries, WhatsApp is how people conduct business. I am anti WhatsApp in my regular life, but I used it with a VOIP number when I was traveling abroad.

It’s one thing to tell your friends and family you use Signal, you can’t tell literally every business. Well, you can, they just won’t to do business with you.

I miss flip phones for similar reasons. I loved flicking them open and snapping them shut.

One time I had to use a website where the email 2FA expired in 30 seconds! I usually keep my email client open while my computer is on, but, come on, that was ridiculous.

Running Google Ads requires uploading your drivers license or passport. I’m a volunteer at a teeny non-profit. Why should I have to surrender that level of personal information for a business/non-profit account where I’m not even employed (no one is, it’s all volunteers)? I didn’t, and the account was suspended.

The problem is the inconsistency. The new UI has it so that the inbox is way more dense than the folders, no matter which density level you choosem

The newest release is visually awful. It drove me crazy and I had to downgrade back to the last stable (102). The content density was wildly inconsistent and text would be squished in one area and really spaced out in another. The toolbar moved so action buttons were in the title bar area, away from where your mouse would be (compared to before) if you’re interacting with your inbox.

Other than that, the old version works just fine. Multiple email accounts, calendar and contacts. It does the job. Minor nitpicks, like dark mode doesn’t dark evwrything, you still have to manually change your reading window colours. But at least it’s once and done.

They’ll simply ask for it and people will give it in order to keep using the platform.

Google Ads asked me (a private individual) to provide my drivers license or passport in order to verify an organization’s Google Ads account, or else the account will be suspended. I understand verifying the organization via governed registration records, that makes sense. But requiring an emoloyee or volunteer’s passport?

The account is just going to get suspended.

I signed up for a Google Ads account for a non-profit I volunteer with. I had to verify the organization with governing documents, okay, fair enough. They also “require” my drivers license or passport. Excuse me? We will no longer have a Google Ads account after Sept 15 (the cut off to verify my identity).