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emb

@ emb @lemmy.world

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1
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201
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Multilingual people of Lemmy who learned a language (or multiple) as adults, how did you do it?

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  • There are plenty of things you can do, mostly comes down to time and determination and what you enjoy. Overall, use the language a whole lot for decoding/encoding real communication. At first that can be too hard, so you might bridge the gap with deliberate study, grammar/translation formulas, and vocab memorization.

    We have a community at !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz where you can look for support. This would be a good question to crosspost there. (Full disclosure, I'm a mod there.)

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    What do you think of the book Fahrenheit 451?

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  • Valid, I was definitely thinking of that parallel when reading the recent AI headlines.

    Destructive scanning is not altogether bad, but it's a huge shame to see it happening from companies that give nothing worthwhile back to the public commons.

    It does make me reconsider my 'burning books is too clearly evil to suspend disbelief' a little. Still, they're somewhat different circumstances.

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    What do you think of the book Fahrenheit 451?

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  • I liked it, didn't love it.

    The whole central image of it, setting fire to books, and the way they go about it, just felt too direct to me. Still, it weaves a good story and the ideas resonate well enough.

  • In your opinion is reading War and Peace the same accomplishment as listening to the audiobook? Why or why not?

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  • I think one could read it passively. I'd imagine some students getting it assigned and just going through it as fast as possible to get the gist. I also don't think always there's a very clear difference between literature and casual reads.

    But overall I agree, print encourages a more active approach by making self-paced the default. Leaves plenty of opportunities for meta-cognition. Audio can too tho, just depends how people engage.

  • Reading anything good?

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  • Yep, I was just about to plug the !books@lemmy.world community too.

    It's nice to see how much engagement they get on the weekly threads! They've got a yearly bingo thing going on too, which is fun if you're trying to read more. And just all around it seems like a nice place to share your reviews/thoughts or ask for recommendations.

  • In your opinion is reading War and Peace the same accomplishment as listening to the audiobook? Why or why not?

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  • For the most part, yeah.

    It's definitely possible to read passively. You know, how sometimes the words just sound out in your head while you're lost in some other thoughts. And it's possible to sit quietly with headphones and actively listen, poring over every word while nothing distracts your focus.

    But by default, I think the modes encourage active and passive engagement like you're getting at.

  • In your opinion is reading War and Peace the same accomplishment as listening to the audiobook? Why or why not?

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  • This is one area where I think the distinction is actually important!

    For kids, they're learning to read. Heavy, repeated practice decoding and interpreting printed characters is the point.

    Ultimately the activity of reading changes as you get older, into receiving new information and perspectives. At that point an audiobook is pretty much at parity. But earlier on in elementary and even middle grades, kids really need the actual reading IMO.

    I have a relative who vastly prefers audiobooks. But his wife has to keep reminding him, don't let their daughter take that shortcut. She has to actually learn to read (and read well) first.

  • In your opinion is reading War and Peace the same accomplishment as listening to the audiobook? Why or why not?

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  • That's how I always think about it too. Imagine telling someone "I jogged all the way to the store". Assuming it's more than a mile away, that might be a little surprising. If the person then says, "well I biked, but same point, I got there", it's a slightly different reaction. "I jogged" and "I biked" are two different things with different meanings.

    Not that it should be looked down on or it's bad at all.

    I guess there's a gap in the language a bit. There's not a great sounding word (afaik) to indicate 'consuming a book in whatever format', so it's understandable that 'read' evolves into that. Still, in most cases to me it makes more sense to choose between 'read' and 'listened'.

  • E-mail archive browser for gmail takeout files (.mbox)

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  • Was just recently trying to figure out how to browse my mbox backup, and wound up at the same solution.

    I'm stunned that it's part of a plugin, and not a standard feature. Didn't see many other actively maintained programs that made it easy either.

  • Effective Feedback Mechanisms for Anti-Consumer Approaches to Gaming?

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  • There's not a lot you or any one individual can do, but every little bit contributes. Do measure expectations tho - in many cases (eg, Sony) the backlash is very much expected and they're just planning to weather it.

    Biggest thing is to cancel your PSN sub (or other subscriptions relevant to whatever issue), stop buying buying games that fuel whatever practice (eg in the Sony case, stop buying digital games on Playstation).

    Tell your friends and family why you're doing it, especially if there are people you play games with. Try to widen the impact from losing you, to losing your whole social circle. (Note that it probably won't work - people are set in their ways and not everyone cares about every issue-, and may not be worth it if you don't have another way to connect with them.)

    Bluesky has some companies like Playstation and Xbox on it, so that's one place to be vocal. Twitter and Reddit probably still get read a lot by these companies too, so if you're on those, sure add to the dissent. They probably also value engagement on Facebook, maybe Threads/Instagram. Tho that makes me think, not sure if it's better to even add activity to their posts - maybe best way to send a message is simply to unsubscribe/unfollow? Sometimes it's worse to be ignored than hated.

  • How does one code by themself?

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  • Don't sweat it if you don't remember syntax stuff right away.

    The building blocks will repeat so much - your if statements, loops, variable initialization - that some will stick in your head eventually.

    But even when you get it, every once in a while you'll get a brain blip and have to look it up. Don't hesitate to have the language manual readily available. (As a next step, try working from that kind of language reference instead of copying direct from the tutorial.)

    Most of the time in you won't even have to know it - in larger projects, you'll find a similar bit of code in an existing file and copy it, then make your modifications. Or depending on your dev environment, the IDE's intellisense stuff will act as a guide rail.

  • What is your favourite album of all time?

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  • Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.

    Shine On is so beautiful. Then the middle songs, especially the title track, scratch that more catchy, accessible itch.

  • if you had to swear off the internet for good what would you take with?

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  • Already mentioned in OP, but a copy of Wikipedia would be first priority.

    To say something else, I'd also grab the archive of GameFAQs guides.

  • How do you find the best products to buy for everything?

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  • There's also a recommendations community here !recommendations@lemmy.world

    It's not active enough to be all that useful. But hey, the more people that subscribe, the closer that is to changing.

  • How do you find the best products to buy for everything?

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  • Like any other signal, the options have been found out and probably, mostly, reduced to noise. But Wirecutter and Consumer Reports claim to test things and recommend. The latter needs a subscription, but you may have one through your local library.

    For electronics, rtings was quite good last I used it. Some categories are free, but they are (or were) quite open about letting you sub, find what you want, then cancel after the month. It was nice that most of the data was objective stuff presented in tables you can filter by. But many data points are definitely subjective ratings.

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  • I don't think it pervades all of Lemmy, but I do think rage bait does well here. Seems like the most popular comments are expletive laden diatribes about how x, y, or z is evil and bad, and the most popular posts are headlines about megacorps or evil politicians doing it wrong.

    It's not even that the outrage is usually misplaced. Reddit and Windows and Gen AI and Facebook are indeed all bad things in various ways and degrees. But there's room for nuance, and no need to jump down people's throats about stuff.

    Certainly there's a selection bias - enough of the people here left Reddit in principled stands. That or they're just into open source enough to try niche projects.

    To be fair, the taste for negativity isn't just here. Online culture seems to have that slant at large these days. But it does seem more here in some ways.

  • Warrior, rogue or mage, why?

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  • I like to try and pick a mix. I've been leaning more mage lately. Sometimes magic is super op, sometimes it's just an interesting system. Sometimes it's neither tho, and just clunky. So it's really kind of a toss up on whether that's a good decision.

    Warriors are probably the best pick lots of times - just because gear systems often incentivize them. Finding a cool sword or shiny armor isn't very exciting when you're just hurling fireballs all the time anyway.

  • Commodore's Next Hardware Release Is Dumb, And Proud Of It

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  • "We built the phone in between" [a smart phone and dumb phone] is a pretty appealing tag line. In the last half of the 2010s, when I finally dragged myself into getting an actual smart phone, I really wished I could get a flip phone that was more capable. The feature phones still on the market at the time seemed to be right out of 2003.

    This implementation seems a little off. It has the flip form factor, and can run most android apps, great! But then it sounds like they arbitrarily block browsers and 'social media'? I think just leave them out by default, and let people go that route if they want it. The form factor already limits how well some of those would work.

  • Any good books on conciousness?

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  • Consciousness: a Very Short Introduction.

    I can't vouch for that particular book, but the VSI series is usually a good bet.

  • Technology @lemmy.world
    emb @lemmy.world

    BBC - The people who hunt old TVs

    www.bbc.com /future/article/20250911-the-people-who-hunt-down-old-tvs