TechTakes

My kids use Duolingo for extra training of languages they are learning in school, so this crapification hits close to home.

Any tips on current non-crap resources? Since they learn the rules and structure in school it's the repetition of usage in a fun way that I am aiming for.

after I've previously posted this and this, an update: both the memrise browser version and the iOS app now have "chat to a buddy" as a non-skipable step in course iteration

the "buddy" is a chatbot of unclear provenance. this page mentions "MemBot - powered by AI" at the top, which is a link to this zendesk page, but that's a dead link

On the (slim) upside, it's an opportunity to ditch Google, and maybe it will sooner or later break their monopoly position. I switched my main search engine to Ecosia a while ago, I think it uses Bing underneath (meh), but presumably it's more privacy friendly than Google (or Bing directly). I've had numerous such attempts over the years already to get away from Google, but always returned, because the search results were just so much better (especially for non-English stuff). But now Google has gotten so much worse that it created almost an equilibrium... sometimes it's still useful and better, but not that often anymore. So I rarely go to Google now, not because the others got better, but because Google got so much worse.

"The first time I ever suffered offline consequences for a social media post"- Hey Gang, I think I found the problem!

Said revenue estimates, as of 2026, include billions of dollars of "new products" that include "free user monetization."

If you are wondering what that means, I have no idea. The Information does not explain.

Probably something to do with their recent ramblings about getting an openai social network off the ground.

throwback uni game!

Edit:

From the article: I apologize, this is going to be a little less reserved than usual.

The insistence on blipping out anything even vaguely sexual (like the word orgasm) to appease the kami of the algorithm is really off putting after a while.

I thought he might be doing a bit but it doesn't feel like it. Also he speaks like old comic word balloons where they would randomly bold every third noun to show intensity.

These people probably think Karl Marx is Satan, but my god at least he was able to understand and respect Adam Smith better than whoever's trying to magick wealth out of this absolute idiot soup! Looks like capitalism the ideology is just as unsustainable as capitalism the economic system.

That Michael Kove guy is one un-self-aware twat. Apparently all millennials work in high paying tech jobs.

Huh, I had missed the part in 2020 when Peter Thiel just flat out stated outright that it only makes sense to be in favour of capitalism if you're a capital owner.

Gonna copy this in because there's a lot to unpack, and I don't want to do it alone.

From: Peter Thiel
Date: Sunday, January 5, 2020 at 2:44 AM
To: Mark Zuckerberg, Nick Clegg, Antonio Lucio
Cc: Sheryl Sandberg, Marc Andreessen
Subject: RE: Milennials

There are many themes that could be developed
more here; let me make a few quick points for now:

Nick -- I certainly would not suggest that our policy
should be to embrace Millennial attitudes
unreflectively. I would be the last person to
advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials
say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than
simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid
or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and
understand why. And, from the perspective of a
broken generational compact, there seems to be a
pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that
when one has too much student debt or if housing
is too unaffordable, then one will have negative
capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to
start accumulating capital in the form of real estate;
and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then
one may well turn against it.

1. Part of me wishes that the font were just a little bigger. This way, the word wrap would come to 10 syllables a line, and we could pretend this was a lost Shakespeare monologue.
2. I'm almost disappointed by this. Thiel, suggesting that it might not, in fact, be the children that are wrong? Where's your ideological purity, Thiel? Didn't know you started reading r/GenZedong.
3. Also, it's Peter fucking Thiel lecturing Nick fucking Clegg, former leader of the lib dems in the UK, on paying lip service to socialist policy in order to stymie any real societal progress???

A whole generation is leaning more socialist because homeownership is unattainable and student debt is crushing. The solution is whatever is the latest big tech fad.

Just like all of gen X's problems would have been solved with more .com, right?

"The millenials were so well paid in tech jobs during the boom that they nevered bothered to invest in homes" is ... a take

The replies are a long sequence of different stupid takes... someone recommending cryptocurrency to build wealth, blaming millennials for not investing in homes, a reply literally blaming too much spending on starbucks, blaming millennials overreacting to the 2008 crisis by not buying homes, blaming millennials being socialists, blaming millennials going to college, blaming millennials for not making the big bucks in tech. About 1 in 10 replies point out the real causes: wages have not grown with costs or with real productivity and capitalism in general favors people holding assets and offering loans over people that have to borrow and rent.

I'm a Millenial (even if I think these labels are dumb) and I find these kinds of things fascinating. Esp when they describe things I do not recognize in any way in my peers, re them talking about the causes of people disliking capitalism. Sure I'm in a more progressive/leftwing bubble (of which I'm prob the most extreme nowadays in various ways), but I know a lot of people who are looking into buying houses/have bought houses who still are not fans of musk/tesla etc. Seems like they forget people can have principles, and just look at a simplistic view of 'material conditions' (I hope people paid attention to the recent bsky shit on what this actually means in historical context). Flashbacks to r/ssc talking about 'leftwing polticians not thinking about X' while the leftwing politicans I knew irl were actively talking about it. Feels very like im looking at an alternative world. (Prob also quite true as im Dutch, and this is about the US (with right wing fan fave Poland having a honorable mention)).

Do think it is amusing Millenials get blamed for everything still. The punching bag generation. Poor Gen Z, for which this is now starting up.