• 9 Posts
  • 23 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: April 28th, 2023

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  • My general approach is to use Anki as my primary resource with the addition of the Genki textbook, video lectures and grammar videos on YouTube (Toki ni Andy, Game Gengo, Livakivi, etc.), and immersion content (Manga, anime, YouTube). I use Anki because I believe it’s the most effective method for me having used it previously to learn Esperanto; although I believe that you should use whatever method is the most fun for you, whatever will keep you coming back for daily work is good. Don’t fall for the “Bro Science” language learning people who promise quick shortcuts, there are none, these people are usually trying to sell you something.

    My daily study consists of about 40 minutes of Anki per day. I split my time between two decks, which is suboptimal in terms of occasionally containing duplicates, but I like it as it serves as a method of chunking my study out throughout the day and as a way to recognize the same Kanji in different contexts. These two decks are the KanjiTransistion and Core 2.3k decks. I do four new cards from the KanjiTransistion deck and three new cards from the 2.3k deck. Following that if I’m in the mood I’ll return to reviewing my Hiragana and Katakana decks (you should do this first if you haven’t already!). I also use the Review Heatmap plugin to see my streak, which helps me stay focused on goals and milestones.

    You should form your own opinion about what method of learning works best for you, but don’t fall victim to spending time strategizing and figuring out the scientifically perfect way to learn the language, there isn’t one. If you’re spending time planning how you’re going to learn the language, you’re spending less time actually learning. The only way to get good at a language is to literally be exposed to it and learning it for 1000+ hours.




  • This article strikes at a very salient set of points about smartphones and social media. As someone that specifically tries to only use federated social media because it avoids some of these dark patterns, I certainly agree with. I also use my smartphone without any notifications turned on, ever.

    Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing “kids these days are too soft” which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue. For example:

    This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.”

    The scare quotes around microagressions, a genuine issue faced my marginalized communities, is really uncomfortable and gives an unfortunate perspective on some of where this author is coming from.

    Putting that aside, I really do feel like most of what is said here is on point. Reducing social media use is imperative. Designing smartphone UX that doesn’t shove notifications at you would also be a good idea. Getting younger people involved in communities and forming friendships is incredibly important.




  • I will say unlike Reddit I find the best experience on here tends to be sorting posts by newest comments so that way discussion pushes things to the front of my page. There’s still too little content for sorting things by Top in various different communities to be worth the time. I suppose this turns it into more of an old-school forum homepage in a way.






  • I like browsing it! You always find interesting people and writings about a wide variety of topics. It’s got enough users to have variety but not so many that it feels in any way corporate. It’s very much in line with the idea that limitations breed creativity. I’d highly recommend everyone download a decent browser and look around it a bit.

    My only worry is that the Google Gemini AI thing will quickly suck all the air out of that name.




  • Linux uses the File System Hierarchy which Windows does not use. How do I keep my system organized while keeping to the FSH.
    Altogether it’s actually not that different from Windows, it’s just shuffled around a bit. You’ll have your /home/yourusername/ folder, which is where you’ll put most of your files. If you have more than one hard drive in your machine you can mount it under /mnt/ and then store the files on it as you would normally. You don’t have to worry about where your programs are stored (your package manager will take care of that for you).

    re: the command line
    For the most part I agree, but I also think it’s a solved problem. A linux install with Gnome is on par with Mac OS when it comes to user friendliness, with no need to ever look at a terminal in order to do things. The UX here is nearly a solved issue. However I also feel that “growth” or “mainstream success” is no longer something I feel like I need linux to achieve. When I started using Linux in 2009 half of the programs I tried were pale copies of proprietary software. WINE barely worked. Game support was almost non-existant. WiFi drivers were genuinely almost always broken. Flash forward fifteen years and all of these issues are fixed. Using Linux on a day to day basis makes me happy, I no longer feel like I’m missing out on anything by using it. That is such an incredible leap to take. The key takeaway is that all of these problems were solved without Linux becoming “mainstream”. It and the community around it have just kept moving along and making it better over time. It’s been lovely to watch it grow like that. A fully-featured and powerful terminal is just one part of this fantastic, open computing environment that I love.

    As an additional note to this, I do think that Linux is poised to really take off among one particular demographic: PC gamers that build their own machines and can now finally see a good alternative to forking over $150 to Microsoft for their OS. The Steam Deck has definitely turned heads here. I don’t think the legions of people buying laptops to take notes during university lectures and browse Facebook (the “20 wpm typers” out there) will be very interested in Linux machines no matter what we do, so let’s focus the energy where it counts.


  • 1) Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card. Are there any real noticeable advantages/improvements to using Wayland over Xorg.
    If you have an Nvidia card you’re probably best sticking to Xorg for now. I’m currently running Xorg with Gnome 45 since I have a GTX 1060. As I understand it Wayland is better at handling refresh rates across multiple monitors, as well as DPI scaling. These are minor issues compared to having everything working smoothly. I do feel like Xorg is on the way out now however, and I expect to switch off of it in a year or two.

    2) Does bloat actually have a noticeable negative impact on your system or are people just over reacting/joking.
    It’s mostly just a meme. It certainly won’t slow you down. What it does do is take up space on your hard drive and in your menus. I do understand taking pleasure in ensuring that your system is trimmed down to only what you really need. But don’t worry about it at all.

    3) What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
    The same habits you have on Windows. Keep your files and folders in order. Beyond that there’s not much you need to worry about, especially with Kinoite.

    4) Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?
    Not that I can think of off the top of my head. Most important is leaning to RTFM, meaning go read the documentation for your distro (or just look at the Arch wiki) when you have an issue. If you run into a problem and need to ask for help, make sure you don’t do the XY problem.

    5) Any other resources besides the AUR that I should be aware of?
    I don’t think Fedora Kinoite supports AUR, that’s an Arch Linux thing. You’ll be getting 99% of your apps from Flatpak.

    6) What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
    A long time ago I made a thread that got shared around a bit about how I thought the command line was pushed by Linux anoraks who didn’t understand the needs of the common user. I’ve used Linux a lot since then and I’ve changed my perspective: the command line is your best friend. It lets you do exactly what you want to do very quickly. It’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s beautiful. If you learn it a whole world of additional tools command line tools will open to you (ssh, grep, etc). There’s a reason that places like /c/unixporn love pictures of open terminals with neofetch loaded up.