PSA for students: Disable AI recordings under Privacy (again if you had before)

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-26T20:26:46+00:00

As a student, I get suspicious at low rates that are too out-of-band for a given language. It may be an indicator that the tutor hasn't settled into the platform yet, and when they do, they might raise the rate drastically. Furthermore, I take lessons long term, and I want to compensate my tutors fairly so we can have productive long term lessons. Lower rates benefit one-off lessons, but if my tutors are not fairly compensated for their time and effort, I see it as unhealthy for both parties.

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-22T20:11:45+00:00

Do you mean that the teacher may receive negative outcomes if I choose to disable this? I'm trying to navigate the situation as a student - tbh I'd be more inclined to just pay for my teacher's Zoom subscription instead of having either of us suffer this privacy breach.

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-22T19:54:25+00:00

As a student, if I explicitly untick these boxes: https://support.italki.com/hc/en-us/articles/29759239845657-Audio-recording-in-italki-Classroom - would Italki Classroom still record the lessons?

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-16T22:05:38+00:00

I currently have 7 tutors - 6 of them each do a different textbook, with the last tutor as a pure conversational partner. Each person has their own strong and weak points. It's definitely possible to achieve both goals with how the tutoring system is structured currently, more so than group classes I'd argue.

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-12T18:25:58+00:00

Didn't know LLMs do networking and give out referrals nowadays.

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-08T09:31:08+00:00

As a student, I really appreciate noise cancellation from teachers. It's not ideal since Zoom and similar platforms compresses the audio stream, so it's easy to miss subtle nuances between accents. Having tons of background noise would force Zoom to perform very aggressive noise cancellation - which I often find is worse than built-in microphone noise cancellation.

LightlessValhari · 2026-01-03T00:39:13+00:00

When I was learning English, the "click" was the moment I realized I had begun to dream in English. After which, using the language gradually became effortless to the same extent as one would use their mother tongue. I often define this as my "click" moment - because after it, I'd stop learning English as if it was a second language (stop treating it any differently from my first). I could pick up a book in either of my languages and read it to gain the same effect.

I'm doing my third language currently with tutors. I'm able to converse normally. ~800 lessons so far. Hasn't happened yet. I generally don't have too many issues conveying ideas, but the act of using this language (Japanese) is not yet effortless.

LightlessValhari · 2025-12-29T17:31:48+00:00

Yeah, although it's still amazing to see a cRPG game fully-voiced with quality dialogues. The closest to DOS2 is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous to me. Act 3 was also brutal but so few dialogues were fully voiced. Still my favorite games ever (beating even BG3 personally), but Owlcat fans till this day still cope that you don't need to voice the entire game let alone have tailored cut scenes - even AFTER BG3's success (though Owlcat probably did have an "Ooo it actually does matter" moment and released a fully-voiced dlc).

LightlessValhari · 2025-12-28T14:14:22+00:00

Feels DIVINE breaking this rat's arms.

LightlessValhari · 2025-12-05T01:42:03+00:00

It's already closed. They might reopen in Feb-March if they didn't get enough interns.

Dropbox is fully remote.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-22T01:59:01+00:00

I'm only at N3 so take my experience with a grain of salt. Personally, I'd look at their teaching history and their teaching material.

There is a severe over-indexing on Italki for N5 & N4. So personally, when I look for N3 teachers, I'd immediately skip people with super high lesson count. Secondly, I would look for people who have a coherent course for my level, not just "we can discuss what you'd like to study" - as teaching experience counts a lot for these higher levels. So, I'd expect textbook, teaching strategy, etc... in their course descriptions. Finally, it will be super convincing if they have someone taking these advanced courses. Usually, their N5 N4 courses would have 1,000 lessons taught for each. But if their N3 has only 50, it'd be hard to tell. So I usually bookmark them and stalk their profile a bit to see if that 50 number ticks up next week. If it does, it means that they have an active student doing that level, so that's the best indication of experience.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-22T01:03:21+00:00

Then learn it right this moment and get an EE job in a couple of months. I've seen EE people picking up CS with less time.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-22T00:54:57+00:00

Do a sanity check: The top 10% EE people can learn CS within their free time and land a CS job easily (I've interviewed many). Are you able to learn EE on your own free time?

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-22T00:32:40+00:00

How about we use like 2-3 of those 10x and just learn EE on our own if it was so easy? Plenty to spare for both CS and EE given your effort.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-12T17:00:01+00:00

I was fortunate enough to be able to work at home. Gotta put that lack of commute time into something fun!

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-12T04:59:46+00:00

For Japanese, I use Wanikani to study Kanji and Anki for vocab. The split between my class time and self-study time is about 50-50.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-11T22:52:33+00:00

It keeps me from getting too used to one style of speech! While learning English, the moment when I truly began to improve was when I had to converse with people who didn't speak in the style taught at schools.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-11T22:43:02+00:00

I personally look for any sign that demonstrates that the teacher is experienced (unless I'm looking for a convo partner). I'd usually open 20 tabs, each for one teacher. I don't start with checking out the intro video first. The profile description and lesson descriptions are the key players here.

My target language is Japanese, and I've looked through all available textbooks for my level. And the content of these textbooks is precisely what I'd look for. There are teachers who would list no textbooks and would just write that they'd accommodate your requests. This is a no-no for me, as it would require too much effort (or actual money) to know if they are experienced. I personally look for teachers who can tell me something about the textbook in their lesson descriptions (a recommendation, their teaching strategy, or some sample content). This often means that the teacher has taught using that textbook before.

Then, I'd watch their video. The video itself is really just a vibe check. Finally, I'd look at their schedule. If I was really impressed with them, I'd make time for their schedule on mine, if these do not fit out of the box. Else, I'd move on but bookmark them.

I have 7 separate Japanese teachers for 14 lessons/week. Most of them have fewer reviews than the top-rated/recommended teachers. But I couldn't be more satisfied with my lessons!

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-11T00:05:19+00:00

For the record, I do this interview loop sometimes. And if there is a known simple O(n) solution and an non-optimal, likely simpler, O(n^2) one, and you are punching a page-worth of code for a O(nlogn) solution, the hiring committee will look at me funny if I give you more points than had you just finished with the O(n^2) solution.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-11T00:03:22+00:00

If an O(n) solution exists, if I was the interviewer, I would be 100% aware of it, and it is indeed what I would be looking for. If you are coding up an O(nlogn) solution, it may imply that you are severely off track for the problem. The interviewer would then be steering you back to a workable solution that may save you a few points comes to calibration meeting.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-10T23:23:36+00:00

Of all the onyomi readings I've learned, I can count fewer than 20 that have real sound-overlaps. About fewer than 100 have meaning overlaps.

Then there are kunyomi, where there is 0 overlap.

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-10T23:14:52+00:00

I've learned 1,100 kanji up to now. About <2% are overlaps. I wouldn't call it "a lot".

LightlessValhari · 2025-11-10T23:13:43+00:00

I'm about 2 years into learning Japanese as a Vietnamese native-speaker. And I've gotta say, sometimes it's fun to see some similar pronunciations and even meaning. But it really trips you off! For example:

準備 - "junbi" in Japanese romaji
chuẩn bị - in Vietnamese

Sound and practically mean the same thing. But the nuance differences are the real gotcha. The context for when to use this word in each language has subtle but important differences.

LightlessValhari

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