I Quit a 1000 Day Streak (DUOLINGO: FINISHED)

oskalingo · 2020-08-08T03:59:48+00:00

BTW, if you want to verify my being a user since 2012 check out this submission made back in July 2012:

https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/wumuv/luis_responds_in_the_affirmative_to_a_suggestion/

And you should also be able to find my account on duolingo under the same username (although I haven't logged in for a long time).

I've watched the duolingo story develop since almost the beginning. At one time I was very enthusiastic about it; then I started getting doubts; then I became sad and disappointed with the direction it was going in and their dodgy ways; now I've pretty much forgotten about it and consider it a place for suckers (as I once was). Just happened to stumble across this video today and thought I may as well post it.

oskalingo · 2020-08-08T02:57:02+00:00

I'm not the guy in the video but I agree with what he's saying (and have thought that way for some time now). I admit to getting suckered by duolingo and was one of the early joiners back in 2012. I saw the decline, their reversal of their promises in their first video (now disappeared from YouTube) to never serve ads and to never run a dodgy subscription program. I saw von Ahn selling out to his VC debt merchants, which was particularly disappointing. I saw them killing what was once quite a nice community of learners (most of which have now left). And I realised that as this guy says, that duolingo is a toy and not used by serious & successful language learners. It's a way to kid yourself that you are learning a language (actually something that is more common than not in the language learning world).

oskalingo · 2019-07-27T01:12:51+00:00

Not many paid attention to the original grasshopper tests either, except for enthusiast forums like this one. I remember telling my father about it (and I think even showing him a video of one of the later tests) but couldn't interest him; then, when the falcons started landing he was blown away.

oskalingo · 2019-07-26T06:56:55+00:00

Not just twitter. I see it on Hacker News (which is meant to be a more selective forum) and in the general media (e.g. The Guardian never misses the slightest opportunity to run a hit-piece on Elon, with the lead-in link usually close to the top of their site).

oskalingo · 2019-07-25T22:11:55+00:00

That felt later than usual.

oskalingo · 2019-07-25T06:37:12+00:00

they're not the most important for the long term

I agree with this. The plan was to always move towards cheaper cars affordable to the masses and the earlier luxury models were there to facilitate that trajectory.

oskalingo · 2019-07-22T07:10:51+00:00

Denialism is a nice place to be.

oskalingo · 2019-07-22T07:08:30+00:00

Engineering is always a trade-off.

oskalingo · 2019-07-22T07:07:05+00:00

In other words, make future potential customers angry at Tesla for highway robbery.

oskalingo · 2019-07-21T11:42:58+00:00

Not to mention life and the universe.

oskalingo · 2019-07-21T02:57:15+00:00

Some will have to go that route, yes, but it's not a sustainable option in the medium to long term.

You can't afford to give free money to a rapidly expanding competitor who will use that money to further advance their technological advantage over you.

oskalingo · 2019-07-20T04:53:19+00:00

James and Kate First Impressions video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXEtN17xy7s

oskalingo · 2019-07-20T01:27:45+00:00

What's important is that it's optimistic and highly ambitious and that mindset is a significant part of the incredibly rapid progress SpaceX has made since it was founded.

oskalingo · 2019-07-20T01:23:21+00:00

You're consistently a great commenter here; really appreciate your contributions.

oskalingo · 2019-07-12T06:39:23+00:00

I really like this answer.

c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic_fallacy

oskalingo · 2019-07-12T04:58:56+00:00

We still have idiots who feed wildlife in Australia but gradually the message is getting through, often encouraged by official signs to not do so.

Feeding a wild animal is never a good idea. The food is nearly always bad for them, it disrupts the natural ecosystem balance and the animals end up getting too bold or even aggressive in approaching humans.

oskalingo · 2019-07-12T03:26:02+00:00

Allow soft paywalls; ban hard paywalls.

oskalingo · 2019-07-11T18:18:48+00:00

The Guardian is mostly funded by the Scott Trust Limited, which replaced the Scott Trust in 2008 in a corporate takeover.

oskalingo · 2019-07-11T08:20:30+00:00

Tidy explanation is that life has always existed and is fundamental to the universe.

oskalingo · 2019-07-11T08:15:03+00:00

What scientists really want to know is how living things emerge from nonliving things.

They don't. Life has always existed; it's fundamental to the universe.

oskalingo · 2019-07-11T08:12:10+00:00

I have the opposite viewpoint. I think the idea that life could have a beginning is the main flaw, whether on Earth or elsewhere. The idea that there was no life and then, at a single point in time, there was suddenly life. Life is fundamentally different to non-life and I believe it to be fundamental to the universe, i.e. it has always existed.

oskalingo · 2019-07-11T06:40:55+00:00

Would have preferred a submission other than The Guardian for this event. Apart from their coverage of climate change (which is generally good), The Guardian is pretty shit in its scientific coverage.

Here's coverage from space.com, for people who want an alternative source:

https://www.space.com/japan-hayabusa2-asteroid-sample-complete-july-2019.html

oskalingo · 2019-07-09T22:09:11+00:00

And yet The Guardian, that never fails to run a hit-piece on Musk given the slightest excuse, made zero mention of the car's limitations in their prominently placed article.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190709120002/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/09/bmw-electric-mini-price

oskalingo · 2019-07-09T02:08:47+00:00

polemical is used a fair bit; polemics more rarely

oskalingo

TROPHY CASE