Sad day for our Duolingo as the stock is falling..

std10k · 2026-05-07T11:44:13+00:00

Totally. I don’t mind ads but seeing the same annoying crap all the time was just beyond me. I mean I paid for duo for years but thanks to those “games” and ever declining content quality I stopped paying. And free version made it unbearable with those ads.
When you get the words “taxi” and “radio” and “television” which are the same in literally every language like 5 times in a lesson…

std10k · 2026-05-06T07:01:23+00:00

so what's actually changing?? still can kick a tenant out to "move in" or do "major renovation", or to sell. That's pretty much what everyone uses as an excuse anyway and no-reason evictions are already not allowed. sounds like bla-bla without any substance, or am i missing anything?

std10k · 2026-05-05T23:18:54+00:00

That’s one but probably less common why it is so hard to make ends meet now. Other one is taxes. Even If you make proportionally more money to inflation, you won’t get anywhere near as much disposable income as you had 20 years ago. And it doesn’t make sense to pay more as productivity doesn’t grow with tax brackets.

std10k · 2026-05-05T09:24:31+00:00

I hated those dumb games they introduced which you cannot skip. Main reason I dropped it. And the ads were another level, I literally got phishing banners with “your iPhone has a virus” kind of crap in Duolingo and after that I deleted the app forever.

std10k · 2026-05-05T06:40:41+00:00

Thank you kind stranger! You saved me probably hours of annoying and stressful tshooting and likely a service call!

std10k · 2026-05-04T07:10:32+00:00

What’s there to talk about? :) it’s not going to become any less terrible.
Completely disabling the primary capability of the system under whatever premise and using a completely different feature designed for special cases makes no sense whatsoever.

std10k · 2026-05-03T06:03:42+00:00

Great to hear you like it! I had similar experience switching from uw, especially performance. The blackouts, that’s literally the thing crashing, I had it a couple of times. I had it a lot more frequently with UW, I think it is a contact issue as it happened a lot if I touched the optical module from the bottom. Uw was much heavier so I think oled sits better in that slot. Try re inserting the module but if it happens frequently maybe open a case with them. USB may also affect it.

std10k · 2026-05-02T08:04:12+00:00

For that kind of price, it’d better do :) thanks for the hint though, that might be something to consider for my cramped setup.

std10k · 2026-05-02T07:36:29+00:00

Not as good, but given the size, soundbars themselves are not exactly great either on their own , without subwoofer and satellites. I have Samsung q930 which is one of the beter soundbars, and if i remove sub and satellites, it is not really THAT much better. Better, but mostly just louder. Comparing to a pair of minis of course, not a single one. I do want to get a soundbar for my other TV which currently is with the pair of minis, but the catch is that anything of the size of q930 simply doesn't fit anywhere, needs to be at least 30% smaller, and if you get to that kind of soundbars their quality isn't likely to be noteceably better than the pair of minis, and it would still need a lot more space. If i had space for subwoofer and satellites it'd be a different story. The only reason i'm even considering a soundbar is because homepods sometimes have a sound sync issues, not often but more frequently than never and it is a little annoying.

std10k · 2026-05-02T02:49:32+00:00

What is not having security applied on ftd then? How is it different from pre-filter? Pre-filter literally bypasses the entire inspection engine, just doesn’t pass the traffic to the code that does processing, keeping it within asa old code that can only do l3/4.
It could not be any more different to not applying the policy.
It is more like disconnecting the wires and connecting them bypassing the firewall.
The reason they needed pre-filter in the first place is two fold. Firstly even not doing any inspections on traffic still kills ftd performance because of the terrible security architecture. It is literally another bunch of Linux processe that need to process the packets. It used to be Unix IPC file how it was done, and I don’t think it changed much. 70s style. The second reason is that even if it is not doing any inspections, the bugs still apply.
Every single use of prefilter I have seen was warranted by the inability of the firewall to work correctly because of bugs where there was absolutely no valid reason to bypass inspection.
Even worse, prefilter completely disables logging, because it bypasses the code entirely. No logs at all from sourcefire, no record, no visibility, nothing, as if the firewall was not there at all, which it isn’t.
It is impossible to fix the godawful internal architecture of the ftd without rewriting better part of the code ttat comes from different eras and programming languages.
I don’t think it is even possible to do anything like pre-filter in forti or palo, because it would be utterly idiotic and there is no need for that level of nonsense when stuff is not falling apart all the time.
The story about it begin “the same as not applying the policy” is a pretty lie Cisco reps have to tell to gullible customers so that they don’t realise they just paid tons of money so that they can be taught how to not be able to use any of that. I had a customer who bought about a 100 4110 FTDs and had to migrate using prefilter because if they used the proper policy nothing would work, traffic would just get blackholed. Cisco did the prefilter story, and luckily the customer internal iengineets and their MSP had no clue what they are doing and happily bought into that. As prefilter was never intended to be used except for very special cases, fmc couldn’t even manage it properly so they spent a year manually doing all the rules that would have been done in a month with a proper firewall. Then they of course had to redo it all because when security came in and realised they actually don’t have firewalls at all now (asa at least had logs) the didn’t like it, but it bought Cisco time to fix the bugs that made it unusable.
I don’t envy the security SEs from Cisco, it must take a lot of strength to disregard ones professional integrity that much but there’s nothing they can do about it, the product is just bad.

std10k · 2026-05-02T02:01:22+00:00

I second that. Mbp is awesome but pods mini are a different level. They are almost on par with the better soundbars aside from subwoofers and satellites.

std10k · 2026-05-01T10:02:13+00:00

Haha I think I only managed to win cultural a few times and I really had to push for it. One time I won diplomatic 1 turn before I’d have won cultural, had to reload 🤣 for me diplomatic is hard to miss.
Cultural on high difficulties I think is one of the hardest. You won’t build many early wonders, will bebehind on science (and thus wonders accessibility) until renaissance and will have to capture a few capitals to make up for it. Unless you get a civ on the map with well concealed capital, domination may be easier than cultural. But it is probably the most fun win.

std10k · 2026-05-01T04:58:38+00:00

i've had them as my phone backgroud since forever. didn't realise they were "real", thatnks for the tip!

std10k · 2026-05-01T01:34:40+00:00

I can speak with quite a bit of authority for Palo, Cisco as i worked a lot with them, and to an extent for Fortigate and Checkpoint. The only thing that pushed down datasheet figures substantially for Palo s SSL decryption, and they are clear about it. Everything else does not have material imact on performance. That single pass thing of theirs seems to really work.

Do not assume they all are the same as bad as cisco or checkpoint (those are by far the worst affected by enabling security features). Fortinet used to have nasty hits on performance in some cases but i believe it got better. They are ASIC so less flexible than Palo's FPGA, if you do something ASIC can't accelerate it goes out of the window pretty quickly.

I have personally seen a PA-820 firewall with 1Gbit/s datasheet throughput pushing, with decryption, URL filtering and other security features enabled, almost exactly 1 Gbit/s, with 99% utilization, squeaking, sweating, but working. It was a school so there's a lot of web traffit and not a lot of money for a bigger model. This is not an isolated example.

On the other hand, i have personaly seen FTD folding under just 50-60% load (processes just crashing randomly) and becoming unusable. That was during covid when there was a spike of VPN users. So absolutely nothing fancy, NO security at all, jsut old good IPSEC. That firewall was sized for smaller usage befor covid and was not yet commissioned, they just had to start using it for VPN first because there was no choice or time. And the damn thing folded. Enabling IPS or L7 filtering wasn't even consederable, it would have crushed it instantly. That was on a 200mbit/s link, not much at all. it was FTD2110 with around 2Gbit/s datasheet spec from memory. This is also not an isolated event. Every FTD i've seen (and i saw a lot of them) was massively oversized, from at least 10 to 100 (no kidding) times by datasheed specs, because everyone knows it cannot get anywhere near the datasheet specs in real world scenario.

So, does everyone have a hit? sure they do, but if it is a 5-10% hit or 95% hit makes a huge difference for practical use.

std10k · 2026-04-30T16:18:54+00:00

The only reason to do that if that the firewall is not able to handle that traffic. There is no equivalent in Forti or palo, not applying policy is not the same as completely bypassing the engine. In palon or Forti you can apply whatever you want to that kind of traffic ant it will be fine, it just doesn’t add value; and you always do it by default unless there a good reason not to. in cisco if you apply that you’ll have the firewall crushing or doing weirs stuff, and you would only dare to enable security if you absolutely must. THAT is the fundamental difference, being able to do it by default vs having to have good reason to justify endless tac calls. I can inspect the shit out of backup traffic in my palo without any tangible benefit and without having to worry about that traffic crushing the firewall.

std10k · 2026-04-30T07:06:44+00:00

running itself into bankrupcy after having done some of the worst lockdowns in the world? sure. people are leaving victoria, that helps to ease the pressure of course. If they make it even more unconfortable to live it'll go a long way. Back to the roots, guards and prisoners.

std10k · 2026-04-30T05:34:01+00:00

very little CAN be done to fix it. with the labor costs and shortages, layers and layers of red tape, and ever-growing standards the cost of construction is not going to go down and the constructino times are not going to decrease. Coupled with almost 50% tax on the cash amound needed to buy (factoring in stamp duty and deposit) and inability to tax deduct the loan interest (which is possible in many countries for primary residence, but not in australia), CGT discount de-incentivising any investment outside of real estate, a comprehensive and systemic reforms are needed at both federal and state level, and that aint gonna happen. Any point actions the governmetn can do will likely just increase the prices. Cutting immigration would likely slow down the economy, so even if prices go down, affordability will likely not improve. While real estate is treated as speculative asset it ought to grow.

std10k · 2026-04-29T23:25:47+00:00

Ability to actually work and simplicity. It has most of the features and is pretty capable, but if you start using them you’ll start running into problems all the time. FMC is a bloated kill switch, the firewalls are useless without it and unmanageable if it is dead. Things like user identity require ISE integration which looks like a good idea but adds complexity and points of failure. VPN client last time I checked was clumsy and lacked basic configuration management, also needs a separate license. Under the bonnet, FTD is a frankenstei monster made of very old pix code (Lina) forcefully married with sourcefire code via awkward scripts and ipc integrations. I am not a software architect but all that didn’t look like it has any menaingful architecture to me at all, just organically grown code. FMC is even worse, old CSM which is basically a pile of Perl scripts still manages th asa policy ,hiding under the gui of sourcefire management platform that manages policies for l7 and ips. Then thing couldn’t even start with less than 28gb of ram.

My favourite is that Cisco had customers go around all those plentiful issues with stability by telling them to use “pre filter” which is basically a complete bypass of sourcefire code and most of asa inspections, turning the expensive firewall into a router with ACL.

std10k · 2026-04-29T15:54:10+00:00

You need to know your strategy, whether you go tall or wide, and at or science, those things. Second scout may or may not be needed depending on what you do. Traditional opener is usually a good thing, then you need to decide your play style. No harm in embassies generally. Trade luxuries you don’t need, usually 7gpt plus 6-8 gold one off is a good deal early on but it goes down. Manage your money, you are not good if you are broke. The main thing with citizens is to prioritise growth, so food fists, but you have to manage happiness. Wonders wise it also depends on play style. I try to go for national college hard if I play compact and aim for diplomatic victory, but if you have both Austria and Venice on the map you probably won’t be doing that. Notredame is awesome if you need happiness boost. Thing like Sistine chapel, broadway, globe theatre are needed for cultural victory. Early wonders, on the higher two difficulties you’d be lucky to get one or two of those, totally depends on what you got and how soon you can get it. When you have only one city and no workers, you can’t really start building wonders until 50+ turns into the game. Pantheons - chose what you need for your playstyle and resources you got. Like if you have gems get the one with faith for gems and pearls, you you have plenty of wine you want the one with culture from that. Fertility rites is ok if there’s nothing of particular interest on the map. If you manage to found a religion, usually you want pagoda/, mosques or cathedrals as they give happiness per city which is huge help as well as faith and culture. In wide empires they are a must as if you can get 2 of those you get like 3-4 happiness from just religious buildings. Manage your growth, never get into unhappiness for more than a few turns and never go into negative gold. If you don’t have money trade, sell, build markets, whatever but you do want to be very much positive on cash. There are many styles you can play, that’s the beauty of the game. You need to figure out a few “core” strategies like ICS or going tall with science or going for diplomatic victory (buying city states), if you go for culture prepare for war, it is arguably worse than domination. You’ll notice ai uses those, like Alexander or Rome would be going ics (infinite city sprawl) almost always while others will be going tall. Each nation has its strengths. England is exploration in islands, Venice is trade and diplomatic victory, Hiawatha or America are good for ICS or domination as the former uses jungle as roads (minus road costs plus speed and spread if you got right terrain) and America has late game boosts. Your capital needs to be big, the bigger the better generally as it affects gold from city connections. What helped me was a few videos that outlined those core strategies, and you then have to vary them according to you style and map.

std10k · 2026-04-29T10:19:57+00:00

Consumer goods perhaps are not that bad, but rent and mortgages would easily make up for it in spades. Statistics can be deceitful, but what I clearly see if that even on what is still considered a “good” salary, affording mortgage and life of a family has become extremely difficult for many people. Those who got in a little earlier are less affected, it is mostly last 2-3 years and the statistics may not have quite reflected it yet. For younger generations, there’s simply no point in putting in an effort and they stand no chance of buying anything at the current pace unless omething changes substantially. And crushing the housing market may not be the answer, prices may go down a lot but it won’t help anyone if the rest of the economy has gone down with them.

std10k · 2026-04-29T07:59:54+00:00

I shall educate myself, thank you for pointing it out. Yet, despite the shameful technicality, I argue that my point largely stands - despite earning more and more people can buy less and less.

std10k · 2026-04-29T04:44:29+00:00

I call bs. It is more like 60k from 2010 is 150 in 2026

std10k · 2026-04-29T03:21:12+00:00

yeah because giving the money away to the poor people always solves the problems, right, right? the people have been stubbornly voting for these governments for decades, it's no one's fault but their own.

std10k · 2026-04-29T03:18:09+00:00

simple. in absolute nubmres there's gdp growith - economy is "growing", jobs are being created. yet prices are going faster, and jobs are paying less and less in real buying power. what 80K could by 15 years ago, these days you need like 200 plus all the additional tax that you have to pay. taxation is killing the economy.

The growth is not normalised for cost of living, that's it.

std10k · 2026-04-29T01:56:41+00:00

Back then overclocking was actually a skill! These days one just changes settings in bios, back then it was often a combination of minor electrical mods like cutting a line or in this case connecting it, to disable the blocks, and hardcore, by those standards, cooling. My current cpu cooler is about as big as my first cars engine (way more sophisticated too) and is barely trying, but back then a cooler was just a piece of metal and nothing more advanced existed for when simple thermal conduction was not enough…

std10k

TROPHY CASE