this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] self@awful.systems 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

can anyone recommend a language learning app or system that isn’t dependent on LLM garbage? after bouncing off of Duolingo I almost landed on Readlang, but:

  • all of its features seem to be LLM-dependent
  • because of that, its word and phrase explanations have a bit of oddity to them that I feel will get worse when I get past the beginner material
  • it’s a lot slower than it should be because it’s calling into ChatGPT for everything
  • even though this is supposedly their strength, I’ve had really bad instances where a GPT-based translation app translates Spanish (which should be fairly easy) into absolutely nonsensical English, and I’m kind of terrified I’ll make a fool of myself learning Spanish from a system where that’s a statistically likely probability
  • maybe I don’t want to pay some asshole to not write me some study materials????
  • plagiarism and the rainforests
  • it feels like Readlang really doesn’t need an LLM or a $6/month subscription that’ll almost certainly go up? like, it’s essentially an e-reader with a manual translation feature (that could be just a Spanish word/phrase dictionary) that also generates flash cards whenever you activate the translation. is there really not an e-reader or browser plugin that just does this shit without LLMs?

with that rant out of the way, I’m open to suggestions that aren’t Duolingo’s model or another round of passing grades and zero vocabulary retention at the community college

[–] imadabouzu@awful.systems 7 points 3 months ago

Honestly, almost anything can work. Some, sort of flash card system, and some, sort of input in the language that you enjoy. I use Anki and yes it's trash but I have never found spending anymore than the least necessary time on the tech of language learning worth it.

The crucial thing, in my experience, is that language acquisition only works if you're paying attention because you actually care about the material in front of you. I think a lot of people make the mistake of only studying aspirationally and well beyond their current capacity, forgetting how to be a child and be highly curative and explorative. Weird shit, even practically unuseful shit, is surprisingly better than you'd think.

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