The Legend of Prince's Special Custom-Font Symbol Floppy Disks - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/04/princes-legendary-floppy-disk-symbol-font.html <comment><USER2> For those who don't know, Prince legally changed his name to a made-up unpronounceable symbol in the early 90's to sidestep restrictions in the contract he had signed with his record company, Warner, which at the time had the rights to use the name "Prince" for music and merchandise.

After the legal name change, news outlets started calling him "the artist formerly known as Prince." Meanwhile, Warner had no rights to the new, unpronounceable name. Warner executives likely were not too happy about that, but couldn't do anything about it.

In 2000, after the contract with Warner expired, Prince went back to using his old name.

Source: [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36107590](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36107590)

<comment><USER3> Is the part about him _legally_ changing his name really true? All the sources say so, but surely there are laws and regulations around name changes in the US. I have a hard time imagining the IRS having him down as the symbol.

Also, changing your name can't be a legal way of getting out of contracts, can it? If it is, then someone should let Ke$ha know...

<comment><USER4> Looking at the discography and discussion on the Wikipedia artivle, I don't think the name change got him out of his contract. It seems that he had to release a certain number of albums to finish his contract. I think by using the symbol on those albums, he prevented Warner brothers from having rights to use his name in connection with it. He probably negotiated his next contract a bit differently.

<comment><USER5> What he did was start turning the crank, churning out five albums in three years, since the contract stipulates a certain number of albums to be produced. Which leads one to wonder if he didn't want the Prince "branding" applied to this work; maybe he thought the label was meddling too much and it wasn't really his work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He also performed with "Slave" painted across his face/chest. He _REALLY_ didn't like his treatment by the studio.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ha! You type "P" for the symbol-- so he doesn't have his own Unicode codepoint?

The font may have an ambiguous license, but it appears that it was _meant_ to be widely distributed to promote Prince. Is it available anywhere? I could make my own, but that wouldn't be the same.

<comment><USER8> No, he doesn't, and it's a crying shame. Contact your local Unicode consortium representative - If and 𒀽 deserve Unicode codepoints, the artist formerly known as Prince surely does too.

<comment><USER9> To propose this character to the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) you'll need to include as many examples as possible showing the symbol used in running text. Physical objects and logos won't do; you need to show historical use of the symbol in running text (newspaper or magazine articles, books, liner notes, et cetera). Find examples, and we could make the proposal.

We've done it before on HN:

[https://github.com/jloughry/Unicode/#readme](https://github.com/jloughry/Unicode/#readme)

<comment><USER10> Unicode tends to resist adding symbols for specific people, companies, or brands. They'll say to put it in the private use area.

<comment><USER9> You're right, and IIRC this symbol has been proposed before unsuccessfully. But recent events have called to attention the backstory behind Prince's symbol---how it was created for use as a _tool_ to modify an unfair contract, and how that successful hack opened up the recording industry for artists--- many articles were printed about it at the time (most of them missing the point), a few books were written since, lots more articles were published about it last week, and likely more books about Prince are being written now.

A code point is needed for Prince's symbol now. It's no longer merely pop culture but history and law.

<comment><USER10> Eh. As much as we like Prince, his symbol is still a brand, and Unicode should not be a permanent memorial to brands.

And here's why excluding people is nice: I'd say there's history involved in the fact that the North Korean encoding (KPS 9566) has codepoints for special decorative characters for writing "Kim Jong-Il", but Unicode isn't putting those in either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _After all, could any other artist convince a major music publication to integrate a custom font?

"How many people can just say 'Hey, I'm changing my name to this symbol so can you use it from now on?' and everyone's like 'Alright. Okay. No questions asked. You're Prince! We'll do it!' It was kind of funny to me."_

Then again, music journalism is probably a business where they are accustomed to seeing all kinds of diva behavior.</comment>


High Level Kubes Overview - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/kubernetes-an-overview/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you're thinking of getting into K8s, this is a place to start.</comment>


The Online Privacy Lie Is Unraveling - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/06/the-online-privacy-lie-is-unraveling/ <comment><USER2> Published: 2015

(For clarity)</comment>


How fast can you allocate a large block of memory in C++? - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2020/01/14/how-fast-can-you-allocate-a-large-block-of-memory-in-c/ <comment><USER2> Any C++ programmer could write code that "allocates" 500MB in a few instructions if the pages already exist.

If the pages don't already exist (as indicated by the given timings), this is a test of the OS and has little to do with the language.

It's a poorly posed question. C++ runs on many environments.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you need to allocate lots of memory, you should be using mmap(). If you need it faulted in, you use MAP_POPULATE. Try to use MAP_HUGETLB to economize on TLB cache entries; you may need to set "vm.nr_hugepages=16384" (or something) in /etc/sysctl.conf (or someplace) to reserve them.

If you are allocating lots of memory and don't know about hugepages, you badly need to learn.

If your program has threads, unmapping memory is generally to be avoided.

<comment><USER4> > If your program has threads, unmapping memory is generally to be avoided.

Could you expand on this? I recently encountered a situation where allocating and freeing many large allocations using mmap() seemed to eventually cause problems with thread creation, but I had assumed that it was probably because the virtual address space had become too fragmented, which of course would not solely be a result of unmapping. Or maybe that fragmentation is what you're referring to, and I'm just reading too much into that sentence.

<comment><USER3> It just creates long stalls as the TLBs of all cores that threads in the process run on are flushed and must be reloaded from backing RAM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Const-me The OP should have added "Linux" somewhere in the title.

Here on Windows, the OS doesn't overcommit and the first new[] call actually allocates these pages (possibly in a page file).

Also, if the requested size is large enough (>512kb on Win32, >1MB on Win64), the OS guarantees zero initialization despite C++ doesn't: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi/nf-memoryapi-virtualalloc)

<comment><USER5> Even on Windows the pagefile space is taken but it doesn't have to write to disk right? They can zero on first read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't the speed depends on the compiler, the operating system, the hardware...

There is no particular reason you can't allocate 500GB in 1 cycle. Just get rid of all memory management.

It seems silly to answer a question about C++ in operations per _second_ , besides.

</comment><comment><USER7> > If you actually want to measure the memory allocation in C++, then you need > to ask the system to give you s bytes of allocated and initialized memory. > You can achieve the desired result in C++ by adding parentheses after the > call to the new operator

Is this an actual thing? You can force reification of overcommitted memory just by calling operator() on it?

<comment><USER8> The example given:

        char *buf = new char[s]();

Put into Compiler Explorer:

        https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/QAs9gz

However, doing this is a very strong code smell. At the very least, using `new` and assigning to a raw pointer is a sign that the C++ developer is managing memory manually and is likely to hit a lot of problems including memory leaks or segmentation faults. Also many would forget that this is calling `operator new[]()`, not `operator new()` and might confuse with placement-new `operator new(...)` or `operator new[](...)`. And the developer might also forget that `new` could throw an exception... [0]

The developer should instead be using, at a minimum, a `std::unique_ptr<char[]>` [1]. Or, IMO, a `std::vector<char>` which reminds the developer not only of the pointer but also of the count of bytes which have been allocated (.capacity()) and also of the valid range which has been initialized (.size()).

IMO, if the developer wanted a pointer to a byte array then it's a lot easier to use `malloc()` than trying to remember all the different ways you can get screwed by `operator new`:

        std::unique_ptr<char, std::function<void(char*)>> m{
            (char*)std::malloc(count), std::free
        };

[0]: [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/new](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/new)

[1]: [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/unique_ptr](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/unique_ptr)

<comment><USER9> > using `new` and assigning to a raw pointer is a sign that the C++ developer > is managing memory manually and is likely to hit a lot of problems including > memory leaks

There is no need to badmouth all c++ developers. Plenty of us can keep our memory straight just fine. just because you don't like pointers, does not mean the rest of us can't use them perfectly safely.

<comment><USER10> I think the evidence is pretty clear that programmers can't, in general, use bare pointers properly. The very best write use after free, double free, stack smashers, and all manner of other memory related bugs. We can see the evidence of this fact in the CVEs, the syzkaller bugs, etc. If you haven't been bitten by a serious instance of one of these, then you just haven't written very much C++.

IMO the debate about whether programmers can safely handle bare pointers is over. They can't. The only question is whether smart pointers help enough to make the extra line noise worth it.

<comment><USER11> And the guys that implement smart pointers are what, exactly? Uberprogrammers? Is there a certificate to get into that club? What about compiler authors, that deal with, gasp, optimizations of these bare pointers? Kernel developers? Embedded system engineers?

It is ok to stay above a certain level of abstractions consciously, but stating that one _cannot_ go below safely is just steadying mediocrity.

<comment><USER12> > And the guys that implement smart pointers are what, exactly? > Uberprogrammers? Is there a certificate to get into that club? What about > compiler authors, that deal with, gasp, optimizations of these bare > pointers? Kernel developers? Embedded system engineers?

One cannot do any of those things safely by hand. Compilers, kernels, and embedded systems do indeed do these things; they also have bugs.

<comment><USER11> You are contradicting yourself. If one cannot do these things safely by hand, then noone can implement the automatic abstractions either.

<comment><USER13> You cannot safely control an internal combustion engine's valve timings by hand, but it is clearly possible to implement this automatically (and fairly simply). Some things are much easier for machines to do than humans, even though the machines are designed and build by humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very minor nitpick, but IMHO, this article creates a little unnecessary confusion by insisting upon a particular meaning of the word "allocate" without being very clear it's doing that.

That is, it uses "allocate" to mean "make ready for immediate use with no further (lazy) processing". Another perfectly reasonable definition would be "guarantee to be possible to use".

The distinction would arise on, for example, a system which doesn't over- commit memory but also doesn't fault pages in upon allocation. On such a system, allocation might give you a rock solid guarantee that you can write to (and read from) that memory but it wouldn't give you any guarantee about how fast or slow that would happen on initial access.

Personally, I prefer the second definition, but that's not really the point. The point is to be clear and avoid confusion.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a completely ridiculous article. The whole concept is flawed.

New/delete like this are for smallish general purpose allocation, for example of objects, where we want to keep the code at a fairly high level in C++ and not think about low-level concepts like "bytes" or allocation mechanics. Or performance.

Conversely, an app written in C++ that needs huge swaths memory for manipulating raw bytes and needs high-performance would not likely use new char[] or calloc/malloc directly at all. It would directly interface with the OS via mmap or indirectly via some domain relevant library, for example, OpenCV.

We might even still exclusively use the C++ language to write the low-level portions of the code, but if you need to interface with the OS in specific controlled ways or write performance oriented code, you are not going to do it using only high-level C++ operations. You are going to call exactly what you need to interface with the system directly. If you want mmap(), you'd just call mmap() from C++. If you want sbrk(), you'd call sbrk(). If you don't like the system new/delete and malloc/free, you could use something like dlmalloc and and even remap new/delete to it, or to some custom slab allocator.

Secondly, as pointed out by others, the author isn't benchmarking C++. He's benchmarking glibc malloc and the Linux mmap. We'd expect a C program using malloc/calloc to have exactly the same timings.

Thirdly, fallacious reasoning about initialization. If your app needs to allocate (for some ??? reason) 32 GB of memory, you would NOT automatically zero it first, unless you actually needed it to be zero, or you wanted your app to waste a bunch of time. Unnecessary zeroing huge arrays is not required for good security. We're mostly benchmarking memset here, not even malloc/mmap. So it's completely apples/oranges to compare mmap benchmark with a zerofill benchmark. I almost expect a follow-up article that points out accessing x[i] is much faster when x is a raw array of integers than when x is a std::map of strings.

Now read the footnotes. The author is misunderstanding what "idomatic C++" means. RAII is the best answer I can come up with for idiomatic - C++ doesn't have a built-in guard concept so we creatively mis-use constructors and destructors to get a similar result.

Footnote 2 proves the author knows bupkis about how C++ or any part of the system actually works. He's semi-admitting as much.

I'd hope for much better from a CS professor. Stick to benchmarking this:

      for(i=0; i<1E9; ++i);

</comment><comment><USER16> > the system may then decide

This makes me think if the whole question is really about C++ or the OS implementation for memory allocations. This could have little to do with C++.

On a bare-metal system, malloc/sbrk (and thus _new_ ) can be something as simple as:

      uint32_t retptr = heap;
      heap += size;
      return retptr;

</comment><comment><USER17> Anonymous mmap() zeros memory so why is new wasting its cycles doing so too? I doubt any modern c++ standard library is using brk/sbrk I this day and age.

<comment><USER18> The thing is, tested C++ standard library implementation cannot assume a specific platform or implementation of libc. It's too portable.

Yes, you could add some platform and type specific speedups, it ends up a big mess.

In C++20 you get uninitialized allocation functions which do not have to initialize.

<comment><USER17> By definition the libraries present a portable interface to underlying system resources and are full of platform specific code (I was a Cygnus founder so spent plenty of time deep in these issues at a time when there was more diversity). All posix is systems I know (e.g. Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc) return pages of zeros from anonymous mmap. I consider it a bug if they post process in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> most std libs rely on malloc lib underneath. so i am not sure what's being tested here. Especially that the standard allocator is being used.

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone want to take a stab at how malloc actually works? What's under the hood? What data structures and algorithms does it use?

<comment><USER21> In a comment the blog author says he's using Ubuntu and glibc malloc. And glibc malloc has a threshold (128 kB or thereabouts) where it switches to using mmap(). So in practice this benchmark is a test of how the Linux kernel implements the mmap() syscall, and how the compiler implements the zeroing loop.

<comment> Const-me > And glibc malloc has a threshold (128 kB or thereabouts) where it switches > to using mmap()

Very similar on Windows. In modern CRT, malloc is a thin wrapper over HeapAlloc WinAPI. That one has a threshold (512kb or 1MB depending on 32- or 64-bit process) where it switches to VirtualAlloc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> dup: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22053831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22053831)

</comment><comment><USER23> What is the point in initializing memory here?

<comment><USER7> It ensures that they actually exist, because otherwise the OS will just overcommit them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> On a barebones system, 0 cpu cycles.</comment>


Pan Am Games: Link to our website without permission and we'll sue - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/11/pan_am_games_warns_link_to_us_and_well_sue/

<comment><USER2> Four years ago, I noticed that the Pan Am Games were on ESPN Deportes [the Spanish Language version of ESPN in the US] and I realized that at some point between the early 1980's and 2011, the games had basically slipped entirely out of the sports narrative in the US. The Pan Am Games used to be a big deal with prime-time network coverage. Yet somehow the US sports broadcasting industry has decided that video of someone doing a radio broadcast is better content than actual international competition by elite athletes.

This despite more than a ten fold proliferation of cable sports networks. The Gold Cup has better coverage. Professional lacrosse has better coverage. The NBA off season has better coverage.

And then I read the article and I realize, it perhaps may be only by force of will that ESPN Deportes broadcasts the games, so thick does the stupidity of the games' organizers appear. And it is a shame, because the athletics is amazing and the stakes are so high.

</comment><comment><USER3> Accordin to [http://www.toronto2015.org/about-us/organizing- committee](http://www.toronto2015.org/about-us/organizing-committee) this is the person in charge of "Communications and Media Relations": [https://twitter.com/nealabarton](https://twitter.com/nealabarton)

It would be interesting to get her thoughts on this.

</comment><comment><USER4> That was funny. They have updated the terms now:

        Other sites may link to the Site with or without our authorization, and we may block any links to or from the Site.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could it be a PR stunt?

<comment><AUTHOR> I highly doubt it, unless they've recently hired a genius. They've been struggling to explain what the Pan Am Games are to the Toronto residents over 18 months. Not a PR hit so far.

<comment><USER6> Toronto resident, can confirm. I've heard more #panawful puns than I can count, but still have no clue what the games are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> According to their error message, they sent an email to "email@example.com", not "email@example.com".

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the best answer to this is to not mention them or link to them and let them standalone.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do they have a legal leg to stand on with this? It screams frivolous.</comment>


This is my new game Trickochet, and how I fund my startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamesgames.com/game/Trickochet.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope you guys like it. It's exclusive to that site and others within the same network for about a week so if you have feedback or find bugs please share with me.

I should gross about 7 or 8 grand off it in total which is how I've fund my startup over the last year... an analytics platform for Flash games like these and their more social cousins.

Edit: It also provides me a great opportunity to really show what my startup does and means:

[http://blog.swfstats.com/post/Trickochet-launched-today- or-w...](http://blog.swfstats.com/post/Trickochet-launched-today-or-why- SWFStats-matters.aspx)

It's been out about 24 hours and an early, glaring and killer problem has become visible. Nobody will share, favourite, or rank well a game they start losing on the 4th and abandon on the 5th levels.</comment>


Mercedes-Benz Confirms It Will Skip Detroit Auto Show in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/mercedes-benz-confirms-it-will-skip-detroit-auto-show-in-2019 <comment><USER5> I can see the Detroit Auto Show slowly fading away unless they really revamp it. Two suggestions:

1) Don't hold it in the dead of winter, and instead move it to a time when it's warm out

2) Move out of the Cobo Center. Belle Isle could use a defining event, so perhaps they could hold it there.

<comment><USER6> I loved being able to take a Saturday and go to Detroit while I was in college in Cleveland, so selfishly I'd be against moving it to the summer. As a more practical concern, I would assume the show is when it is because it corresponds to manufacturer's debut schedules.

In terms of 2), what's wrong with the Cobo center? Being downtown is nice for walking around etc after.

<comment><USER5> There's nothing wrong with the Cobo Center, it's just that it happens in the middle of the winter. If you can't take the People Mover to Cobo or park real close, it can be a major pain in the butt to walk there.

<comment><USER6> I guess since I was a resident of the midwest, it never really bothered me :)

I can certainly understand for visitors from around the country why it'd be a pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to say...that's one good looking car: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Benz+Concept+EQA+electric+vehicle&...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Benz+Concept+EQA+electric+vehicle&ia=images&iax=images)

I've seen many concept cars that looked "interesting" but rarely have I ever wanted one as much as this.

[https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes- benz/vehicles/the-...](https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes- benz/vehicles/the-concept-eqa-electric-athlete/)

<comment><USER8> It looks pretty much like a standard 'B' class.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=mercedes+b+class](https://www.google.com/search?q=mercedes+b+class)

And by the time it will be in the showrooms it will probably look even more like it.

<comment><USER9> I think you mean the A class: [https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes- benz/vehicles/pass...](https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes- benz/vehicles/passenger-cars/a-class/a-class/)

<comment><USER10> The A class used to be such an ugly car but I must say I really like the look of the new model. That one designed as an electric car (which the concept car would be) looks very compelling.

<comment><USER11> Well, they essentially copied the look of the BMW 1 series. Too bad BMW is giving up on the sports pedigree of the 1 series by switching to a FWD base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This year Mercedes relaunched the G-Wagen with Dieter and Arnie paying lip service to an electric future. This was at a side show adjunct to Detroit Auto Show in venues of Mercedes choosing. It is as if they have decided they are too big for the show.

Mercedes have their own world whether it is F1 or those AMG road cars, they have something for everyone that wants luxury performance. There is no need to have a few Chevy and Ford efforts in this world of theirs, they are not communicating their brand to their customers with consumer comparisons.

Furthermore, the domestic U.S. manufacturers and their international brands (e.g. former 'Vauxhall') are making region specific cars, the German marques generally offer 'world' cars that are the same everywhere to some extent. This year their G-Wagen was something they could take to Detroit, in most years, for most of their products, I am sure Mercedes think of doing the launch in their home market for a global audience. They can fly out all the influencers and journalists they need to Germany, put them up in nice hotels, let them do autobahn speeds and get all the reviews they need.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like cars, and in particular I like GM's electric vehicle program and technology.

So it was strange to me that the Detroit Auto Show came and went I was blow away that GM (or Chrysler or Ford) didn't announce any new EVs or even promote their existing EVs there -- despite GM having stated recently they intend on launching at least a dozen new plugins before 2020. All the big 3 showed at the Detroit show were tacky muscle ICE cars and big boring trucks.

I imagine they will announce those cars or at least some concepts this spring, instead, at a different auto show. Which is a pretty sad statement about the Detroit show that the Detroit manufacturers don't even take it seriously as a venue for their future products.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's like CEBIT/Hannover Messe for PC stuff (or COMDEX if you're from the USA), all that stuff has moved online and only inertia keeps the remainder going.

There was a time when going to tradeshows was a must to stay up-to-date, nowadays it is mostly a waste of time.

<comment><USER14> For major brands, yes. It sure makes it hard for little brands to get noticed, however, when the tradeshows go away. My dad has been in the bicycle business since the early 70s and I used to go to Interbike (the big tradeshow) with him. I remember when Timbuk2, the bag company, made its debut there. They were tiny but did something nobody had ever done before: the owner brought his seamstresses to the show and they sewed custom bags on-demand right there at the show. Everybody wanted one and they were minor status symbols at the show that year. That was a huge turning point for them and they got very popular after that.

This kind of exposure just wouldn't happen in the social media age, where everybody is trying bold, non-scalable antics to get attention, but it might work at a tradeshow--if they still exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We have all seen how little dealer support that electric cars need - <USER4> enough to support the traditional IC engined cars with all their fail modes. To be sure, Mercedes dealers can managing the long slow decline in service that an electric Mercedes fleet will bring over the next 10-20 years - <USER3> the declining rust buckets going. So a smart car maker may even move to the Tesla model over that time period, especially with the anticipated changes in the car market that is predicted with self driving cars etc.

<comment><USER16> _We have all seen how little dealer support that electric cars need - <USER4> enough to support the traditional IC engined cars with all their fail modes_

Isn't this compensated for by them having fewer user serviceable or diagnosable parts requiring a trip to the dealer for any maintenance? I don't know, just curious

<comment><USER15> Yes, this gives fewer tasks that dealers can perform = less $$ earned. You have all see the high rates charged for all jobs, compared to free market repair shops and how they try to make it had for anyone but a dealer to access data, same as Tesla

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Detroit Auto Show (and most others) are dead, they just haven't stopped moving yet. Year after year the displays have shrunk, and the focus has turned to the LA auto show, and Chicago. I think we'll see the show circuit collapse down to one, maybe two, premiere shows and the rest will go away.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know why anyone is going to _any_ auto shows.

They can just send a flyer that says "blah blah not electric blah blah".

Done and done.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't blame them, I wouldn't want to go to Detroit either.

Really though, I'd take about any excuse to go there because Detroit style pizza is _amazing_. If you haven't had it, I highly recommend it.

But to be more on topic, I think it's really interesting that tech and cars seems to be converging enough that CES is becoming more appealing than the Detroit Auto Show. With Ford planning on cutting a large portion of their line in the near future, it'll be really interesting to watch how this market continues to change over the next decade or so.</comment>


SEC vs. Telegram: A Battle That Could Be Avoided - <AUTHOR> https://forklog.media/sec-vs-telegram-a-battle-that-could-be-avoided/ <comment><USER2> Telegram accelerated its demise by "refusing to disclose the bank records concerning how they have spent the $1.7 billion they raised from investors in the past two years and to answer questions about the disposition of investor funds" [1].

[1] [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-claims-telegram- refuses-s...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-claims-telegram-refuses- share-153618647.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought David Gerard's summary was better: [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/03/24/telegram- ico...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/03/24/telegram-ico-sec- prevails-telegram-restrained-from-issuing-grams/) & [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/03/30/news- telegra...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/03/30/news-telegram- appeals-injunction-adaptive-capital-fails-the-story-of-the-petro/)

<comment><USER4> Popular opinions are often popular because they're false. (Hence why David is unpopular)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another way this battle could be avoided is if they didn't issue these tokens in the first place.

Is there any reasonable argument for why the world is or will be better off if Telegram gets its way and these tokens exist? Is there any reasonable argument as to why they got almost $2 billion dollars besides intentionally creating a product to further financial speculation?</comment>


500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can't learn from a language app - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/smarter-living/500-days-of-duolingo-what-you-can-and-cant-learn-from-a-language-app.html <comment><USER3> Learning a language requires immersion. That's why classes with other students are more effective than flashcards.

VR has potential to really make a difference here. Imagine you load a VR level. It's a busy outdoor market in Taipei. In your inventory you have some cash. NPCs with AI and chat logic are around you interacting. Your goal is to buy some bread and get to the subway. You see a vendor with some bread, but don't remember the word for bread. You hear a NPC talking to the vendor and buying some bread. Now you remember. You speak the words, but the vendor doesn't understand. Your tones are off. You try again, this time the vendor smiles and says how much it costs. You give cash, take the bread, and walk to the subway. The next level, buying a subway pass...

This basically already exists in RPG games. It just needs mic support so you can speak and good "game" design that's designed to help learn the language. Playing this for an hour a day would be more effective than an hour of flashcards. And also a lot fun.

<comment><USER4> I found the article to be BS. My experience:

1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc.

2) Duolingo is okay for some things, but not for others. But discounting all apps after having tried one or two, though, is a lot like the famous Gates quote: "640k should be enough for anybody" (which he claims to have never said), or the nineties articles as to why no one would shop online.

3) Pimsleur is brilliant for developing basic conversational ability. It works really, really well.

4) The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency, but it stops at a half-year of lessons for the most developed languages (and 2 weeks for some of the less developed ones). Developing four years of lessons at this level of quality is hard and expensive.

5) BUT: Moving on beyond Pimsleur, there is a range of tools which are passable. Things like Duolingo, Memrise, Supermemo, etc. can help build vocabulary. There are apps for watching movies for language learning (which adds subtitles, dictionaries, etc.) which can help build comprehension. Etc. Picking-and-choosing, you can get something which, while not as good as going there, is much better than classes.

6) This field is progressing super-quickly on the whole. What we have today is much better than five years ago, and we'll have much better things five years from now. I'd be surprised if apps weren't the best way to learn a language in not too long.

<comment><USER5> > Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn > a foreign language.

Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive.

Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin (that is produce and listen to sounds radically different from my native English).

From what I've seen the ability for computers to give feedback on what you are doing wrong is far away from a trained human's.

> The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency,

I've been looking over their website - it seems like it is just audio lessons and no tutor is provided? If that is correct, how would someone learn to correctly pronounce words in say Mandarin using this?

<comment><USER6> > Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how > I could have learned elementary Mandarin

One of the points made in _The Language Instinct_ is that children pick up their languages without using any explicit feedback. That is, people in the child's life who can already speak are liable to ignore errors in the child's speech, and when they do point out errors, the child will essentially always ignore the feedback.

But I wouldn't say children don't get feedback at all. They get a lot of important feedback, such as whether the thing they wanted to happen when they spoke did happen, or whether the person they were talking to appeared to understand them. However, this kind of feedback is generally not the kind provided by a "teacher"; everyone automatically provides it.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. By "people" above, I should have clarified "adults".

The issue is that it is very difficult for adults to learn new phonemes (individual units of sound that distinguish words from each other) - an adult hearing a novel phoneme tends to map it to one existing in their native language.

Children however aren't handicapped by this problem -- they actually learn the phonemes of their language before they understand the words.

In the Mandarin context, this means it is difficult to learn the ü sound - <USER2> just is perceived as something like "u" (resulting in inability to distinguish lü from lu). Tones are another category, where it is just plain hard for adults to distinguish words by tonality. Needless to say, production of the novel sounds is also incredibly hard.

Point being - it's difficult to bridge this gap - and I'd imagine near impossible for most without a teacher. I find Pimsleur's claim of learning a language "effortlessly" with a "near-native accent" \- with only the aid of a CD - absurd in this context.

A source that goes into this: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846316/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846316/)

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology) Similar pages exist for many other languages. If you study the descriptions of the individual phones carefully, you should be able to consciously position your tongue and mouth to produce the correct sound.

E.g. the ü sound is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel) , which means that it only differs from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_unrounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_unrounded_vowel) (the English ee sound) by the lips being rounded instead of unrounded. English also has rounded vowels, for example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_rounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_rounded_vowel) (the oo sound). So you can learn to consciously pronounce ü by pronouncing ee and then rounding your lips as when pronouncing oo while keeping the tongue in the ee position.

Most teachers don't know enough about phonology to give that kind of explanation. My Mandarin teacher certainly didn't. I can only credit Wikipedia with helping me perfect my pronunciation to the point where I can be mistaken for a native speaker on the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My now 12.5 years old daughter started to learn English on Duolingo when she was around 9. She didn't complete the full course, but has around 100-150 days of lessons. It definitely helped her starting to understand the language.

She loves Harry Potter so much that after reading the whole series in Romanian, she started to read the first volume in English. Didn't finish that either, but managed to read about 100 pages of it and she said that after 30-40 pages, it became substantially easier to understand.

Now she's among top 3 students, if not the first, in her class at English, outpacing colleagues who take 2-3 hours weekly of extra English lessons, without having a single paid English lesson.

Duolingo might not teach you how to speak a language fluently, but it definitely can give you a headstart in learning one.

She's not able to speak English fluently yet, but she's able to watch TV series without subtitles and she's able to actually communicate with other English speaking people when visiting other countries.

<comment><USER9> When I started learning more languages as an adult, I found that the biggest accelerator for me personally was likewise to read novels, even if they were way beyond my nominal skill level. The first 50-100 pages would be slow grinding, looking up almost everything in the dictionary, but then it would rapidly get faster and easier as I got used to common turns of phrases, idioms etc. And it was great for maintaining real motivation, wanting to read and understand these captivating stories by Eco, Houellebecq, etc.

<comment><USER10> That's a really interesting approach. I wonder if there are reading apps which have that dictionary integrated, but which still require a mouseover / tap to display it for a particular word (they are just using a translation language dictionary).

<comment><USER11> Look up LingQ

<comment><USER12> LingQ is great but too expensive for what it is, in my opinion. You could build a similar (unpolished) app in a month over some weekends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The worst part of Duolingo is how boring it is to level up a skill to 5 when you already understand the topics taught. When learning German or Italian and testing out of the earlier levels, the exercise you get most of the time is just "sort these English words to translate the sentence". You can get it right all the time just by looking for a grammatically correct sentence with the most superficial of understanding. And if you really understand the sentence, you feel like you are wasting your time. What's the point? Let me take the level 4 or level 5 test directly!

I feel that over time, the app has been too optimized for user engagement instead of efficient learning. A/B test abuse, and looking at the wrong metrics.

<comment><USER14> Repetition is the mother of learning, as the old Russian proverb states.

The point is making a phrase really get memorized.

<comment><USER15> The Pimsleur method, which relies on a progressly timed learning technique really helps commit language to long term memory. It's audio only, but I really recommend then. I believe Ankh is based on this as well.

<comment><USER16> If you are interested in repetition, Assimil is similar.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimil](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimil)

> These are some of my favorite Christmas gifts because they're the only self- > teachers I know that work. In just 20 minutes a day -- if you do exactly > what they tell you to with the books and accompanying recordings - \- then > presto! You will be talking like, roughly, an unusually cosmopolitan 3-year > old.

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=502158...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5021582)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm using Duolingo to learn my 4th language. My previously recent language was studied in the early 90's, for perspective.

Currently, I'm taking on Japanese. Becoming fluent with this app (or any other single app) is going to be just impossible. In isolation it will be a haphazard collection of phrases picked up at a glacial pace.

The pluses to Duo are huge, though. What some see as repetition to gain master on a mini-subject are of huge benefit compared just seeing the one or two sample sentences in a book, or hearing the same. I have to build sentences with the correct structure and I'm immediately graded and shown the answer.

As a self learner, there was nothing like this thirty years ago. With Japanese, there are particles which mark the different parts of a sentence. Sure, these are all in grammar books, but having them drilled into me and forcing me to construct sentences with them is hugely helpful.

There are lots of complaints that the Japanese course in particular is bad or leads to stilted speech, but at the structural level it seems to agree with the grammar guides and textbooks I'm _also_ using.

Learning Arabic, I had a stack of textbooks three feet high and dozens of cassette tapes. Surely Duolingo replaces a large chunk of these, especially the starter ones.

It isn't good at bulk/breadth, and there is no speaking component.

Edit: I guess I'm saying I'm a huge fan of Duo (and other apps) as an addition to the tools available for learning a language.

<comment><USER18> Duolingo is not good for learning East Asian languages. For Japanese, it is particularly bad. Try LingoDeer instead.

<comment><USER19> Why?

<comment><USER20> For one, the accents of the speakers they are using are humorously bad for Japanese specifically

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi For Mandarin Chinese, I found the Chinese-specific apps HelloChinese and ChineseSkill to be much better than Duolingo. Duolingo seems to follow a one- size-fits-all approach, and it suffers when faced with a language with tones, a complex character system, a romanization system commonly used for learning (pinyin), etc. Those other two apps have been called Duolingo clones, but they were designed with Chinese specifically in mind and it shows, they're leaps and bounds better.

I also have found The Chairman's Bao (news, curated and graded by HSK level, together with pinyin, vocabulary, grammar points and questions associated with each piece of news) and various Coursera courses helpful.

There is also plenty of crappy apps and resources around, and probably much better resources than the current ones will be made, but if one chooses well, it's amazing how easier it is to learn a language now than ten years ago. Getting to any nontrivial level of Mandarin Chinese was all but impossible without classes, now it's doable.

<comment><USER21> Much appreciated. I have been learning Mandarin on Duolingo. It was mostly just for fun, but at some point it starts getting a bit frustrating (lack of notes, topics, reading longer texts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Frustration with Duolingo and Memrise when learning German led me to build a tool that could generate sentences in German and English simultaneously, while obeying the grammar rules.

In my opinion, the handful of hand crafted sentences they provide bundles way too much complexity together at random.

In a traditional text book, you'd get a dozen questions that are very similar, changing one or two aspects of a sentence.

Ich habe ein Buch. Sie haben ein Buch. Ich habe zwei Bücher.

So, I built a ClojureScript app that did just that. Sitting down and churning through hundreds of those allowed me to build an intuition for grammar rules that I knew on paper but would mess up when attempting to use them.

But it took quite a bit of time to write, especially when the sentences became complicated, so was almost certainly a net negative to my personal learning.

I had thought about building it out further, but I don't speak German so would need a partner, and ended up getting funding for something else so life took me in a different direction.

I do wish there were a product like it though, if anyone knows of anything similar I'd love to know. It's not that exotic, just a digitized textbook!

<comment><USER16> > So, I built a ClojureScript app that did just that. Sitting down and > churning through hundreds of those allowed me to build an intuition for > grammar rules that I knew on paper but would mess up when attempting to use > them.

If you did not use an existing rules engine, would you please consider open sourcing what you have done to help others who are considering building something similar? Or describe more in depth how you did it?

The current tools I see out there like LanguageTool are quite horrid when it comes to expressing the rules.

[https://github.com/languagetool- org/languagetool](https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool)

<comment><USER22> I had a bunch of helper functions, but my view was that there's no way to solve it in general; building exercises would always involve writing annotations via a DSL.

You wouldn't be able to avoid hand crafting each sentence structure (like you were writing a textbook), but the advantage comes from being able to parameterize the generation of tests. You define where the holes are and what can go in them for a particular exercise, and the combinatorial nature of it yields thousands of examples, with tunable complexity, allowing you to crunch on a topic with enough variation that you still have to think and not get bored.

Ich mag rote Bücher, aber er grüne besser ist denkt.

It's been two years so es ist viellicht nicht richtig!

I don't think if you solve it this way, my solution would really be a helpful starting point.

I didn't have a plan for moving past the first year or two of learning, I think you could learn a ton of basics this way, but once language gets more subtle and varied you'd probably need to do something else entirely.

Also I don't know if this would work with other languages. German is extremely regular.

<comment><USER16> Thank you! Yes, German is very regular. I've also heard Russian is where you construct a cathedral of grammar so that you can begin speaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The best way to learn a language is to need to learn it. If you come in contact with a foreign language daily, it becomes much easier to both practice and motivate yourself to continue to practice. As someone who has spent thousands of hours learning a foreign language, I've come to the conclusion that I will never do it again unless I have a proper reason for it. Might seem obvious, but it's worth pointing out.

<comment><USER24> The best way to learn a language is spending a good size chunk of money. People are loss adverse. The need to extract value from the sunk cost is a powerful motivator. That's why in-person classes tend to be more effective than books. A book is always going to be there. Missing a class on the other hand is money down the drain.

<comment><USER23> I don't think this is true. I've spent lots of money on "necessary equipment" for my hobbies, and that hasn't made me commit more time to them. People buy expensive running shoes because they see themselves as being runners, and then they never put them on.

<comment><USER24> Running shoes don't integrate from lack of use. A membership at a health club, on the other hand, goes to waste if you don't use it.

<comment><USER25> Your language skills deteriorate without use as well. I used to know German at a passable level at school, I no longer do. I can see patterns ans know some words, but it's definitely heavily degraded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As far as language learning apps go I've gotten way more milage out of Clozemaster than I ever did out of Duolingo. At least for learning vocabulary Clozemaster's combination of spaced repetition and cloze-completions helps immensely (especially using it on free text input mode instead of multiple choice). That said Duolingo does help a lot more with the dead basics.

For context I could already speak Mandarin because I grew up bilingual but always found that I've have to laboriously re-learn vocabulary for literacy. Clozemaster seems like the most sustainable way for me to maintain an expanded vocabulary (in both Traditional and Simplified characters) that I've found.

I just do Clozemaster every time I sit on a toilet, pretty easy habit cue, if a bit gross.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone else feel like language learning is overrated? (Yes I'm an uncultured provincial American and I'm sorry). Unless you frequently travel somewhere where another language is spoken, have family that speaks another language, or want to travel places like that, it's hard for me to see why learning more about your own language, math or something, socializing, learning about how your government and society work, or something else wouldn't be more rewarding in the long run. And, actually be able to give you some reward over a reasonable period of time (1 year) versus learning a language where I think you'll reasonably at it for at least half a decade to achieve proficiency unless you're really dedicated or move there.

<comment><USER28> Upvoted because I want to see replies to this question.

My intuition is that language learning has other positive effects than just the practical one of allowing you to converse with other people in that language. For instance you say that math would be more rewarding in the long run. But why? Most people really don't have a practical need for math past arithmetic. But your intuition is that it is nonetheless rewarding. I strongly agree! But I think the same is true of language learning, for very similar reasons.

But I don't really know if my intuition is right. Maybe someone else here has a better answer.

<comment><USER29> I'll reply. Firstly to the parent poster:

I'm a native English speaker who learned French to a conversational level (~B2 in the European Language Framework) before I left my home country. That language skill helped me get a job where I am now. The country I am in is multilingual, so the ability to learn languages and a willingness to make an effort with other languages is very important.

I can however understand this attitude, especially if you don't travel enough to warrant it and don't really need to use it. I feel sad typing this, because I am personally very interested in languages, but language skills in my home country aren't particularly valuable or desired and English dominates. If you decide to dedicate that time to learning a different skill, well I can't really fault that.

However I'd make some observations. Firstly, knowing some words even if you travel infrequently can be helpful. Secondly, according to wikipedia, 12% of the US speak Spanish, 29% in California. That's not nothing.

As to the benefits, I personally think there are numerous. People say you "understand the culture" or something but I'm not sure you get this unless you immerse in a native-speaking country. What you get on a purely linguistic level is an understanding of grammar, an understanding of some word roots (especially if you learn French, which had a significant influence on English as a result of the Normal invasion, or Latin. Similar benefits probably exist if you learn other romance languages or maybe German/Dutch), and an understanding of how that language influences how the speakers approach the world. Also, if you ever want to help a non-native speaker improve their English, it very much helps to appreciate the struggles they're going through.

Since this is HN, I don't think my language skills have improved my programming at all. I don't like duolingo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've used Duolingo for several years almost daily for 2-3 minutes to get started with learning Spanish (on a very longterm time horizon). It was a great way to start (because it felt like basically zero effort, other than establishing the daily habit which is naturally easy for me). Nowadays I read and watch Spanish-language news and write a daily journal in Spanish. I'm not at fluency yet but progress is steady.

<comment><USER31> It's a great way to start, and a great way to practice certain skills that are perhaps less oiled. I read foreign papers, listen to foreign music, and watch foreign films but that only helps so much with the actual speaking part of language. To those complaining of DuoLingo shortcomings, remember it's a part of language learning and not a one-stop-shop.

Practicing tricky conjugations and endings for languages is where DuoLingo is of most use to me, such that I keep up with my "language feel" so on-the-fly speaking isn't as mentally taxing. The times where I have taken extended breaks from DuoLingo would always end in my feeling as though I was getting rusty and not able to properly speak.

Also, thank you to whomever added the "leaderboard" feature to DuoLingo. Really brings out my competitiveness such that I now do something like 300 lessons per week as opposed to doing maybe 50 per week back in the day. Love when apps do things like that, helping me help myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Duolingo felt Like a massive waste of time to me. I don't remember it helping me beyond reinforcing my hiragana a bit. Multiple choice vocab training doesn't work and the amount you learn per day is way too low considering I did 30 minutes per day. After I switched to Anki my vocabs took off like a rocket. Duolingo basically cost me 3 months without learning anything. Of course back then I was lazy so maybe Duolingo helped me get started without losing interest quickly.

<comment><USER33> I feel similar way. Duolingo has the best gamification which actually works. But it didn't actually teach me much. I ended up moving to Rosetta stone (better in content, worse at keeping me interested). Then after getting some more experience I switched to lessons over Skype and don't regret it at all. This was for Japanese, which is not at the same level as the much more popular Spanish though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is purely anecdotal but I think it could be how most people will experience language study.

On my last flight from Japan, I sat next to a 20-something couple who spent a week in Japan. They told me they had a great time but they had problems trying to communicate. While most Japanese know a bit of English, they wanted to converse in Japanese and had incredibly hard time. Both of them spent 5 months studying Japanese on Duolingo on their phones and thought they had a decent grasp if language so they were surprised when they couldn't understand Japanese native speakers and couldn't speak it well enough for natives to understand them.

I never even heard of Duolingo before this experience and after trying ti myself for an hour, I can think of a half-a-dozen better ways to spend 5 months studying Japanese than to do work for Duolingo.

</comment><comment><USER35> I was an early duolingo adopter but I feel that the app went nowhere if not down-hill. The main drive force at the beginning was learning a language just good enough and moving onto translating articles and comparing translations with other users and discussing these - that was a very intersting way of learning. Today you just grind simple questions on terribly designed courses. The writte material is an absolute joke and for the longest time wasn't even available on mobile.

Also this obsession with streak really killing motivation for learning. Someone should send duolingo the article that was on HN front-page few days ago about learning being more effecitve when taking breaks.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've used Duolingo for several months (a year ago) to learn Spanish and when I visited Barcelona for the first time I was impressed by how I was able to put some every day phrases in use, things like "How are you? Can I have a coffee?" etc..

The thing I don't like about Duolingo is its curriculum and the way they structure their lessons. I found it very difficult to go from the early beginner stage to the more advanced phrases and vocabulary due to Duolingo trying to teach me phrases early on that made no sense, like the famous "The lion eats monkeys"[1].

A month ago I started using busuu[2] and I am loving it. They have a great structure, they are explaining it very well and I am able to understand fairly quickly[3]. Even better, they have setup a network where users can send exercises to other members (native speakers of the language you are trying to speak) and they will correct and rate them. The network is very active, as soon as I submit my exercise, a couple of minutes later someone will have corrected it. (Premium plan though, I made a 3 months plan, hopefully it will be enough to get me on track).

I would suggest everyone to give busuu a try.

[1]: [https://em.wattpad.com/e5f4065cb909961cd40e0ff3c277e684f9b28...](https://em.wattpad.com/e5f4065cb909961cd40e0ff3c277e684f9b2866d/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f4a7132704e316d726e554f334e513d3d2d3134302e313531363936363664363739616165393232363438303439303032352e6a7067?s=fit&w=720&h=720) [2]: [https://busuu.com](https://busuu.com) [3]: [https://imgur.com/a/3PrxDBH](https://imgur.com/a/3PrxDBH)

<comment><USER37> Not sure when, but the spanish learning tree has been re-worked and thankfully there are no more sentences like that.

Those weird sentences make for a good laugh though. I was asked if I speak spanish, I've answered with a confident "El gato beben leche"

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I learned Spanish 12 years ago by studying in Antigua, Guatemala then continuing to backpack through South America. I never felt that I learned Spanish until after about a month in Colombia where I had to use Spanish almost daily for the entire day.

I've tried DuoLingo for French and I've built several language apps myself. I think we'll eventually get to the point where we can learn new languages from our phones but it will require a lot more content and interaction.

i haven't updated my core apps in 4 years:

[http://appstore.com/h4labs](http://appstore.com/h4labs)

At the moment I'm merely trying to assist the learning process with simple games:

Word Search:

\- [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word- search/id1311744...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word- search/id1311744075?mt=8)

Matching Games:

\- [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pictures-and- words/id1459560...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pictures-and- words/id1459560476?mt=8) \- [https://itunes.apple.com/sk/app/language- pairs/id1438817614?...](https://itunes.apple.com/sk/app/language- pairs/id1438817614?mt=8)

I'm looking for other ideas to build. At the moment, I'm working on a Verb Conjugation Game.

I'm also building Spanish verb rule database on Github:

[https://github.com/melling/Spanish_Verbs/blob/master/Conjuga...](https://github.com/melling/Spanish_Verbs/blob/master/Conjugation_Rules.md)

</comment><comment><USER39> I agree with the criticisms in this article. I currently have a 1.012 day streak on Duolingo, which I'm using to learn German, Esperanto, and Greek. I've "completed" the German course several times as the course was expanded, and even with the help of Clozemaster and Memrise I'm still only a B1 on an online CEFR test. It's fine for the basics, but there's no way it'll make you good enough to, say, start working for a German-language software development company.

<comment><USER40> > _1.012 day streak_

You are even using the German typographic conventions for numbers in the wrong language, I'm sure you're well on your way!

> _It's fine for the basics, but there's no way it'll make you good enough to, > say, start working for a German-language software development company._

Sed cxu vi povas lerni suficxe da Esperanto, ke vi povus labori cxe Esperanta programaro kompanio?

<comment><USER41> According to [1] there are at least 8 more countries with that kind of a thousend seperator

[1] [http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the- world-s...](http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-world- separates-its-digits.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've found no better technique than a language exchange partner. If you are learning Spanish, find a Spanish speaker trying to learn English. Meet up for an hour speaking English for 30 minutes and Spanish for 30 minutes. For me, this was the only way to put lessons into practice without the stress.

<comment><USER43> But it doesn't apply when it comes to unpopular(frankly speaking I am a Chinese and several years ago I tried my best to find a partner for English but failed) languages like Chinese.

<comment><USER16> Have you considering paying someone?

Since friends will be hesitant to correct you when you make a mistake, I recommend iTalki ([https://www.italki.com](https://www.italki.com)) as it is considerably less inexpensive than in-person lessons/practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Duolingo uses too much translation and not enough real ear training or customisation to be effective. Translation agruably hampers fluency.

There is a method and book I used called Fluent Forever and I learned more Dutch before coming to live in NL over a few months than most people I've met who have lived there for many years. You can create immersion fairly trivially without being there physically...

Fluent forever (and their forthcoming app) works essentially like this:

\- hearing and pronouncing new phonemes \- 600 words in contextual sentences (with native speaker audio and self chosen images), using spaced repetition, helping you to absorb vocab and basic grammar without learning it directly. -continuing to build your own sentences and learn words while working occasionally with a tutor that you essentially employ to help you to get more words for flashcards and to speak in language for hours (italki is good for it). \- buy grammar books and look for some good examples to apply rules into sentences about your own life / story so you can absorb more core grammar without verb tables etc.

I did buy frequency dictionary, target language native dictionary, grammar books, some literature and access to audio books in target language

It's not free but not super expensive either. Time commitment of ideally an hour a day 7 days a week was hard part.

</comment><comment><USER45> As a non-native speaker in a non-English speaking country, spending time reading and writing comments on HN has, I think, greatly improved my English skills. I am always intrigued to discover new sentence structures and phrasal verbs put in real use. I have also found that the particular usage of English, that is, the writing style, the vocabulary, the bias, are to a large extent a reflection of the culture in English-speaking countries.

<comment><USER46> If you wrote more about the relationship between the language and the culture from a non-native perspective - I'd read it.

<comment><USER45> In my mother tongue (Bulgarian), the style of everyday communication is rather different. Ad-hominem arguments are not rare and are sometimes considered a legitimate way of reasoning, people are also expecting to receive and send "orders" when they communicate in a business environment. All of that doesn't foster any deep reasoning and leads to shallow conversations which change their direction quite sporadically.

Coming here to this website, I am able to enjoy a style of coherent communication where your arguments must be well-grounded and logically sound. In the relatively rare cases of applying personal bias while questioning the claims of others, you do so with much softer words and phrases.

For example, something like "I'd like to pretend that the issue is..." is a construct which can be translated to Bulgarian with a very similar grammatical construction, but it is virtually unused and would be considered outrageously snobbish and pretentious when used. We would just say "the issue is...".

<comment><USER47> This is fascinating; thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I envy the author's persistence. 500 days of working on a task without skipping a day is impressive.

<comment><USER49> It is impressive, but you can buy items (with the in-app currency you get from finishing lections) that allow you to skip single days (or even whole weekends, IIRC).

<comment><USER50> That's correct - though you still need to log in to buy a Streak Freeze after it's used up, so you can't skip more than 48 hours. You can't "buy" multiple Streak Freezes in advance.

The Weekend Amulet is only offered after completing the lesson on Friday, as far as I can tell - you can't just buy them in the store, and they expire after the weekend is over whether you used it or not.

(I'm currently on an 872 day streak.)

<comment><USER51> I got a bit over a 500 streak but stopped after that. I felt that spaced- repetition on the words was more effective than whatever DuoLingo was doing, and DuoLingo's lesson for the language I was learning was not well maintained.

The gamification techniques DuoLingo's used made it much easier to maintain the streak. Albeit, it was really easy to just do DuoLingo "to get it done" rather than focusing on it as part of study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is where conversational AI will be an incredible asset. Imagine being able to spend your commute with a personal language coach.

<comment><USER16> I feel we are only a couple years away from a Google AI blog announcement of a AI language teacher prototype.

<comment><USER53> They released an AI-powered language learning app two months ago [https://bolo.withgoogle.com/intl/en/](https://bolo.withgoogle.com/intl/en/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Don't try to learn 100% of what you know about a language from an app; and if you can manage to install an input method for your target language, toggle those "rearrange these words" exercises into typing exercises.

If your target language has any media you enjoy watching (this is hard for me with Mandarin, and to some extent Japanese, since I find most of the TV shows basically unwatchable), consume that with subtitles, and pay a bit of attention at first to how things are said. If you hear a new word or phrase which sounds useful by its translation, repeatedly transcribe the phrase in the target writing system, and get a feel for why it means what it does.

Duolingo is a tool, but just as you should not attempt to build a house with only a carpenter's hammer, you should not attempt to learn a language with only Duolingo.

</comment><comment><USER54> Slightly off topic, but if you are multilingual, teach your kids. My parents are fluent in Japanese, Spanish, Kekchi, ASL, and English between the two of them. But they didn't bother to teach me or my siblings, so we only speak American English.

</comment><comment><USER55> Duolingo works for languages that have grammar the same or nearly the same as English (or possibly whatever language you're learning it in), but when you try to learn something like Japanese it is almost entirely useless.

<comment><USER56> Hey, that sounds interesting. Could you elaborate? As a native Japanese speaker, I'd like to hear your theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I used Memrise until I got bored: being forced to learn and repeat _ad nauseam_ words that I'm sure I will never use is stupid. Since then I use an Anki deck with selected words/sentences picked from a Polish newspaper and a cheatsheet[1], that I should update more often, for patterns and macro understanding.

[1] [https://github.com/archimodels/learning- notes/blob/master/no...](https://github.com/archimodels/learning- notes/blob/master/notes-polish%20language.yaml)

</comment><comment><USER58> Doulingo seems to be a solution to learning a language but it's only a tool to help you.

Even after a long time of using Duolingo most users will not have the ability to have a simple discussion.

The Pimsleur method is infinitely better for learning to speak a new languuage. With Pimsleur, you can learn the response to given situations. Also waiting to learn reading, writing and the grammar of a language is probably better after you have a basic understanding of the language since you start to equate words with the way you would pronounce them in your language rather than the one you want to learn.

There is nothing like speaking the language to learn it. Duolingo is good as a side tool to help you learn but not your primary method.

If you want to learn a language there are better ways to get to fluency. Duolingo is good at keeping you engaged so use it in conjunction with another method to help you learn. Unfortunately, there are no easy ways to learn. You have to put the effort and time.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think there is no substitute for old style learning, teacher, classroom and stress of memorizing about 20 words for the next class. Did anyone use those small format notebooks with two columns so you can effectively examine yourself? One column for foreign word and second for mother tongue word?

<comment><USER60> That's interesting. I have been under the impression for years that no one has ever learned a language successfully this way.

<comment><USER59> I think it is great for vocabulary. But vocabulary is only a part of knowing a language. Apps mostly aim at vocabulary, and while approach is similar I think it is much better to stare at a paper notebook then your smartphone screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I am a Chinese and I am learning German on Duolingo in English and sometimes learn English in German. I am on my 561 day streak today and I find it is very useful.

Before practice I can learn the related grammar and the newly added stories feature and tinycards function is of great help(glean words in context).

</comment><comment><USER61> I've been learning French and German throughout the last years, and I tried different setups. I came to the conclusion that apps like duolingo lack a consistent (or any) narrative, following a set of characters that interact with each other and the world. A good example for German is Deutsche Welle: [https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview](https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview)

I've recently written more on the topic in my post on linkedin: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-duolingo-bad-way-learn- la...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-duolingo-bad-way-learn-language- what-do-instead-roman-prokofyev/)

</comment><comment><USER62> Duolingo is s fun mobile game that happens to have words in different languages. It uses all modern gamification and addiction technics to keep you hooked.

However, the very act of using the app means you are willing to learn a new language. As a consequence, you will learn more about those languages through other external factors, like people or paid programs.

If Duolingo's only purpose is to keep you interested into learning long enough to learn languages externally, then I guess that's not too bad either.

I wrote about my own experience of 383 days here: [https://idiallo.com/blog/no-spanish-with-duo](https://idiallo.com/blog/no- spanish-with-duo)

</comment><comment><USER63> This link is a joke, but it would be a very effective way to learn a language. I'd guess everyone of you can understand almost everything said, even if they don't speak Spanish:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgOqJLRpYI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgOqJLRpYI8)

And I can imagine the lessons/clip getting progressively more advanced. Has a course based on narrative clips been actually tried to anyone's knowledge?

(If it was made in the soap opera style (and budget), it wouldn't even be that expensive to make).

</comment><comment><USER64> Michel Thomas is, in my humble opinion, having been crap at languages though school and having tried many alternatives THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER.

If you have a logical brain (as I suspect many HN readers do) and like to know how and WHY the language works as it does. And be able to make sentences from day 0. Try it. It's amazing. And he's also an amazing dude. Check him out on Wikipedia. Ex-french resistance. Tried to bring the world together with language. Recorded each CD in one take just from memory. A true legend.

</comment><comment><USER65> Duolingo and other apps are fine to build passive vocabulary (the words you can understand) up to some level, but the real issue for me is the lack of a real "speaking" component.

Frequent speaking practice is key to build your active vocabuary (the words you can use). It's also key to build your confidence in using a language.

Shameless plug: that's why we are making an app that really makes you speak: [https://en.globers.co/](https://en.globers.co/)

</comment><comment><USER66> Both of our teenagers use Duolingo to "top up" their in person foreign language classes at school.

They are both categorised as "above expectation/level".

Hard to ascertain how much additional value Duo Lingo adds, but in aggregate it seems to be helping.

However, I wonder if there would be a way to effectively match students learning opposing languages to help each other one in one via Zoom?

We're certainly grateful for the free language support!

</comment><comment><USER67> Even though I've only ever lived in Canada and the US, I feel like I could benefit from learning more English. I realized this when I watched my kids diagramming sentences and thought back to how I was never able to master anything beyond basic noun, verb, pronoun, adverb stuff. I'm talking about things like participles and perfect tenses and articles.

<comment><USER40> I'm not really sure what you could gain from that. Language is not the stuffy study of hard and fast rules, but a constant negotiation between what the listener is capable of understanding, and what the speaker will compose.

In the same way that unexamined Ebonics is not just crappy English, unexamined Standard American English is not just crappy English.

Whether you're aware of the underlying rules or not, you're following those rules when you're understood, and you're breaking them when you're not.

<comment><USER67> > I'm not really sure what you could gain from that.

Are you saying that as someone that has a good understanding of English grammar?

I was thinking that in the same way have a better knowledge of basic physics or chemistry can help me cook or fix my car, better knowledge of my language could help me understand and be understood.

For example, in one of my previous jobs I received a critique saying I should stop using the passive voice when I write. It's a habit I haven't been able to break and my first draft of anything I write is still very passive. Frankly, I don't have a good idea of what makes something passive on paper.

<comment><USER40> > _Are you saying that as someone that has a good understanding of English > grammar?_

I have a very strong working understanding of English grammar, but I couldn't recall many of the concepts concepts by name. I think I'm roughly at the same place as you on that matter.

> _I should stop using the passive voice when I write._

That is a great idea. For people who have trouble sticking to habits, I always suggest using a tool like [http://hemingwayapp.com/](http://hemingwayapp.com/)

Tools like this give you practice recognizing patterns you don't want to see in your writing. People I've suggested it to have found it very useful.

<comment><USER67> > hemingwayapp.com

That's pretty neat. Thanks for the link.

I ran my previous comment through it and my comment requires an 8th grade reading level and was scored as good.

My paragraph that starts _" I was thinking"_ is marked as very hard to read. My _" For example"_ sentence is hard to read. I used one adverb (frankly), and used the passive voice once (be understood). I'm not sure I see the problem with _be understood_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I still remembered when i first time learn Russian.

I have no idea of Russian, and my dad told me that: /Ro-di-na/ means country.

I feel, OK, i can feel it. It's not too hard to me.

That's why, learning foreign language needs a way to tell user s that: It's not that hard, here's it is. Country is blah lbah, "what's your name" is blah blah,...

</comment><comment><USER69> The Lojban community is regularly asked about Duolingo courses. The sad fact is that Duolingo makes money off of volunteer-contributed courses, and as a result, we cannot incentivize any Lojbanists to take the time required to produce Duolingo courses, since they know that an un-Lojbanic startup will profit from their work.

</comment><comment><USER70> I've done duolingo for the last two months - it's much better to think of it as a fun game with some learning on the side rather than anything serious.

Aside, the leaderboards are unironically a great feature. It gives a great incentive to practice more rather than reaching your required 50xp.

</comment><comment><USER71> I agree with the article insofar as that learning a language solely via an app is not effective. However, I do not get the impression that the author actually has much experience learning languages through other means.

      > The phrase "learning a language" is deceptively reductive. A language isn't a
      > singular monolith, but rather a complex interconnected system of components
      > that build a way to communicate. The lexicon consists of the individual
      > words, which speakers have to memorize. The syntax and grammar tell speakers
      > how to properly structure those words in a sentence. Then there's the writing
      > system, which is the visual representation of words or sounds that allow
      > words to be constructed (for example, in English, the writing system is the
      > alphabet).

And, more importantly, there is also the task of learning the meaning of words in common idioms, as well as learning to recognize implicit meaning. Understanding syntax and individual words will never help you understand sentences like, for example, "sorry, I just had to get it out of my system". It will also not help you recognize the tone of a piece of writing.

      > Duolingo often just drops a new particle on you without much explanation of
      > what it does or even that it's a particle at all. Memrise handles this a bit
      > better, with lessons dedicated to how certain particles and grammar work, but
      > it helps to have external lessons, an instructor, or best of all a native
      > speaker to help explain some of the finer points of nuance in a language's
      > grammar.

It is debatable whether external lessons have an advantage over lessons in a mobile app, but that a native speaker is "best of all" suited to explaining the grammar of a language is a bold-faced lie. Native speakers do usually not understand grammar at all, because they have no reason to. (They do, however, almost universally across cultures often love giving an answer to grammar- related questions that you ask them, to avoid admitting to their lack of understanding.)

      > You can learn as many words or sentences as you want, but until you're able
      > to have a conversation with another person, you'll never be fluent. [...] For
      > that reason alone, learning a language with an app should be a starting
      > point, not the end. If you make it through an entire Duolingo skill tree or a
      > Memrise lesson plan, it might be time to upgrade to an in-person class, or
      > you might want to find a native speaker to practice with.

I think this more balanced assessment is the most important takeaway from the article. When learning any language, through any means, you will never progress beyond a basic level without practice. Practice does not necessarily have to entail having an in-person conversation, but you absolutely need to actually make use of the language skills you're acquiring: watch TV, write a blog, read a book, call someone, and so on.

Personally, I don't really recommend taking an in-person class if you already use an app and a textbook to learn. Sure, you can ask the instructor questions about particular grammar points that you encounter in your studies, but generally, if you're asking questions about grammar, you're doing language learning wrong. The human brain is much better suited to understanding and producing human language than it is to parsing text from a Backus-Naur form, so that's what you should focus on. A Japanese child doesn't understand the purpose of every particle either, but she easily beats you in fluency.

Related TED talk (good despite the sensationalist title): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0)

<comment><USER33> > Personally, I don't really recommend taking an in-person class if you > already use an app and a textbook to learn.

I think there are cases where it really pays off to have a real lesson to improve your experience. There are situations which are not possible to explain in a concise/picture way, duolingo-style. They may be also hard to figure out from generic rules from a book. But having someone to ask - "so what is the reason behind this specific use?" can save you hours of study and many mistakes.

Even worse, learning without interaction with someone who can correct you may result in you learning something that's not true. But you kept repeating it and it only became harder to get rid of the issue. That's my experience from learning Japanese from Duolingo and Rosetta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I have assumed that something like Alexa would be the next obvious quantum leap for language learning - is anything like that out there?

</comment><comment><USER73> I used to think Duolingo was awesome, but after using Mango Languages, I changed my mind.

Duolingo was fun for learning words and 'playing games' but that didn't hold my attention for very long... despite loving language learnings.

Mango languages on the other hand taught me to speak and kept me rolling for over 6 months and counting! It focuses on phrases and does a great job building up from small to larger... and sneaking in grammar lessons. I absolutely love it and am so impressed

</comment><comment><USER74> They need to make the sentences more complex/challenging. To me it feels too much like grinding in WoW.</comment>


Citrix in last-ditch attempt to sell itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/22/us-citrix-m-a-idUSKCN0RM2T920150922 <comment><USER2> > _Earlier this year, Elliott called on Citrix to sell some units, cut costs > and buy back shares to make up for six years of underperformance. In > addition to the GoTo business, Elliott has called for Citrix to explore the > sale of NetScaler, which helps speed up Web-based applications._

So, make up for "underperformance" by selling the things that make money?

<comment><USER3> Um, hard to sell things that _don 't_ make money?</comment></comment>