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sab

@[email protected]

Quite possibly a luddite.

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People who order "a decaff coffee with an extra shot" - why?

All our coffee is served with two shots by default. We’re not some fancy coffee shop, just a motorway service station that makes coffee to go. We have some regulars who order a decaff with an extra shot. I explain thats going to have three shots total, and they’re happy with it....

sab ,

Portafilters for a single shot is pretty standard equipment, but it's also a bit controversial among the snobs. A lot of baristas will stick to making double shots and just throw the second one away if nobody orders an espresso while it's still fresh. In a moderately busy bar excess espresso shots are not really a problem.

sab ,

The difference between Italy and the rest of the world in terms of espresso culture is night and day. If you want a decent espresso in most of Europe you have to go to some hipster obsessing over every tiny detail - if you go to a random bar they will give you an espresso shot the size of a glass of milk. I always go for a lungo in Italy, but most espressos I get in other countries still feel a bit ridiculous to me.

On the positive side, the obsessive hipsters might actually be on to something - there's a lot of potential for flavour in the espresso that is generally not explored in Italy. Italian beans tend to be very dark roasted, meaning that the brewing of the coffee is very forgiving but there is less potential for more exciting flavours. Then again, people who want a fruity cup of coffee are arguably better off sticking to other extraction methods.

And there's certainly quality differences in Italy as well! Though I feel like it often boils down to the basics such as keeping the machine clean and preventing soap taste.

sab ,

A lot of people don't have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks n' knives
And they gotta cut somethin'

  • Dylan
sab ,

It's not the best, and quite clearly not a priority of the project yet. I'd say map integration is a little bit worse than in DuckDuckGo, which is already not as good as Google. If this is important to you it's probably too early to jump on Kagi.

On the positive side I didn't realize this before just now when checking it out in order to answer your question, so it hasn't bothered me much. Usually when I need address information I go straight to the service I see best fit.

I'd love to see Kagi make an effort to push OSM though, but that's probably not exactly on top of their priorities.

sab ,

As a Kbin guy and paying Kagi user I feel weirdly seen.

sab ,

Unfortunately, it often means going straight to maps.google.com or the Google Maps app - it's the main Google service I still haven't gotten rid off in my life. If I need something a bit more simple I'll check Open Street Maps, either through a desktop app or Organic Maps on my phone. If I need hiking trails Organic Maps is clearly superior to Google Maps, so then there's no real question.

sab ,

Kagi supports bangs (similar to DuckDuckGo), so searching for "!osm 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW" will take you straight to the White House.

The official web site of Open Street Maps is not exactly Google Maps in terms of usability, but it's a functional map. :)

sab ,

It depends. In terms of accuracy, I've seen new streets missing in OSM that are updated in Google Maps, but also the other way around.

If you want to find korean restaurants or cheap hairdressers, Google Maps unfortunately still has an edge over OSM. If you want to find hiking trails, it's the other way around.

OSM is missing things like satellite images and Street View, which is undeniably useful sometimes.

I wouldn't say it's worse, but it's better only for certain use cases, and worse for others. :)

Mbin is a fork of kbin: a decentralized content aggregator running on the Fediverse network (lemmy.ml)

Mbin is a decentralized content aggregator, voting, discussion and microblogging platform running on the fediverse network. It can communicate with many other ActivityPub services, including Kbin, Mastodon, Lemmy, Pleroma, Peertube. It is an open source alternative to other link aggregator services like Reddit. The initiative...

sab ,

My understanding of the situation is that Ernest, the main developer behind Kbin, thinks of the current Kbin as a proof of concept, and he is doing profound rewriting of the codebase to better fit his vision of how it should be working.

Meanwhile, other people wanted to contribute to Kevin directly, developing a better product on top of what Ernest considers to be too shaky foundations. So he's not all that interested in pursuing that part of the development before he is happy with the core.

This also leads to a dynamic where he still has his own vision for the project and it goes through him, whereas other contributors want to make it their own more and develop something different.

It's hard to see how to make everyone happy here without forking. Hopefully both projects can still gain from each other in the future: Mbin can benefit from the rewritten codebase of Kbin, and Kbin can implement features from Mbin after seeing that they are good and work well. In either case, the continued development as separate projects is probably not all that bad.

sab ,

Yeah, I think it became a bit of an impossible solution the second Ernest's proof of concept suddenly attracted a whole bunch of users and attention after the Reddit exodus. Kbin was clearly not ready, and I admire him for staying on course with the development after that despite pressures.

That said, users are not wrong to want easy to implement features asap. So I personally think the fork makes a lot of sense, though everyone could do without the occasional bad faith from some of the people involved.

sab ,

I used it to learn German almost ten years ago and it was fantastic. When I started out you had a limited number of lives, but they realized this was not good for learning and removed it. This lead to me learning German on Duolingo very successfully - my approach was to aim over my competence level, do difficult challenges, and keep at them until I managed to do it right. High paced, challenging, generally fun, and extremely educational.

Then they re-implemented the limited number of lives not to increase educational value, but to punish non-paying users. This means that I have to do the lessons slow, even honest typos are punished so I have to read and re-read whatever I write before I can jump to the next challenge, and I cannot ever challenge myself by going beyond my skill level.

I paid for a year of Duolingo, but it's very expensive, the whole user experience is more annoying to me even for paid users now than it was as a free user in the past, and I don't like the direction the company has taken and I don't want to encourage them by paying for they enshittified service. Had they kept trying to make it better for everyone I would have been happy to pay €5, possibly €10, per month for a few extra premium features.

Right now it does really feel to me like they are punishing their users and creating a bad user experience on purpose.

sab ,

In my experience the typo-tolerance is not very flexible. I write using Dvarok instead of QWERTY, so the typos I make don't always follow regular patterns. On my phone I use a swipe keyboard, so sometimes a typo comes out as a different word entirely. No matter what I don't want to be punished for my mistakes, even if they are real mistakes. I just want to keep on learning without the tool I'm using intentionally trying to make that harder for me.

sab ,

Never heard of busuu before, but tried it now and am enjoying it a lot. Thank you!

It's also worth giving a shout-out to LibreLingo, which aims to be an open source version of Duolingo. For now it's only Spanish though, and as I'm not interested in learning Spanish at the moment I haven't gotten any real use out of it.

sab ,

Anyone who has a passion for open source and wants to learn Spanish should check out LibreLingo! It's also a nice project for people who want to contribute to something that is not owned by a company, though it's a bit too early for contributors who have language skills but no coding experience.

sab ,

Unfortunately I don't know of any open source alternative. After another response in this thread I started using busuu.com for French and Italian, and I'm liking it so far. Their business model is pretty transparent, but I find it less annoying than Duolingo so far.

Viel Glück and buona fortuna with your language learning!

sab ,

Yeah, the adds take up some time, but I still find the overall experience less annoying than I did with Duolingo last time I used it. The push towards human interaction, which Duolingo has actively pushed away from, is also welcome.

Australia bans Nazi salute, swastika, other hate symbols in public as antisemitism spikes (www.cbsnews.com)

Australian lawmakers have banned the performance of the Nazi salute in public and outlawed the display or sale of Nazi hate symbols such as the swastika in landmark legislation that went into effect in the country Monday. The new laws also make the act of glorifying OR praising acts of terrorism a criminal offense....

sab ,

Solid typo on the side of CBS. Or, alternatively, a surprising amount of honesty from an Australian politician.

sab ,

I landed on it being a red flag, but nothing so bad that I'll stop supporting them for now. But given that it's a paid service, part of what I am paying for is for them to provide a better and more ethical alternative to known free engines. In turn, this means that I hold them to very high standards.

I'm guessing after the backlash over this they will be even more careful going forwards. It's impossible not to make mistakes now and then, and though I agree with @poVoq that Kagi's response here reflected that they had not thought certain issues through enough, I choose to be patient with them for now. At least they are making an effort to communicate rather than just giving empty corporate responses that mean nothing.

sab ,

The famous terrorist organization known as the Red Cross.

sab ,

Genuinely curious who'll be killed off first - him or Putin.

sab ,

I know Russians who live in Europe and who are deeply anti war and Putin, but whose families are still completely buying into Russian propaganda and who think their own children are lying to them.

I also know Russians from less brainwashed families who are critical.

More strikingly perhaps, I had a friend a little less than a decade ago who went to study in Russia for half a year, and came back completely apologetic for everything Putin stood for. I cut contact and haven't heard from her since, so I have no idea where she stands now, but it was a forceful demonstration of the propaganda apparatus. It's not that they're necessarily evil or bad people, they've just been subject to world-class propaganda for decades. Opposing Putin after all that takes quite a lot of work.

sab ,

Looks like Latin to me.

My First Regular Expressions

I’ve been reading Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, and since nobody in my life (aside from my wife) cares, I thought I’d share something I’m pretty proud of. My first set of regular expressions, that I wrote myself to manipulate the text I’m working with....

sab ,

I'm currently seeing a girl I started dating after she had problems with her regex and I helped her out.

So far so good.

sab , (edited )

In Scandinavia we never stopped calling the holiday by it's pagan name - jul.

We've been told for a thousand years now that it's somehow supposed to refer to the birth of Christ, but the celebration is older than Christianity and nobody knows for sure the origin of it's name. As far as me and my family is concerned, it's a pagan holiday.

Happy to celebrate with my Christian friends though, there's nothing wrong with being inclusive.

God jul!

sab ,

Bingo!

Christmas traditions are a fun mix of things. The modern Santa Claus is mostly a mix of Saint Nicholas and a bunch of continental European traditions, but the pointy red hat is the product of being what we refer to as a nisse - a mythical creature closely related to gnomes.

We have long traditions of leaving food out for the nisse living in the barn for Christmas. And Santa is not named after Saint Nicholas over here - we call him julenissen. The Christmas gnome, if you will.

sab ,

Oh wow!

I always assumed it was connected to the word "by" as used in "by and by", so that it would basically mean "have a good afterwards".

Cool stuff. Bob Dylan makes more sense to me now:

And goodbye is too good a word babe
So I'll just say fare thee well

sab ,

Slow cooked pork ribs with boiled potatoes and sour cabbage. It's a tradition to the point of pretty much being mandated by law at this point.

sab , (edited )

Sounds amazing!

An Argentinian friend told me she felt some of their Christmas food was a bit strange, as it was a lot of heavy food that you'd otherwise never eat in summer but that's eaten anyway because it's associated with Christmas. Does this fit your experience?

It's ten below where I am, and I certainly wouldn't mind being served up that dish haha

sab ,

I got it this year! Most wonderful time of the year indeed!

sab ,

To be fair to the israelis, pregnant ladies are the two for one discounts of bulldozing people to death.

sab ,

I was one of those pedantic assholes arguing that one shouldn't use the term genocide too quickly, as you could have pretty fucking awful crimes against humanity without meeting the definition of genocide.

But yeah, at this point the line has been crossed a long time ago. It's genocide.

Liquidation of Wikimedia RU [Wikipedia Signpost] (en.wikipedia.org)

Briefly: Stanislav Kozlovsky, the director of Russian Wikimedia project (which supports the Russian Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, etc.), has been declared a “foreign agent” by Russia. He has been forced to resign from his job at the Moscow State University. Following the event, Russian Wikimedia has decided to dissolve...

sab ,

There's a lot of less resourceful russian men who fled to escape the draft as well, generally to countries in Western Asia rather than in Europe. But they had better reasons to leave then most.

sab ,

Been listening to this lately, loving it. Always keeps it entertaining, stays true to the discipline, and I'm always learning a lot.

sab , (edited )

I appreciate your point, but you should really consider emphasizing the point of your comment using bold text. It would make it easier to read.

sab ,

In my experience it's not so much about putting a limit as it is about avoiding takers and finding other givers. But one has to be careful not to be used. :)

sab ,

Is this basically the people acting out the lyrics of Johnny Cash's Cry! Cry! Cry!?

It seems like a reasonable stance, but I'm just confused by how often you could possibly have people forecasting your downfall. I mean, unless you're secretly a leader of a country currently engaged in war crimes or something.

Charlie Sheen “Assaulted In His LA Home By Neighbour Who Forced Her Way In” (deadline.com)

Charlie Sheen was assaulted in his Los Angeles home by a neighbour, police have announced. The woman charged was named as Electra Schrock. She was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, force likely to create great bodily injury and residential burglary.

sab , (edited )

Could very well be a random crazy rich person.

sab , (edited )

It's celebrity news and he's unharmed. I feel like the jokes are appropriate enough.

sab , (edited )

At my old job they were singing Hallelujah at an event because someone had required more secular holiday music.

Which.. I mean.. yeah.

Love the song though. Best song ever written about faith, God, and sex in juxtaposition.

sab ,

Not necessarily more strict, but joining the Union would open the waters for European fisheries which is politically unpopular.

sab ,

Also searching for in Mastodon has been a good way to find information about developments. Not so necessary now that there's an official account I guess. :)

sab ,

It's not. He wants to create a social media that exploits its users without being accused of monopolistic behaviour.

Minnesota panel chooses new state flag featuring North Star to replace old flag seen as racist (apnews.com)

Minnesota’s new state flag should feature an eight-pointed North Star against a dark blue background shaped like the state, with a solid light blue field at the right, a special commission decided Tuesday as it picked a replacement for an older design that many Native Americans considered offensive....

sab ,

I think it's beautiful! Places it geographically and culturally (north, cold), the colours are nice, and the shapes are simple yet original.

Is it normal that I feel pretty bad for ignoring homeless people begging for help?

I want to give them money but since my childhood my parents pretty much told me that they are all either faking it or are too lazy to go to work for money. I mean, I guess they can go to work but not everyone gets accepted to work as easy as it sounds like.

sab ,

I read @bustrpoindextr as not criticizing the charities directly, but rather reflect that they represent a systematic failure of government structures. We shouldn't need homeless shelters or soup kitchens - there shouldn't be homelessness or hunger. Taxation and sensible public spending should render charity unnecessary.

Which is a nice thought - I wouldn't judge people for giving their money to political interest organizations promoting solidarity rather than directly to charities.

It's a fine balance between patching the flaws of the system and trying to replace it all together. In some extreme cases charity might make the system just bearable enough that it's not overthrown, which might occasionally do more harm than good in the long run.

sab ,

Yes, I think I got your point - the soup kitchen should be financed by taxes rather than volunteer contributions by charitable souls. And I of course completely agree.

Even then, there might be room for a charity providing a social space for those with fewer means or who find themselves in a rough spot in life. I think no matter how well the state is doing in guaranteeing for people's needs, there'll be some room for civil society to make a contribution; if nothing else because the sense of purpose it can give the helpers is in its own right a goal worth pursuing.

sab ,

On the contrary. Many charities benefit from volunteer work hours that simply would not be possible on a normal government contract. The efficiency of some charities simply cannot be matched by State institutions, as people don't want to volunteer working for the state.

Some volunteer positions could possibly be replaced with well-paying jobs to lower unemployment rates at the benefit of the economy, but people also get a sense of purpose from volunteering. The charitable economy ran by volunteering and donations is an incredible asset for any society, no matter how great the social security net is. And in my experience, a better security net is often correlated with more charity.

That's not to say shitty charities don't exist. But good luck financing all the activities of the Red Cross through a state budget, paying everyone for their work.

sab ,

Sure - if your alternative is doing nothing. It's not like he's saying giving money to beggars is immoral, it's just amoral.

sab ,

Ah, yeah, sorry - that was badly phrased. I shouldn't have included Kbin on that list. I'm on Kbin myself, just worded myself poorly. :)

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