All dates should be formatted according to ISO 8601 standard (YYYY-MM-DD).
Months should be adjusted so September, October, November, and December are the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th month respectively (so the literally meaning of the names accords with their actual meaning).
Not cleaning your kitchen knife after sharpening is trashy and contaminates your food with metal shavings.
Search engines should not use locational data including IP address to provide “more relevant” results. Checking for restaurants or weather forecast? You should have to manually add the relevant search terms. Want results in a specific language? You should have to manually apply this filter.
Convenience is not worth the potential harm of locationally biased search results.
For example, where I live is like White Nationalist Central Station. My search results are thus far more likely to net me results with a pro-US/nationalist skew, thus potentially entrenching or normalizing harmful beliefs.
Whenever I’ve tried bringing this up with Techlords, I get a feeble, “B-but then you couldn’t say ‘restaurants near me’ UnU” and like … good? It’s not like it’s hard to type city and state in the search field.
I’ve never found a search engine that even has this as an option. Even Sear XNG instances net results that are clearly aligned with the location of the instances server.
A Kagi dev even lied to me when I was looking into that as an alternative, saying they don’t use location, when it’s pretty easy to determine that they do.
I also don’t want a “good” algorithm. I also don’t want to see big corporate sites prioritized either. If some backwoods nobody has a site that’s more relevant, show it to me. I feel like pre-Google search engines were better, but that’s another vent for another day.
Now where did I put my false teeth and walker???
With duckduckgo you can disable the country filter thingo to get international results, and you can also change it to another country
You know what’s hilarious about this basically non-functional setting? If I toggle the switch off, it provides results based on my IP address’s location, but if I toggle it to “UK” it will also provide some results for the UK city that my town is named after, without me ever providing the name of my town lol
DDG is a for-profit brand that’s a lot more nefarious than people think. They’ve even succumbed to AI.
Just tried setting no country, then ducked “wine”.
Results were definitely still from my country first.
When I set display language to US English, results came up from the US, instead.
When I set it to French, it shows French websites at the top.
So the language you set affects what websites you are shown in the results. That sucks.But you can actually just turn off ads in the settings. That’s pretty fucking neat!
Even the lite and html versions of DDG will provide locationally biased search results. There’s no way around this. Best you can do is use a VPN, but then you’ve still got the problem of reading locationally biased results, just for a different location. It sucks.
Oh believe me, I know. DDG was the first one I tried, and I tested it with every configuration possible. Like many other search engines such as startpage and kagi, you sure can do this in the settings, but it will do absolutely nothing to stop it from using your IP address to net locationally biased results specific to your current location. You may assume it would function like this, but it doesn’t.
I even tried their html and lite versions, but although it was less cluttered and much more pleasant to use, it still provided results that were very clearly based on my IP address.
I’m not even sure what those settings do because they appear to have no function. Maybe they change language and currency on some sites for convenience, but again, that’s not what I’m talking about in my comment! I’m saying a search engine should not use any locational data whatsoever to adjust results. And if you reply “well, good luck finding one because it doesn’t exist,” then congratulations, you understand my comment! They don’t exist because we’ve all sacrificed our societal wellbeing for the sake of the smallest convenience.
Even if changing it to another country/region worked (it doesn’t), we’d still have the problem of netting biased results based on what country I switch it to. That would be akin to searching while using my VPN, which once again, does not solve the problem of search engines using IP address to provide locationally biased results.
have you actually properly tested that the results in your location are more extremist? like compared with using a vpn on ddg?
Not a small hill and I could not agree more. This is relevant to Noam Chomsky “manufacturing consent”.
ip adress only gives the nearest big city. information like this is pretty useful to show you info based on your state/province.
yes I don’t think a search engine should promote more extremist views but it’s pretty nice if when I search ‘left party’ I get a left party from my country, and not the American democratic party.
The first time i searched for a business online the results came from a city on the other side of the planet. I’m ok with getting search results in my area.
100% agree.
To add to this, when I’m looking up something online I want info provided by the internet in general, not just by my next door hillbilly.
A steel ball is not a ball bearing. A bearing is something that bears load and allows for motion, usually rotation. There are sleeve bearings which are just one material or journal bearings which have pressurized oil to separate the spinning shaft. A ball bearing is an assembly with rolling elements (balls, rather than rollers). Those steel balls are just called balls. The whole assembly is called a ball bearing. I used to work in bearing manufacturing and they were just called balls.
Would it be better if I clarified by calling them “ball bearing balls”? Or would that lead to my unpleasant pummeling by steel balls?
Yeah that’s accurate. Or just “bearing balls”.
Yeah, I think this is the best option. It sounds a little weird at first, because we’re so used to hearing it the other way around, but it makes more sense if you think about it.
It does sound a little weird. I usually just say balls
Cloud-based. If a product won’t work if my internet dies, or I can’t access my data without internet or a subscription, I won’t buy it.
Niche pronounced with a “ch” sound is wrong and dumb and I hate you
Rhymes with “sheesh”
On that note: cache
How else would you say it?
I’ve only heard /niʃ/
Do some people say /nit͡ʃ/ ?
So what sound should we use instead of “ch”? What about “ch”?
English spelling is so silly
It originates from French
Microfiche.
cache
chaos
niche is french
“sh”
Don’t you dare ask questions.
Those people who pronounce it ‘nitch’? The word for that is WRONG. Those people deserve ridicule.
Omg, I always pronounced it niche. Then slowly over the years I’ve gaslit myself into believing it’s nitch because that’s all I ever hear
If a company has a bad interface on their electronic item I’ll not buy it. To me it’s a big hill but I guess it’s how you want to look at it. I’ll stop buying anything from that company if they keep doing it
I would agree with you, but I still want to own a microwave. There are none with reasonable UI behavior as far as I can tell.
One dial is power level, the other is time.
Neat! I’ve only ever seen commercial-grade ones like that.
Looks good actually.
But how does it handle the door opening early? Does it still leave unused time sitting on the time dial?
Yeah, it doesn’t clear the dials, and if you want to manually reduce the time you do need to adjust the time dial, but you get a delightful bell sound when you do so. The door does stop the magnetron when open though.
My new corollary: If your online e-commerce site asks customers to add a tip, even if $0 / no tip is an option, I’m not buying shit from you.
If i need wifi, bluetooth, or an app to use a product that shouldn’t need it (eg a toaster, toothbrush) i will not buy it. i also won’t buy a wireless device (say a bluetooth speaker) if it requires an app. I would be willing to pay $500 more to have a tv with no smart features than a ‘smart’ tv. corporations: keep your shitty malware. my phone is a temple.
“catsup” is the better spelling; “ketchup” looks about as proper as “nite lite”
Anything with cats is inherently superior
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how do you feel about Coca Cola Blāk?
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it was coca cola mixed with coffee. sweetened both with high fructose corn syrup, and two artificial sweeteners, simultaneously. I still remember the aftertaste… it’s not something you forget.
How about no
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Delicious. Canfield chocolate fudge soda was bliss.
It never went away for me, I just make it myself!
I’ll have like 1/4 glass of milk and add chocolate syrup then as I mix that I add seltzer and if stirring correctly it won’t fizz up. I know people say adding the acidity of seltzer spoils the milk, but I’ve never noticed it when I make it.
Spoiling milk is all about the ratio of the fat. It’s why cream is used in alcoholic drinks. The higher fat content of the cream means it can take more without spoiling. Try yours with skim milk vs. whole and taste the difference.
English verbs have historically had present form, past form, and past participle form, eg. go / went / gone. I’m sad to see the past participle form being phased out of American English. People I went to school with and who I’m sure were taught differently (not to mention innumerable podcasters and public radio personalities), now say things like: “By the time I got home I found he’d already went,” eliminating the past participle and instead using the past form. Had saw is not uncommon either. I am old enough I refuse to incorporate this development in the language. If I ever encounter had was/were in the wild I might blow a gasket. Now entering my fuddy-duddy years :(
Okay I believe you and all, but I genuinely don’t understand. My partner has even criticized this in my language but I don’t get it.
Sincerely someone who wants to understand and was unfortunately homeschooled by dumb fucks
Thanks for asking–I’ll try to keep it brief (so as not to bore), and my apologies if I am retreading stuff you already know, but I’ll have to do some lead-in to explain why I care about this at all.
Why past participles?–and why I love them:
Starting with a couple of example sentences that could help differentiate the “simple past” form versus the “present perfect” form that uses the past participle:
- I saw a shooting star last night.
- I have not seen a shooting star.
In the first example, the time mentioned is “last night”-- a time period that in the mind of the speaker is finished or closed.
In the second, there is no time frame mentioned, but we intuitively understand that it is making reference to a period of time that is unfinished or still open–in this case that period is “in my life.”
I really appreciate the nuance that a change in verb form can impart, and so elegantly done!
Participles in telling stories
When it comes to telling stories to each other we almost exclusively keep the main actions in the sequence of events in simple past forms, eg.:
- I woke up.
- I got a shower.
- I ate breakfast.
- I couldn’t find my car keys.
- I had to take the bus to work.
But what if I wanted to have a little twist in the story where I make reference to stuff that happened before my narrative? In English we’ve got this great trick up our sleeves. I could use the past perfect, formed by had + past participle, eg:
- I couldn’t find my car keys. Little did I know that my wife had accidentally dropped them into the laundry basket. So I had to take the bus…
Simple, clean, elegant, and provides a satisfying twist :) Otherwise I would have to tell it like:
- My wife accidentally dropped my keys into the laundry basket. I woke up. I got a shower…
Or like this:
- …I couldn’t find my car keys. Earlier my wife accidentally dropped my keys in the laundry basket, but I didn’t know that at the time. I had to take the bus to work.
I guess all are valid, but I certainly find option 1 the nicest. Option 2 has spoilers. Option 3 is what many other languages do.
Verbs and simplification in languages
If I recall from my dabbling in linguistics, there’s a tendency among most languages to become simpler in terms of their grammar over time. Most English verbs are now “regular,” and you can make the simple past and past participle just by adding -ed to the end of the verb, eg.:
- yell - yelled - yelled
- ask - asked - asked
- smile - smiled - smiled
But among our oldest and most common verbs we’ve got bunches of “strong/irregular” verbs, eg.:
- go - went - gone
- take - took - taken
- see - saw -seen
These are the verbs that people are changing in spoken American English at present. People are “regularizing” the past perfect forms by dropping the past participle and using had + simple past. I know it mainly comes down to linguistics drift and personal choice, but I appreciate that these irregular participles have purpose (by being a part of the perfect tenses, and the nuance they can create), and history. Moreover, I think having greater mastery of these forms in your speech and writing helps make reading texts written in English before the end of the 20th century so much easier.
Long story short: people can and will speak English however they want. No big deal. But in the case of excising the irregular past participles from English, I’ll hold on to what I was taught and grew to love about English grammar.
got a shower
That made me shudder. Are you a dog and being showered by someone else, or was it a gift granted to you for hard work that day? ;)
In my dialect it’s the equivalent of took or had a shower. :/
I’ve also noticed an increase in using “had [done]” instead of [did] in places I wouldn’t expect. I’m sure a linguist could break that down more thoroughly.
Oh no…
Everyone should use the Oxford comma.
The word Himalayan is pronounced like Him-a-lay-an, NOT Him-all-ee-an…
I’ve never heard it pronounced like that, and I live somewhere notorious for bad pronunciation. Is there another similar word pronounced like him-all-ee-an in your local accent?
You got room on that hill for one more?
The Office means the British version. The American office refers to the American version.
As an American, this disagrees with my worldview. But I also don’t know enough about the British version to say your wrong 🤷♂️
I never watched the British one, and I don’t care for the American one, too cringey. Makes me sympathetic cringe.
lol. I get that. I say what I say cause the British one came first.
Also, if you feel like that about The American Office, you will not like the British one.
Good to know lol, thanks
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The British one came first, hence my view. It doesn’t matter though cause you’re missing the point of the British one.
I live in a pretty mountainous area, but I can think of a couple blind corners on small hills near me. So probably the one on the way to the bakery while running or biking.
But I do a lot of ski touring so I’d rather die on one of the big ones.
Pineapple on pizza is delicious, that is all
As long as it’s small chunks, not whole rings
Anyone who puts always-on blue LEDs in electronics deserve the oubliette. People who put such LEDs in electronics meant for the bedroom deserve an oubliette that’a slowly filling with water.
That sucks, but you can put some isolation tape on LEDs.
But I wish something horrible to those who thought it’s a great idea to make every goddamn electronic device make beeping noises.
My water boiler, fan, washing machine. In my childhood I don’t remember everything beeping at every interaction. It makes me furious and you often cannot fully disable it.
Once I tried to solder the beeper out but my soldering iron was probably not suitable so I failed :(
You can muffle the beeper pretty effectively with some tape, the old air fryer we had terrified one of the dogs because of the incessant beeping. My coffee scale by default beeps whenever you touch it, thankfully that’s 100% mutable.
I also hate this.
The beeping! My damn air fryer has to let everyone in the neighborhood know that I’m making food at 3:00 am, I hate it so much
Gonna ignore the fire alarm someday because I’ll just assume someone is air frying something
Allow me to try and persuade you. The problem is bright blue LEDs. It’s still stupid that they make them so bright, but the problem isn’t the color. A hypothetical bright red, green, or amber LED would also be a problem.
Shorter wavelengths hit different though. That’s why we have blue light filtering glasses, Redshift, etc.
a non-diffused, bright, monocromatic red led would still be painful to look at in the dark, it’s just that blue LEDs tend to be brighter + our eyes are more sensitive to blueish green light at night + the damn companies don’t bother putting a diffuser in front of the diode.
Diffusion and overall brightness do make a difference as well.
This is fair. I have had to put tape over a red alarm clock because it was too bright before. Those manufacturers also get the oubliette
Or just excessively bright LEDs. Just because LEDs are super efficient, doesn’t mean they should take them as bright as they can go.
“Because fuck your sleep cycle that’s why”
