Mein Deutsch ist nicht das Gelbe vom Ei, aber es geht.

Bekannt? aus /r/germany, /r/german, /r/greek und /r/egenbogen.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Although I never used it, I am aware that Calibre can serve books in your local network. I imagine that this offers some position and annotation sync.

    Also, a bit off-topic for this sub, but… how do you read? E-readers? Tablets? Software choices?

    Unfortunately, there was never great ebook hardware. I use a tablet with Android. KOReader for ePub, constantly trying new Android PDF readers but finding nothing decent.

    While not intentionally, running Syncthing between all my computers means that my PDF annotations get synced across devices. ePub ones do not; afaik KOReader uses its own metadata format that it stores as a standalone file.

    Before, when I was still in university, I used Zotero also for annotation management. Feels like an overkill nowadays since I only read for leisure.




  • Let’s not overstate Duolingo’s effectiveness for language learning.

    The technological challenge to adopting a self-taught language learning method into an app is rather small. You just need the content. Either you develop the course under a Free Culture license, or you purchase the rights for an existing method and you port it. Plus maybe some volunteers to handle user-interaction.

    A good example is the VHS Lernportal which implements three levels of German class in a way that actually has some pedagogical merit. It’s killer-feature is nothing technological, but that they have some teachers in the backoffice that will read your occasional text-production exercises and offer corrections (no, language tool wouldn’t be able to replace humans in that case, because language tool doesn’t know what you are trying to say and therefore gives you multiple guesses but no way to know which one you actually need).















  • I’m going to take “favourite” at face value, i.e. that I actually like, not just that I am forced to use because the alternative doesn’t exist (e.g. my bank’s app or the post-office’s app) or isn’t viable (PDF editors on Android).

    Libby, the lending library app. I could avoid it and stick to physical media and piracy, but it’s a well-designed app with a decent catalogue and given that it’s a library and not me purchasing DRMed files, I found the ethical proposition there tolerable.