That’s a great way to get more people to use Linux 
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Will this be the year of the Linux desktop?
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This is server, so I doubt it’ll push anyone over that hasn’t gone already.
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Cross-posting here. Duolingo has been riding the enshitification train hard the past couple of years, but this really takes the cake.
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If you know anything about Polygon: the layoffs include Chris Plante, Tara Long and the entire video team
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This is a bummer, i primarily used Polygon for my gaming news (and other nerdy things). It wasn’t perfect but they had certain writers that i really liked so it’s upsetting. And before that i used to frequent Joystiq and that also got shut down 
I could go to some place like IGN but i always found that site to be kind of joyless and not a great experience to browse. Anyone have any recs for gaming sites you like? Is IGN any better these days?
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Rock Paper Shotgun is my usual, but there has been some enshittification there too over the past year or so with subscriber-only posts etc.
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I’ve been going to Game Informer since it came back freed from the shackles of Game Stop. Aftermath seems pretty decent but requires an account (and browsing kind of stinks with a free account…it’s probably better if you pay?). When I really want info on a specific game I tend to search the threads at ResetEra.
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Eurogamer is alright, although are/were owned by the same group as RPS so there’s also some subscriber-only posts, although not many. They had a sister site USgamer, not sure if it’s still running.
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Valnet Blues: How Online Porn Pioneer Hassan Youssef Built a Digital Media ‘Sweatshop’
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Duolingo pissed me off when they narrowed the bands in their leagues. My German has gotten better, but I’m about ready to check out Lingonaut when my Duolingo subscription is up for renewal. I paid, so why not use it until then? I’m just ignoring the leagues.
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I’ve been pretty unhappy with Duolingo over the past couple years. It’s just been a constant march of enshitification.
First they got rid of the “tree” and replaced it with the “path”. I hate this. If a lesson track was boring or irrelevant, I could work on something else and then go back to it later. Now I’m stuck slogging through 20 or 30 rounds of a topic I don’t care about just to get to the next one. It was a terrible idea then and is a terrible idea now. Yes, they have done some tweaks to make it better, but it’s still not as good as the way it used to be.
Then they got rid of the forums, which were an amazing resource for understanding answers. Yes, they weren’t perfect but there were still incredibly helpful. But that’s ok, they eventually found a way to bring them back (but worse).
Then they added the new and really expensive Max subscription tier, which I didn’t care about because it didn’t have anything relevant to my language track (I primarily work on Japanese) but despite this they upsell it (and family plans) to me constantly even though I already pay for Super. Then they rejiggered the app to bury useful learning features behind submenus and add more Max-centric stuff front and center even though I don’t have a Max subscription.
Then they added a replacement for the forums, an AI powered “explain this answer” which is like the forums, but is gated behind the Max subscription tier. With a Super subscription, it will show up every time I get an answer wrong but it’ll upsell me to Max if I tap on it.
Duolingo has always had dark patterns in place to lock you in and keep you using the app, but it’s gotten so much worse. For instance, they started adding tons of annoying push notifications that don’t stop even if I disable them in the app settings. If I disable push notifications entirely (which I did), I then get daily nags to enable push notifications or to use the widget. I don’t want any of this shit. This is straight up asshole design.
They recently added a toxic thing into the app where you can make fun of your friends if they miss a day or use a streak freeze. Seriously - it’ll advertise this in your feed now and you can send a 
or 
emoji back to them. That’s fucked up.
Apparently things have gotten significantly worse for free tier users according to the many complaints I’ve seen on Reddit.
I really hope Lingonaut can be a good replacement when it launches.
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I have been a free user for about 250 days and only signed up for Super recently. While it’s been nice not having constant ads or running out of hearts, I feel like the upsell stuff for the family plan and Max have only gotten more aggressive. Also it spent a week with a banner across the top nagging me to enable notifications.
(I never allow games to send me notifications… it’s a game, not a job or an emergency or a family member.)
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Wow! I use it primarily on my laptop. It doesn’t do speaking exercises on DuckDuckGo, so I’m stuck with Chrome. That’s all I use Chrome for.
I don’t have Max - I’ve never noticed being pestered about it, and didn’t even know it was a thing!
When I do use my phone, it wants me to enable push and I just nope that.
Is that what “Nudge” does? I’ve never used it - I thought it was rude to “nudge” someone at 6:00AM, which is when I’m usually using it. The “worst” I do is not “High Five” my partner on a friend quest if I did 100% of the work. It happens a lot.
I see Lingonaut is in beta. Have you tried it, @ficuswhisperer ?
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Nudges will send a push notification to your friends. They are canned messages that are often incredibly passive aggressive. They would pop up on my phone constantly even after turning off all push notifications within the app. That’s why I disabled all push notifications globally for the app. Now I get nagged constantly to turn them on. It’s like, fuck off already.
These are some examples of “nudges”: (not mine)
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