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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • Doable but you need teachers to open source their lessons and vet them.

    If an OS alternative was trying to completely replace duolingo, it would need far more than that. Duolingo has had extensive work put into listening and speaking lessons. Almost all lessons have a listening componentwhich is a ton of content to make up for. They have significantly better voice recognition than my phone. The amount of effort to get something like that working for a language, let alone dozens of languages is a high bar.

    Take a look at any of the job postings that duolingo has, they’re only looking for Google employee level of skill for a reason (aside from how fucked the job market is).

    It’s not impossible for duolingo to be replaced with an open source version, but it’s a giant undertaking.





  • I don’t think safety courses and licensing are a huge barrier to entry though, unless we let them be.

    Training and licenses generally aren’t free, and e-bikes are already pretty expensive. It would add quite enough of a barrier to entry to dissuade more people from switching to them, which is something the environment cannot afford. We honestly need to be doing everything in our power as quickly as possible.

    And yes, training and a license would indeed make a difference with how riders conduct themselves. Including wearing a helmet or paying attention.

    I’ve seen plenty of car drivers on the road who presumably have a license, yet they don’t wear seat-belts, don’t pay attention, turn in places they shouldn’t, speed, etc. The first step should be infrastructure changes to increase the number of protected/dedicated bike trails (which in turn allow accidents to happen safely), built in speed limiters, rules on helmets and speed, mixed use zoning to reduce trip count/speed/cars, etc. Such changes don’t have an impact on barrier to entry or and only a negligible effect on our freedom.

    Traveling by bike is one of the few ways you can travel without having the government involved in some way, or at least minimally involved. I’d like it to stay that way.

    And like I said earlier, most of these injuries are to the rider themselves, which means they were probably doing something stupid in the first place. People are going to be stupid even with a license and training, so we may as well design around it as a first step.


    I have a cat. It likes to get into things I don’t want it to. I could theoretically teach it not to do so, but the far simpler option is to keep the layout of my house and my things such that it can’t get into things in the first place. If I keep the closet doors shut, it isn’t getting in. People are stupid, and similarly, we should design our infrastructure to account for that. It’s why speed bumps exist after all.