The depth of the reduction and all the built-in escape valves show that this was an extremely tough compromise, but hopefully we can use this landmark deal to boost the fight for the 4-day work week as the new norm. I think that’s something IGM made a priority, but many sectors represented by ver.di are also ideal sectors for this.

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.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/68004.html

Garrett’s post makes a great point in only a handful of lines. Strongly recommended reading for anyone who organises a community of any kind.

Ich war lange Zeit sehr zufrieden mit BackInTime.

und diese dann synchronsiert werden wenn ich die Festplatte angeschlossen habe

Es gibt zwei Optionen unter Schedule: Repeatedly oder When drive get connected.

That’s likely.

Perhaps intermittently so? I have obviously booked tickets in the last year with direct debit. hence why I expected it to work this time too.

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 think it’s fucked up that the federal government introduces a policy and then tells the states “you figure it out”, indeed.

But I think it would be reasonable to add a time commitment to the ticket that will allow enough revenue to be collected after the period of intensive use (referring to the line in the German article: “Die Option zur monatlichen Kündbarkeit werde intensiver als erwartet genutzt. Das nimmt den Verkehrsunternehmen Planungssicherheit.”) The Probe BahnCard still has a minimum running period of 3 months, so making D-Ticket’s running period at least three months would be understandable. I can’t say if that will be enough to keep the pricetag of 49 Euro even remotely sustainable of course.

Greenshot (GPLv3) is a powerful screenshot tool with its own basic image editor.

TIL, thanks. This might be a viable path for me.

I can give it a shot, certainly. One of the main contributors behind it is in my RSS reader so there’s some name recognition there. Future pricing is not final though, so I can’t budget for it before committing.

It might not be a solution for everyone, but you can self host a git repository on your static site!

I like the concept and the aesthetics, but I guess you still need to run a git server?

If you are willing to self-host and are scared of the gitea license shake-up, use forgejo.

When it comes to self-hosting, there’s also the costs. Hosting providers have been hitting me with price hikes one after another this year, so I’m looking into shutting down some servers instead.

Okay, that sounds like it hits the spot. I’ll read up on them. Happy to hear testimonials for existing users.

More user friendly.

But so slow, that’s what gets me all the time. I like moving fast around town.

I see. Then it might be a factor of population density. Where I come from, there’s way less people moving in and out per building, to put it simply.

That solves it for me.

Are they objectively more efficient than an airlock system like this, or is their popularity accidental?

I can imagine they are more expensive than a double door system.

Yeah, that makes sense. It’s the same for where I come from (but keep the cold in, instead), and the airlock system is by far the preferred solution. I think only IKEA insists on revolving doors where I came from.

It’s not a great photo, but basically you have two doors (manual, automatic, or slide) in a series, with an “airlock” space between. You open the outside door, step in the space, the outside door closes behind you, then you open the inside door and step into the building.

Perhaps because I’m far more used to them, they seem more efficient to me.

PS. This system is used in Germany too, but in very few spaces. I’ve seen it mostly in restaurants.

Huh. Never experienced that. Never been into a restaurant in Germany where ambient music was on, and I never felt like the customers were louder than what’s normal for me.

Sorry, can’t answer why, it must be a sub-trend, maybe some specific kind of restaurant you tend to visit?