As a non-native English speaker, I use Grammarly's free tier daily. It is invaluable to help me catch common mistakes, as well as to get a better understanding of the language through the explanations it provides. I will need to write even more English in the next few months, so it seemed like a good idea to get the Premium subscription. Unfortunately, Grammarly's pricing ($144 for the year) is prohibitive when converted to Brazilian Reais. And even if I am capable of making that payment now, I would rather avoid becoming dependent on something that is so expensive for me. So, what are some affordable alternatives to Grammarly's Premium subscription?

Just to be clear, I am aware that it is not ideal to rely too much on that kind of tool. Rest assured that my domain of English is enough that I am entirely capable of taking the suggestions as extra help and not as a crutch.

Am I the only one?

They've made some serious improvements and I generally enjoy using Firefox but I occasionally run into issues that just shows complete disregard for end users. Assuming, of course, my issues are not isolated.

Every month or so, when Firefox updates, it completely resets itself. This doesn't happen with every update, but Mozilla pushes an update that breaks the functionality of my browser. My browser settings, my userChrome profile, my extensions and their settings, and my bookmarks are all gone. Everything.

I do have sync but that doesn't work properly either. It only syncs some of my settings (which actually makes it harder for me to figure out what's enabled/disabled) and while I do get my bookmarks (none of which have their favicons), the extensions that manage to sync (meaning the ones that were installed from the store) don't sync their settings unless they have cloud support.

I do not understand this. Why do I, as an end user who care about Mozilla's mission, have to deal with this? I'd overlooked many of Firefox's shortcomings in the past, but when the browser works, it works well. I have some issues, but browsers are complicated and running into issues are to be expected. I understand that, but I simply cannot understand how eager they are to break the end user's workflow. Isn't it supposed to be a cardinal sin for every software company, especially the ones trying to survive, to not do this?

I just spent roughly half an hour of my day to get my browser back to its previous state. Adding the times I had had to deal with this issue before, I've spent hours on dealing with Firefox that I shouldn't have. I don't think I have another half an hour to spare for it and I don't want to anymore, but is there even an alternative for Windows that suck less?

(Apologies for the rant, but I needed to vent and perhaps get a discussion going about the current state of browsers.)

Here's a place to share machine learning research papers that seem interesting to you. I'm no expert, but sometimes I skim them, and maybe there are some folks on Tilde who know more than I do?

One paper per top-level post, and please link to arXiv (if relevant) and quote a bit of the abstract.

I’m looking for a search engine just for news; kind of a Google News competitor but something independent. Any ideas?

I know of Ground News, it’s already pretty good though it’s less search engine and more aggregator. Open to hear more.

Most of my photo-taking is done with my Smartphone but it really lacks a proper zoom feature. I'd like to purchase a cheap compact camera with a zoom lens. Is there anything out there you would recommend?

edit

Bonus if it has a USB-C interface. I hate carrying multiple cords around.

I've long been uncomfortable using platforms that have a bad reputation with respect to:

1. Human rights / genocide
2. Disinformation
3. Privacy

All three of those can be connected with advertising revenue, among other things. When I use platforms that are shady in this regard, I know I'm colluding with them and contributing to the problems they create. So it's been a relief to see new platforms like Tildes emerge, as well as those based on ActivityPub.

But even platforms that don't have overt advertising (Telegram?) do have a problem with hate groups that go unchallenged. And I know that if I was running an instance of an ActivityPub compatible platform such as KBin, I mightn't be able to keep on top of moderating things like disinformation.

So I suppose my question is, where do you draw the line? I've deleted my Twitter and Meta accounts and I'm exploring alternatives, but I'm not sure if I'm going from the darkness to the light, or just into shades of grey.

I went to university for computer science up until the pandemic started. It was great. I remember working on so many projects that were basic but a lot of fun and others that were a lot more complex but still fun and rewarding. For example, one of the staples of beginner projects is Conway's Game of Life. I remember building that in HTML, CSS, and Java Script. One of my other favorite projects was a website for alum to visit to see alumni news and events, and also to lookup other alum.

What were your favorite projects when learning to code?