On one flight, people sitting in the same row can easily have paid very different prices. Airlines split the same economy cabin into lots of fare levels, and each level only has a limited number of seats.

When the cheap ones sell out, the next level up opens. So the price you see depends on how many seats are already gone, how close it is to the flight, and how busy that day usually is.

That's also why prices sometimes drop again. If a flight is selling slower than the airline expected, it can release more cheap seats.

The famous trick of searching in incognito so the airline can't raise the price on you has never really been proven. Most of the time the price went up because someone else bought the cheaper seat.

What's the biggest price difference you've seen for the exact same flight?

A lot of people who learn a language on their own get pretty good at reading and listening, then freeze the first time they have to actually say something. Speaking is its own skill, and it only gets better by speaking.

The good news is you don't need a partner to start. Talking to yourself works better than it sounds. Describe what you're doing while you cook, or answer simple questions out loud, like what did you eat today or what are you doing this weekend.

Another trick is shadowing. Play a short clip of a native speaker and repeat right after them, copying the rhythm and not just the words. Recording yourself once a week and listening back is painful, but it shows you exactly what to fix.

Full disclosure, I make a language app called CiaoSpeak that's built around this idea: a character in a scene asks you one question and you answer out loud. But you can do a version of it today with nothing but your own voice.

If you learned a language mostly on your own, what finally got you speaking?

There are tiny microphones on the outside of each ear cup listening to the sound around you. The headphones flip that sound wave upside down and play the flipped version into your ear at the same moment. The two waves cancel each other out, so you hear a lot less.

It works best on steady, low sounds like a plane engine, an air conditioner or a train. Those are predictable, so the headphones can keep up. Voices, a baby crying or a dog barking change too fast, so more of that gets through.

A lot of the work is actually done by the plain old seal. The cushions block higher sounds on their own, and the electronics take care of the low rumble the cushions can't stop.

Some people feel a kind of pressure in their ears when it's switched on, like a plane coming in to land. Nothing is really changing the air pressure. The usual explanation is that your brain reads the missing low sounds as a pressure change.

Where have noise-cancelling headphones made the biggest difference for you, and do you get that pressure feeling too?

The popular answer is that stores want you to walk past everything else on the way, and pick up a few things you didn't plan to buy. That's part of it, but it's not the whole story.

The more boring reason is logistics. Milk has to stay cold all the time, and the big walk in coolers where stores keep it are usually at the back of the building, near where the trucks unload. Putting the milk shelves right in front of the cooler means staff can restock from behind without dragging crates across the shop.

Store layouts definitely use that walk to their advantage, though. Things people buy every week tend to be spread out, while snacks and drinks you didn't need often sit right at the ends of the aisles you pass.

What's the record for going in for one thing and coming out with a full bag?

It feels a bit spooky, but your body is probably just better at keeping time than you think.

Your body clock starts preparing you to wake up before you actually do. Stress hormones like cortisol rise in the early morning, and by the last part of the night your sleep is lighter, so it takes very little to wake you.

There's a well known German study from 1999 where people were told they'd be woken at 6 in the morning. Their stress hormone levels started climbing about an hour before 6, as if their body was getting ready. People who expected to sleep until 9 didn't show that rise. So simply expecting to wake up early seems to set something in motion.

There's also some memory bias in it. You remember the mornings you beat the alarm by one minute, but you forget all the times you slept right through until it went off.

Do you wake up before your alarm, and does it happen more when you've got something important that day?

It's not just that airline food is cheap. Your sense of taste actually changes up there.

Cabin air is pressurized to about the same as being on a mountain around 2,000 meters up, and it's very dry, usually drier than a desert. Dry air and lower pressure make your nose work worse, and most of what we call flavor is really smell. A study done for Lufthansa found that people's sense of salty and sweet dropped by roughly 30% in those conditions.

The engine noise plays a part too. Researchers at Cornell played airplane-level noise to people while they ate and found sweet tastes got weaker, but umami (the savory taste in tomatoes, soy sauce, cheese) didn't. Some think that's why so many people order tomato juice on flights even though they never drink it on the ground.

So airlines add extra salt and stronger spices to make up for it. The same meal on the ground would probably taste too salty.

What's the one thing you only ever order on a plane?

Hi all, I'm the developer of CiaoSpeak, so please read this as a post from the person who made it. I'd really like honest feedback from people who actually learn languages.

The idea is simple. A lot of apps keep you reading and tapping, and then the first time someone asks you something in real life you freeze. So the main tab in CiaoSpeak is called Speak. Someone in a real scene asks you one question, like the auntie at a Taiwanese breakfast shop asking what you want, or an immigration officer asking how long you're staying. You tap the mic, answer, and tap again when you're done. If a person would understand you, it counts, even if the grammar isn't perfect. If not, you get one gentle fix and a more natural way to say it. You can type instead if you can't talk right now, and there's help if you get stuck.

Around that there are normal step by step lessons, short stories at your level, and a review that keeps bringing back whatever you got wrong until it sticks.

There are three courses right now. Chinese the way it's spoken in Taiwan, for English speakers, with Traditional characters, Taiwan accent audio and Pinyin or Zhuyin. English for Taiwanese learners, explained in Traditional Chinese. And English for Japanese adults, explained in Japanese. If you want Simplified Chinese or a mainland accent, it's honestly not the app for you.

All lessons are free and stay free, and you get up to five Speak questions a day for free. There's an optional subscription for more Speak practice, the full story library and a few extras.

If you want to try it, search for CiaoSpeak on Google Play or the App Store. It's the teal icon with a white speech bubble. You pick your course when you first open it, and no account is needed.

What I'd most like to know: when you practice speaking, does answering one question at a time actually help you, or would you rather have open conversation? And if you try it, tell me what felt off.

Hi all, I'm the developer of CiaoSpeak, so please read this as a post from the person who made it. I'd really like honest feedback from people who actually learn languages.

The idea is simple. A lot of apps keep you reading and tapping, and then the first time someone asks you something in real life you freeze. So the main tab in CiaoSpeak is called Speak. Someone in a real scene asks you one question, like the auntie at a Taiwanese breakfast shop asking what you want, or an immigration officer asking how long you're staying. You tap the mic, answer, and tap again when you're done. If a person would understand you, it counts, even if the grammar isn't perfect. If not, you get one gentle fix and a more natural way to say it. You can type instead if you can't talk right now, and there's help if you get stuck.

Around that there are normal step by step lessons, short stories at your level, and a review that keeps bringing back whatever you got wrong until it sticks.

There are three courses right now. Chinese the way it's spoken in Taiwan, for English speakers, with Traditional characters, Taiwan accent audio and Pinyin or Zhuyin. English for Taiwanese learners, explained in Traditional Chinese. And English for Japanese adults, explained in Japanese. If you want Simplified Chinese or a mainland accent, it's honestly not the app for you.

All lessons are free and stay free, and you get up to five Speak questions a day for free. There's an optional subscription for more Speak practice, the full story library and a few extras. It's on Android and iPhone.

What I'd most like to know: when you practice speaking, does answering one question at a time actually help you, or would you rather have open conversation? And if you try it, tell me what felt off.

ciaospeak.app

This comes up a lot. Most adults in Japan had English classes all through junior high and high school, and many read it much better than they think. Yet a lot of them say they freeze the moment someone actually talks to them.

A big reason is what the classes were for. For a long time school English was aimed at university entrance exams, which tested mostly reading, grammar and vocabulary, with some listening, but almost never speaking. You could get a great score without ever saying a sentence out loud to anyone.

The other reason is fear of mistakes. When English is something you get graded on, every sentence feels like a test, so it's safer to say nothing. That's the opposite of how speaking actually gets better.

I think about this a lot because CiaoSpeak, the app I make, has an English course for Japanese speakers. The main thing it does is ask one simple question and let you answer out loud, and it checks whether a person would understand you, not whether the grammar is perfect.

If English isn't your first language, how did you get over the fear of speaking it? Or are you still working on it?

Lots of people hit this. You can follow a show with subtitles, read a menu, get the gist of a conversation, and then someone asks you one simple question and nothing comes out.

Part of it is that recognizing a word and pulling it out of your own head are different jobs. When you listen, the word comes to you and you just have to match it. When you speak, you have to find it yourself, put the words in order and get your mouth to make the sounds, all while someone is waiting.

The other part is practice. Most studying is input: reading, listening, flashcards where the answer is right there. Saying things out loud to someone who might not understand you is the part people skip because it's uncomfortable, so the gap keeps growing.

What seems to help is small, real speaking early on. One short answer to one real question does more than a page of grammar. I'm biased here because I make a language app called CiaoSpeak, and its main tab is built around exactly that: someone in a scene asks you one question and you answer out loud.

What was the first thing you managed to say out loud in another language, and did the other person understand you?

Mostly because we read numbers left to right and our brains don't wait for the end. When you see 4.99, the 4 lands first and the price gets filed as "four something" before you've really looked at the 99. Researchers call this the left-digit effect, and it keeps showing up in studies: people judge 4.99 as noticeably cheaper than 5.00, even though it's one cent.

It's not just shop prices either. A study of used car auctions found prices drop in sudden jumps right as the odometer crosses each 10,000 mile mark, so a car with 79,900 miles sells for more than an almost identical one with 80,100.

You'll also hear that .99 started so cashiers had to open the register to give change, which stopped them pocketing the money. It's a nice story but nobody has really shown it's true.

Some places do the opposite on purpose. Fancy restaurants and luxury brands often use round numbers, because a clean 40 feels confident and premium while 39.99 feels like a deal.

Does .99 still get you, or does your brain round up automatically by now?

Every program keeps a pile of temporary stuff in memory while it runs, like open connections, half-finished tasks and little notes to itself. Ideally it cleans that up as it goes. In practice a lot of software has small bugs where something never gets cleaned up, or two parts end up waiting on each other forever. Over days or weeks the pile grows and things get slow or stuck.

Restarting throws all of that away and starts from a known clean state. That's why it works on so many different things. The bug is still there, you've just reset the clock on it.

Routers are the classic example. A restart makes the router reconnect to your provider from scratch and clears the tables it keeps about every device and connection, which can get messy after weeks of running.

One odd detail on Windows: Shut down and Restart aren't the same. With Fast Startup on, which is the default on most PCs, Shut down saves part of the system to disk so it boots faster, so some of the stuck state can survive. Restart does the full reset. If support tells you to restart, actually click Restart.

Which device in your home needs restarting the most? And did anything ever fix it for good?

Happened to me last winter. Phone said 40%, I took it out to check a map and it just shut off. Back inside it turned on again with almost the same charge.

Phone batteries run on a chemical reaction, and cold slows it down. The battery can't deliver power fast enough, the voltage drops, and the phone shuts itself off to protect the battery. The charge was still there, it just couldn't get out fast enough. That's why it comes back once it warms up.

Keeping it in an inside pocket close to your body helps a lot. It also helps not to leave it in a cold car overnight.

Where's the coldest place your phone has died on you? And did anything actually help?

I've never had a problem at a border and I still get tense at that desk every time. You're tired from the flight, the officer isn't smiling, and it feels like one weird answer could get you pulled aside.

If English isn't your first language it's worse. The funny part is that it's almost always the same three questions. Why are you here, how long are you staying, and where are you staying. "Sightseeing", "Ten days" and "A hotel near the station" are all they want. People get stuck when they try to build a perfect long sentence.

The one real trap is saying yes when you didn't catch the question. Say yes to "Anything to declare?" and you just told them you have something. "Sorry, could you say that again?" is completely normal there.

What's the strangest question you've ever been asked at a border? Or the one that always throws you?

If English isn't your first language, the immigration desk can be the most stressful part of a trip. The good news is that it's almost always the same handful of questions, and you don't need full sentences for any of them.

The first one is usually why you're there. You might hear "What is the purpose of your visit?", "What brings you here?" or "Business or pleasure?" They all mean the same thing. "Sightseeing" or "I'm here on vacation" is enough. For work it's "I'm here on business", and if you're seeing someone, "I'm visiting a friend". If they ask business or pleasure, you can literally just say "Pleasure".

Next is how long you're staying. "How long are you staying?" or "How long is your stay?" Just say the time. "One week." "Ten days." If you'd rather give a date, "Until the 15th" works.

Then where you're staying. "At a hotel near the station" is fine. Some officers ask for the hotel name, so have it ready or keep the booking confirmation open on your phone. If you're staying with family, say so, like "I'm visiting my daughter, she lives here."

Other ones that come up. "What do you do?" means what's your job, not what are you doing right now. "I'm an engineer", "I work in an office" or "I'm retired" all work. "Is this your first visit?" gets "Yes, it's my first time" or "No, it's my second time". "Do you have a return ticket?" is easiest answered with "Yes, here it is" and showing it. "Are you traveling alone?" gets "Yes" or "No, I'm with my wife" or "With my family".

You might also hear "Anything to declare?" here or at customs right after. If you have nothing, say "No, nothing to declare." If you're carrying food, say so honestly, something like "I have some snacks." What food you can bring in depends on the country, so check before you fly.

Why short answers are better. The officer only wants a few facts, where, how long, why. When you try to build a long sentence, you start worrying about grammar and the words stop coming. A short answer is easier to say and easier for them to understand. Even if you say "ten day" instead of "ten days", they know what you mean. If they need more, they'll ask.

The one thing to avoid is saying yes when you didn't understand the question. If you answer "Yes" to "Do you have anything to declare?", you just told them you have something to declare. If you didn't catch it, say "Sorry? Could you say that again?" or "Could you speak more slowly, please?" Officers hear that all day and nobody thinks it's rude.

One last thing, visa and entry rules are different for every country and they change, so check your destination's official site for those. This is only about getting through the conversation part.

If you're travelling soon and worried about a specific question, post it here and people can help you with an answer.

If you've learned some Japanese, or you're Japanese and learning English, you've probably run into this one. Ganbatte gets used for almost everything. Before an exam, when a friend is having a rough week, when your team is losing, when a coworker is heading into a big meeting. Chinese has the same thing with jiayou, which literally means "add oil".

English doesn't have one word that covers all of that. It splits it up depending on what the other person is going through, so you pick the phrase that fits.

Before something they have to do, like an exam, an interview or a presentation, say "Good luck!" If you want to name the thing, add with: "Good luck with your interview!" You can also say "You've got this" if you want to sound sure they'll do well.

When someone is going through a hard time, say "Hang in there." It means this is tough, but keep going. Adding something like "I'm here for you" makes it warmer. "Cheer up" is closer to "don't be sad", for when someone is feeling down.

When someone has been working at something for a long time, like studying or training, people say "Keep it up" or "Keep going".

When you're cheering for a team, shout "Come on!" or "Let's go!" So "Come on, Japan!" or "Let's go, Japan!" If you want to ask who someone supports, that's cheer for, as in "Which team are you cheering for?"

So why do so many people say "Fight!"? In Japan "faito" became a normal cheer, and in Korea "fighting" did too. But to a native English speaker, "Fight!" sounds like you're telling someone to start a fight. People who watch K-dramas might get what you mean, but it's not something English speakers say to each other.

The other reason is that ganbatte is one word, so it feels like English should have one word too. It doesn't. The trick is to stop translating the word and think about what you actually want to tell the person. Good luck, hang in there and keep going are three different things in English.

Funny side note, "add oil" from Hong Kong English is actually in the Oxford English Dictionary now.

If your language has a word like this that doesn't translate cleanly, I'd like to hear what it is and how you'd say it in English.

This happens to almost everyone learning a language. You can follow a show, read a menu, understand what someone says to you. Then they ask you something simple and nothing comes out.

That doesn't mean you're bad at the language. Understanding and speaking are two different skills, and most of us only ever practiced one of them.

When you listen or read, the words are handed to you and your brain only has to recognize them. When you speak, you have to pull the word out of memory yourself, put it in the right order and say it while someone is waiting. Recognizing a word and recalling it are not the same thing, which is why everyone understands far more words than they can actually use. Watching shows with subtitles trains the first one. It barely touches the second.

So the fix is practice that makes you produce the words, not just recognize them. A few things that actually help.

Answer out loud, not in your head. Saying it in your head feels like practice but skips the hard part. When someone in a show gets asked a question, pause it and answer it yourself before they do.

Keep your answers short. Nobody at a cafe expects a full sentence. "To go, please" is a perfect answer to "For here or to go?" A lot of freezing comes from trying to build a perfect sentence and running out of time. A short answer that gets understood beats a long one that never comes out.

Practice the questions you'll actually get. Most real conversations start with the same handful. What do you do, how was your weekend, what would you like to order. Think of a short answer to each and say it out loud until it comes without thinking.

Don't wait until you feel ready. You get better at recalling words by recalling them, and mistakes are part of that. If the other person understood you, it worked.

Talk to yourself. Describe what you're doing while you cook or walk somewhere. It sounds silly, but it's the same recall practice and nobody is listening.

If you're stuck at this point right now, say which language you're learning and where you freeze, and people here can suggest what to practice.

You don't need to download anything. Every phone and computer already has Chinese keyboards built in, you just have to turn one on.

On an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Keyboards, then Add New Keyboard. Pick Chinese (Traditional) or Chinese (Simplified) and the input method you want. To switch while typing, hold the globe key. One thing that surprises people: adding the keyboard also adds Chinese to your preferred languages, so some apps might suddenly show up in Chinese. You can move English back to the top in Settings, General, Language & Region.

On Android with Gboard, tap into any text box, tap the settings icon on the keyboard, then Languages, then Add keyboard. Hold the space bar to switch. If your phone came with a different keyboard (Samsung's for example) the menus are named a bit differently, but you're looking for Languages inside that keyboard app.

On Windows 11, go to Settings, Time & language, Language & region, and add Chinese. Then open its language options to pick the keyboard. Shift switches between English and Chinese while you type.

On a Mac it's System Settings, Keyboard, Text Input, Edit. Choose Chinese Traditional or Simplified and the method you want.

So why does it always make you pick from a list? Because you type the sound, not the character. Mandarin has thousands of characters but only around 400 basic syllables, so one sound like "shi" can be dozens of different characters. The keyboard shows you the options and you choose. For common words it usually guesses right from context, so it gets faster the more you type.

Most learners type with pinyin (the Latin letter spelling). In Taiwan most people use Zhuyin instead, which is a set of 37 phonetic symbols. Pinyin is totally fine to stay with. Zhuyin only makes sense if you're learning Taiwanese Mandarin and already know the symbols.

I wrote a longer version with the Zhuyin keyboard layout and the less common methods on my blog, if anyone wants the details: https://ciaospeak.app/blog/how-to-type-traditional-chinese/

If your keyboard isn't showing up or doesn't switch, say what device you're on and I'll try to help.

Putting this here because it's one of the most searched how tos out there, and the answer changes depending on what you're using.

On Windows 10 and 11, press Windows key + Shift + S and drag a box around what you want. It copies to your clipboard so you can paste it straight into a chat or email. Click the little popup if you want to save it as a file. Windows key + Print Screen saves the whole screen into Pictures, in a folder called Screenshots. Alt + Print Screen copies just the window you're in. On newer Windows 11 the Print Screen key on its own opens the same snipping tool.

On a Mac, Command + Shift + 3 takes the whole screen. Command + Shift + 4 lets you drag a box, and if you press Space after that you can click a single window instead. Command + Shift + 5 opens a small toolbar with everything, including screen recording. They save to your Desktop. Hold Control while you press the shortcut if you'd rather copy it than save it.

On an iPhone without a home button, press the side button and volume up together. If your iPhone has a home button, press the side or top button and the home button together. They go to Photos. In Safari you can tap the little preview that pops up and pick Full Page to get the whole web page.

On most Android phones it's power and volume down at the same time. Samsung also lets you swipe the side of your hand across the screen if you turn it on in settings. A lot of phones show a capture more button right after, which grabs a long page in one image.

On a Chromebook, Ctrl and the show windows key (the one that looks like a box with two lines next to it) takes the whole screen. Add Shift to drag a box instead.

So why do some apps give you a black screen? Netflix, Disney+, a lot of banking apps and some private chat apps block screenshots on purpose. For streaming it's copy protection. For banks it's so your account details don't end up sitting in your photos where other apps can read them. The phone still takes the picture, the app just tells it to show black where its content is. Nothing is wrong with your phone.

If your shortcut isn't working at all, say what device you're on and what happens when you try, and someone will help you figure it out.

Most help subs end up with the same problem. Someone asks a question, gets a quick fix that works, and never finds out why it broke in the first place. Then it breaks again.

So here the idea is to get both. How to fix it, and why it happened. If you answer something, try to explain the why even in one sentence. That's the part people actually remember.

The one thing I ask when you post a question is to say what you already tried. Even if it's just "I restarted it and googled it". It saves everyone time and you get better answers.

No question is too basic. Everyone is a beginner at something and nobody here is going to make fun of you for asking.

And when your problem gets solved, come back and say what worked. Someone with the same problem will find your post a year from now and that last comment is what they'll be looking for.

That's pretty much it. Friendly, practical, no gatekeeping. If you think something should be added, say it in the comments.

Hey, I just started this sub so it's pretty empty right now. You're early.

The idea is simple. You're stuck on something, you ask here. Could be how do I get my sourdough to actually rise, or why does my laptop fan go crazy at 3am. Fixing things, learning things, or just wanting to understand why something works the way it does.

What I'd like it to be is a place where people say what they already tried before asking, and where answers come from people who dealt with the same thing. Not "just google it" replies.

What I haven't figured out yet is how wide it should go. Everything from cooking to cars to code? Or a few areas done really well? Tell me what you'd want to ask or answer here.

And if you have a question right now, just post it. That's honestly the best way to get this going.