What a joke. "Scientific" studies like this are hugely damaging to the public's understanding of science and their health choices. Terrible for science as well, considering the vast majority of scientists don't even actually know what a P-value is, they cannot reliably judge garbage like this.
> I think it's dangerous for programmers to focus on building a thing rather than serving their users.
It seems Mastodon is an example of programmers actually building something with real ambitions rather than just trying to make big money by trying to form an addiction for their users.
Sure, and that influences the choice of metrics. I think chasing things like user active minutes (UAM) can lead to pathological development. But for a social product, "real ambitions" must include people a) using it, and b) being happy they are using it. But my point is that features and signups can't be ends in themselves, as those are not real ambitions.
I understand what you're saying. The only counter point I'd put forward is it's purposefully playing to the ego mind for attention - arguably deserved or otherwise - to draw more people to trying it out. Likewise, you have to start somewhere. Hopefully over time they can start measuring and reporting on metrics with more meaning to them, which will require them also explaining that meaning to educate people - which will give us all an understanding as to what their understanding is. I still don't feel I understand the ecosystem well enough to say if I like it or not, I do like observing different models though to see how and if they work, what problems they solve or don't - so I am enjoying Mastodon seemingly gaining traction; it at minimum leads to discussion on HN.
Sure. Vanity metrics can be great for marketing or generating reasons to celebrate. There's nothing wrong with saying, "Wow, we have a million registered users!" as long as they also recognize that registration is only the first step. In a retrospective like this, I want to see them doing both.
For me, RSS is by far the best way to access web content.
I've tried some self hosted RSS readers over the years but I've stayed with FreshRSS[1] for the last year. It has been a marvelous experience. Zero trouble, zero administrative burden. Self-hosted bliss. Best of all is the fact that it uses a flat file DB so it can easily be backed up, moved around and migrated. Can not recommend it enough. Also, it's PHP, so works on any cheap shared hosting. That's how I use it.
One of the best things about it is escaping the algorithmically curated feeds.
Every and service that I use has an RSS feed, except for Twitter. I use RSS-Bridge[2] (self hosted too) to follow users. RSS-Bridge[2] will give you feeds for just about every service you can think of.
If you don't find a feed for a site, sometimes you just have to dig a little. You learn at which URIs the most commons CMSes presents their Atom/RSS feeds (hello /feed/).
> Apple puts the user in charge how an mobile OS should look like or should behave and this is the biggest differentiating factor between iOS vs other platforms.
The user in charge? Interesting. I have both an iPhone and an Android handset. It has been this way for years (work is the reason). I believe I will never be able to fully accept the iPhone.
It seems like it wants to make a lot of (often stupid) decisions for me. When I want to connect my phone via cable to transfer some files it is always a hassle. I can't sideload apps that somehow goes against Apple's will. As an example, NewPipe is a blessing on Android if you enjoy YouTube (not available via Google Play). The fact that full phone backups are done via an video/audio player (iTunes) makes zero sense.
I feel trapped and irritated when I use the iPhone. When I use the Android phone I feel like the OS trusts me to make my own decisions.
I should perhaps mention that I chose to run Android without a Google account or Gapps. I've gone from Cyanogen via Copperhead to Lineage. Ironically, Android without Google is the best phone experience I've ever had.
Backups do not require iTunes at all. You can backup and restore to iCloud automatically. I have not used iTunes for backup for a long time. Also if you want to use iTunes you do not need to have the phone plugged into anything. Having iTunes open and have the phone connected to the same network via Wifi is all you need to do to sync.
> Also if you want to use iTunes you do not need to have the phone plugged into anything.
Titanium Backup on Android allows for pretty much seamless updates across ROMs (if you know what you're doing). Try doing the same on iOS... oh, sorry. There's no choice in OS vendors there.
That is the key difference. What if I don’t want to be the sysadmin for my phone? What if I don’t want to root my phone? What if I prefer things to just work out of box?
It's about choice. 2 billion people with Androids aren't sysadmins. The phones work fine out of the box. The parent likes choice, while some people don't miss it. No need for strawman arguments.
Do they? Is there a one touch full device backup solution for Android that doesn’t involve rooting the phone or flashing custom ROM? Is there a way to easily sync my sessages to other devices[1]?
The two billion people do no flash custom ROMs or root their devices. They do not even get sucurity patches on time. But they try to use their device just the way one would use an iPhone — with almost zero customisation. So they end up with a phone which doesn’t do everything it should straight out of the box and is vulnerable for most of its lifetime, for the sake of choices/cusomizability they would never use.
I you are talking about the choice of OEMs, I agree. It is not ideal that Apple is the only iOS vendor[2]. But the benefits, IMO, outweigh the problems.
[1] Messages for web is a recent advancement.
[2] While we are on the subject of multiple OEMs, I’d prefer if OEMs followed the Windows model where they can install a few apps and tweak things a bit, but can’t (do not?) make drastic changes to the OS. I’d prefer to live in a world where I don’t have to worry about whether the Android Phone I am looking at is more vulnerable than the others.
The first part of the comment is useful info. The second is pretty useless. There is zero need for this to turn into vim vs. emacs which is what everyone of these threads seems to turn into lately.
>t seems like it wants to make a lot of (often stupid) decisions for me. When I want to connect my phone via cable to transfer some files it is always a hassle. I can't sideload apps that somehow goes against Apple's will. As an example, NewPipe is a blessing on Android if you enjoy YouTube (not available via Google Play). The fact that full phone backups are done via an video/audio player (iTunes) makes zero sense.
This is what bothers me too. On an iOS device, you have to do everything in an app, and if the app doesn't support what you want to do, it's just not possible. Want to take an mp3 file from the web and play it with iTunes. Not easy. Got some audio books that you want to load in and play in your podcast player? Not easy. Everything has to go through each app, and there's no way to move data from one app to another, unless the apps have specifically setup that hand-off.
Seems like a questionable way of learning how to power down.
> […] I sought out Colleen Russo Johnson, a co-director of UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers. Johnson did her doctoral work on kids’ media and serves as a consultant to studios that produce children’s programming. […] even in relatively limited doses, these videos can affect young toddlers’ development. If kids watch a lot of fast-paced videos, they come to expect that that is how videos should work, which could make other educational videos less compelling and effective. “If kids get used to all the crazy, distracting, superfluous visual movement, then they may start requiring that to hold their attention,” Johnson said.
If you're interested in YouTube success stories, Swedish Babblarna[1] makes children's videos and their most popular video has 64 million views. Many of their popular videos have over 10 million views (about the population of Sweden). The difference is that they're only in Swedish.
> the study is very small – only 11 Yekwana individuals over the age of 40 took part in the research