> I recently overheard a very smart user struggle to find how to mute a group
> you end up having to search the internet for a recipe as to what place to click to find which flydropping menu
I remember when software was supposed to remove pain points in my life, but now I'm not so sure. I often contemplate whether switching from Spotify to the CD player in my car will save me time, but I'm fairly certain it will save me aggravation.
Back in the day I had an alarm clock. I set it to go off at a specific time and it did. The only failure mode was the battery running out.
Then I got a Nokia phone. It worked the same as the alarm clock, but I could even set myself notifications and what not. Worked great!
Then I got an Android phone and sometimes the alarms just wouldn't work.
And now today I'm using another Android phone and I give it about 80-20 odds that the alarm works correctly. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it does a quick alarm for a few seconds and stops. And I don't know why.
Notifications on this are even worse. Sometimes the notifications are so unnoticeable that sitting next to the phone with headphones on will not actually alert me to the notification.
I don't see others ever complain about it so I feel like I'm somehow missing something big but I don't know what. Notifications and alarms on modern phones seem extremely unreliable to me.
My father was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack. We were staying with him in shifts, and when I was "off", I watched the last episode of succession. I made sure my phone was on the chair next to me and the notification / volume was all the way up.
After the episode he was dead and I missed the whole thing b/c somewhere along the way "press volume button at home screen until it was full" did not actually turn notifications on anymore. I've never been so mad at UI/UX.
Turning on ringer / notification volume requires pressing volume button once, then clicking the equalizer, then dragging the notification volume up to desired level. There's no indication anywhere that notifications are silenced. I have a google pixel 4.
I encountered this kind of inconsistency with my Android phone, too (Samsung Galaxy S22). I think every time my alarm failed to go off it was because the phone had automatically updated its OS and restarted overnight, and background apps like the alarm wouldn't run until I entered my pin to finalize the phone's startup process.
I've usually used my $3-4 alarm clock for waking me up in the morning, and then my phone timer for naps.
Now that I just took a closer look, I was able to find a way to disable automatic updates on the phone. (I had to find and tap "Software update > System Update Preferences > Smart Update" in the Settings app.) But I like the alarm clock, so I'll probably keep using it anyway. Better that my phone isn't the first thing I interact with every day.
One thing that Apple has got right with the iphone is: every time it's installed an update over night, restarted, and is waiting for me to enter my PIN to unlock it, the alarm still worked.
Same here, switched to a physical alarm clock after inconsistent alarm behavior post OS updates on my Samsung S22.
I disabled Smart Update after reading your post but considering my phone used to prompt me to update, then started doing them on its own - I wouldn't trust that setting to stick.
I have S22 but don't use alarms much. However, my wife has S23, and this very issue is something I've been banging my head on just last week! Her alarm clock would occasionally not ring, but instead the phone would give a few beeps. My wife has a bunch of stacked alarms in 10 to 30 minute intervals, and I've listened to all of them going "beep beep beep <dead>".
I don't know what's going on there; I've read hints that for some people, their phone thinks it's in a call, and manifest such behavior in that situation. Some reports blame Facebook Messenger. What I know for sure is that it isn't restart or update related.
And yes, it's beyond ridiculous for this to be happening in the first place. It might just become a poster child of how idiotic tech has become. For the past decade or so, it feels that each generation of hardware and software, across the board, is just fucking things up more - even things you thought were so simple and well-understood you couldn't possibly fuck them up, like alarms or calculator apps.
Time zones. I've had trouble while traveling when my phone decides to change time zone, shifting the alarm times unrequested ways. I would appreciate a phone that could properly understand GMT in a way that would allow me to set an alarm at a specific GMT time regardless of which timezone I step into. (yes, I am sure there are XYZ apps that can do this, but I don't see why the base OS cannot handle this without installing more apps.)
One problem with Android phones is that they're all different, sometimes greatly so, because the different phone vendors customize them with their own software, much of which is utter garbage. The stock alarm app on mine has never failed me either, but with some other phone, who knows?
If I had a choice between my mom's 30+ year old windy-uppy egg timer vs. the abomination that is the digital interface on my stove, I would take the egg timer every single time.
Unfortunately my sister keeps stealing it (back) every time she visits!
It's _so_ much better than my phone as a general duty kitchen timer. The best thing is I can just leave it going off and it'll just run down the spring and stop. _So_ much better an experience than needing to get my phone out of my pocket when my hands are covered in whatever I'm cooking.
in the kitchen is where I've found voice timers to be the best. there's an unlimited number of them, I can name them, and I don't have to touch anything to set them. which is great because I'm not very good so my hands get messy all the time. "hey Siri/Google/Alexa/Bixby set egg timer for 3 minutes"
A long time ago, on my first Android phone, the alarm used to fail on me.
Since then, all of the failure modes I knew about were fixed. Now I think the only thing that makes an alarm fail on Android is if you run out of battery charge. Of course, that doesn't make me any less paranoid about it.
But anyway, the notifications seem to only get less reliable with time.
The iPhone alarm app is an oddly circuitous process as well. I just don’t ever trust that I’ve set it correctly. Just let me type the time and move on. It’s also unclear if silent mode will override the alarm having sound.
Recently switched from Android to iPhone and was dismayed that Apple doesn't have the "Alarm set to 8 hours from now" confirmation. Such a simple and effective UX. Overall I was frustrated with Android but it gets a few things right.
No, I want to set an alarm at 6:30 am because I know I need to be at work early at 8am tomorrow. The alarm time is not derived from the current time in any way. "8 hours from now" is helping me verify that I didn't mess up the day or am/pm.
If I used timers I would have to carefully subtract the desired wake up time from the current time. It's not the same at all.
I have a recurring problem where my Apple Watch won't sound the alarm if my sleeve or blanket is covering the screen. Like it won't even do haptic feedback. This has made it utterly useless as an alarm that's supposed to wake me up.
I had the other issue. I was at a standup comedy show with my phone appropriately silenced because I knew I could ignore the alarm this once.
And the alarm still went off making noise. I managed to turn it off superquick such that the comedian got as far as looking in my general direction and saying I was lucky I was fast because he couldn't pick me out exactly.
I'm in a similar boat. I set everything (I think) correctly and fail to hear notifications. But only sometimes. When I check the settings they are subtly different.
I think it's something to do with how I listen to podcasts but haven't been able to work it out.
I hope you do understand that a system that can play almost every song ever recorded is going to have a more complex and error-prone user experience than a static 50 songs.
Using the same logic you might say that people shouldn't be allowed to drive until they are 24. Statistically far more lives would have been saved yesterday if we'd only simply restrict more liberties based on age alone.
Worth discussing! You might also suggest that driving tests should be harder/longer/repeated, specialized based on different types of driving, and license privileges restricted based on years/miles safely driven. We already do it to truck drivers. Remember, most societies have already crossed over into treating driving on public infrastructure as a privilege, not a right/liberty.
The theory is that there may be civilizations, or remnants (AIs), that have a vested interest in removing possible competition for resources, or in the case of the AIs, have been instructed to snuff out signs of life for the same reason.
If you are the first one and want to make sure to prevent all future advanced civilizations from evolving, you send out von Neumann probes. You can tell them to build relativistic kill missiles and destroy all planets. No planets = no new civs, probably.
There is no such thing. I think physics and economics dictates that you can't really be advanced enough for interstellar industry and yet backwards enough to have the type of resource scarcity which would compel interstellar resource competition.
If these aliens can not only travel but do resource extraction at interstellar distances, that implies having highly advanced fusion or annihilation reactors.
Minerals are just chemical reaction products, and therefore necessarily cost negligible energy to synthesize compared to interstellar travel. It's easier to just make the minerals you need.
Isotopes are finite in number, and we already know and largely understand all the ones are likely to ever be useful. "Island of Stability" nuclei may or may not be possible beyond that, but even if they're not only possible but also useful, they will almost certainly have halflives short enough that they will also have to be synthesized rather than mined. So, there's no competing over planets either way.
At the lower end of the tech levels where you can have interstellar industry, the only "amazingly high-energy isotope/mineral" is hydrogen fusion fuel. There's nothing in the Earth's crust or core that could be useful for them, because terrestrial planets are made out of spent nuclear detritus. Though maybe they can bring a big fusion candle and just run off with Jupiter, if they forget about their own gas giants and stars.
At the higher end of the tech scale, even hydrogen stops being a resource. Matter annihilation (e.g. via microscopic black holes) means that it doesn't matter what element or chemical your fuel is made out of when you're converting it directly to energy.
I think any resource competition argument for "dark forest" exopolitics really undersells how vast space is, and how abundant resources are. A single Jupiter with basic fusion reactors could easily sustain quadrillions of humans in enormously inefficient utopian living conditions for trillions of years. [1] It's going to need to get a lot more crowded before fighting over minerals is something that any sane interstellar civilization would worry about.
> If these aliens can not only travel but do resource extraction at interstellar distances, that implies having highly advanced fusion or annihilation reactors.
No, it doesn't. You don't know what you don't know. Aliens can have tech based on some rare isotope/mineral/whatever.
> Minerals are just chemical reaction products, and therefore necessarily cost negligible energy to synthesize compared to interstellar travel. It's easier to just make the minerals you need.
Unless these minerals require special rare isotopes or some other material we're not yet aware.
> Isotopes are finite in number, and we already know and largely understand all the ones are likely to ever be useful.
No, we do not. Google "island of stability".
> At the lower end of the tech levels where you can have interstellar industry, the only "amazingly high-energy isotope/mineral" is hydrogen fusion fuel.
That statement isn't a fact. Unless you magically synthesized all possible isotopes and materials. Which you didn't.
> There's nothing in the Earth's crust or core that could be useful for them
But maybe there was, that's the argument.
> Matter annihilation (e.g. via microscopic black holes)
Again, you're talking about known science. Not everything. You don't know what you don't know.
> A single Jupiter with basic fusion reactors could easily sustain quadrillions of humans in enormously inefficient utopian living conditions for trillions of years.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with the argument we're having. It doesn't disprove that there might have been some rare resource (or maybe it's still here, we just didn't get to it).
Properties like the binding energies of molecules and nuclei are a direct and well-understood consequence of the laws of physics. Materials in the real world aren't like Star Trek, where dilithium and the omega molecule can be treated as an infinite energy source because the name sounds cool. In order for a material to be an energy source, that energy has to come from somewhere.
You can only put so much strain on a chemical bond before the electrons decide to stop sticking together anymore. You can only get as much energy out as the mass change from splitting an atom. You can only store as much energy in a heavy nucleus as was originally put into it by the supernova that created it. Anything else would violate basic laws of physics, to such a degree that everything in our universe would presumably immediately cease to exist.
> No, we do not. Google "island of stability".
I already addressed the hypothetical island of stability in the sentence immediately after the one you quoted. The term is relative. They are expected to have longer halflives than the instantly decaying superheavies like ununoctium, but even the longer predictions of their decay properties have them disappearing far too quickly to be mined as minerals.
I'll add now that there's also no reason to believe that island of stability substances, if they even exist, will have any more particularly useful or powerful properties than any other heavy metal. When was the last time you needed to use Mendelevium for something?
> Yes, but that has nothing to do with the argument we're having. It doesn't disprove that there might have been some rare resource (or maybe it's still here, we just didn't get to it).
It disproves the idea that there might be some useful resource which you would want to go conquering for. The resources available in any star system are already more than any conceivable civilization could ever use.
The other side of this is the difficulty of interstellar travel. Reaching relativistic speeds implies turning a significant fraction of your vehicle's mass into energy. With the ability to create and manipulate such power densities, you're better off just synthesizing whatever you need.
> No, it doesn't. You don't know what you don't know.
> But maybe there was, that's the argument.
> Again, you're talking about known science. Not everything. You don't know what you don't know.
If the argument for suggesting a complete break from the known laws of physics can be summarized as "You don't know what you don't know", then you may as well argue that the universe is secretly controlled by a giant space cat which will reward us with salmon if we all shine laser pointers in our retinas every third Thursday.
"Maybe there was" is not actually an argument, in the sense that there is neither anything specifically substantiating it which can be examined, nor any falsifiable conditions which may disprove it.
All your arguments are basically "we already know all of physics, there's nothing new to learn". Which is just wrong.
And then you engage in obvious logical fallacies like talking about mendelevium, as if it's exactly the same as hypothetical stable isotopes from the island of stability. You have no idea what you're talking about, you have not produced those isotopes, no human did.
And then you engaged in completely dishonest straw man with the space cat. I never claimed that there are such isotopes or other used yet unknown natural materials, I just suggested that there may have been some.
Considering how dishonest you are, I won't respond any more.
My argument is that based on everything which we do already know, it is unlikely that any material with the physical and economic properties like what you are suggesting can exist, and any "suggestion" that such a material does exist is completely arbitrary. Russell's teapot, and all that. There's plenty new to learn, but it'll probably be closer to strangelets and dark matter in exotic conditions than "baryonic rocks but amazingly shiny".
The entire point of "science" is that you can and should make reasonable predictions based on past observations. E.G. Mendelevium. Calling that a "obvious logical fallacy" is… Disturbing, frankly.
You know, I've yet to see you make a single point that's based on anything more than "Maybe", "No, it doesn't", or "How dishonest you are". Lots of rhetoric. Not much else.
It is your choice to interpret disagreement and contradictory information as "dishonest". Have fun with that.
I think the 70's gas rationing in the US was another example of where price controls absolutely stomped on consumers.
I'm not sure if there are any examples to the contrary, but there are surely people who benefit as, say, 'winning' a rent controlled apartment (but I wouldn't necessarily consider that those people were ever actually consumers in the market to begin with).
A lot of interesting policy options in that case - thanks for sharing.
I think an evolution of government is necessary, likely where a relatively blank slate is needed to flush out the influence of regulatory capture - and most important where each political party comes forward to present their actual party platform that will update/remove what existing laws in place - basically a version controlled repo like Git facilitates. This way there will be an exact breakdown, exactly in the place of existing laws for the layperson et al to go through it in an easy UI/UX; along with commentary and conversation - similar to how the Genius.com allowing line-by-line threaded commentary.
I tend to think that cargo cult programming and resume-driven development are the intellectual path of least resistance. Perhaps it's analogous to, "I'd rather rewrite this than understand how it works", because that requires less intellectual effort. Quality engineering is not achieved by the intellectually lazy, from what I've seen.
You're not wrong, but when you're inheriting a convoluted 50 file React shitfest that could have been a single HTML page and 20 lines of javascript... what are you going to do? Invest time in understanding that, or radically simplify in 20% of the time it takes to grok what you get thrown at you?
No, a single HTML page and 20 lines of Javascript is clear cut. But there's a _lot_ of instances where it's not that way, and still rewrites are being proposed.
Hint: because almost every web developer is a junior who doesn't know what they're doing.
Proof: that's literally what a significant positive growth rate of an occupation means - if the doubling period is N years, then at any given moment, half the workforce has N years of experience or less. I don't remember the estimate for webdev, but I think N was something between 3 to 5 years.
Society is already structured to handle a population where approximately 50% of adults cannot read beyond the 6th grade level. For all the hemming and hawing and throwing money at education, it might be the best we ever get. I'd venture that our society would continue to operate just fine if that number went up to 75% of the population, considering the pareto rule about the percentage of workers who are actually productive and so on.
I also don't have an absolute opinion, but the math of the simulation hypothesis does appear to check out and it's not difficult to believe, scientifically, that intelligences dramatically superior to human-level are possible.
(1) is likely achievable if we gain a better understanding of biology and the human nervous system, which seems likely given a timeline of continuous scientific progress. (2) is even easier for me to grasp as we already know how much energy the human brain uses and we have billions of them now. So far we're not aware of any serious show stoppers for this scenario, but we might be talking timelines of 100's of years.
:) can I please get an explanation why it's obvious to you that there is not correlation between singing and dancing ability? I'm genuinely curious
EDIT: I can't dance nor sing for shit so I guess I'm a living example of falling victim of some sort of logical fallacy.
I don't think there is an obvious correlation or obvious absence of correlation. In some sense, it's heuristics all the way down; but where one might see an obvious correlation, the one who is applying critical thinking sees only a possible correlation.
You didn't provide any argument supporting your assertions. So your critical thinking is not really that critical, because you can't really defense your claim.
Okay,singing requires manipulation of your voice (diaphragm + airways. You also need to know the correct posture to keep,but its not 100% necessary).
Dancing requires manipulation of your feet, legs, hips, shoulders, arms, hands, and head. Sometimes your belly and butt as well.
Just having a sense of rhythm isn't good enough. You can bob along to a rhythm with 100% accuracy, and not be "dancing." You need to know how to move your body in a way that is rhythmically accurate and pleasing to the eye, coordinating different body parts in alternating, but synchronized patterns. It's a totally different skill set. Musicians,for example, are often very reluctant dancers.
But sense of rhythm and good hearing is required to both singing and dancing. So there is a common skill. Singing requires manipulation of your body (diaphragm) and so does dancing, so your muscle coordination must be good, again common skill. And it just happens that there is not a single famous singer that behaves on scene like a typical non-dancer you can observe in a club.
So obviously there is some correlation between singing and dancing. It might not be very strong but it's obviously there and categorically saying that there is no such correlation what-so-ever is really strange.
There are a lot of famous singers that don't dance on stage. Neil Young, Kurt Cobain, Geddy Lee, Bob Dylan. Having a sense of rhythm and a good ear just aren't enough to make you a good dancer.
Your examples of singers that don't dance on the stage don't prove that they can't, but just that they don't want to.
I was asking about someone who is a well known singer but actually tries to dance but really can't and it shows.
And again, we are talking about correlation, and not exact match of skills. So it wouldn't mean that a great singer is automatically a _great_ dancer, too. Just that if someone is really good at singing he is likely to be pretty good at dancing but not necessarily exactly as good. Maybe that's part I didn't articulate clearly earlier.
And you were with them when they casually danced in clubs and you saw they actually can't dance? Or you are around that that kind of musicians that actually never ever dance for fun at their leisure?
Went to many music festivals, clubs, dances with them. They couldn't dance. They weren't incapable of learning how to dance. They just weren't automatically good at dancing because they were good at playing music.
Aren't you completely discounting the friction inherent in ownership of a vehicle? Humans tend to find clever ways to justify their irrational decisions, but there is absolutely more friction involved in owning a large truck that is used to haul cargo once a year versus having the same cargo delivered once a year.
Two things. First, the time of friction is important. Pretty much all friction points with vehicle ownership are distributed throughout the year, *and are amortized across all uses of the vehicle*. When you want the vehicle to haul the mulch you press the button and you get bacon. Contrast with renting a truck to pick up mulch, or renting a restaurant for a party, or putting your parents in a hotel. Those friction points happen every single time you want to do the fun thing, and happen when you want to do the fun thing. Press button, pay tax, *then* get bacon. There's a big psychological difference there.
Second, I think you're framing it as {truck + self pickup} vs {no vehicle + delivered}, but I think the more likely comparison is {truck + self pickup} vs {sedan + delivered}. Nobody's going to get a truck as their only vehicle that they'll literally only use a few times a year. They'll be choosing between truck and sedan as their daily driver (or truck as second vehicle). In the replacement case in particular (truck vs sedan) the friction delta is very small.
If you own the vehicle and it breaks you have to fix it - but most of the time it isn't broken. You need to pay insurance, but that comes in a regular bill, and so is easy to budget. In return for this you get a vehicle ready to use when you want to.
If you don't own the vehicle and need one there is a lot more friction: you need to figure out where to get a vehicle. More than once I've gone to get one and found they were sold out and so I couldn't rent when I needed one. More than once I've gone to get one and discovered the fine print didn't let me use it for what I wanted.
Yeah, the people acting like carshares and rentals are low-friction feel like they live in a different universe than the one I lived for over a decade.
Open the app. Oh no, the car that's near my apartment isn't available when I need it. Ok what else is around? Ehhh the BMW is pretty expensive and unnecessary. Ah here's a Honda... but it's a 25 minute walk away.
Ok so I have to walk 25 minutes just to start the car. Then I can go where I want to - but if I bring anything back I'll have to find street parking in front of my apartment building to unload. Then I have to bring the car back to its spot, and then walk another 25 minutes back home.
Oh and don't forget to gas it up, because unlike owning a car, with a carshare more often than not you have to gas it up on the way back to avoid a penalty. You roll your eyes slightly at not just having to drop by the gas station but literally paying for the rental time to do it. But it's fine, whatever.
Like, I get that lots of people find this to be fine (I did, for over a decade!) - but it's anything but low-friction.
Traditional rentals are even worse - unlike carshares their pickup/dropoff locations are nowhere near you, so now you have to think about an Uber!
Where is the friction in owning the large truck? Paying for gas?? Finding parking?
(US-centric view.)
If you live in a major urban center, sure. Paying hundreds of dollars a month for a parking spot would quickly convince me that car ownership was a bad idea. Otherwise, at least in the US, cities spread out to make room for the habits of their inhabitants. There's going to be easy parking where you live because that's what all of your neighbors want.
Of course, I agree that you should just have the deliveries... but I'm not seeing this as an argument why. The costs are not great enough.
You’re paying considerably more all of the time – the vehicle is 2-3 times more expensive to buy, fuel costs are similar, every component will cost more to repair, and, yes, most buyers will have to worry about finding a parking spot on a regular basis. Insurance and, often, registration will cost more, too.
Now, if you’re in the 20% of truck buyers who really need them those are necessary costs but most people are buying them as a lifestyle accessory.
There’s also a fairly large group of people who live in urban settings who think they need all of that but are paying more than the cost of renting on the few times they actually do. Those people have been very good to the manufacturers’ profit margins but unfortunately all of the extra pollution and lowered safety affects their neighbors as well.
That's the key people are missing, it's classic upselling. You're not comparing "nothing" to "truck" you're comparing "ok I get this vehicle that does X" to "or I get this other one that does X+Y".
This is the real reason the SUV has eaten everything, because the so-called "crossover SUVs" and other small ones are just fancy hatchbacks, and a car with a square butt will always be more useful than a similar sized car with a trunk.
The question was a large truck, but there’s also a complication here which might be fading with high interest rates: low rates, pandemic shortages, and improved wages meant a lot of buyers went upscale and that pushed the average truck sale price north of $60k, with a lot of luxury models in the $80k range. That’s what I had in mind for my comment.
I think gas and parking are good examples. If your truck has had 30% less fuel efficiency than a car, then you're going to spend 30% more of your time at the gas pump, huffing fumes, than a car owner for exactly the same outcome in terms of utilization.
Parking is similar. I can fit a small 2-door car into x% more parking spots in a city than a larger truck. So you can spend x% more of your time looking for parking spots. Maybe you're still looking for a spot when the car owner has already completed the errand.
As someone else mentioned, this friction is amortized over time so for some the psychological cost is lower, but for those who understand the principle of opportunity cost, it is a very real and tangible cost of ownership.
I remember when software was supposed to remove pain points in my life, but now I'm not so sure. I often contemplate whether switching from Spotify to the CD player in my car will save me time, but I'm fairly certain it will save me aggravation.