I purchased almost every phone Samsung made up to the Note 3, which I still use today. I'm on my fourth replacement battery, which happens to be a Zero Lemon 10,000mAh.
I'm simply too poor and unwilling to contribute to the e-waste problem to purchase a complex computing device without a user-replaceable battery. I simply cannot justify buying a new device every 18 months as the battery loses significant capacity.
So to a business owner, _no_ commodity is more valuable than feedback.
People have a bad meal at a restaurant, and 90% of the time, leave without saying a word. The business owner is perplexed, and eventually goes out of business.
"The roast beef here is terrible."
Six words could have saved his business.
The same is true for every business.
AC is certainly free to stop reading, and AC knows that. You're not really adding to the conversation, but you could dissuade them from providing an extremely valuable service to businesses in the future - feedback.
Well, FWIW, you might want to give a high-end bluetooth headset a shot, if you haven't.
Bose, plantronics.. anything above $50 has substantially better speaker and microphone quality than you'll find on a handset these days. It's still to great, but it's better.
It's not really a mystery. Phones used to have external antennas, and now they're not only internal but the phones themselves have mostly metal cases (because it feels so much more "premium") with a tiny plastic window for the antenna because that metal blocks the radio waves. This is textbook "form over function" design.
I'm with you against the whole form-over-function bullshit that's swept the mobile device world in the last 10 years, but I wouldn't necessarily call out internal antennas as the problem.
For one, frequencies are higher permitting smaller antennas. Voice channels are digital, and compressed, meaning lower data rates. And, quite frankly, if you can support data at megabit levels (which you can even at like -100dBm), you can support 44khz/16bit voice, let alone the unbelievable low bandwidth codecs we use.
I think it has more to do with the simple fact that people don't use voice as often, and manufacturers are putting their development effort elsewhere. This leads to problems like incorrect microphone placement, non-functioning noise cancellation, radio firmware bugs, poor process priority management, etc.
In the old days, I'd choose a phone based on how well it made calls. Now, it's literally the last thing I check, if I even check at all. Screen quality, data rates, processor performance, storage and RAM, internal sensor array and battery life are all far more important to me, and I suspect this is true for many, if not most. Even if it's not true, I think it's what manufacturer market research suggests, and so we are where we are.
Assuming a linear-ish discharge curve over a 70% discharge, 1.44Wh D cell to 18.5Wh (equivalent) C cell is not a 2x capacity increase.
I want battery technology to increase an order of magnitude every year too,... but come on. We've made enormous strides.
You, yourself, can buy low-resistance, low-self-discharge lithium ion batteries at 250Wh/kg. And they're cheap. Compare that to 30Wh/kg NiCD batteries of 30 years ago.
Not that I agree or disagree, but I've heard this argument advanced: by building a pipeline, you increase overall production cost efficiency; the supply and demand curve meet at a lower pricepoint, and oil is consumed at a higher rate.
50% of climate change gasses (methane and CO2) come from the production of meat.
So, food is (mostly) a closed cycle. While the chemical reaction that creates methane is a problem (as methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2), all of the CO2 released by us and the animals we eat comes from, ultimately, CO2 captured by plants.
Cows eat grass (or corn.. sigh), and new grass grows, capturing CO2.
Aside from being unachievable, we should be asking ourselves as a species: is it even a good idea to try?
The amount of energy we "use" (ie. convert) today will register as noise relative to what we will be using in 1,000 years from now (should we survive). We've reached the age, as a species, where we need to be focusing on the long-term, as well as the short-term. If we're to survive past the next mass extinction event, we're going to have to keep the technology advancement train a'rollin. There is no going back, and there's no reason to go back.
We should each strive to reduce our impact on the planet, our resources, and each other. We should build efficient machines, and use them efficiently. We should stop burning coal, gas, and oil, and generate our electricity through a blend of hydro, nuclear fission, solar, wind, and geothermal. These are all short-term achievable, and healthy for our civilization.
But we should not be compromising our ability to convert enormous amounts of energy, nor the effort we put into developing this technology. For one day, we're gonna need it.
One thing I never understood is why no one's come up with an ad blocker that still requests ads in the background, but doesn't display them (as an option).
Quite literally, everyone wins in that scenario. Advertisers get to feel like they're changing the world. Web sites are funded. We don't have to deal with advertisements.
And manufacturers/service providers are less likely to deal with the wrath of people like me who go out of our way to avoid products with offensive advertising. We won't know any better.
We, as members of society, need information when we choose who to befriend, who to do business with, and who to avoid. If people are not free to express themselves, we cannot make good choices.
If you're the type to avoid humor in bad taste, and you find this person offensive, you should be fighting this. Otherwise, at some point, you may find yourself emotionally attached to someone who feels this way, only to find out after the fact. When people bare their soul in a public forum, without fear of repercussion, you can observe and make decisions on how you want to interact with them in private. You can decide ahead of time.
If speaking one's mind is potentially illegal, much important information becomes unavailable as people will be unwilling to speak their minds. You cannot know someone is a racist, or someone is opposed to religious influence, or someone is against liberal governance, or someone has a problem with war. You can't know if they're neo-nazis, and you can't know if they believe politicians should be hanged for war crimes.
You may enter into relationships with these people only to find out much later that they feel a certain way.
The more deeply offended you are by speech, the more you should fight for it to be open and free.
Telegram offers every feature of WhatsApp, plus end-to-end encryption with visual signatures, arbitrary file sharing, multi-device support (including PC), is open source and the API is published.
They claim to have 40M+ users, so they're a substantial amount of the way to displacing WhatsApp already.
I want to preface this with: I'm an Android user/developer of 5 years, and have no interest in Apple devices. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I apologize for the long-winded post.
Sadly, I find Android is heading in a very bad direction.
Google has captured most of the top of the market, leaving little opportunity for growth, so it appears they've started "simplifying" the UI to capture those with little/no interest in mobile computers, those with less mental acuity or those unable/unwilling to spend a few hours learning the fundamental operating principles of a machine, young children, etc. Same direction Gnome headed in a few years back.
Can't blame them; they are a publicly held corporation, and they must grow. But, unfortunately, simplifying a user interface almost invariably makes it less useful to those who are willing to put in the time to synchronize with the machine.
Just a few more egregious examples of this in the latest Android versions:
Menu button removed
Contextual menus are a extremely powerful. On most modern OSes, right-clicking a control brings up a menu of actions related to that control. Since touchscreens lack a practical way to right-click, the menu button used to implement the equivalent functionality. Some UI designers claim it's inconsistent because you never know if the menu button is going to do anything, and that is a valid complaint. However, removing contextual menus entirely is silly. Many apps run full-screen where an overflow button is inappropriate, and when appropriate, overflow buttons needlessly take up room on the screen and enforce a display layout that isn't always appropriate for every app.
Bafflingly unusable new task switcher
If you haven't seen the new task switcher layout for 5.0, check it out. No longer can you see screen captures of your most recent 5-6 apps, but rather a confusing, battery wasting, user-interaction-required morphing list.
Google Maps feature regressions
Although not directly related to Android, it is symptomatic of Google's general new approach to mobile development. Gone are incredibly useful features like distance measure, zoom controls, sortable place search, place search compass arrows, and many other features that made the old Android maps app so great.
Where are chrome extensions? Native multiwindow support? GNU tools (instead of their godawful "toolbox")? Correctly functioning alt-tab? DNS overrides? Native image backups? Out-of-the-box viper4android? How about forcing manufacturers to add a "delete crapware" button if they want membership to the play store? Where are the extended privacy controls?
The thing is, they already have the "power users" market. So there's no reason to improve the Android core. We've all got CM, AOSP, AOKP, etc., anyway, right?
But it's frustrating, and I do hope some competition pops up to re-address the concerns of those who really use their devices.
The big deal is that it got so many things right back when no one else could figure it out, and that netted them a ton of users (which of course means that most of our friends are probably already on it.
Here are the features that won me over two years ago:
- Proper functioning chat groups that forward every message type (video, audio, locations, text, etc) to all members
- Location sharing
- The two-checkmark system (one means message reached server, two means message reached user's device)
- Zero configuration; your contacts are scanned (I get why some people have a problem with this, though), and everyone else who has WhatsApp installed appears automatically
- Audio messaging (GMRS-style)
Keep in mind, WhatsApp supported all of these features years ago. It was fast, reliable, simple to install, easy to use... it really was unique. Now everything out there supports all or at least most of this functionality, but it's too late; WhatsApp already has the user base.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, not being pedantic, but... the bullet is designed to take lives, but more specifically.
I purchased almost every phone Samsung made up to the Note 3, which I still use today. I'm on my fourth replacement battery, which happens to be a Zero Lemon 10,000mAh.
I'm simply too poor and unwilling to contribute to the e-waste problem to purchase a complex computing device without a user-replaceable battery. I simply cannot justify buying a new device every 18 months as the battery loses significant capacity.
So, it appears my next phone will be the LG G5.
Why don't any of the adblockers simply request the ads but render them off-screen?
Everyone wins. Content providers get ad revenue, and advertisers get to feel important.
.. is worth risking a few lives.. including my own.
So to a business owner, _no_ commodity is more valuable than feedback.
People have a bad meal at a restaurant, and 90% of the time, leave without saying a word. The business owner is perplexed, and eventually goes out of business.
"The roast beef here is terrible."
Six words could have saved his business.
The same is true for every business.
AC is certainly free to stop reading, and AC knows that. You're not really adding to the conversation, but you could dissuade them from providing an extremely valuable service to businesses in the future - feedback.
Like k5 all over again. :(
Man.. we're old. :(
Well, FWIW, you might want to give a high-end bluetooth headset a shot, if you haven't.
Bose, plantronics.. anything above $50 has substantially better speaker and microphone quality than you'll find on a handset these days. It's still to great, but it's better.
AMPS ran at 800-900mhz, though.
It's not really a mystery. Phones used to have external antennas, and now they're not only internal but the phones themselves have mostly metal cases (because it feels so much more "premium") with a tiny plastic window for the antenna because that metal blocks the radio waves. This is textbook "form over function" design.
I'm with you against the whole form-over-function bullshit that's swept the mobile device world in the last 10 years, but I wouldn't necessarily call out internal antennas as the problem.
For one, frequencies are higher permitting smaller antennas. Voice channels are digital, and compressed, meaning lower data rates. And, quite frankly, if you can support data at megabit levels (which you can even at like -100dBm), you can support 44khz/16bit voice, let alone the unbelievable low bandwidth codecs we use.
I think it has more to do with the simple fact that people don't use voice as often, and manufacturers are putting their development effort elsewhere. This leads to problems like incorrect microphone placement, non-functioning noise cancellation, radio firmware bugs, poor process priority management, etc.
In the old days, I'd choose a phone based on how well it made calls. Now, it's literally the last thing I check, if I even check at all. Screen quality, data rates, processor performance, storage and RAM, internal sensor array and battery life are all far more important to me, and I suspect this is true for many, if not most. Even if it's not true, I think it's what manufacturer market research suggests, and so we are where we are.
Modern atheists often have their own dogmas, and all the same problems.
There is no such thing as a "modern atheist" any more than there is such a thing as a "modern person who doesn't collect stamps."
Atheism isn't a religious choice.
Assuming a linear-ish discharge curve over a 70% discharge, 1.44Wh D cell to 18.5Wh (equivalent) C cell is not a 2x capacity increase.
I want battery technology to increase an order of magnitude every year too, ... but come on. We've made enormous strides.
You, yourself, can buy low-resistance, low-self-discharge lithium ion batteries at 250Wh/kg. And they're cheap. Compare that to 30Wh/kg NiCD batteries of 30 years ago.
Not that I agree or disagree, but I've heard this argument advanced: by building a pipeline, you increase overall production cost efficiency; the supply and demand curve meet at a lower pricepoint, and oil is consumed at a higher rate.
50% of climate change gasses (methane and CO2) come from the production of meat.
So, food is (mostly) a closed cycle. While the chemical reaction that creates methane is a problem (as methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2), all of the CO2 released by us and the animals we eat comes from, ultimately, CO2 captured by plants.
Cows eat grass (or corn.. sigh), and new grass grows, capturing CO2.
This .. is one of the best replies I've ever read on /.
.. the dictionary definition of corruption. Like, literally.
Aside from being unachievable, we should be asking ourselves as a species: is it even a good idea to try?
The amount of energy we "use" (ie. convert) today will register as noise relative to what we will be using in 1,000 years from now (should we survive). We've reached the age, as a species, where we need to be focusing on the long-term, as well as the short-term. If we're to survive past the next mass extinction event, we're going to have to keep the technology advancement train a'rollin. There is no going back, and there's no reason to go back.
We should each strive to reduce our impact on the planet, our resources, and each other. We should build efficient machines, and use them efficiently. We should stop burning coal, gas, and oil, and generate our electricity through a blend of hydro, nuclear fission, solar, wind, and geothermal. These are all short-term achievable, and healthy for our civilization.
But we should not be compromising our ability to convert enormous amounts of energy, nor the effort we put into developing this technology. For one day, we're gonna need it.
One thing I never understood is why no one's come up with an ad blocker that still requests ads in the background, but doesn't display them (as an option).
Quite literally, everyone wins in that scenario. Advertisers get to feel like they're changing the world. Web sites are funded. We don't have to deal with advertisements.
And manufacturers/service providers are less likely to deal with the wrath of people like me who go out of our way to avoid products with offensive advertising. We won't know any better.
I thought he died years ago!
Telegram is better. Open API, open source clients, multiple concurrent connections, end-to-end encryption availability..
Though it doesn't have WhatsApp's userbase (yet), they do have over 50m active users and growing by the day.
Help us displace WhatsApp once and for all!
.. to know how people feel.
We, as members of society, need information when we choose who to befriend, who to do business with, and who to avoid. If people are not free to express themselves, we cannot make good choices.
If you're the type to avoid humor in bad taste, and you find this person offensive, you should be fighting this. Otherwise, at some point, you may find yourself emotionally attached to someone who feels this way, only to find out after the fact. When people bare their soul in a public forum, without fear of repercussion, you can observe and make decisions on how you want to interact with them in private. You can decide ahead of time.
If speaking one's mind is potentially illegal, much important information becomes unavailable as people will be unwilling to speak their minds. You cannot know someone is a racist, or someone is opposed to religious influence, or someone is against liberal governance, or someone has a problem with war. You can't know if they're neo-nazis, and you can't know if they believe politicians should be hanged for war crimes.
You may enter into relationships with these people only to find out much later that they feel a certain way.
The more deeply offended you are by speech, the more you should fight for it to be open and free.
Telegram offers every feature of WhatsApp, plus end-to-end encryption with visual signatures, arbitrary file sharing, multi-device support (including PC), is open source and the API is published.
They claim to have 40M+ users, so they're a substantial amount of the way to displacing WhatsApp already.
I want to preface this with: I'm an Android user/developer of 5 years, and have no interest in Apple devices. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I apologize for the long-winded post.
Sadly, I find Android is heading in a very bad direction.
Google has captured most of the top of the market, leaving little opportunity for growth, so it appears they've started "simplifying" the UI to capture those with little/no interest in mobile computers, those with less mental acuity or those unable/unwilling to spend a few hours learning the fundamental operating principles of a machine, young children, etc. Same direction Gnome headed in a few years back.
Can't blame them; they are a publicly held corporation, and they must grow. But, unfortunately, simplifying a user interface almost invariably makes it less useful to those who are willing to put in the time to synchronize with the machine.
Just a few more egregious examples of this in the latest Android versions:
Menu button removed
Contextual menus are a extremely powerful. On most modern OSes, right-clicking a control brings up a menu of actions related to that control. Since touchscreens lack a practical way to right-click, the menu button used to implement the equivalent functionality. Some UI designers claim it's inconsistent because you never know if the menu button is going to do anything, and that is a valid complaint. However, removing contextual menus entirely is silly. Many apps run full-screen where an overflow button is inappropriate, and when appropriate, overflow buttons needlessly take up room on the screen and enforce a display layout that isn't always appropriate for every app.
Bafflingly unusable new task switcher
If you haven't seen the new task switcher layout for 5.0, check it out. No longer can you see screen captures of your most recent 5-6 apps, but rather a confusing, battery wasting, user-interaction-required morphing list.
Google Maps feature regressions
Although not directly related to Android, it is symptomatic of Google's general new approach to mobile development. Gone are incredibly useful features like distance measure, zoom controls, sortable place search, place search compass arrows, and many other features that made the old Android maps app so great.
Where are chrome extensions? Native multiwindow support? GNU tools (instead of their godawful "toolbox")? Correctly functioning alt-tab? DNS overrides? Native image backups? Out-of-the-box viper4android? How about forcing manufacturers to add a "delete crapware" button if they want membership to the play store? Where are the extended privacy controls?
The thing is, they already have the "power users" market. So there's no reason to improve the Android core. We've all got CM, AOSP, AOKP, etc., anyway, right?
But it's frustrating, and I do hope some competition pops up to re-address the concerns of those who really use their devices.
The big deal is that it got so many things right back when no one else could figure it out, and that netted them a ton of users (which of course means that most of our friends are probably already on it.
Here are the features that won me over two years ago:
- Proper functioning chat groups that forward every message type (video, audio, locations, text, etc) to all members
- Location sharing
- The two-checkmark system (one means message reached server, two means message reached user's device)
- Zero configuration; your contacts are scanned (I get why some people have a problem with this, though), and everyone else who has WhatsApp installed appears automatically
- Audio messaging (GMRS-style)
Keep in mind, WhatsApp supported all of these features years ago. It was fast, reliable, simple to install, easy to use... it really was unique. Now everything out there supports all or at least most of this functionality, but it's too late; WhatsApp already has the user base.
Myself, I'm hoping Telegram displaces them.
2014. Almost 2015.. and sex is still the thing. So odd.