Just to be clear, our apps don't have any advertising, large white space etc. We do user experience testing but there's no way it can cover the needs of 1M+ users. Apps are launched based on what customer beta testing and internal best practices tell us, but after a couple of months, you quickly realize people are using the app very differently and some people are clearly struggling with it (calls to help desk etc.)
There are certain things you cannot anticipate, regardless of how well you design your user experience sessions or beta program. Those you only discover once the app is released and people start using it.
Regardless of what the 1st amendment grants you, maybe we should think about what exactly we're promoting here?
If a built-up zone has a 30 km/h limit and someone is driving 60 km/h, hopefully most people can see why that is a problem. I wouldn't flash my lights to warn the driver there's a cop with a speed gun waiting down the road because that's a safety issue and there's no reason a pedestrian should be run over because someone can behave responsibly.
On the other hand, if a country road with no houses or people nearby has a limit of 80 km/h and someone is barreling down the road at 120 km/h, I likely would flash my lights because that's likely going to just be a cash grab on the part of the local cops. You leave the road doing 120 km/h on a quiet country road, apart from the damage you'll do to yourself is running through a bunch of corn in a field. But if you're doing 120 in a 80, that's the risk you take.
If that were true, then Indian/Chinese families moving to western countries would cease to have very large families. But that's not happening so your hypothesis is flawed.
..let me start by saying if your app is sending credit card/payment info, screen grabs, passport data etc. without the express and explicit knowledge of the user, that's just plain wrong.
However, I find usage analytics in apps and websites immensely useful. For example, if I find that users are swiping around an app aimlessly or take 15 clicks across multiple pages to get to a certain form or feature, it tells me I need to reconsider the workflow or design of the UI. Without the ability to track what a user is doing in the app, I would have to rely exclusively on user feedback which is infrequent and often unactionable.
I don't need to see screen grabs, but knowing that a user went from Page 1 to Page 8 and the clicks or journey they took is invaluable user experience information. Using the hotel booking system (screen grabs aside), I can immediately see why it would be helpful for the developer to see the entire journey a customer took in their app from logging in to completing a booking. A user that spends 40 minutes and 50+ clicks is most likely having issues navigating and the developer would want to minimize that.
TL:DR: The intent isn't always evil behind user tracking.
Some compelling reasons in your post, but I would venture the most likely answer is actually because nuclear power wouldn't give them returns during their time in office and for almost every politician out there, gains for society achieved AFTER they leave office are of no consequence to them
South Asian descent person here. I can assure you the reasons Indians / Chinese / Pakistani's etc. have large populations have nothing to do with moist air flowing off the Indian Ocean or any other environmental factor.
Look, all of this "who nominated or promoted who" discussion aside, let me offer up a more simple explanation that I see quite often in the work environment.
You have someone who is charismatic, competent, or has a reputation of "getting things done" (pick any or all). Under a positive type of leadership, that person is collaborative and manages to get things done. Under a negative leader, that person may still get things done, but they'll leave a trail of destruction behind them. They will burn bridges throughout their entire career and have little regard for the problems / challenges faced by others in their quest to get their own personal task accomplished.
I'm not an American and I try not to dig too deep into American politics for my own sanity, but when I read about Ajit Pai, he strikes me as the kind of person who does evil or not based on his boss.
I am responsible for running a website for a large corp. Some of the things we use analytics for:
- Understanding where our daily volume comes from geographically. This let's us understand if we need to bolster mirror sites so they are more responsive
- Understand how many people consume our content using different languages. Without analytics, we wouldn't be able to budget accordingly to ensure we're meeting our global customer demands
- Performance management. Analytics tell us how quickly pages are loading. If a certain page is loading much slower than others, we know it means there's a high chance of abandonment so we have to look at the page and see how it can be optimized
There's probably 50 more things I can list but we wouldn't be nearly as effective without analytics.
I live in a remote community that has no fiber/DSL/cable internet. A few months ago, they tore up one of the main roads and widened it a bit - not enough to make it 2 lanes both ways, but to add a hard shoulder *shrug*.
At the time, I was really hoping they would have laid some fiber, what with the road being dug up and all, but alas it was not meant to be. They had placed some orange stakes alongside my property and, in a fit of optimism, I checked the Internet which assured me orange stakes = high speed communications but they never actually laid cable.
To this day, I have no idea what the orange stakes were supposed to be for.
I have the same problem. I live in a rural area and my internet is extremely slow. I purchased the last Battlefield game last year (maybe the year before?) and I still haven't played it because it wants to download 17GB of data and my internet connection won't stay up long enough for that to complete successfully.
I think the question of ethics comes into play because of what you're doing at the gene level rather than abiding by established rules of testing and governance.
When I think of unethical behavior and gene editing, I think of things like:
- Modifying genes so that certain aesthetic characters are artificially promoted (e.g. blue eyes, blonde hair)
- Certain skin tones (is that even possible? I dunno)
Things I would NOT consider unethical:
- Eliminating diseases (sickle cell, popensity for cancers etc.)
..... you know, I just spent some time asking myself why I consider the first two unethical and I can't come up with an immediate rational explanation. Let's say 500 years from now, everyone had green eyes, brown hair, and a lighter skin color and maybe even spoke one language. We would be a completely homogeneous society. Racism would be all but eliminated.
Is that a bad thing? I'm a person of color and I'm not so sure it's a bad thing (tm).
Well, I'd like to think the working out helped my health too. I mean, I saw actual, tangible results in terms of my weight lifting ability and ability to run / cycle / climb stairs without getting winded. I don't think that would have been possible on a diet-only strategy
Also, I don't fully understand the biological process behind the intermittent fasting but I can only talk about my personal results, hence the YMMV. I think with a reduction in caloric intake, there's a corresponding decrease in metabolism. That is, your body realizes you're intaking far fewer calories than normal and it makes certain adjustments so going from 2,400 calories to 1,100 calories works for a while, but then your body just gets used to 1,100 so your weight loss either plateaus or slows down.
I was able to actually measure the slow down in weight loss via my diary depending if it was an intermittent fasting week or not. And I kept a very regimented diet. It was essentially the same food each and every day. No variation.
Breakfast: 2 egg whites
Mid-morning snack: 2 celery sticks cut in 3 pieces each. 5 slices of cucumber, 5 cherry tomatoes, 5 baby carrots
Lunch: Pure Protein bar. 1 335ml can of Coke Zero
Mid-afternoon snack: 10 raw almonds, small bowl of raw spinach
Dinner: 1 piece chicken breast, small piece of steak, side of steamed veggies. 300ml water with metamucil powder. Costco protein shake
I'm sure a good biologist / dietitian could actually explain my results in a way that would make sense but in the absence of that, I'm just talking about my personal achievement, measured rather religiously each and every day.
I must admit, I find a certain hilarity associated with watching people eat cinnamon powder etc. As long as they're ONLY hurting themselves, it's funny. When they do stuff that could hurt others, it's not funny. Random-stranger-minding-their-own-business did not sign up to be part of your shenanigans
While we're at it, can we ban the following:
- 10 things I hate about my . Inevitably shows person with their head in their hands in despair
- 60 minute long videos for content that really is 5 mins
- Instructional videos with terrible / annoying music. If I clicked on a video titled, "Greatest V12 sound ever", I don't want to hear some crappy pop / synth music.
- "Review" videos that are just some cheap text-to-speech program reading out an obvious copy and paste from an article
I did something similar with intermittent fasting and was able to achieve my goals. I was turning 40 and tipped the scales at around 240 lbs. I read A LOT , watched a bunch of YouTube videos, scoured health forums to get an idea of what worked for others. Unfortunately, my doctor was useless in this regard so I relied on the Internet to give some guidance
Here's my routine.. DISCLAIMER: This worked for me, it might not work for you. YMMV:
- Start off on Atkins/Keto diet. Cut out all sugars/carbs. Really, really difficult to do but you have to push yourself. I ate Atkins bars and veggies mostly.
- Restrict diet to 1,100 calories daily. Track this via the FitBit app. If it didn't have a barcode or wasn't in the FitBit database, I didn't eat it
- Joined a gym. Went 6/7 days and worked out until my FitBit said I burned 800 calories. Combination of weights and cardio. I found the treadmill really hard on my shins and knees but the stairclimber is great and really got my heart in the peak zone quickly
- intermittent fasting! . I would eat my 1,100 calories on Monday, intermittent fast on Tues (only water or Coke Zero) and a very small bag of celery, cucumber that would last me the entire day IF I felt I needed to dip into it. Back to regular diet on Wed, and then skip a day. Fasting was difficult the first week or so, my body was actively craving food.
In a year, I dropped 60 lbs. My weight lifting pretty much tripled across the board, except for squats. I still have a hard time with squats and ALWAYS get DOMS. Speed on the stairclimber went from 4 to 14 e.g. I can maintain speed 14 out of 20 for a full hour.
The intermittent fasting really helped - I kept a diary of my weight loss. 2 weeks I would just maintain my 1,100 calories and then switch to alternating fasting days for two weeks. The two weeks with fasting resulted in faster weight loss, but at the expense of some energy drain. I don't know if that was psychological, but it FELT like it was harder to work out for sure. One thing I'll point out is after the fasting day, I didn't feel hungry the next day - I forced myself to eat something as part of my diet tracking but more often than not, I didn't feel hungry enough to eat
Right now, I'm 42 and maintaining a body weight of ~165 lbs. Still going to the gym 5/7 days (the two off days are recovering from DOMS after leg day and one day just to recuperate after intense cardio. I don't feel like I need to rest after a cardio day but that's what most other people do)
I'm my experience, forcing a person or corporation to do something they would not have otherwise done will lead to a half-assed attempt so this is unlikely to be a successful venture.
Serious question - I understand everyone has fat cells, just that in obese people, they are larger than in lean people. However, if we turn cancer cells into fat cells, and that person adopts a healthy lifestyle to reduce the size of the fat cell, is that a win-win? Or is this a different type of fat cell that has other consequences?
Slashdot Mirror
Just to be clear, our apps don't have any advertising, large white space etc. We do user experience testing but there's no way it can cover the needs of 1M+ users. Apps are launched based on what customer beta testing and internal best practices tell us, but after a couple of months, you quickly realize people are using the app very differently and some people are clearly struggling with it (calls to help desk etc.)
There are certain things you cannot anticipate, regardless of how well you design your user experience sessions or beta program. Those you only discover once the app is released and people start using it.
can't behave responsibly. *sigh*
Regardless of what the 1st amendment grants you, maybe we should think about what exactly we're promoting here?
If a built-up zone has a 30 km/h limit and someone is driving 60 km/h, hopefully most people can see why that is a problem. I wouldn't flash my lights to warn the driver there's a cop with a speed gun waiting down the road because that's a safety issue and there's no reason a pedestrian should be run over because someone can behave responsibly.
On the other hand, if a country road with no houses or people nearby has a limit of 80 km/h and someone is barreling down the road at 120 km/h, I likely would flash my lights because that's likely going to just be a cash grab on the part of the local cops. You leave the road doing 120 km/h on a quiet country road, apart from the damage you'll do to yourself is running through a bunch of corn in a field. But if you're doing 120 in a 80, that's the risk you take.
If that were true, then Indian/Chinese families moving to western countries would cease to have very large families. But that's not happening so your hypothesis is flawed.
..let me start by saying if your app is sending credit card/payment info, screen grabs, passport data etc. without the express and explicit knowledge of the user, that's just plain wrong.
However, I find usage analytics in apps and websites immensely useful. For example, if I find that users are swiping around an app aimlessly or take 15 clicks across multiple pages to get to a certain form or feature, it tells me I need to reconsider the workflow or design of the UI. Without the ability to track what a user is doing in the app, I would have to rely exclusively on user feedback which is infrequent and often unactionable.
I don't need to see screen grabs, but knowing that a user went from Page 1 to Page 8 and the clicks or journey they took is invaluable user experience information. Using the hotel booking system (screen grabs aside), I can immediately see why it would be helpful for the developer to see the entire journey a customer took in their app from logging in to completing a booking. A user that spends 40 minutes and 50+ clicks is most likely having issues navigating and the developer would want to minimize that.
TL:DR: The intent isn't always evil behind user tracking.
Some compelling reasons in your post, but I would venture the most likely answer is actually because nuclear power wouldn't give them returns during their time in office and for almost every politician out there, gains for society achieved AFTER they leave office are of no consequence to them
South Asian descent person here. I can assure you the reasons Indians / Chinese / Pakistani's etc. have large populations have nothing to do with moist air flowing off the Indian Ocean or any other environmental factor.
It's partly religion, partly lack of education.
Look, all of this "who nominated or promoted who" discussion aside, let me offer up a more simple explanation that I see quite often in the work environment.
You have someone who is charismatic, competent, or has a reputation of "getting things done" (pick any or all). Under a positive type of leadership, that person is collaborative and manages to get things done. Under a negative leader, that person may still get things done, but they'll leave a trail of destruction behind them. They will burn bridges throughout their entire career and have little regard for the problems / challenges faced by others in their quest to get their own personal task accomplished.
I'm not an American and I try not to dig too deep into American politics for my own sanity, but when I read about Ajit Pai, he strikes me as the kind of person who does evil or not based on his boss.
I saw a different term being used somewhere and I think it makes more sense:
"Climate destabilization"
We've been through this before but $60k+ for a car is NOT all that unusual now. I don't know why you keep claiming it is
I am responsible for running a website for a large corp. Some of the things we use analytics for:
- Understanding where our daily volume comes from geographically. This let's us understand if we need to bolster mirror sites so they are more responsive
- Understand how many people consume our content using different languages. Without analytics, we wouldn't be able to budget accordingly to ensure we're meeting our global customer demands
- Performance management. Analytics tell us how quickly pages are loading. If a certain page is loading much slower than others, we know it means there's a high chance of abandonment so we have to look at the page and see how it can be optimized
There's probably 50 more things I can list but we wouldn't be nearly as effective without analytics.
I live in a remote community that has no fiber/DSL/cable internet. A few months ago, they tore up one of the main roads and widened it a bit - not enough to make it 2 lanes both ways, but to add a hard shoulder *shrug*.
At the time, I was really hoping they would have laid some fiber, what with the road being dug up and all, but alas it was not meant to be. They had placed some orange stakes alongside my property and, in a fit of optimism, I checked the Internet which assured me orange stakes = high speed communications but they never actually laid cable.
To this day, I have no idea what the orange stakes were supposed to be for.
You can have both, it would seem.
I have the same problem. I live in a rural area and my internet is extremely slow. I purchased the last Battlefield game last year (maybe the year before?) and I still haven't played it because it wants to download 17GB of data and my internet connection won't stay up long enough for that to complete successfully.
Wait, what?
Are you saying Black Lives Don't Matter because we continue to accuse China of jailing Muslims? Or because we're NOT accusing them enough?
The emphasis on "jailing" suggests you don't believe they're actually jailing them so I don't know what you meant.
Can someone please explain?
I think the question of ethics comes into play because of what you're doing at the gene level rather than abiding by established rules of testing and governance.
..... you know, I just spent some time asking myself why I consider the first two unethical and I can't come up with an immediate rational explanation. Let's say 500 years from now, everyone had green eyes, brown hair, and a lighter skin color and maybe even spoke one language. We would be a completely homogeneous society. Racism would be all but eliminated.
When I think of unethical behavior and gene editing, I think of things like:
- Modifying genes so that certain aesthetic characters are artificially promoted (e.g. blue eyes, blonde hair)
- Certain skin tones (is that even possible? I dunno)
Things I would NOT consider unethical: - Eliminating diseases (sickle cell, popensity for cancers etc.)
Is that a bad thing? I'm a person of color and I'm not so sure it's a bad thing (tm).
Well, I'd like to think the working out helped my health too. I mean, I saw actual, tangible results in terms of my weight lifting ability and ability to run / cycle / climb stairs without getting winded. I don't think that would have been possible on a diet-only strategy
Also, I don't fully understand the biological process behind the intermittent fasting but I can only talk about my personal results, hence the YMMV. I think with a reduction in caloric intake, there's a corresponding decrease in metabolism. That is, your body realizes you're intaking far fewer calories than normal and it makes certain adjustments so going from 2,400 calories to 1,100 calories works for a while, but then your body just gets used to 1,100 so your weight loss either plateaus or slows down.
I was able to actually measure the slow down in weight loss via my diary depending if it was an intermittent fasting week or not. And I kept a very regimented diet. It was essentially the same food each and every day. No variation.
Breakfast: 2 egg whites
Mid-morning snack: 2 celery sticks cut in 3 pieces each. 5 slices of cucumber, 5 cherry tomatoes, 5 baby carrots
Lunch: Pure Protein bar. 1 335ml can of Coke Zero
Mid-afternoon snack: 10 raw almonds, small bowl of raw spinach
Dinner: 1 piece chicken breast, small piece of steak, side of steamed veggies. 300ml water with metamucil powder. Costco protein shake
I'm sure a good biologist / dietitian could actually explain my results in a way that would make sense but in the absence of that, I'm just talking about my personal achievement, measured rather religiously each and every day.
Once the app is removed from the Google store, does Google actually do anything to remove it from users phones too?...
I must admit, I find a certain hilarity associated with watching people eat cinnamon powder etc. As long as they're ONLY hurting themselves, it's funny. When they do stuff that could hurt others, it's not funny. Random-stranger-minding-their-own-business did not sign up to be part of your shenanigans
While we're at it, can we ban the following:
- 10 things I hate about my . Inevitably shows person with their head in their hands in despair
- 60 minute long videos for content that really is 5 mins
- Instructional videos with terrible / annoying music. If I clicked on a video titled, "Greatest V12 sound ever", I don't want to hear some crappy pop / synth music.
- "Review" videos that are just some cheap text-to-speech program reading out an obvious copy and paste from an article
I did something similar with intermittent fasting and was able to achieve my goals. I was turning 40 and tipped the scales at around 240 lbs. I read A LOT , watched a bunch of YouTube videos, scoured health forums to get an idea of what worked for others. Unfortunately, my doctor was useless in this regard so I relied on the Internet to give some guidance
.. DISCLAIMER: This worked for me, it might not work for you. YMMV:
Here's my routine
- Start off on Atkins/Keto diet. Cut out all sugars/carbs. Really, really difficult to do but you have to push yourself. I ate Atkins bars and veggies mostly.
- Restrict diet to 1,100 calories daily. Track this via the FitBit app. If it didn't have a barcode or wasn't in the FitBit database, I didn't eat it
- Joined a gym. Went 6/7 days and worked out until my FitBit said I burned 800 calories. Combination of weights and cardio. I found the treadmill really hard on my shins and knees but the stairclimber is great and really got my heart in the peak zone quickly
- intermittent fasting! . I would eat my 1,100 calories on Monday, intermittent fast on Tues (only water or Coke Zero) and a very small bag of celery, cucumber that would last me the entire day IF I felt I needed to dip into it. Back to regular diet on Wed, and then skip a day. Fasting was difficult the first week or so, my body was actively craving food.
In a year, I dropped 60 lbs. My weight lifting pretty much tripled across the board, except for squats. I still have a hard time with squats and ALWAYS get DOMS. Speed on the stairclimber went from 4 to 14 e.g. I can maintain speed 14 out of 20 for a full hour.
The intermittent fasting really helped - I kept a diary of my weight loss. 2 weeks I would just maintain my 1,100 calories and then switch to alternating fasting days for two weeks. The two weeks with fasting resulted in faster weight loss, but at the expense of some energy drain. I don't know if that was psychological, but it FELT like it was harder to work out for sure. One thing I'll point out is after the fasting day, I didn't feel hungry the next day - I forced myself to eat something as part of my diet tracking but more often than not, I didn't feel hungry enough to eat
Right now, I'm 42 and maintaining a body weight of ~165 lbs. Still going to the gym 5/7 days (the two off days are recovering from DOMS after leg day and one day just to recuperate after intense cardio. I don't feel like I need to rest after a cardio day but that's what most other people do)
I read it as the cancer cells turns into a fat cell, not just behaves like a fat cell.
Different tastes for different people, I imagine.
So what? At least they are doing it
I'm my experience, forcing a person or corporation to do something they would not have otherwise done will lead to a half-assed attempt so this is unlikely to be a successful venture.
Hiring managers are clueless
I'm the hiring manager you insensitive clod!
fat? :)
Serious question - I understand everyone has fat cells, just that in obese people, they are larger than in lean people. However, if we turn cancer cells into fat cells, and that person adopts a healthy lifestyle to reduce the size of the fat cell, is that a win-win? Or is this a different type of fat cell that has other consequences?