Jonathan Ive speaks about design
The importance of design, also an opportunity to see macbook air components before they are all assembled.
Vlogging on a Via Ferrata with the Theta S by Ricoh is not only feasible but interesting. Earlier today I went to the Via Ferrata du Fort L’écluse in the French Region of Ain. This Via Ferrata goes long the nice rock face next to the climb. The purpose of this video is to bring you with me so that you can experience the sounds of Via Ferrata without the climbing experience or a head for heights.
The Theta S by Ricoh is a 360° camera with two lenses. One lens is looking at the person taking video and the other lens looks at what the holder of the camera sees. When the two signals are combined you can export the video as a 360 video to be shared.
The device has a mini HDMI out, a USB port, enough memory for 45 minutes of video at 1920X1080 with a 30FPS shooting range. It is currently one of the more affordable and intuitive devices to use. You can keep it with you at all times and getting material ready for editing takes seconds. The beauty of such a simple and light solution is that it allows for a very quick turnaround time.
I was hanging off a cliff when I was taking my videos today but if you’re a normal person you will probably be sitting in a café or some stairs to review the footage. When device wifi is activated and when you download the app you can use your phone as a remote to take videos or pictures and even to watch back the video you have taken in 360° vision. If you’re not happy with the shot then you can repeat it until you are happy. This system is a simple, elegant and all in one solution that is quick and intuitive to use.
If you want to see how unhealthy social media is just look at this story about DMs on Instagram. Now if you want to DM someone that you don’t follow they can send just one text message.
Imagine, you’re a user of Instagram. You’re following friends, family and colleagues. Now consider that every fourth post is by someone you don’t know anything about. Now imagine that you see the influencers several times a day, every single time you refresh your feed.
Complete strangers are invading your timeline, polluting your streams, and in general reminding you of your social isolation, reminding you to feel Fear Of Missing out. You’re then told that the FOMO person can only be texted once. This is absurd, because Instagram isn’t a social media site now. It is an advertising platform with user generated content spread thinly.
I read that Threads is now at one fifth of it’s 100 million user peak. It’s at around 20 million users. This makes sense. Why would people want a timeline filled with strangers, rather than friends? Why would people join a website/app that is part of Facebook. I know that it’s called Meta, to whitewash itself, but I call it Facebook, to show that the whitewashing effort failed.
That Instagram feels the need to limit DMs tells us two things. The first is that they have made Instagram toxic. It’s because of this toxicity that everyone needs to protected from one eyed trouser snake pics and other forms of spam via DM. If Instagram was still a network of friends of friends, it would still be self-policing. It isn’t, so new rules need to be put in place.
The second thing it tells us is that rather than tweak the algorithm to make suggestions and conversations healthier, they are just adding barriers, rather than tackling the core issues.
This morning before getting up I read about how some people rented a villa, and damaged a statue taking photos of themselves with it. It also mentioned at least three people adding graffiti to the Colosseum. The issue with social media is that instead of having the morality of healthy communities, it has the morality of advertisers and marketers. The result is the vandalism and iconoclasm that is becoming more and more common. social media algorithms amplify emotions, and emotions, especially on social media are toxic.
Social Media Algorithms Distort Social Instincts and Fuel Misinformation
Key facts:
- Social media algorithms are designed to promote user engagement, thereby amplifying inherent human biases for learning from prestigious or in-group members.
- This amplification often promotes misinformation and polarization as it doesn’t discern the accuracy of the information.
- Researchers suggest that both users and tech companies need to take steps to mitigate these effects, including user education and algorithmic changes.
Social Media algorithms are toxic. Rather than tackle the cause of toxic behaviour companies like Facebook prefer to pretend that the problem is the user, rather than the algorithm that drives humans to behave in a toxic or trollish manner. Instead of encouraging humanism algorithms amplify emotion, because emotion encourages people to stick around.
In contrast, algorithms are usually selecting information that boosts user engagement in order to increase advertising revenue. This means algorithms amplify the very information humans are biased to learn from, and they can oversaturate social media feeds with what the researchers call Prestigious, Ingroup, Moral, and Emotional (PRIME) information, regardless of the content’s accuracy or representativeness of a group’s opinions.
“It’s not that the algorithm is designed to disrupt cooperation,” says Brady. “It’s just that its goals are different. And in practice, when you put those functions together, you end up with some of these potentially negative effects.”
In addition, the researchers propose that social media companies could take steps to change their algorithms, so they are more effective at fostering community. Instead of solely favoring PRIME information, algorithms could set a limit on how much PRIME information they amplify and prioritize presenting users with a diverse set of content.
All of these social media sights are driven by algorithms that amplify negative emotions, rather than foster community. That’s why I think hashtags are bad, and that twitter threads are bad. That’s why I think commenting, re-sharing and other forms of behaviour are better, especially in a chronological timeline, as we have with blogs and most of the fediverse. I won’t use pixelfed because it uses hashtags rather than categories or healthier community building tools.
We worry about AI but algorithms control more of what we see and feel, than AI.
After decades of using Social Networks I have almost never felt the need to send DMs, especially to strangers. I usually use them sparingly, either to coordinate IRL meetings, or to share information that I do not want everyone to have access to. Instagram is restricting DMs not because they care about their users, but because they are deflecting from the problems posed by their algorithms that encourage polarisation, and trolling.
Today I went for my first flight with the DJI Mini SE and it feels very familiar, after flying a spark so frequently, until I crashed that drone. I would have replaced the spark but I didn’t because it would either cost two thirds to replace the old one, or cost a lot to buy a new drone, with batteries and the rest of the gear. I waited. I didn’t wait for four weeks, four months, or four seasons. I waited for two years, until I saw the DJI Mini SE was about to come out.
What I like about this drone is first and foremost its price, but also its form factor. In Europe drones that way more than 250 grams have stricter rules than drones below 250 grams, so with a small light drone, you can fly in more places. The other advantage is that you can go for a two hour walk, without ever been bothered by the weight. I know because that’s what I did today.
Another nice feature is that the DJI Mini SE Flymore pack comes with a three battery charger spare props, and a carrying case. Everything fits neatly into the carrying case, and the carrying case fits nicely into a 10 litre hiking bag.
With the DJI spark it was a pain because the charger was large and needed to be transported in one case. In another case I had the drone and three batteries and because batteries were good for just 20 minutes you had to have a few. In the end it was a pain to keep everything charged and ready. Thinks have improved over the last three or four years.
If you crash this drone, and break one of it’s arms you can unscrew the broken arm and replace it, without replacing the entire body. Repair-ability is important with something that can get stuck and fall from a tree onto a tarmac road, as mine did.
And finally, I have flown just once for about 15 minutes and I feel a little rusty. It feels just the same as the Spark, but maybe a little slower. I notice that between telling it to go full forward to full backwards there is a little control lag. I would consider getting a landing mat, for when landing in grass. With the Spark if you tried to start it near grass it would behave like a lawnmower. This one tells you there is a motor error. I took off from the edge of a farm road. I had good visibility and could see cars if they were approaching.
That’s it for now. I will update you as I learn more
For a period of time I would buy new mobile phones every six months. This was to test new hardware, new operating systems and new versions. Recently mobile phone development has hit a development wall. http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/31/white-nexus-4-available/ of a phone is excellent, if that’s the reason you chose one phone or another. That’s not how I select my phones. Battery life is. For the last two years I have looked at mobile phones and battery life and it has not improved. I like to use my phones as GPS during via ferrata trips, walks and other outdoor activities. Within an hour you are usually down to half a battery or less and by the time you arrive home the phone is dead, unless you get an external battery to recharge the device. The fashion to develop phones that are thinner and thinner with bigger screens is only making things worse. I’d love to see manufacturers once again double phone size and triple battery capacity. I’d like something thick that I could use for a day in the mountains.
Suunto have provided an alternative:
This is a device that you wear as an ordinary watch on your wrist. It has an integrated GPS, pressure sensor and a rechargeable battery. In day to day use the battery loses around 1% of battery charge per day when in normal mode and around 3% per hour of exercise. It takes just a few seconds to get the watch in to activity tracking mode, to pause, tracking, or to stop tracking all together. The data it collects is synced with a computer very easily. If you spend a little extra money you can buy accessories for cycling, for heart rate monitoring, for cadence and more.
Satellite acquisition is fast. Every time you sync the watch and charge it Geo-stationary satellite information is downloaded and synchronised with the watch. This speeds up the time it takes to have an accurate location. It takes around 4 seconds when near the location of synching and less than 30 seconds when 1-200 kilometers away. It’s fast.
The beauty of such devices is that they encourage physical activity. Online you can share your tracks with friends and you can tailor apps to the types of sports you do or goals you set. There are apps for 10k runs, marathons and many more similar activities. Part of the purpose of this watch is to be a fitness trainer and app developers have made a variety of apps for interval training, distance etc.
This watch has replaced my need for a mobile phone app to track the activities I do when outdoors. I can preserve battery life on the mobile phone until I am back on the home cellphone network or using the phone for in car navigation.