Am I reading this correctly? It sounds like the product is an LED matrix which requires third-party cloud servers to update the display? That doesn't sound right.
Also, the author uses 2x 32x32 panels @$97 each as a price peg, but you can get a raw 64x32 panel from Adafruit (a quite expensive supplier) for $50.
I agree, and I would hardly call this 'a steal' as the article says.
But, for many people an Arduino is black magic even if they're quite skilled at programming. I know some of them. I can imagine this would appeal to those people.
I'm personally more into electronics too, kind of goes with growing up in the 80s when computers and electronics were just inextricably connected.
If you are a startup, you cannot create a popular app in a crowded marketplace by being scrupulous about best practices.
Match owns almost all of the dating-app market, and they have extremely deep pockets to buy/extinguish competition with.
Because of the consolidated nature of the market, and the winner-takes-all nature of the industry, I really believe that it is impossible for a new entry to gain popularity and focus on hard problems like security.
This is fundamentally a problem with capital allocation and incentives. There's not much that a small team can do about it.
I'm pretty sure it's just an observation about the situation that any player in that market would find itself in, so therefore when you look at apps in that market they're shitty about privacy.
It's a comment about dating apps, not about people who decided not to go into dating apps i.e. found "a market you can address without doing that."
There's a difference between understanding why people behave dishonestly, and making excuses for dishonest behavior. You're doing the second one under the color of the first.
No one has to make a dating app. I don't see how "no one else could do it without betraying their users either!" as you argue - and, again, even granting this is true, which you've done nothing thus far to show - excuses the actual betrayal that actually has occurred. If you'd like to make an argument that it does, I'd be interested to hear that.
Maybe so. It's easy to get your blood up when you're addressing flagrantly careless behavior that substantially helps make possible the systematization of the same kind of targeted, but back then still by necessity only interpersonal and mostly opportunistic, violence that was a daily feature of your life throughout most of its first couple decades.
So, sure, the one comment to which you've directly responded here, I'll call that out of line on my part. Everything else I've said throughout these comments stands.
He's saying that in the end, all that will be available to customers will be the unscrupulous ones - because if someone tries the other approach, they'll fail.
And there always will be someone trying the unscrupulous approach, no matter how many people decide not to.
Fine! Don't try, then. "Someone is going to do this shameful thing, therefore there is no reason why I should not do this shameful thing" isn't quite the logic of a sociopath, but only because a sociopath sees no need in the first place to excuse to himself his own immoral behavior.
If your attitude is "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all", that's fine. But a predictable consequence of that attitude is that, when the cost of "doing it right" is high enough, the only people who do it at all are the people who don't do it right.
The incentives are broken, and telling the people who point out that the incentives are broken that they're just making excuses for bad behavior doesn't actually fix the incentives.
I’m pretty sure no one in this thread is saying that but you?
It’s an observation that market conditions seem to disadvantage anyone who DOESN’T do that, so unless you like spending a bunch of effort and time (and being less competitive overall because of it, and likely go nowhere), maybe spend your effort somewhere else if you don’t like to be that way.
There are a ton of markets like this. If you wanted to open a ‘good’ check cashing place for instance, go right ahead. Just don’t be surprised if you lose your shirt trying it by not being like the other, less scrupulous players.
You appear to be taking a very uncharitable interpretation.
This thread reads to me as there may be perverse incentives due to nature of dating and capital markets that make it nearly impossible to compete while valuing security.
u/firephonestival is stating the obvious and much repeated: any conscientious effort will be buried by the horde of amoral and immoral players. They are not defending, excusing, or in any way minimizing the excreble outcomes of our winner-takes-all economic regime.
How much of that is because they have been conditioned that things should be free though?
We have 10+ years of Google, Facebook, and others handing out major tools and functionality for free because of the privacy invasion.
I have to wonder how things would have looked had that not become the norm.
As far as being purposefully made worse, yeah both apps do that. Grindr charges $100, Scruff charges $120 a year. Considering how popular both apps are I have to assume they are pulling in quite a bit of money.
That's quite a claim when, until Grindr's practice of selling PII was disclosed, no one had any reason to imagine that by using the app they would be disclosing their sexual orientation and behavior. In light of that I have no idea what preference you imagine to have been meaningfully revealed here.
My claim is that for a large number of Americans, it's probably worse to be outed for seeking extra-relationship (I'm not sure of the proper term) casual sex than for being gay/bi/queer. Of course, both of those could be revealed at the same time which would be quite the double-whammy to an unsuspecting partner.
I'm not sure I agree, though. In an open relationship it'd be no surprise to my partner if I were using Grindr (he probably would be too, in that case!) and I think therefore that'd be more or less orthogonal to the concern around the risk of forcible outing posed by Grindr's misuse of data. Both are certainly of concern, but I think independently so.
> If you are a startup, you cannot create a popular app in a crowded marketplace by being scrupulous about best practices.
> Match owns almost all of the dating-app market, and they have extremely deep pockets to buy/extinguish competition with.
understood. the only practical response to the banal corporate indifference of modern markets is ultraviolence. establish a rival dating app and send ninjas to the bedrooms of match owners to threaten their lives
hn says "there's not much a small team can do about it" but they are clearly considering only a small team of technologists and a few salespeople/growth marketers. hn has drastically discounted the impact a small team of (kunai-wielding, not mid-2010s startup recruiter speak) ninjas can have
>If you are a startup, you cannot create a popular app in a crowded marketplace by being scrupulous about best practices.
>Match owns almost all of the dating-app market, and they have extremely deep pockets to buy/extinguish competition with.
Match owns almost all of the dating app market because they've acquired who? Startups who created popular apps in a crowded marketplace that they don't already own.
Now, if you want to argue that you cannot create a popular app in a crowded marketplace without accepting a buyout offer from the dominant player, now that's a topic I think is worth quite a bit of discussion.
Dating apps likely face a lot of churn because those customers who succeed cancel permanently. So for young apps burning out trying to compete it may be very hard to resist a big buyout from larger players with deeper pockets and fewer moral constraints.
On the other hand, programmingwise dating apps are simple as heck and require almost no staff (source: Match's presumptive development priorities across their apps). Wasn't Plenty of Fish famously one guy for years and years? Heck, nowadays you can even seed a new app with fake accounts even easier with thispersondoesnotexist.com. Couple that with Facebook's GPT-3'ish release today[1] and you can probably create some pretty convincing activity, including messaging.
>I really believe that it is impossible for a new entry to gain popularity and focus on hard problems like security.
Well, they can. New entrants to the dating app market always start out this way. They gain loads of initial trust and word of mouth growth by putting users first. But they inevitably fall victim to the same market forces as their competition, and slowly become the same thing. It happened to Tinder, it happened to Bumble, and it will happen to Hinge.
Ok sure but the point nerdjon and GekkePrutser are making (which I agree with 1,000%) is that it's super selfish to prioritize "creating a popular app" at all costs over protecting people's actual lives. Creating a popular app is great but don't risk the lives of your users!! That should go without saying!
That’s now what they’re saying . They’re saying if customer data security won’t be a deciding factor, you’ll lose by focusing on that instead of what IS the deciding factor.
People still use Grindr a ton even though these security issues have been well known for years and in most areas users have real concerns for their safety and lives if they’re caught using it, so I can’t say they’re wrong.
Little known fact: Facebook Dating doesn't sell any subscriptions, there are no limitations behind a paywall. They probably have the best security but I guess you could argue that Facbebook sells your data in other ways.
It is actually what I would expect from a dating site. Match group apps look more like a vehicle that only exists to transfer money from your pocket into theirs.
In the days before the internet, you would write to local news and your legislative representatives instead of making noise on Twitter.
These days, local news doesn't really exist, and representatives will only listen to big campaign contributors. Social media has stepped in to fill that gap for the modern lower/middle class.
As someone who's completely oblivious with the inner workings of the military sector, is there such thing as an ethics commission to ascertain what is deemed "ethically acceptable" and what is not?
Does it work? Does it fill a niche that can’t otherwise be filled and is considered important?
If so, it’s usually considered ethically acceptable.
See: land mines, white phosphorus, etc.
Chemical and biological weapons are in the few exceptions, and that is generally because they are very difficult to control and use without hurting your own troops as much or more.
Sadly, dolphins are another common target for conscription. They are smart mammals. The ones in Sevastopol could be considered turncoats, having transitioned through Soviet->Ukrainian->Russian hands. They're basically swimming guard dogs.
There is a joke about intelligent apes like orangutans and chimpanzees: they could probably learn to speak, but they refuse to do so out of fear that people would try to employ them.
Sure, but you should always check basic mg/kg numbers before you take a drug. Diphenhydramine can be hallucinogenic in high doses.
They also sell 1-gram extra-strength Tylenol pills OTC, but that's a very high dose for an average person. And what do you know, acetaminophen is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the US.
This rings very true to me. Most cold call emails have almost no information.
Worse, it feels like recruiters are realizing that their shotgunned "[X]-backed [Y]tech startup" emails are not getting replies, so they are starting to write clickbait subject lines!
In the past few months, I've seen a reduction in emails with subjects like, "Interested in a [general industry] [company type] role?" with some details in the body.
They've been replaced with subject lines like "What's up?" or, "Quick question" with minimal details beyond an invitation to "connect sometime".
It feels like they didn't get what they wanted by asking nicely, so they've decided it's better to be manipulative and evasive rather than taking "no response" for an answer.
In most forms of online communication, this type of behavior is considered creepy and disrespectful of boundaries. In recruiter world, apparently it's all in a day's work.
How about putting a salary range and WFH expectations in the subject line? We get a LOT of these emails; give us more information, not less.
You'll end up paying $N00 and $10-30/mo for a good one, but they are very useful for people who use words like "nomad".
You can Bluetooth them to your phone to do things like SMS, maps, weather updates, etc when there's no cell service. They also usually have "SOS" buttons, just in case.
It does not matter if you are interviewing for an opening which has been set aside for you. (Niche skills, nepotism, former colleagues, etc.)
It does matter if you are going for a fungible position with many applicants. Not a lot, but people are biased to hire others who they think they'd enjoy spending time around.
That bias helps attractive people, as well as people who look and act like part of an org's "in-group" (if one exists). It's ugly and gross, but it seems pretty fundamental to human nature.
North Koreans have been "jailbreaking" their electronics for a long time.
There are some good books about how ordinary people lived up to around Kim Jong-Un's reign, such as "Nothing to Envy" and "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader".
Devices such as TVs and radios were always set to only receive state broadcasts, and they are subject to regular inspections. But the safety measures were cheaply produced on a small scale, often a simple mechanical limit on a dial housed behind tamper-evident stickers.
The Tumen River has also been a traditionally porous border where black market media (and cosmetics, food, electronics, etc) could flow freely. As is usual in an authoritarian regime, well-connected people can ignore the rules, smart/wealthy people can work around them, and the occasional unlucky person can be made into an example.
> The Tumen River has also been a traditionally porous border where black market media (and cosmetics, food, electronics, etc) could flow freely. As is usual in an authoritarian regime, well-connected people can ignore the rules, smart/wealthy people can work around them, and the occasional unlucky person can be made into an example.
Sounds about right. Yeah and also, there's media that is freely distributed just for fun, and I think everyone can play Starcraft...there has to be a way. Game of cat and mouse. It's not just about what's forbidden and what's not it's also about bribing a little bit here, a little bit there...working the system, find a little something in the regular Wednesday (?) black market, hear a little secret...and as long as you're visibly contributing to society overall, you can push the envelope. Same as anywhere, Cuba is big on "sobrecumplir" meaning exceed expectations. If you do that, you can do all kinds of stuff.
So what is also missing from these viewpoints is that yeah on an individual basis, individual freedom, Koreans have fairly little of that to be sure. And it's not only due to rules, the rules and strictness is interwoven with the poverty, they cannot be thought of independently. If a country is poor, its prisons have to be that much worse than a rich country's for them to be a deterrent to theft. And that's just one example.
But collective freedom! Now that's a different story. These Koreans have a lot of that! Basically they gave up all their individual freedom in exchange for all the collective freedom they could possibly get. That's how you end up with Juche, for instance, mostly a way to accept poverty down the line but in exchange never allow foreign powers to perform manipulation through trade. And in fact, in the last "maximum pressure" period that Trump imposed, Korea didn't budge or suffer.[1] And for collective freedom the people--to my fullest understanding--need an autocrat, autocrator [2], the one guy everyone else in society stands in the way of bullets for, and who then thinks of all of them in return without any interference from foreign manipulation. Democracy is then in terms of the neurons of the autocrator. Any one of these neurons can change his mind completely[2], without tallying ballots or recounts.
That's what I gather from reading beyond the curriculum of Stanford's Korean History class.
[1] The price of rice didn't change under sanctions. A big reason given, though there were several, was that because North Korea's agriculture was generally not mechanized, State Dept. couldn't squeeze them on the availability of spare parts for machines. That was a huge surprise for State...and on top of that the counterfeiting. So while United States can owns the ability to print dollars, so does North Korea. How good would you think they would get if they made it a national priority? The brightest minds, thinking of ways to make a Benjamin cheaper than $100. It's a super simple goal. I think anybody can forge them for $1000 apiece, but to get it down under $100, ah! So while South Korea sends its brightest minds (in this case best test scores, they are totally subscribed to that) to eg Stanford, North Korea keeps them right put, working on sovereignty. Nationalism. Like they can get a 99 percentile student on every square millimeter of the $100 dollar bill. And get this, the North historically had better students than the South, especially the most mountainous areas, those had the most Yangban standardized exam passers. Because what else will you do with your time but study!
[2] I think in Russia the Czar is called an autocrator internally, Czar was the external name.
[3] This concept was enshrined in the Choson dynasty, absolutely any son of the King could inherit the throne, without any restrictions on whom his mother was. Although I know little of palatial uh...well conspiracies, what else could you call them...dynamics. Dynamics. There were rules, and nuance, and many interests at play.
Also, the author uses 2x 32x32 panels @$97 each as a price peg, but you can get a raw 64x32 panel from Adafruit (a quite expensive supplier) for $50.