Monthly Archives: August 2022

Article note: Having active control over the content you're consuming on a computer rather than passively watching TV appears to lower your dementia risk _more_ than increasing your physical activity level in this micro study.

Enlarge (credit: Dennis Fischer Photography)

Standing desks—and even biking desks—are a response to a growing body of studies showing that a sedentary lifestyle creates many health risks. Regular physical activity appears to confer a degree of protection from various problems, both physical and mental, and many results indicate that this doesn't have to be Olympic-level training. Simply walking around the apartment a few times a day appears to help.

Now, a team of researchers has looked at the opposite question: Are all forms of inactivity equal? The answer is probably not. While the details depend on the health issues involved, there's likely to be some good news for people reading this, in that computer use appears to be somewhat protective against dementia.

Get off your chair

The physical risks associated with inactivity are generally associated with lower cardiovascular health, either directly or via obesity. Even a small amount of physical activity appears capable of limiting these impacts, although increased exercise generally seems to be even better (details vary depending on the study and the exact risk being examined).

Article note: It really is _staggeringly_ unacceptable. Google suspended this person's account and reported them to the police because a photo of their child's medical problem they took at a doctor's request was automatically backed up. And there is essentially no recourse because google's whole model is customers can only interface with robots. Systems should serve _people_, if we're getting false positives that massively disrupt people's lives, we should go ahead and E2E encrypt the middle-men and surveillance state out (and frankly, we probably should anyway).

Article note: Oh good, that timer is nicer than most of the ugly-ad-farm-with-timer alternatives. I'd love a similar timer with simple display built as a nice little Qt program, but somehow there isn't one, and I don't have the energy to fix that.

Welcome back "Google set a timer for X minutes." Kudos to the team that...

Article note: Not as stupid as I was afraid it was going to be, they're still getting the branches that will take out lines, but not the ones that will be ground-fault dumpster fires in the event of a downed line.

Article note: No shit, now the manufacturers need to act on it.

Enlarge / Not all progress is good. (credit: Hispanolistic/Getty Images)

It's probably a little early to be warning of extinction, but in some new cars, buttons are becoming hard to find. Given that a screen has to go into the dashboard anyway (thanks to things like backup camera requirements) and the fact that people increasingly won't consider a car without Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, touchscreens make life easier for automakers in terms of design and assembly.

It's just that they don't make life easier for drivers. Instead, we're treated to bad interfaces that don't create muscle memory but instead distract us while we should be driving. And now, Swedish car publication Vi Bilägare has the data to prove it.

VB tested 11 new cars alongside a 2005 Volvo C70, timing how long it took to perform a list of tasks in each car. These included turning on the seat heater, increasing the cabin temperature, turning on the defroster, adjusting the radio, resetting the trip computer, turning off the screen, and dimming the instruments.

Article note: Yes.

Article note: Oh look, google killing a product. And this isn't even the fist time around in that space for Google; they had that "Android Things" platform they rug-pulled a couple years back, and migrated everyone who didn't leave onto this one.

Article note: Isn't the supposed value proposition for Apple that you trade paying a premium to lock yourself into their ecosystem for their not selling your attention as their primary product?

Enlarge / Apple's HQ, as seen in Apple Maps. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple is looking into significantly ramping up its ads business, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, and has already internally explored adding ads to the iPhone's Maps app, with other potential expansions also on the horizon.

The shift may be driven in part by a recent change within the company's reporting structure: Gurman wrote in his email newsletter this week that Apple advertising VP Todd Teresi began reporting directly to Apple services head Eddie Cue a few months back. He also wrote that Teresi plans to increase Apple's advertising revenue from $4 billion annually to billions in the double digits.

As Gurman notes, advertising is already a part of Apple's strategy, but it's limited in scope and to certain places. The most traditional advertisements you'll see in an Apple-made app are the ones in the Stocks and News apps. There, you'll see display ads just like those you see on news websites—both outside of stories and inside of them.

Article note: It seems like ContentID is so abused it's hard to claim there are significant non-abusive function. It doesn't handle clear fair-use. It keeps being used for scams, both directly and for extortion. It screws up the functioning of the cultural commons.

Article note: I'm not hopeful that the process won't be captured by companies who have made enormous amounts of money off of exploitative data collection practices and/or private and governmental entities who like buying that data, but at least there's a plan for a plan to regulate.