Obviously this is completely subjective, but to me that one you linked is SO much uglier than the other. I'd hate to have that on my wrist, whereas the one this whole submission is about I'd probably buy to replace my Oura ring if it had sleep tracking, heart rate monitor etc. rather than just step count
I agree: it's horrible! But, as numerous commenters have observed, the one featured in the submission is only available at retail in England and countries other than the U.S.; on eBay it's $175 + shipping/delivery/insurance.
This: "... I'd probably buy to replace my Oura ring if it had sleep tracking, heart rate monitor etc. rather than just step count."
If it had all those other features it would cost way more than the version offered!
That's definitely a feasible explanation (and the one I would assume to be true for AliExpress).
But there is another, slightly less evil, explanation that I know at least some companies have pushed their apps because of: the thinking is that if you're on their website, there is less friction to open a new tab and search for a lower price from their competitors, than if you're in their app. Obviously it's hardly any different - opening a new app (the web browser) vs. opening a new tab in the app you're already in - but the theory is that there's a slight psychological difference.
Of course I'm not saying that trying to prevent your customers from searching for better deals is a nice thing to do. Just adding that data mining isn't the only reason for some companies to want people to use their apps.
It's quickly getting to the point for me that "find the thing I want locally and buy online if it's cheaper" is reversing. I've actually been to one of the few remaining electronics retailers to look for a PC for my kid recently, and it was nice not to be assailed by dark patterns (yes, there are dark patterns in b&m retail, but they're much more obvious).
There's a bit more nuance to it though, I think, because traditionally there has been more of a firm line between humans and tools.
For example, most people would agree with this line you wrote: "If I pick my phone and record a video, I'm now the producer and director of the film and the sole creator of it." A pedant could say "woah hang on, that's ignoring the fact that actually the iPhone is the one recording the images that make up the film, how can the human get all the credit", yet nobody would actually make that argument when discussing who created the film.
Generative AI is pretty much the first time (maybe there are some niche contradictions to this claim?) we consider a tool to be contributing enough creativity to the process that we don't all agree "only one person was operating this tool, so that person is the sole creator" - but some people DO still hold that line, and do consider the human who wrote the prompt to be the creator.
And I don't think there's any objective technical metric we can use to say who's right, it comes down to our collective judgement deciding where the line is.
Would you mind sharing how you prompt this? I'm not a developer myself (just someone who occasionally dabbles, though most of my coding was pre-LLMs) and curious to see how much info/instruction you consider necessary to test them making an actual app (albeit a simple one).
That does help of course, but it overlooks the fact that anxiety can be an illogical mental health problem rather than just a logical well-founded concern. By which I mean even if the audience's reactions are completely ideal, it doesn't mean someone with bad anxiety won't spend lots of time in the future thinking of all the ways in which the audience might have been silently judging them etc.
I get this because I do it. I get immense anxiety from what people may be thinking, or what could go wrong in all areas of life.
Speaking to the entire company gets me nervous, but strangely not as much as other things, I think because I have to be delivering a presentation there's less time to spin in a loop worrying.
I think there's a certain type that you're talking about that does tend towards energy drinks like that, but it's not true in the other direction, as that type is a minority of energy drink drinkers. Just a particularly noticeable one.
I've not been a fan of them myself since I was a teenager years ago, but I've worked with quite a few people in all sorts of roles, whose drink of choice was whatever their favourite energy drink was, either having one occasionally or between one and a few a day, while being completely relaxed, mature, and just nothing to do with any sort of stereotypes you might think of in connection with energy drinks.
Sure, I guess I've just worked at enough startups that advertise "keeping the fridge full of Red Bull" as some kind of perk, when in reality it kind of ends up being a code for "you'd better enjoy working long, long hours".
I mean, there's more than enough reasons to criticise or laugh at the UK that actually exist, without mocking a country for a hypothetical of someone online that hasn't actually been proposed by any politicians or, well, anybody at all?
It is incredibly annoying at the self-checkout being asked to present PHOTO ID to buy a monster energy. I was once denied my beverage, so I walked back over to the meal deal area and purchased a Starbucks canned coffee that had THE SAME LEVEL OF CAFFIENE
You're making the mistake of assuming it has something to do with the caffeine content or caffeine being illegal.
There's one pattern that all these rules have in common: Someone noticed a problem, so they added friction to try and reduce the problem. People are getting fucked up on Red Bull? Add friction to buying a Red Bull. People aren't getting fucked up on coffee? Then don't add friction to coffee. I know us engineer personalities would like to define uniform rules for all caffeinated products or not define any rules, and that's what you should do if you are making a medical robot to maintain someone's caffeine level, but that isn't really how the social world works. It's a quite straightforward loop of observation->response.
If the private subsidiary was doing semi-unrelated stuff to the goals of the non-profit, and using it to fund the non-profit, then your logic could make sense - for example if a cancer research charity owned a profitable business and funnelled the profits up to spend on research, great.
But in OpenAI's case, the claimed goals of the non-profit were essentially "do AI in a way that puts safety above profits". And whether or not one agrees with their previous approach to safety, or even whether safety needs to be cared about, it's undeniable that the for-profit business isn't acting as useful fundraising for the non-profit's goals, it's literally acting in the opposite direction.
> it's undeniable that the for-profit business isn't acting as useful fundraising for the non-profit's goals, it's literally acting in the opposite direction
It's generally not up to your or to me, it's up to the donors to the non-profit. If what you find to be undeniable is very much deniable to them, then that is their right.
The only question of public concern is whether OpenAI, Inc., a charity, meets the exemption requirements [1].
Well, you don't know if they do, or if they were just capitalising the start of their sentence while not feeing that the word needs a capital letter in and of itself.
(But yeah, personally I would capitalised both counties regardless of spelling/which name used.)
