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2020-12-30
, 06:28
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Posts: 4,708 |
Thanked: 4,649 times |
Joined on Oct 2007
@ Bulgaria
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#2
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And now Withings again. 
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Technically, there are three determinate states the cat could be in: Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.
Technically, there are three determinate states the cat could be in: Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.
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2020-12-30
, 06:41
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Community Council |
Posts: 4,920 |
Thanked: 12,867 times |
Joined on May 2012
@ Southerrn Finland
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#3
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Originally Posted by robthebold
That's a Withings watch branded as Nokia, probably some display piece.
I'd never heard of such a thing till I was messing around on the goodwill website.
Apparently it's been around for a while. Who knew?
https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/111569688
Would be neat if there were a syncing app for SFOS, etc.
As you might know Withings was acquired by Nokia some years ago and then divested again after an year or so. (For a while Nokia was keen on following the Health/Measure-Yourself craze but never managed to cash on it and so rid itself of all health-related business...)
I've got one of those which is exactly identical to the piece shown above except for "Withings" brand instead of "Nokia". It's a pretty OK as watches go, and has just this one function, measuring daily exercise level from 0% to 100%
What I like about it is the long battery life, it runs for couple of years on a battery, not needing daily/weekly charging like smartwathches.
The activity measurement is pretty basic, it records continuously all movement to a buffer that lasts about a week and resets the activity counter each day.
The downside of it is that it is very tightly coupled to the withings cloud and you need an Android application for just about any operation you would like to perform, for example you cannot even set the time except from the application
All data visualization and analysis is done through the Withings portal so you need to pull data from the watch to the cloud before being able to see your stats and graphs.
I really hate the trend of uploading personal statistics to cloud which seems to be the norm today so I spent some time reverse-engineering the BTLE protocol it uses between the watch and phone but never got it into useful shape so my watch has been resting on the bottom of a drawer for few years now...
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Dave999: Meateo balloons. What’s so special with em? Is it a ballon?
Dave999: Meateo balloons. What’s so special with em? Is it a ballon?
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2020-12-31
, 10:59
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Posts: 584 |
Thanked: 1,550 times |
Joined on Sep 2019
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#4
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Originally Posted by juiceme
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
The downside of it is that it is very tightly coupled to the withings cloud and you need an Android application for just about any operation you would like to perform, for example you cannot even set the time except from the application
And it looks like a normal, even somewhat old-styley analog watch.
Sadly I think that's a trend we're going to see more of: devices that look like they're well-made analog devices of eras past, but really just do the same datamining poo-poo as any smartphone...
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2020-12-31
, 11:20
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Community Council |
Posts: 4,920 |
Thanked: 12,867 times |
Joined on May 2012
@ Southerrn Finland
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#5
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Originally Posted by nonsuch
Presiis!
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
And it looks like a normal, even somewhat old-styley analog watch.
Sadly I think that's a trend we're going to see more of: devices that look like they're well-made analog devices of eras past, but really just do the same datamining poo-poo as any smartphone...
For some unfathomable reason such behaviour is touted as a pinnacle of user-friendliness though I'd tend to call it out like user-fiendishnezz!!
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Dave999: Meateo balloons. What’s so special with em? Is it a ballon?
Dave999: Meateo balloons. What’s so special with em? Is it a ballon?
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2020-12-31
, 17:21
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Posts: 1,038 |
Thanked: 3,980 times |
Joined on Nov 2010
@ USA
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#6
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I was puzzled by the apparent lack of a crown or buttons or anything. "It's set by the phone" is a perfectly reasonable answer to that , but also a bonkers design decision. Except that it's all about the data-mining, as you've said, juiceme.
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2021-01-01
, 00:58
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Community Council |
Posts: 1,669 |
Thanked: 10,225 times |
Joined on Nov 2014
@ Lower Rhine
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#7
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Slightly offtopic but a similar brain fart has happend to LEGO.
Once in a time you bought a ~500€, 1000pcs Technic model of a crane or sth. and got a dedicated remote control to control every feature of the model with a tactile button and sometimes even sliders and potis.
Now, they canceled all remote controls since a year or so and force you into the Lego Control app on a phone that connects via wlan.
You literally have to navigate through sub menues to find features. Ergonomie, usability? Ah screw it, an app is cheaper and much more "environmental freindly".
Granted, you can create waypoints for the model to act like a robot and such, but heck, why cancel the remote control? Both please...
They mainy purpose of LEGO was to get people away from their consumption devices and get creative. Wow. Hope they shot their own foot and people look into alternatives like QBricks.
Once in a time you bought a ~500€, 1000pcs Technic model of a crane or sth. and got a dedicated remote control to control every feature of the model with a tactile button and sometimes even sliders and potis.
Now, they canceled all remote controls since a year or so and force you into the Lego Control app on a phone that connects via wlan.
You literally have to navigate through sub menues to find features. Ergonomie, usability? Ah screw it, an app is cheaper and much more "environmental freindly".
Granted, you can create waypoints for the model to act like a robot and such, but heck, why cancel the remote control? Both please...
They mainy purpose of LEGO was to get people away from their consumption devices and get creative. Wow. Hope they shot their own foot and people look into alternatives like QBricks.
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Watch our weird watchfaces for mighty AsteroidOS
Performance comparison Video Sailfish 2.0 vs 1.1.9 vs 1.1.7
[MC eV] Maemo Community eV membership application please concider to join!
Watch our weird watchfaces for mighty AsteroidOS
Performance comparison Video Sailfish 2.0 vs 1.1.9 vs 1.1.7
[MC eV] Maemo Community eV membership application please concider to join!
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2021-01-01
, 20:30
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Posts: 584 |
Thanked: 1,550 times |
Joined on Sep 2019
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#8
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Originally Posted by mosen
Controling who?
force you into the Lego Control app
They mainy purpose of LEGO was to get people away from their consumption devices and get creative. Wow. Hope they shot their own foot and people look into alternatives like QBricks.
Forcing it into the cloud certainly was a bad move, but there've been many such moves, now and in the past.
Collaboration with Star Wars.
Being such a great unisex toy, they still had to introduce a completely separate line "for girls", implying that other lines are "for boys".
Computer games.
NinjaGo.
Etc.
Some might even argue that the very introduction of LEGO Technic was such a move, trying to get into a market segment dominated by FischerTechnik until then. Not me, I loved it.
When I was a child I visited the one and only LEGOLand, and it was all made from square bricks, nothing else. That was LEGO back then.
Enough nostalgia, I'm not complaining.
But I see kids playing with it every day, and sometimes I wish they were reduced to LEGO of the seventies. Just bricks (well, mostly). Challenges the imagination much better.
Last edited by nonsuch; 2021-01-01 at 20:35.
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2021-01-03
, 03:33
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Posts: 1,038 |
Thanked: 3,980 times |
Joined on Nov 2010
@ USA
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#9
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Originally Posted by nonsuch
These are super-interesting points, and much more, uh, pointed, when I finally had to face them head on . . .
Controling who?
Ah well, the basic idea was good, but obviously they always had to invent ever-new ways of selling their stuff, right from the start.
Forcing it into the cloud certainly was a bad move, but there've been many such moves, now and in the past.
Collaboration with Star Wars.
Being such a great unisex toy, they still had to introduce a completely separate line "for girls", implying that other lines are "for boys".
Computer games.
NinjaGo.
Etc.
Some might even argue that the very introduction of LEGO Technic was such a move, trying to get into a market segment dominated by FischerTechnik until then. Not me, I loved it.
When I was a child I visited the one and only LEGOLand, and it was all made from square bricks, nothing else. That was LEGO back then.
Enough nostalgia, I'm not complaining.
But I see kids playing with it every day, and sometimes I wish they were reduced to LEGO of the seventies. Just bricks (well, mostly). Challenges the imagination much better.
The "Friends" line (ostensibly for girls) really did increase Lego sales to/for girls. It's not just the pink boxes, either. The sets focus more on the insides of the buildings and what goes on there, whereas the "boy" sets are more about exteriors.
Some interesting articles about the series:
Lego's 'sexist' Friends range for girls spurs 35% profit rise
Lego revenues in girls' construction toys triples in three years -- Fortune
Lego's sales soared 25 percent last year thanks in part to its new series of building blocks designed for girls.
The above article points out this isn't the first time a toymaker has made a big move to appeal to the other gender: 'Nearly half a century ago, toymaker Hasbro found a way to sell dolls to boys: call them something else. “G.I. Joe” and Star Wars dolls were dubbed “action figures.”'
Another article from the Wall Street Journal:
The company found that—unlike what it had long thought—girls enjoy building as much as bonowys. The nuance is that they enjoy building different things, Ms. Costa said. Lego also tried gender-neutral packaging but found that girls, as well as parents, would more often pick sets for girls when they came in pink or purple.
And the most fascinating one from The Atlantic: For toymakers like Lego, where is the line between making products children love and telling kids how they should play?
To see how boys and girls play, you just have to watch them do their thing. That’s what Lego did over the course of its research in past decade. For one project, Lego gathered a group of boys and asked them to build a Lego castle together. Separately, they gave the same task to the group of girls. Both groups worked together to build the castle, but once it was assembled, there were stark differences in how the two groups proceeded.
“The boys immediately grabbed the figures and the horses and the catapults and they started having a battle,” McNally said. “The facilitator said, ‘What about the castle?’ And they said, ‘Well, that’s just the backdrop for the battle.’”
The girls, on the other hand, were more focused on the structure—and not too impressed with what they found. “They all looked around inside the castle and they said, ‘Well, there’s nothing inside,’” McNally said. “This idea of interior versus exterior in the orientation of how they would then play with what they built was really interesting. If you think about most of the Lego models that people consider to be meant for boys, there’s not a whole lot going on in there. But [the girls had] this idea of, ‘There’s nothing inside to do.’”
“Both girls and boys were saying they liked building, but there were nuances in what they were looking for,” he added. “We heard girls overwhelming saying we would much rather build environments than single structures. They were really just looking for a lot more detail than we were offering.”
I ended up deciding it was okay. (I got a little criticism from friends that I figured both left and right of me). And she's been much more interested in the "Friends" line than the generic Duplo and Junior sets she was exposed to before. Furthermore, her little brother is actually enthusiastic to help her build the giant Friends stable and equestrian training set, even though he's the super-stereotypical boy, "counting weapons" on each page of his Lego Star Wars books he reserves at the library every week.
But it's probably the end of the line for this narrative. Daughter is well into the tweenage years, and interest in toys like Legos -- even Lego Friends -- is waning for books about dragons and the potentials of temporary hair dyes.
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2021-01-03
, 12:57
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Posts: 584 |
Thanked: 1,550 times |
Joined on Sep 2019
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#10
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Yes, there are different ways of playing, and I don't prefer the battle style as described above.
But the description is too dualistic, there's more options, with LEGO or otherwise. In the above example it could be to play both outside and inside, be a community, go exploring... etc.
Ways that aren't sepcifically "boyish" or "girlish".
These differences as described tend to run along gender lines but I think they are not attached to the actual sex, or at least to a much lesser degree than we like to think.
I believe we should strive to provide opportunities to our kids to develop themselves independently of the constraints of strict gender roles. And just to be clear, I'm not refering to some currently popular trends of gender neutrality - it doesn't make a boy less of a boy if he likes playing family with his friends, for example. And it doesn't make a girl less of a girl if she picks up a stick and plays battle ninja with her firends.
And I think we (the adults of 2020) are doing a pretty decent job. Not perfect, not too extreme, but getting there. Gender roles aren't as strict anymore as they used to be 50 years ago, not by a long shot.
But then the toy & entertainment industry come along and realise that by keeping up these gender roles they can double their profits, as you so nicely pointed out above.
Cleverly and very succesfully implanting this into children's minds.
Thus destroying part of the good work parents & teachers around the world are doing.
LEGO is just one example.
I'm seeing this every day at work (3-7 year old children). It saddens and angers me.
PS: wow, how did we get here from a Nokia watch?
But the description is too dualistic, there's more options, with LEGO or otherwise. In the above example it could be to play both outside and inside, be a community, go exploring... etc.
Ways that aren't sepcifically "boyish" or "girlish".
These differences as described tend to run along gender lines but I think they are not attached to the actual sex, or at least to a much lesser degree than we like to think.
I believe we should strive to provide opportunities to our kids to develop themselves independently of the constraints of strict gender roles. And just to be clear, I'm not refering to some currently popular trends of gender neutrality - it doesn't make a boy less of a boy if he likes playing family with his friends, for example. And it doesn't make a girl less of a girl if she picks up a stick and plays battle ninja with her firends.
And I think we (the adults of 2020) are doing a pretty decent job. Not perfect, not too extreme, but getting there. Gender roles aren't as strict anymore as they used to be 50 years ago, not by a long shot.
But then the toy & entertainment industry come along and realise that by keeping up these gender roles they can double their profits, as you so nicely pointed out above.
Cleverly and very succesfully implanting this into children's minds.
Thus destroying part of the good work parents & teachers around the world are doing.
LEGO is just one example.
I'm seeing this every day at work (3-7 year old children). It saddens and angers me.
PS: wow, how did we get here from a Nokia watch?
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Apparently it's been around for a while. Who knew?
https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/111569688
Would be neat if there were a syncing app for SFOS, etc.