>People buy them because they are cheap, not because they are good.
This is quite the overarching generalization. Especially on a site like HN where there are tons of financially well off people choosing to use Android. Do some people buy Androids because they are a cheaper alternative to iPhones, sure. Do some people buy Androids because they don't like things like Apple intentionally slowing devices down, like having access to things like Termux, the ability to flash their own ROMs and root, etc? Absolutely. I don't even want to make this an Apple vs Android thing, but please don't reduce a valid choice down to people's financial situation.
Statistically the average selling price of an Android phone is $200. Even Samsung’s ASP is $250.
An “overarching generalization” doesn’t mean there aren’t outliers. But most people aren’t buying Android phones so they can flash ROMs and run Termux.
On the other hand, the “slowing down phones” meme is outdated - it was a choice between slowing them down and then shutting off completely. All batteries degrade over time.
I don't want to argue about Android vs iOS at all. You should buy what you like, I just provided a couple reasons why I use Andoid. I'm assuming your numbers are worldwide since you did not provide a source. If they're US centric, I'd be very surprised. Living in the US, I know plenty of people with Pixel 3s and S9s. These people did not buy these expensive flagship Android phones because they were cheap. There are plenty of valid reasons to buy them.
If Samsung were selling high end Android phones in volume, how many cheap crappy phones are they selling for the ASP of all of their phones to be $250?
I don't know how many expensive phones Samsung sells, but Google hardly sells any Pixels at all. Last time I checked, they made up less than 1% of Android handset sales.
So in the case of Android, you would have phones with replaceable batteries running old OS’s that the manufacturer abandons unpatched security holes.
Give me a phone that can run the latest OS for five years that I can take to the Apple store and get the battery place for $79 ($29 until the end of the year) any day.
Besides, the processors that are in most low end and midrange Android phones are so horrible compared to 4 year old iPhones, I can’t imagine them keeping up with new software.
No updates is another issue. But it is a problem created artificially. Somehow my 10 year old Core 2 Duo I'm using as HTPC is still getting updates and is working perfectly fine.
> Besides, the processors that are in most low end and midrange Android phones are so horrible compared to 4 year old iPhones, I can’t imagine them keeping up with new software.
Again - it's mostly software problem.
I have Motorola Moto E LTE(2015 - 2nd gen) with 1GB of RAM and it's working perfectly fine with Lineage OS [without google services] + F-Droid. I'm using it for Jabber communication (Conversations), podcasts (AntennaPod), GPS (Osmand), e-mail checking (mostly notifications from my bank ;)), calendar (DAVDroid), searching web (Firefox) when I want to check something on the go (bus/train timetable, address etc.) and everything works fine.
My friend had same model and he replaced it because everything was slow with "official" android.
I also have to change my phone. Reason? Battery. Changing it is difficult(https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Motorola+Moto+E+2nd+Generation+...) and paying someone to do it doesn't make any sense (labor + new battery would cost more than this phone is worth...).
No updates is another issue. But it is a problem created artificially. Somehow my 10 year old Core 2 Duo I'm using as HTPC is still getting updates and is working perfectly fine.
The issue is not artificial. Before around the Core 2 Duo, processors and hardware were getting faster at such a rapid clip and the software was taking advantage of it that you really had to upgrade often to use modern software.
My Dell Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz laptop from 2009 has:
8GB RAM - still the standard amount of RAM on most consumers.
A 1920x1200 display - it was one of the last laptops that had screens with that resolution before everyone moved to 1929x1080 and that resolution is still better than the average consumer laptop.
Gigabit Ethernet - most laptops these days don’t come with Ethernet at all and for those that do, gigabit Ethernet is still the standard.
250GB hard drive - of course now hard drives are SSD but most laptops still only come with < 500GB hard drives.
In 2009, an almost 10 year old computer would have had much lower specs than what was then a modern computer.
You see the same ramp up in mobile hardware that happen with computers. It just happened a lot faster.
And it doesn’t matter why the Android ecosystem is such a mess when it comes to upgrades. But it is.
Not only is the 6S from 2015 still getting official updates - so is the 5s from 2013.
Also, the processors in iPhones are so much better than in the typical Android phone, the phones have more headroom for upgrades.
> Do some people buy Androids because they don't like things like Apple intentionally slowing devices down
Please read up on this point in detail instead of going by sensational headlines. You’d get a more comprehensive picture about how batteries work the same on iPhones and Android phones, and why Apple put in some software changes.
- Build some webapp and get it working correctly in Chrome
- Test on Firefox. It works 90% of the time. 9% of the time it's relatively easy to support. 1% of the time it isn't worth the hassle.
- Test on Edge. It works 80% of the time. 10% it's an easy enough fix. 10% you have to move heaven and Earth to fix and when you contact Microsoft, they know about the issue but won't do anything to help.
- Test on IE. It works 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time you start looking for a new job so you don't have to write the same code a second time for IE.
Edge guesses for each number on a page if it might be a phone number. The guess depends on your locale. If it is considered phoneable, edge removes all javascript and replaces it with a link to skype. Which is fun if skype is not installed, it just pops up a messagebox complaining you need to install something, and it's not going to tell you what exactly. The error is only half translated and lost any meaning in the process. Can't put a DOM breakpoint on it either, the bloody browser just ignores everything you do to that DOM node.
Fun, now a few rare numbers on one of our sites seem phone number enough for the dutch locale to break the site. Tell the user to switch to the french locale as workaround, or get any other browser. MS wants you to change the html to say: hey edge, this is not a phoneable number.
WTF, microsoft? Way to shoot yourself in the foot. What else did you hide in there that will bite me one day?
This. I raised an issue where Microsoft fucked up download prompting in IE9 (identified in beta released 2010) and broke ClickOnce launched via Javascript redirection. They haven't fixed it yet as of today (including in Edge!) and rep contacted me and said they deleted the case we had open.
We rewrote the app so it didn't use ClickOnce in the end.
Even if you have a source for this data, how many of these jobs are going to be lost to automation and process improvements in the next 5-10 years? My father recently retired form a steel mill. He wasn't replaced. My city's entire economy used to be based around steel manufacturing. There's still plants here, but the number of people who work in the steel industry has steadily declined. Here is a cited source to say it's down 42% since 1990 [0]. In addition to the steel industry, I work in the financial sector. It used to take a room full of accountants to file with the SEC. Now it takes one or two to input the data and check for errors in the software. Process enhancements and technology are going to eat people's lunch and manufacturing is one of the easiest areas to automate and streamline.
How recent? Steel is doing very well right now. They are hiring. Your source even shows this, not that your source is at all trustworthy.
1990 is a long time ago.
Steel is far from the only kind of manufacturing. Even if steel mill jobs all disappeared, overall manufacturing could be doing well. I'm not even 100% sure that steel should be lumped in with manufacturing; it's kind of like the final step of mining.
Process enhancements and technology face declining benefits. At some point, you've automated everything that makes sense to automate.
The jobs are going to stick around for 10 years unless we go back to a policy of purposely regulating American industry out of existence.
OP was arguing that manufacturing jobs are coming back. I cited a couple examples showing automation is going to make this very hard to be sustainable. I am not arguing that this is a bad thing or that people won't find productive ways to spend their time. I am arguing that bringing manufacturing back is not a long term sustainable plan.
This is a problem with usernames being the display names on the platform. For example, my friend's Xbox Live name is in the format XX## from before Microsoft upped the minimum character count. He was grandfathered in. He's fairly attached to his name and forcing him to go to one of the remaining unique usernames doesn't seem fair when he's been paying for the service for over a decade. In that time, thousands of "good" usernames have been taken and all that seems to be left is John33191299991102. Asking them to switch names they've already locked in is a very difficult balancing act between this problem and pissing off their longest standing customers.
Steam's approach of unique username and your choice of display name makes the most sense to me. If I want to be Bob, I can be. If I want to choose something rather unique, I can. However, this opens up a whole new set of problems with impersonation. I don't think this is a problem on XBox with the buddy system and no trade economy though.
Blizzard's way of doing names makes tons of sense and doesn't rely on an incredibly awful search to find people. You can name your account whatever you want, but they automatically give you a unique number (when paired with your name) so people can easily add you to their friends list. So you can sign up with the name "Bob" and they will give you "Bob#1234" for people to find you.
This way you don't have any worry about people having short usernames being special or unique. The issue is that this kind of username scheme works for gamers (that aren't trying to be standout/unique necessarily and just want their username), but I don't believe would be accepted by social media influencers whose usernames are their brand names.
Discord does the same thing with the discriminator, and if you're a Discord Nitro subscriber you get the ability to manually change it to whatever combo you like (as long as someone with the same username doesn't have that number).
This is an even better solution. I've never had a Battle.net account so was previously unfamiliar with this. I agree though, this is a good way to give people the display name they want which is the crux of my problem with making unique username the same as the display name.
I 100% agree with you. Software is "soft". Making changes to a code base is very cheap. Iteration just makes sense in software even for critical systems. If you build a suboptimal bridge, you have to live with it. If you write suboptimal software, you can test the actual product and fix it before you even ship. You can't really test a bridge outside of simulations. GP's comparison is apples to oranges in a lot of ways.
> You can't really test a bridge outside of simulations.
Just to pick a few nits, actually bridges are indeed tested during and after construction. It used to be standard practice to do test runs with near limit loads to inaugurate bridges, consisting of getting a fleet of military vehicles or water tankers to cross the bridge while surveyors monitored the bridge's response.
Nowadays non-destructive testing techniques are favoured for a number of reasons, including the fact that sensor rigs can also be used throughout the structure's lifetime to help determine its fatigue life.
Would some people watch TV all day? Sure. However, there are tons of people that are trapped at a desk for 8 hours a day browsing the internet and watching Youtube videos anyway. I don't see all that much of a difference outside of freedom. "Busy" in this context just essentially means must keep their butt in their seat for 8 hours. Giving people freedom with their time allows people to write books, make music, paint pictures, learn skills, create products, etc.
Is it all positives? Probably not. I could see issues with people isolating themselves with no requirement to go into an office. But personally, I don't think unemployment is worse than bullshit jobs. Being busy is not a good metric to go by. If I carry buckets of water back from the river all day, I'm busy. But that's incredibly stupid to do if I have running water.
I'm a former daily smoker. I carry a water bottle with me everywhere. When I was a daily smoker, I would pretty frequently forget where I had just set my water bottle down. My partner still gives me shit for it. Since stopping, this is a very rare occurrence.
As far as the mental sharpness thing goes,I didn't notice any major changes. Some people I know would have some fogginess the day after. This never affected me personally. I think brain fog is definitely a real thing for _some_ users.
I totally understand this is anecdotal. I'm just trying to share my experiences. I hate how defensive people can be about cannabis. I am sympathetic to this because giving proponents of cannabis prohibition anything to latch onto delays progress. It should be legal. People should also have honest discussions about it. It's a fairly low risk drug IMO, but it is a drug.
Yes, many people will take the largest script the doctor will prescribe. Insurance generally helps cover the cost of the prescription, so reselling them can be really lucrative. Even in your scenario, 25 pills seems like a lot. Many people will be totally pain free in 2-3 days. No one needs 8 pills a day for wisdom teeth. Let's say they take 4 a day for 3 days, that's still 13 pills leftover.
Go to any manual labor job (construction for example) in the Midwest. You will find people wanting to buy leftover prescriptions and people selling them. It's a pretty large black market. The vast, vast majority of people I know doing construction, laying asphalt, etc are all daily drinkers, potheads, or addicted to opiates. It's honestly super depressing.
Since the insurance charges the same for a large prescription versus a small one, even if you aren't planning on selling them, it makes sense from a financial perspective to get the extra pills, just in case you do need them. (If there are complications, or if something else happens, etc.)
> It seems getting into America's most prestigious institution on merit is incredibly unlikely, compared to if you happened to have rich relatives.
It's mostly prestigious for business. Not saying it's right, but business is almost entirely who you know. The allure of Harvard is networking and name recognition. For tech, you can make amazing contacts at CMU, CalTech, MIT, etc and there systems are at least partially more of a meritocracy.
>Athletes I guess are a special American thing where universities are involved.
While it might be a raw deal for basketball or football where there is a ton of revenue, this is amazing for athletes of less popular sports like swimming, track and field, softball, etc. Also, athletics give people an outlet. It's at least partially why people walk on with no scholarship.
> You can't work your way out of poverty over two generations. If anything is the American Dream (arguably there's more people outside of America who have one of these, but I digress), it's being able to see your kids succeed. But they want 1st gen immigrants according to the article.
Granted this was a few years back, but parents were 1st gen from an Eastern European country. It helped me in the admissions process at a top tech school.
>Do they have a drop-down for ethnicity?
Yes, but pretty vague (e.g; White, Pacific Islander, Asian, etc). I wrote about my parents in my admission essay. I honestly think it helped me get into the school I wanted to go to. I'm not disagreeing the system is shitty, but where you go to school isn't as important as building your network in the US. The school on my resume may have gotten me some first interviews but the people I met at jobs have gotten me every other one. I'm not a super social person, so I never liked playing this game, but people liking you is far more important than what you actually know or where you went to school most of the time.
This is quite the overarching generalization. Especially on a site like HN where there are tons of financially well off people choosing to use Android. Do some people buy Androids because they are a cheaper alternative to iPhones, sure. Do some people buy Androids because they don't like things like Apple intentionally slowing devices down, like having access to things like Termux, the ability to flash their own ROMs and root, etc? Absolutely. I don't even want to make this an Apple vs Android thing, but please don't reduce a valid choice down to people's financial situation.