Well, then you don’t need a phone review, do you?
Which is fine. Most people don’t need a phone at any given time. You go check reviews for phones when you need one and when you care about the differences between them. If you just need a phone-ass phone you can just go to your carrier and grab whatever is packed-in, no need to check reviews for that, most phones just fine work out of the box these days.
Okay, I’m here to help.
Shave.
Seriously. The amount of pressure put on guys around balding is horrendous, and it can consume your attention if you let it. The moment that superfluous, vestigial hair comes off, it’s such a breath of fresh air (no pun intended). No more fussing, worrying or stressing about it. Plus, in many cases it looks pretty good. Give it a couple of weeks and it’ll just become your face.
Give it a couple of months and the moment there’s a scratchy, annoying milimeter of hair on your head will be a natural call to give it a shave for the comfort alone.
See, this is the exact process I am trying to describe. I’m sure that made sense in your head, and I’m sure if you think about it for a second you’ll realize that Target will very happily set up an affiliate link, just as Amazon does. And, of course, a whole bunch of the SEO listicles are the SEO hooks of bigger traditional review sites, including RTINGS, IGN or whatever. For the sake of argument, punching in “best bluetooth speaker” on DDG returns SEO listicles from Tom’s Guide, Wired, RTINGS, the New York Times, CNET and The Verge, in that order.
Which is not to say it’s not annoying, affiliate links and SEO have done terrible things to how practical reviews on websites are presented and parceled out. But that’s not to say they aren’t done honestly or lack validity on the sites that do it right, which are also the more successful ones.
I am… unfamiliar with the ecosystem of print newspaper appliance reviews, but I can tell you that having sloppy or obsequious reviews isn’t generally a sign of having taken a bribe or even having any direct influence from the manufacturer. Reviewing things is hard, by definition you are not in the same position as the people who will buy the thing later. It can be difficult to make that shift and appreciate value, particularly when it comes to tech where reviewers are often assessing the cool factor of whatever is new on the market while users just need a tool for everyday life.
Also, good reviews and hostile reviews aren’t the same thing. This depends a lot on what is being reviewed, and it’s not to say extremely protective reviews are bad themselves. This is more true in media reviews than on tech reviews, but even on tech reviews, some of my favorite people working generally provide fairly positive reviews, or very neutral spec reviews with relatively little judgement. Very often I don’t need to be protected from harm, I just need a savvy overview of a thing before I pull the trigger.
But also, let’s be clear, don’t book product placement that looks like a review. And if you do, make it a full on ad and make sure it’s presented as a sponsorship, although even when big names do that while trying to stay honest, or because they genuinely like the thing I don’t particularly like it.
It really isn’t, which is why it’s news when something like that comes out. People sometimes confuse being cynical with knowing how things work.
That said, this one is confusing, because it really does seem like Google is blurring the lines here between an ad spot or a product placement spot and pre-release samples for tech influencers intending to review them.
Honestly, cynicism aside, The Verge does a good job of breaking it down, including clarifying that they are under no such stipulations for their own review, so I’d recommend just reading the article in full.
I am cringing pretty hard, doesn that count as “emotional”?
I sincerely don’t care enough about the fate of F-Droid to spend too long litigating the parts of this strategy that seem ill-conceived. If you think that implies hostility… well, it doesn’t. Hell, I hope I’m wrong, it’d be great to have a good indie storefront on Android to use as a default. I just don’t think as described this is it at all.
Otherwise, cope as you need. I have explained the bits I think you’re misunderstanding, I just don’t want to repeat that over and over because man, I need to have an online interaction that doesn’t devolve into that at some point. And I don’t want to explain why not wanting to talk to you any longer is not conceding the point, so this is the last time I’ll express that, too. Cool? Cool.
That’s a weird take, man. By that metric no online conversation can ever end.
I’ve made my point, I’ve said my piece. I’m not super emotionally invested on F-Droid’s success, either. This seems like a bad move in a few different ways, and it’s one that interferes with how I use the platform for the reasons I’ve stated. You don’t want that to be the case, I get that, but I don’t need your permission to feel that what’s being proposed here is going to mess with how I use it.
I also don’t need your permission to make the case that a store of monetized apps is a store of monetized apps and is competing with huge, polished, integrated alternatives in a way that F-Droid currently doesn’t. You’re mostly arguing with the kind of just-use-GIMP wishful thinking where it’s feasible for people to step out of their comfort zone or make morality-driven consumption choices en masse. I don’t feel I need to argue with you about it, though. It’s gonna go the way it’s going to go. The part that bums me out the most, as I said, is as an illustration for how self-reinforcing the niche position of FOSS can be sometimes. Otherwise, you do you.
Come on, guys, I’m sure those comments make more sense in context.
Checking the context for a second here…
…aaaand never mind, carry on.
I genuinely have nothing new to add to this conversation. All my previous points stand and they either address those objections already or the caveats are self-evident.
If anything I’ll say that seeing the defensiveness come together in real time is really helping me understand many recurring narratives happening around this space. I suggest we call this process “the GIMP effect”.
My point is I don’t care about the intentions of the project, I care about the piece of software that comes out the other end, regardless of whether that’s intended or not. A store with a mix of commercial and noncommercial software is just an Android store, like all the other Play alternatives. A repository of non commercial software where you know all the stuff you find fits a specific set of properties is a different thing, and I don’t need to read what the developers say online to feel that difference in the software.
It´s fundamentally harder to see the difference between Play and F-Droid if both have free, monetized and ad-based applications than if Play is mostly monetized and F-Droid is all noncommercial. If F-Droid steps away from that then it has a lot of homework to do and it enters a direct competition that is easy to understand: there are many stores, Play is the best one and the default, so why would I be using another one? If it was up to me, I’d even consider doing this as a separate app and keeping F-Droid as a dedicated version to remain in the position it already has, even if for developers they´re all uploading their software to the same back-end.
F-Droid now has a good answer to that. The version they´re proposing, regardless of their intentions, does not.
Does that help clarify where I´m coming from?
I think this train of thought fundamentally misunderstands how usability works and how positioning works. But hey, I don’t own this, I don’t have a stake on this and I already have F-Droid installed. At a glance it seems like a bad move that makes a thing I use less useful and more like a bunch of things I don’t use. We’ll see where it goes.
To clarify, I’m making a two step argument: One, I will only install a second store on my phone if that store serves a specific use case I don’t get from the first one (which is Play by default, since it comes preinstalled). Two, if F-Droid is going to sacrifice the clear message that it’s the place for noncommercial apps, then it must carry the same apps Play does, it needs to carry ALL of them so I can make it my default store.
So I understand what you’re saying, my point is that this is not a viable value proposition for me. F-Droid is positioned as the safe place for noncommercial software. If it’s no longer going to be that, then it’s picking the same fight with Google Play that the Samsung or Amazon stores do, and it’s just as likely to lose that fight. The reason it isn’t doing that at the moment isn’t its moral high ground, it’s that it has a clear position that doesn’t overlap with Play’s: noncommercial software.
Those are all advantages for developers and activists. End users don’t care or need to care. As an end user the only reason for keeping two stores in my phone is that one does a thing the other one doesn’t, functionally. That’s why Samsung can keep putting their dumb store on their phones forever but people just don’t engage with it.
Now, unlike the Samsung store when I was on a Samsung phone, F-Droid is something I do use, because there is a clear use case there: Play for all the commercial apps, F-Droid for non-commercial alternatives and a stuff that Google doesn’t allow on Play for whatever reason.
If F-Droid wants to make a push for being my only store, they better provide all the functionality, support, variety and convenience Play does, because Play comes pre-installed. If I can’t go to F-Droid to be guaranteed to not have to deal with payments or MTX, then it better have every single thing I need. I’m talking every game, every app, every legacy piece of software. It better have the same one-click payment convenience I get from Google Pay. And it better still have a default option to search for completely free apps, or I’ll have to go find a F-Droid alternative that does that for when I want to be sure I’m not getting any hidden fees with my app.
I’m not sure I can be as pliant as others here. Being less of an activist and more of a user of convenience, if I am making PayPal payments somebody better give me a reason why I’m not just using the same store that came in by default with my phone.
You mean visually? Because both the 9/11 stuff at the start and the religious stuff at the end have aged pretty horribly, honestly.
See, the weird religious pivot entirely ruined it for me, to the point where I can’t tolerate even the good bits. But also, that is the case so much that I don’t want to engage with a re-reboot anyway, so I’m weirdly in the same place.
All the usual caveats apply. Linux still comes behind “unknown” in Statcounter, whose methodology is… dubious, and the Steam survey has Linux at 2%, flat from the previous checkpoint.
I’ll take persona, although it’s been way too many games with the same setup. Ditto for the Trails series.
Honestly, I don’t think it got any better than ATB systems in FF 6 and 7. Everybody else is either riffing on those or spending so much money they think they can’t be those and need to be Devil May Cry instead.
I did not, but I took the liberty to assume the huge indoor lake with rowboats in it may have had something to do with that.
Joking aside, I don’t know if that was natural or a byproduct of mining, but there is a lot of water in there, to the point where there are salt stalactites all over the place and everything is covered in a thin layer of goopy brine. The entire place looks… slick.
Like I said, it’s a sight.
Absolutely, and if you can’t take the plunge on either do whatever feels right.
But I’ll say if you’re anxious about it at all, shaving is a good way to not have to think about it. Not everybody has an easy time just getting over the way they look and not giving a crap, obviously.
Plus if you’re worried about your hairline, going to get a haircut can be a stressful time and shaving means getting it out of the way. And it’s super cheap and fast by comparison.