There are lots of myths about Dark Mode on phones, and the Nielsen-Norman Group has opinions about them. CC-licensed photo by akitada31 on Flickr.
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It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.
A selection of 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Fitbits, Apple Watches and other fitness trackers really do make you healthier • WSJ
Julie Jargon:
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There’s been widespread scepticism in the scientific and medical community about whether fitness trackers can improve health, said researchers from the University of South Australia. So they conducted a study of 39 systematic reviews involving nearly 164,000 participants of all ages.
The result, published last year: when people wore wearables, they on average increased their daily step counts by 1,800—and boosted their daily walking time by 40 minutes.
Fitness trackers are in fact effective in helping people lose weight, increase their aerobic activity and lower their blood pressure, the researchers concluded.
Just the practice of tracking steps can make you think more about health and adopt healthier habits, according to a clinical trial in which participants wore Apple Watches for five weeks.
And in a six-week study in Australia, when parents and their kids all wore Garmin activity trackers, they became more aware of everyone’s physical activity and inactivity. They were also more motivated to do outdoor activities together.
Despite the overall success, getting families to make a long-term habit out of fitness tracking can be a challenge. Researchers in the U.K. gave Fitbits to 24 families with kids between the ages of 5 and 9 for four weeks. The families’ Fitbit use was high in the beginning, but fell off in the final two weeks. The novelty wore off.
To ensure the success of wearables in your family, you can set goals, introduce friendly competition and participate in challenges.
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And yet, as she points out, sales of fitness bands (eg Fitbits) have declined over the past five years, though they bumped up a bit in the pandemic.
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Daniil Medvedev watches US Open on ‘illegal’ streams due to TV blackouts • Insider.com
Meredith Cash:
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Daniil Medvedev just wants to watch some tennis.
The world No. 3 is competing at this year’s US Open — where he won his first Grand Slam in 2021. But when he’s not on the court in Flushing Meadows, Medvedev wants to tune in for some of the other matches taking place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
There’s only one problem: his hotel isn’t showing the tournament.
“I guess in a lot of hotels they have Spectrum,” Medvedev said in his post-match press conference Monday. “I cannot watch it on TV anymore.”
The cable provider is currently in a standoff with Disney — the parent company of ESPN, which has exclusive broadcast rights to the tournament — over their failure to negotiate terms on a new agreement. Until the two sides agree to a new deal, channels that fall under the Disney umbrella will not be available to Spectrum customers.
But Medvedev isn’t willing to miss the US Open matches he wants to watch due to the feud. He said he’ll “have to find a way.”
“I will, I don’t know if it’s legal or illegal, … but I got internet, these pirate websites, so I watch tennis there,” the 27-year-old said with a smirk. “I have no other choice.”
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There’s where the money that Spectrum and Disney can’t agree on is going: to the pirate websites (one way or another). Medvedev is quietly, subversively funny – always taking some pleasure in trolling crowds if they take a dislike to him, like a slightly evil (maybe “even more evil”) Jimmy Connors.
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Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon • Understanding AI
Timothy B Lee:
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If you know anything about this subject, you’ve probably heard that LLMs are trained to “predict the next word,” and that they require huge amounts of text to do this. But that tends to be where the explanation stops. The details of how they predict the next word is often treated as a deep mystery.
One reason for this is the unusual way these systems were developed. Conventional software is created by human programmers who give computers explicit, step-by-step instructions. In contrast, ChatGPT is built on a neural network that was trained using billions of words of ordinary language.
As a result, no one on Earth fully understands the inner workings of LLMs. Researchers are working to gain a better understanding, but this is a slow process that will take years—perhaps decades—to complete.
Still, there’s a lot that experts do understand about how these systems work. The goal of this article is to make a lot of this knowledge accessible to a broad audience. We’ll aim to explain what’s known about the inner workings of these models without resorting to technical jargon or advanced math.
We’ll start by explaining word vectors, the surprising way language models represent and reason about language. Then we’ll dive deep into the transformer, the basic building block for systems like ChatGPT. Finally, we’ll explain how these models are trained and explore why good performance requires such phenomenally large quantities of data.
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A good backgrounder.
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Meta axes support for news in Europe • Financial Times
Daniel Thomas:
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News publishers have hit out at Meta after the tech giant decided to axe Facebook News in Europe and end a scheme to fund local journalism in the UK.
On Tuesday, Meta said that it would “deprecate” the dedicated tab on Facebook that showcases news stories in early December in the UK, France and Germany.
The group said that this was part of an “ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most”.
Meta said that publishers will continue to have access to their Facebook accounts and pages, where they can post their news article links and content, and it would “honour our obligations under all existing Facebook News agreements with news publishers in the UK, France and Germany until they expire”.
The group said that the News tab makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed, “so news discovery is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people”.
However, newspaper executives warned the decision will deprive a valuable source of income and traffic for media groups. Meta has already axed Instant Articles, the mobile-friendly format that quickly loaded news articles on the Facebook app.
In July, Reach, the UK’s largest commercial news publisher with titles such as the Mirror and Express, blamed this move on a drop in digital revenue in the first half of the year.
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Another reminder that Facebook is indifferent to media except as a source of Content. And in case you needed any further demonstration…
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Exclusive: Meta’s Canada news ban fails to dent Facebook usage • Reuters
Katie Paul and Steve Scherer:
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Meta’s decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians’ usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move.
Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news there at the start of August, according to data shared by Similarweb, a digital analytics company that tracks traffic on websites and apps, at Reuters’ request.
Another analytics firm, Data.ai, likewise told Reuters that its data was not showing any meaningful change to usage of the platform in Canada in August.
The estimates, while early, appear to support Meta’s contention that news holds little value for the company as it remains locked in a tense standoff in Canada over a new law requiring internet giants to pay publishers for the news articles shared on their platforms.
Meta declined to comment on the estimates.
The Online News Act, passed by the Canadian parliament in June, forces platforms like Meta and Google parent Alphabet to negotiate commercial deals with Canadian news publishers for use of their content.
Both Meta and Alphabet’s Google have said the law is unworkable for their businesses. Meta, in particular, has said links to news articles make up less than 3% of the content on its Facebook feeds and have no economic value to the company.
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Colour me totally unsurprised. The Canadian government is now at the “find out” stage of FAAFO. Why would Facebook include news links when it doesn’t need to? It’s just delusional.
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Airbnb’s NYC listings could be down 70% after September 5 • Skift
Dennis Schaal:
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Airbnb says it will turn off calendars for stays with ineligible hosts starting September 5.
There are several rules that determine eligibility, including: registered hosts can only book stays for fewer than 30 days and they must be present during the guest’s stay. In addition, hosts must register with NYC’s Office of Special Enforcement – just 257 applications have been approved so far, Skift reported this week.
And how the city will enforce the law is unclear. Skift obtained an email from the city’s Public Advocate office to a host that stated: “OSE [Office of Special Enforcement] will not be proactively issuing fines unless there is an egregious violation; such as hosting a large number of people without being registered. There are a large number of applications pending; however, people who have been making significant efforts to register may be given leniency by the agency.”
Still, Airbnb has said it generated $85m in revenue from New York City in 2022, and the number of listings at risk is sizable, according to data provided to Skift by AirDNA.
• There were 47,000 total listings as of July, of which only about 23,000 were active
• Of the 23,000, 9,500 were private rooms or shared spaces where hosts are eligible to apply for registrations from OSE. Only some of those will ultimately be approved.
• Around 13,500 were for entire homes or apartments. Of these, around 6,000 would seem exempt because they are either hotels or accept stays of 30 days or longer
• That leaves 7,500 listings mostly at risk of no longer being able to lawfully host unless they change operations.«
The regulator comes for everyone eventually. AirBnB has lobbied hard, but without success.
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Dark Mode: how users think about it and issues to avoid • Nielsen Norman Group
Tanner Kohler and Amy Zhang:
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In a recent survey of 115 mobile users asking what mode they generally have their mobile device in, roughly 1/3 said dark mode, 1/3 said light mode, and 1/3 said a combination of both. The argument that dark mode improves the user experience (and accessibility in some cases) always seems to circle back to the same few reasons, mentioned by users, designers, and developers alike:
• Reduced eye strain
• Battery savings
• Aesthetic appeal
• Improved accessibility for those with visual impairments (e.g., cataracts)After updating to allow for dark mode, the Google Docs application on Android touts that it’s “Easier on the eyes at night. Easier on the battery during the day.”
Let’s take a closer look at the commonly cited reasons for supporting and using dark mode.
Reducing eye strain is the most common reason users with normal vision mention for using dark mode. As one research participant put it, “My eyes have always been very sensitive to bright lights. So ideally, I use dark mode on everything I can. […] I don’t think I can go back to normal. [I have] a lot less eye strain. I don’t think I’m getting headaches as much […]”
While dark mode is not guaranteed to reduce headaches, this belief is widespread and motivates many users to permanently set their devices to dark mode.
Dark mode does slightly reduce the amount of light being taken in by the retina and might feel easier on the eyes during a single session — particularly in dark environments. However, some research has failed to find a significant difference in reported measures of eye strain and headaches when participants complete tasks in both light mode and dark mode.
…Many people simply like the way dark mode looks. Some survey respondents made comments such as, “it’s more visually appealing to me,” “I like the look of the dark screen,” and “dark mode is way cooler.”
Some designs are even built in dark mode and do not allow users to transition to light mode. In most of these cases, building in dark mode first is an aesthetic choice; it does not improve usability.
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You can say that again. I detest dark mode. Maybe I’m just too used to paper.
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Netflix is going to let DVD subscribers keep unreturned discs for free • The Verge
Jay Peters:
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Netflix won’t charge DVD.com customers for any discs they still have after September 29th, the company announced from its DVD.com account on X on Monday. That generous offer, combined with Netflix’s recent announcement that it may send customers as many as 10 extra discs from their queues, means that some people might end up with a bunch of disc copies of movies, courtesy of Netflix.
DVD.com customers will need to visit a special link on DVD.com by August 29th to apply for the promotional offer. Netflix will then send up to 10 random discs based on the movies in the subscriber’s queue.
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Nifty! Wonder if this will drive a wave of signups?
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How Google’s augmented-reality dream and pursuit of Apple fell apart • Business Insider
Hugh Langley:
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During its I/O conference in May 2022, Google teased a pair of Iris [augmented reality] glasses running a feature that could translate languages in real time. The demo generated positive buzz, but the group shifted away from the idea soon after, a person familiar with it said.
“Every six months there was a major pivot in the program,” they said. “They would look at it and say, ‘We want a slightly different product.'”
In early 2022, reports began surfacing that Apple’s long-rumored headset was in the final stretch, and Google leaders began to worry.
“At Google, there is a great fear that when Apple releases new products, it shifts the landscape,” a former employee said.
Around this time, Google partnered with one of its oldest hardware allies, Samsung. Samsung wanted to build a headset device similar to Apple’s Vision Pro, which would mix virtual and augmented reality, and Google would design Android-based software to power it.
The project, code-named Moohan, created a political headache inside Google. Samsung told Google it didn’t want other hardware teams working on Google AR products to be privy to the project’s technology for fear they might build a competing product based on that information, according to two people familiar with the strategy.
That created a problem for Iris. “How could you build glasses and not get Samsung riled up?” one person close to the project said. The partnership also meant Samsung would be more likely to call the shots on product features, one former employee said. “It’s easy to end up in a situation where nobody is driving,” they added.
The dynamic is already playing out. South Korea’s SBS Biz reported earlier this month that Samsung delayed the headset after the Vision Pro’s reveal over fears its device wouldn’t be enough to go toe-to-toe with Apple. The delay could push Samsung and Google’s device launch to summer 2024, the outlet reported.
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A bit of followup on yesterday’s report which mentioned this in passing. There’s also a writeup with some extra at Ars Technica.
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Meta reportedly partnering with LG for 2025 Quest Pro 2 • Upload VR
David Heaney:
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In November last year South Korean news outlet SBS Biz reported Meta had entered talks with LG Display with the aim of securing OLED microdisplay supply for future headsets. Microdisplays have significantly higher pixel densities and thus can enable higher resolution more compact headsets.
A new report from another Korean news outlet, Maeil Business Newspaper, suggests this has now resulted in a much broader partnership with the LG Group, involving multiple of its subsidiaries, to build future Quest Pro headsets.
LG Electronics will reportedly handle production, using LG Display displays, LG Energy batteries, and other components from LG Innotek. The first product from the partnership is reportedly slated for 2025, priced at around $2000.
…This wouldn’t be the first time Meta has partnered with an experienced consumer electronics company for a VR headset. Oculus Go was manufactured by Xiaomi, and Oculus Rift S was manufactured and co-designed by Lenovo. In both cases, the headset bore the partner company’s logo on the side as well as the Oculus branding on the front. How LG’s branding will appear on the reported 2025 headset is not yet known.
This also isn’t the only software-first Big Tech company partnering with a Korean hardware company on an XR headset. Samsung announced in February it is building a headset, with Google handling the software.
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The VR-only headset space remains a confused mess, with no clear message about what they’re for. Is it gaming? Is it business meetings? If it’s both, which is the market to focus on? Apple, as usual, is going for “none of the above”, and yet seems most likely to come through the middle. As usual.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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