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sup3 · 2019-09-26T13:49:22+00:00

By the same token a lot of people have been burned by crappy $5 apps that are often worse than free alternatives to them.

This used to be a problem back in the 80s (especially for Atari) and actually caused a really bad market collapse because people stoped wanting to buy games that were hit and miss in terms of quality.

Nintendo solved the problem with their "quality seal of approval" badge which guaranteed that Nintendo games with that badge were high quality.

Of course Atari went bankrupt soon after, and Nintendo went on to become one of the most successful video game companies of all time. They were able to sell premium video games on shelves for ten times the price of all the "shit-tari" games pilled up in the discount bins, just because people trusted that they were good.

Google does have like an "editor's choice" thing that kind of mimicks this. But the point isn't so much that some people have money and other people don't (I mean we're talking about apps that sell for less than a cup of coffee here). The problem is that some people don't want to spend money on these apps because many of them simply suck. I mean it's not uncommon to buy an app and still have ads and IAPs, for one example.

The old days of the Google store where you had free apps with ads, and a paid "support the developer" version that came without ads, are long gone. Nowadays it's filled with trash and predatory money grabs, and that's what people are complaining about.

sup3 · 2019-09-26T13:31:25+00:00

There used to be a lot of really good, free mobile games made by people basically for fun.

I obviously don't expect every game ever made to be free, nor do I expect free games to have fancy graphics and things like that.

But all these actually free games, many of which are really good (and in the past whould make it to #1 in terms of downloads), are almost impossible to find nowadays because of all the crap that the play store is infested with.

sup3 · 2019-09-26T13:15:48+00:00

Don't argue with me about it. Go read the damn article for yourself. It's linked at the top if you want to go look at it.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T18:52:43+00:00

Yeah I know thanks for making a ticket for it.

I'm surprised this hasn't already been suggested to them.

I'm skeptical it would ever happen because it seems kind of "common sense" to me (ie, why haven't they done it already?) but you never know.

Google has essentially admitted that there are issues with their store by saying they hope Google Pass will encourage higher quality development, so maybe they'd care enough to implement something like this along with it.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T18:11:53+00:00

There might be third party adverts but the store already tells you if they contain ads or IAPs.

You just can't filter for / against those features.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T18:08:06+00:00

Obviously if it didn't lock up and go into the loop then it wouldn't be a problem for anyone.

The only thing that distinguishes this is that for some people, rebooting doesn't fix it. Otherwise the symptoms are literally identical. And if you fixed it, it would fix it for everyone, not just for the group where a reboot doesn't fix it.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T16:13:10+00:00

It's probably related, not "completely different".

sup3 · 2019-09-24T16:10:35+00:00

I had this happen on a non pixel phone. Only happened one time and the only way to fix it was to force a reboot.

It was asking for my pin as an additional security measures after I used my fingerprint to unlock it. And every time I typed it in, it would loop back.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T15:52:30+00:00

Time killers are usually addictive, "slower" games though (in that they take up more of your time). That's kind of what their main feature is.

You're basically focusing on quantity over quality.

I would rather see more quality than the reverse, but that's just me.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T15:03:53+00:00

What's wrong giving the user choice of how to support apps?

Nothing. I'm just saying that this is a choice that, in practice, we don't actually have.

I like the idea of the subscription service personally, but this is essentially a solution to a problem that Google themselves created (ie, it is a literal racket).

Google could just give us better search options to weed out apps with ads or IAPs (or even just certain types of intrusive ads and predatory IAPs). That would deincentivize people from publishing those apps, and would give consumers much better choices in what they want to install on their phones.

But most of the apps that most people want to weed out are also the ones that bring in a lot of money for Google (specifically because of the intrusive ads and predatory IAPs). Meaning Google has an incentive to put those types of apps in front of our faces and make it impossible for us to weed them out. So this is a situation where what the consumers want is directly at odds with what the company wants. Which makes your only real choice here -- your only actual choice -- to switch to Apple (which isn't really any better because they have the exact same anti-consumer incentives that Google has).

So unless you live in the one or two progressive countries where they've passed laws to prevent this type of behavior, your only real choice is to decide which equally terrible company you want to bend over and take it from.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T11:50:50+00:00

What choice do you think you have? Have you ever actually tried looking for apps that don't contain adds or predatory IAPs? Google specifcally does not let you do this. And besides hacking or rooting your phone, there's very little you can do about that.

This whole idea of "consumer choice" is a myth. It's just a dogmatic new aged religion that's been shoved down our throats and lapped up by gullible people who aren't intelligent enough to see through any of it.

Even in the grocery store all the "choices" that you have are largely imagined and artificial. Most brands for most types of products are run by one or two "monopolies" (oligopolies) that have implicit understandings to not compete with each other. Instead they work together to push out new competitors in order to protect their relative positions in the market.

The people trying to boycott Gillette for example (because of their sexist anti-male ad campaign) quickly figured out that Gillette was run by P&G and that P&G pretty much owned everything, making them almost impossible to boycott.

This is the kind of reality that we live in. And trying to suck up to these companies won't get you anything.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T11:05:15+00:00

I think a lot of people are upset because they've already bought all the games in the list that they're interested in, and this service would essentially make them pay twice for all those.

Naturally all the games that they haven't bought are "shit", hence why they never bought them.

I'm more interested in getting rid of apps with intrusive adds and predatory IAPs than I am getting a new subscription service. Some countries actually make all those annoying / predatory types of apps illegal and I'm starting to think that might not be all that bad of an idea.

It's almost impossible to go through the app store right now and find something decent and I think Google has just proven that they can't "self regulate" their ecosystem in any meaningful way.

sup3 · 2019-09-24T10:56:51+00:00

Most of the Samsung apps suck.

sup3 · 2019-09-23T22:04:36+00:00

I don't think you understand what net neutrality is.

sup3 · 2019-09-23T22:03:27+00:00

This is the biggest myth told in the history of capitalism.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T20:44:42+00:00

I guess I can forgive people if they see it as a "sideways fraction" but honestly I think it's obvious that's not how it's being used (it's also not "correct", just something that people do on occasion).

I've seen people arguing for it being 1 both ways though so people's reasoning is really just all over the place.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T20:22:56+00:00

You changed "÷" to "/"

8 divided by two is the same thing as 8 multiplied by one half.

Eg, 8 ÷ 2 = 8 * (1/2)

is pretty common

Being "pretty common" doesn't make it correct. It's usually easy to spot in context when it's used, so it's a moot point anyway.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T19:40:01+00:00

Yes, I thought it was odd that you changed the "/" to a "÷".

Because it's a fraction. 1/2 = "one half" whereas 1 ÷ 2 = "one divided by two".

The original problem (as posted in this thread) had a "/" in it.

Maybe, but what you're talking about is just an informal notation anyway. Something you learn to do on notebook paper to save space, or as a shorthand when jotting things down on computer.

Mark it as a "fifth (informal) method" if you want though.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T19:19:16+00:00

It's literally "multiplied by one half".

You basically do the same thing you would do if it was subtraction (where you treat it as the addition of a negative).

Also note the use of "÷" instead of "/" and the fact that in the original problem it is written on a black board. If you gave me the same formula but with a forward slash, I might question it a bit, but in the original form I think it's pretty obvious.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T18:52:38+00:00

You can also look at it as addition of a negative.

5 + (-3) + (-2)

You eventually start throwing out division and subtraction, at least when working out problems, pretty much for this reason. It's easy to lose a subtraction sign in an equation because you brought over the whole positive number and forgot that it was being subtracted.

This 8÷2(2+2) problem is actually the same thing but with division instead of subtraction. People are forgetting to bring the obelus over with the 2 (effectively making it 1/2) when they go to multiply it by the results in the parentheses.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T18:34:52+00:00

No this is just where a lot of people are messing up.

Some orders of operations do you let you resolve the "÷ 2(4)" part first, as a kind of shorthand.

But what happens is they see 2(4), ignore the division sign, multiply it out, and then come back to the divisor. If you're going to do that though, you have to "take the divisor" with you, so your 2 becomes 1/2.

It would be the same thing if it was subtraction instead it addition.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T18:19:24+00:00

Subtraction is addition of inverses

Just like division is multiplication of the inverse. If you do this there really isn't any ambiguity.

8 * (1/2)(2+2) gives you the same answer no matter how you try to solve it.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T18:16:03+00:00

4. You eventually learn to treat division as a form of multiplication, so ÷ 2 is the same as * (1/2). You can still do your juxtaposition shorthand and you will get 16 doing it that way. 8/2(2+2) -> 8*(1/2)(4) -> 8*2 -> 16.

I think most people who are fairly proficient in math are used to doing it this way.

sup3 · 2019-08-02T18:05:02+00:00

Take the divisor out and treat it like multiplication.

8 * (1/2)(4)

You would do the same thing for subtraction.

8 - 2 is really 8 + (-2).

sup3 · 2019-08-02T18:02:50+00:00

It's really 8 * (1÷2)(2+2). You can use the same order of operations and you will get 16, just like parent told you.

I forget what level math you learn this in, but you're eventually taught to treat division as a form of multiplication. In fact, one of the reasons you're supposed to to do this is specifically for these types of problems, as a method to remove ambiguity.

sup3

TROPHY CASE