News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

arielm

Re:Y Combinator's Demo Day loses luster on Saturday September 04, 2021 @12:38PM (#28416544)
One consistent theme I see here is possible stability for investors.

Bookkeeping works and is that crowded of a space, so maybe with enough cash they can get some ROI. Same for food delivery.

I’m not saying this is good, and I could be wrong here. This is just an observation.

But… if you look at what happened to music in the last 20ish years you see basically the same shift away from creativity and variety and a focus on repeating what works.

I think starting a company these days has become much easier without funding though, so real hungry entrepreneurs _can_ bring excitement and creativity to this game.

That should be fine. Forwarding means you’ll become the sender so the SPF record of the original sender will no longer apply.
Like many comments are saying, policing these even more is not an easy challenge, so to say “don’t trust Apple” isn’t really the right attitude IMO.

But… what I think would be nice to see from Apple is better visibility into those ratings and reviews so users have more to go on than a single number.

Will that alone prevent these from happening? probably not, but this isn’t a fight that can be won with a single battle/weapon.

Re:A writing tip I learned at Oxford on Saturday May 29, 2021 @08:38PM (#27329567)
I recently discovered this top on my own while starting a new podcast that’s based on a written newsletter.

It’s not (always) a word for word read, but after a few sessions of reading the newsletter out loud as I was recording, I noticed my writing has become more fluid and the content easier to digest (in my opinion, at least).

It was kind of hard (really, awkward) to read my own writing at first, but it got easier.

A really great tip!

Yes, but a quick look at attprompts.com will show you most apps that use pre-prompts do at least one thing that’s not allowed by the rules.

I Worte about a few, including McDonald’s which uses misleading language and a popular game that shows a fake prompt altogether.

https://appfigures.com/resources/this-week-in-apps/20210430#...

Yes and no.

Yes, 10K isn’t a lot, and the big apps are included in the 10K.

But… companies like Google Need as many apps as possible to funnel data to them so they can profile _everyone_, and they do that with their “free” services like Firebase (aka Google Analytics), in addition to ads.

To Firebase it’s all about scale (aka visibility) and not specific groups.

Not really. But Apple doesn’t use its data to sell you ads.

Wait! They actually do. Apple allows targeting ads in the App Store by things that require data collection.

So, a better answer might be “not right now” because no one is forcing it to play by its own rules.

Another thing to keep in mind is how often these will be seen. Right now ~10K apps ask (or, try to ask).

So the odds of seeing the prompt in the wild aren’t too high unless you’re a Facebook user.

But as more apps show the prompt and it’ll become very common all you need is to agree once and you’ll then be more likely to opt in more than opt out, in my opinion.

I expect that 10k to 10x before the end of the year. Even then, 100k apps out of ~2M isn’t all that many, so it might take a long time for advertisers to regain the kind of access they had pre ATT.

Haha. I totally get that.

But… I don’t think that popup was designed to get the HN folk to opt in but rather those that use Facebook (and Instagram, which has the same language) to communicate actively.

It’s really the pre-prompt I’m referring to here, which, as one of its bullet points for why you should opt in, says it helps keep Facebook free.

That’s a big statement to drop in a tiny bullet point, which makes me feel like they thought about it a lot. Meaning, it’s very targeted.

I don’t think it’s like that for everyone, but I’m not sure what would determine where you are.
I believe so, which is why that % is very small.

I’ve seen quite a few reports from different providers in the last couple of weeks and suspect the _real_ average of opt-ins is considerably higher.

I’m hoping to see some numbers from Apple at WWDC, which I expect would be in the 30-50% opt-in. Why? Because some apps (like Facebook) make it seem like it’s mandatory to opt-in. And I believe that if you opt-in for Facebook you’re more inclined to just hit that same button for every app…

Re:Facebook Analytics is Going Away after June 30, 2021 on Monday April 05, 2021 @06:48PM (#26705644)
Their messaging around this is so limited I wonder what they expect would happen.

It can’t be a good PR move…

Integrity and such aside, as someone who runs A/B tests I love seeing this data. Thanks for sharing it!
I think the reliance on a single provider is as important of an issue as it is who the provider is and the way they make decisions.
Re:Hemingway Editor on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:41PM (#25131390)
That’s a really good point, and is also how I see other similar apps like grammarly.

They can help highlight issues and it’s up to you to decide whether those really are issues or just personal stylistic choices.

I’m a user of both.

I don’t think they have a clear one.

From what I could find, they want to take a cut of the revenue influencers on the service make. I don’t think they do that now though, so I think they don’t really have a revenue model.

I’m curious to see if it continues to see this type of adoption once the election is “old news”.

Don’t forget to wash your hands ;)
Companies who don’t make it very easy to get in touch are just hurting themselves. Agreed there.

I send with my name on it, reply to everyone who hits the reply button, and have a live chat (manned by humans) as well as a contact us form.

If someone can’t get in touch with me after all of that... That’s a different problem.

Again, I’m talking about something you signed up for/subscribed to.

Random emails are... random.

Sad, but not untrue.

I appreciate the pragmatism here!

Do you know of any articles or useful content around this?

Now, that’s 100% spam.

I’m not talking about those at all. Nor the ones where you sign up for one thing and then their “sister company” starts sending you email.

Interesting!

We don’t do any of that, but that’s also something I’ve never thought about.

Can’t you email them?

Buuut, it doesn’t.

The system that you’re talking about is heavily weighted towards sending more stuff to spam than not.

Keeping a good spam rating is an extreme challenge for legit senders, especially when so many people click the spam button for reasons that have to do with laziness and carelessness.

I don’t understand this argument at all.

You mean to say you signed up for a service or subscribed to a newsletter, then see an email from the service or newsletter and don’t know if it’s really that company/person?

Did you check the “to”? Do you look at the url of the unsubscribe link? (Harder when click tracking is on, I know)

And you would rather hurt that company or person because you don’t feel like taking the time?

This makes no sense to me, and I hope I’m not in the minority here.

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