I found reddit a bit refreshing in comparison to Facebook and Twitter, easy to get rid of content I don’t want and easy to start conversations with like minded people. Twitter is really not a place to have conversations, if you’re not somehow famous no one would talk to you unless you jump in a bandwagon of sensationalist content, Facebook on the other hand is limited to your family and old friends, not new people, unless you join groups but then Facebook would go tell your family behind your back about your activity, this “gossip” feature that you can’t control put me off from Facebook groups. Reddit work for me, no followers/friends just topics, no gossip feature, sure there are some heated discussions but you can always chose to silence them.

I left Chrome for personal usage a long time ago, however I am forced to use it at work. I use Safari all around for my personal usage, I find Safari with content blockers and DuckDuckGo as search engine to be a very good alternative.

Safari is a good browser due to it being the most battery efficient on MacOS.

However its content blockers are inferior to what's available on Firefox. It's also not portable, so if you use various devices (Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, MacOS) it's pretty cool having your history synchronized.

Firefox is really good for privacy. For example you can sandbox Facebook with Firefox's containers extension such that they can't follow you around the web.

Firefox is probably the best for power users. I usually use it with more than 100 tabs opened. Its tree-style tab extension and the Awesome Bar makes it painless.

Firefox is also good as a development browser. It lags behind Chrome in some areas but is ahead in others.

At work I only use Chrome for testing our web interface, but I use Firefox most of the time, even on my iPhone (nice UI plus the sync).

Safari has blocked third party cookies, as well as the largely unknown segregated cache and localstorage, and now some form of tracking protection. That should make it equivalent to Firefox containers, although it’s just automatic and kind of invisible to the user. As for blockers, I use 1blocker to great effect. I’d use uBlock Origin but the transition to MAS seemed to be rocky last time I checked.

I do give it a spin regularly but the two things that make Firefox a non starter is battery usage and inability to use Keychain (before quantum there was an extension but even then it was hit and miss)

“using advertisement to peddle overpriced junk to the uneducated masses” using advertising to sell products? like every single company ever? also that is their point, they sell a physical product (what you bitterly call junk) that’s it, unlike Facebook that deliverily hides or obfuscates the fact that its customers are really the product, and before you start saying that they never lied because it is in their T&C, tell that to eldery people who simply join to see the photos of their grandchildren, they can easily simply chose not to buy an Apple product because of the price tag is visible at plain sight, but the price for Facebook use is not so easy visible.

> like every single company ever?

That was my point.

> Unlike Facebook that deliverily hides or obfuscates the fact that its customers are really the product

How did they hide it? It was their business model. The one they copied from google.

> but the price for Facebook use is not so easy visible.

Are you saying that facebook forced the grandparents to use facebook?

I'm not a fan of either facebook or Apple. My dislike of apple goes back. But I taken aback by the anti-fb posturing justaposed by the pro-google and pro-apple lobby here.

I'm not saying that facebook is good. I'm saying apple isn't good either.

It's so striking how an innocuous comment in every anti-fb thread is met with downvotes and attacks.

I agree with you. Facebook is terrible. That's why I don't use it and never have. But I also don't use apple products because apple is terrible. Is that okay?

The author purposely ignores Garmin, who is one of the biggest player in Smart watches, after Apple and among Samsung and Fitbit. They make a strong case of buttons over touch screens, mostly because athletes prefer them, buttons are easy to operate without looking at the screen and the only way when the screen is wet, something that is meant to happen even if you don’t swim at all. But he even ignores the fact that Fitbit themselves always use a combination of touch screen and buttons, including their newest watch The Ionic. I hate when a headline is fabricated this way.

I sort of consider real fitness watches, like the Garmin line to be in a different category from smartwatches. My Fenix 3, especially when paired with a chest strap feels like an actual tool for me, whereas the smartwatches I've seen and tried were more like toys.

I don't think I can ever switch back to a touchscreen watch until there's one that still has the physical buttons, but also lets you disable the touchscreen functionality during workouts - beyond the difficulty getting the touches to register, sweat has enough minerals that the screen sill start registering false touches, which can wreak havoc during a workout when it starts pausing things!

And, of course, with my Fenix 3, I normally charge it less than once a week unless I need to use GPS on it. Touchscreen smartwatches simply don't get that type of battery life.

Capacitive touch screens don't work well if your hands are sweaty. I couldn't understand for the life of me why Garmin ever introduced a capacitive touch screen watch.

I thought my old Garmin GPS watch was amazing when I first got it around 2010.

I certainly can understand why they released a watch with a touchscreen. They're trying to appeal to people who aren't necessarily as serious about fitness (or rather, don't feel the need/desire to closely track their workouts), but do want to start doing more, and want some of the benefits that they've heard smartwatches are supposed to offer.

I think the smartwatch fad is actually good in some ways, because it is forcing Garmin to look at what they can realistically add into their core watches to help make them more appealing, while still not turning them into a full smartwatch until the technology is there.

And I'm calling smartwatches a fad for now because they really are at the moment. The potential for them to be more than a fad is there, but the technology, specifically battery life, isn't there, and the current lineups don't offer a compelling story about why we should consider them an integral piece of technology to keep with us all the time.

See also: FitBit Blaze, which also has real buttons

> The author purposely ignores Garmin, who is one of the biggest player in Smart watches, after Apple and among Samsung and Fitbit.

How did you conclude that it was intentional?

Op says that athletes prefer hardware buttons

if you live in the UK or Spain (where Google voice doesn't exist) O2 / Telefonica does something very similar, you can use their service TuGO and you can keep your phone number, receive and send SMS and calls all through internet and you don't even need your sim, or a phone, you can use it on a Browser or an app for Android and iOS (iPad included), on any network, wifi or some disposible sim. The advantage over GV (apart from not being US only) is that whilst you can use it without a sim, you do get the sim for those services that refuse Voip, you get the best of both world. Also TuGO is given at no extra cost, as long as pay monthly you have it.

Asking your butcher for "zero carbon" cow is pointless, I agree, it is also the equivalent of attempting to avoid buying things with "huge" carbon footprints (like everything that has plastic on it which is pretty much everything useful), much like buying in artisanal shops, or asking for "grass fed beef" or "free range eggs", it is all highly inefficient which is a problem with our growing population. They are all labels often as meaningless as "organic". The vegan and vegetarian options are rather more efficient and simple ways to achieve the same thing with the added benefit of not torturing animals for no good reason other than a particular taste. Once meat is gone from your diet that's it, no debating whether this you're buying has a huge carbon footprint or not, or simply lying to yourself with the zero carbon, dolphin friendly, free range, organic or grass fed labels. I know the usual argument, you're never going to get people to stop eating meat, but then again how are you going to get everyone to care for these labels (which usually carry a higher price in them)? and more over, policing that these labels are actually true?. Think about it, even in the futuristic scenario of populating Mars, are we really going to carry cattle with us, I think it is time to leave it behind.

Except that meat has been part of the human diet before we were even human, and evolution has adapted us to be omnivores. The human body can't produce a number of amino acids any more, a number of which are most easily sourced from the bodies of animals that can produce them (most of which are herbivores). For example Lysine and Methionine are easier to acquire from meat than vegetables; especially if you aren't burning lots of energy (exercise etc) or intake of lots of calories is a health issue.

You can live on a vegan diet, but it is easier to live on an omnivore diet. And since for most people easier is preferable, and when talking about the population of the world as a whole, you'll still find that a large percentage of the world's population will eat meat if it is easily available.

It is easier for moat people to live with fossil fuel so it is preferable right? I'm going to pass on the tired discussion of meat is what we're meant to eat because we've been going it forever. Bottom line is you CAN live without meat, it is perfectly healthy so it comes down to a choice. Now my original point was that having this half measures that require constant policing from both the consumer and industries is harder than cutting down something you don't need for good. Both routes require an equal amount of convincing of people, from eating less meat to using your car less or buying particular types of products over others are changes that most people are not ready or willing to accept and most likely won't come to full fruition until a couple generations down the line (regardless of the route) but you can start one yourself that requires no action from increasingly hostile politicians or corporation whose sole purpose of existence is in direct contradiction with the objective. As it is said, you vote with your money. Also if a tax was to be put on hugely polluting industries it'd be self-defeating to not tax meat and dairy.

My point is this, short of banning eating meat people will continue to do so; even if you made vegetables 1/100 of the cost of meat and fixed the calories / Lysine / Methionine issue (which would probably mean post processing the vegetables which increases costs). Banning means legislation, that means politics.

So seguing into climate change issues, this took politics too. It started with grassroots taking hold in the 60's counter culture, then the start of political pressure in the 70's. The first big political move was Reagan coming on board during the 80's; and also some lucky technology hook ups like solar powered calculators (never underestimate the power of logistical growth from a low end but widely used product).

The 90's brought us government sponsored research and industry backed development and product roll outs; this led to massive improvements in cost mainly though scale. The last 15 years have led to product refinements, financing options, and a greater society wide understanding of just how bad climate change could be.

And now we are at a situation of solar becoming cheaper than coal for producing electricity. 50 years!

So if you want to achieve the same with meat vs vegetables there is an enormous amount to achieve, above all you'll need to convince people at least as well as climate change issues, get government backing, make it as enjoyable as eating meat, and drive down the cost of Lysine and Methionine extraction.

In fact Canola (low erucic acid rapeseed) meal (what's left over after oil extraction) is currently used as livestock feed, this could be used for human consumption but would require further post-processing and possibly protein profile adjustment.

The problem with "you vote with your money" is how unequal money is distributed.

To accept it you must either be against democracy as a concept of equal rights to vote, or for an almost equal distribution of income. Neither of which is particular mainstream ideologies today.

If we stopped all fishing, you would end up with quite a lot of decreased biodiversity in lakes from eutrophication, cause by those farms that supply that vegan diet. I know, because I know fishermen who got paid by the Swedish state to do just that.

We could demand that farms had zero carbon footprint, zero water usage/drainage, a new tree for every cut one, and no pesticides. It is expensive, and food labeled under a mission which try to cover some of those aspects do demand a much higher price. At best it can be said is that its has a lower environmental impact that cows, even through my government (Sweden) explicitly says that if we don't get more farmers, most of the open field and bio diversity that comes from open fields will be lost.

Personally, I would go with a omnivore diet that pay a little extra (ie about double vs the cheapest) for products under environmental focused labels, and then just eat less of it. Even better, skip that car and you will end up having a much lower carbon footprint than any car owner has, regardless of diet.