Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | kspacewalk2's commentslogin

>A lot of people who are "mobile-only" prefer larger phones.

And a lot of people who are not prefer smaller ones.

>I've never been able to use a smart phone with one hand, even an original iphone. So this is probably a really niche complaint that you and Shaq have.

Not in the slightest. I've got a Galaxy A52, a large-ish phone for its time, and I can use it quite easily with one hand. I can't readily think of the small-hands equivalent of Shaq to compose a snarky "it's you" retort, and I'm sure it's not just you, but plenty people around you, with relatively normal hands, can use their phone with one hand.


To do what? I usually hold it with my left and, and one-finger (right-hand index finger) to type / scroll / select / etc. I guess I never "got" the phone model properly or something. My daughters type way faster on their phones, I can't do thumb typing (how do you hit those letters?!?), plus my thumbs get too sore too fast (decades on the edge of carpal tunnel) and/or cramp up.

I was timed at 140+ wpm in high school and online tests / etc have hit close to 200 wpm on a Qwerty. So I CAN touch-type and do it well - and keyboard + mouse is my goto jam. My favorite phone (alas, discontinued way too soon) was the Photon Q (work gave us phones way back) with slide-out physical keyboard.

I "use" an S21, but even just entering my 4-digit pin is awkward with my left thumb - is there some other way to hold it? I can't even imagine trying it with my right.. My thumbs just cramp up..


Mobile-only is a larger segment and growing. "ipad kids" are at the age where they are "iphone teens". And it's also the segment of people who care most about phones.

Apple made smaller phones, but they don't sell. They don't sell when they are nice phones, but smaller, and they don't sell when they are cheap phones and smaller.

Tech people are like car people in that they don't really appreciate that their preferences are niche. Wanting a smaller phone is akin to wanting a smaller car

> with relatively normal hands, can use their phone with one hand.

According to the US Army, the average length of the male thumb: 2.75 in; for women it's 2.49. So we can assume the actual population averages are probably a bit lower.

That means the average iphone is larger than the average male thumb, by a reasonable amount, and it has been for quite a number of generations.

Personally, my thumb is as wide as my iphone, but practically, the way I have to hold it one-handed means that I can only reach half of the screen (technically, the bottom quadrant, so 25% of the overall screen area). I'd need another 1" or so to reach the entire width of the screen with a single hand, and idk 2"+ to navigate the entire screen one handed.

The disconnect probably comes from what it means to "use" a phone one-handed. I mean to be able to hold it in one hand and touch anywhere on the screen and perform any action. Which limits phone size to around 2.25"x4.50", or so to account for a average hand to hit 95% of surface area while holding it. You might mean, just be able to type, or just be able to scroll, which does change things.


> Apple made smaller phones, but they don't sell. They don't sell when they are nice phones, but smaller, and they don't sell when they are cheap phones and smaller.

They funny thing is that the sales numbers were only terrible compared to other iPhones. IIRC it was something like 3% of the iPhone market at the time of discontinuation. Not a big seller for Apple, certainly, but there were times when the Mini made the top ten list for smartphones in general.


Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.

No one needs a compromise. The world (except the US) agreed to use this new map together. It's not a conflict.

To say that "the world agreed" on something based on a General Assembly resolution is an interesting claim, if rather bold.

Is there any other way that the world could officially agree on something?

Yes, if virtually all countries sign a treaty.

Mercator already did compromise on area and length to have "rhumb lines" (used for navigation, but also direction finding) be straight.

Other map projections (we have hundreds!) compromise on other things to improve on others. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections

So yes, we definitely NEED compromise and not some strongman that says, due to limited knowledge "it is how it is, forever".


UNGA votes are non binding symbolic grandstanding. This vote does not mean the world agreed to it. its more like the world agreed to think about it.

Will countries actually change their map projections? That has yet to be seen. Maybe they will, maybe they won't That has yet to be seen.


The whole world thought about it and everyone except the US said “good idea!”

Well, a bunch of people on the world stage thought it would score good political points (and/or they thought opposing it would make them look bad with no upside because its a non binding vote). That doesn't mean the people who make and use maps thought it was a good idea. If anything, the fact this is coming from politicians instead of people who use/make maps is probably negative signal for it actually being adopted. If the people who actually use/make maps wanted this, they would just do it, they wouldn't wait for the UN to say something.

Representing a 3D sphere-like surface on a 2d plane definitionally requires compromise.

Somebody who does not represent anybody "agreed" - not us.

Well, the underlying thinking "only people I directly voted for can do things" is wrong. I guess you never directly voted for your minister of economy, or? In many countries people don't directly vote for the prime minister, chancellor etc.

The key term some people never learned in school is "direct democracy" vs. "indirect democracy".

Even many clubs, e.g. in Germany the ADAC, have systems where people vote for an assembly (or, in politics: a parliament). And then the assembly vote fot ehri CO (or, in politics, for their chancellor). Now, it can happen that this chancellor together with 26 other head of states is a member of the Europen Council (EUCO, one of the 7 bodies of the EU, what btw most people all the time intermingle). And that this EUCO now votes on their president.

In your logic, this presidency of the EUCO is then null and void. Because not directly elected by citizens of the EU.

In my logic, I realize that this position is removed from the people, but it still done by a democratic process. A multi-stage process, but still democratic. And that it still has some bearing.

Asking for the whole world population having an election on e.g. the UN Secretary General --- under the implication that only this would give representation --- is bogus.


Oh no Mr. Schurig. I never praised "direct vote" (that would even worsen it).

I implied instead that there is a crisis in representation.

(...You could be German and you have not noticed, in spite of all the vocal effort in the North? That and all the other similar signals clearly affecting current history.)


I'm Canadian. Canada represents me. They voted on this. That's how the world works. Sometimes my government is not the one I voted for and my interests are not represented, or sometimes my interests are not the majority in my country. That's life.

No one is forcing you to use the new map, you can keep your old map. No one will arrest you for it. Enjoy!


By when is Canada going to be using the new map?

This question is nonsensical. Canada is not ONE identity. It's millions of people, hundred thousands of companies and organizations. Go and ask them individually.

Also, the UN voted to use this map for itself and suggested (!) that others should use it. It never said that everyone has to use that map. It actually said that this voting is "non-binding".


One can still note a poor decision based on its merits.

An equal area projection map is obviously valuable. But it's practically asinine to pick a projection that distorts land features when there are several equal area projections that do not.

Further, Ukraine had to abstain from this vote because they shoehorned in something ridiculous considering the official position of the UN members that Crimea is Ukraine [1], and Crimea is depicted as outside of Ukraine.

I have no idea if there are other hidden yet important changes, since there is hardly any commentary apart from size and shape.

[1] https://ukraine-war-analytics.com/history/international-reco...


No, the resolution doesn't include a map, it's purely about which projection to use so obviously it doesn't mention any land borders.

As best I can tell the Ukrainian ambassador saw the example map made by the Equal Earth creator in 2014 with its somewhat questionable choice in colouring Crimea and saw an opportunity for virtue signalling. Or maybe he really thought the vote was about that specific political map from 2014.


"The world" is not represented by the UN General Assembly. Did you vote for your representative?

The UN does not dictate which map you or your government or your school or Google uses.

I didn’t say it did, I said the UN is not a democratic body. He said the world decided. What is your problem?

You didn’t in fact use the word democratic at all. You used the word “represent”.

I didn't vote for a foreign minister of my country, but his job is to represent my country, including in UN. This is fine.

Here's an image I made to show the difference between Robinson and Equal Earth:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_Equal_...

Whichever you prefer, what matters is that we should all just stop using Mercator.


Well, we should use Mercator for its intended purpose (only), which is to accurately show/determine angles for navigation....

Why? Mercator is useful and familiar to billions of people.

“Robinson projection” makes me think of Canadian fasteners.

I'm partial to the Goode Homolosine projection, next is whatever NatGeo standardized on. Of course, the best is an actual globe --but decent sized ones are too expensive and the beach ball ones are just not very well made.

I could’ve sworn that Robinson had already replaced Mercator by the ‘90s, so I was surprised to see defenders of the latter.

That is the best one, no idea why its not standard.

https://xkcd.com/977/

I have a Waterman on my wall :)


cool - you want to grab a coffee some time?

I like the aesthetics of Robinson, but it gives you the worst of both worlds: it's neither conformal like Mercator nor equal-area for honest data visualization. It's essentially a spline fit over 38 arbitrary numbers chosen to look nice, whereas Equal Earth accomplishes true equal area with a clean, 4-coefficient polynomial.

Equal Earth is basically Robinson with a more straightforward formula and accurate areas.


Tbh, I don't see the use case for Robinson when Winkel-Tripel exists. For almost all use cases where you need a political world map, Winkel-Tripel is the better choice.

Equal earth also has its uses, it's a neat and clean map, but has more distortion in shape, which might be undesirable.


Why would the world feel the need to compromise when all UN countries, except for one agree on the projection. The solution is simply to ignore the minority, especially if it has a government that itself has always refused to compromise with others.

It's a GA resolution. Vanuatu gets the same vote as India. No actually consequential global decisions could ever be made this way, so it's no wonder it's mostly used for symbolic votes like this one.

When are all these countries planning to switch over to the new map?

America is a big place, populated by a lot of different people. Some of those were in fact victims of a genocide by European colonists. Others were allied to the European colonists from day one, and were instrumental in defeating/exterminating their indigenous enemies (see e.g. Tlaxcallans). Most of the victims were decimated by Eurasian diseases well before seeing any European with their own eyes. So presenting colonization of America as a "genocide" is every bit as selective and simplistic as what you're old enough to remember being taught, just in the opposite direction. The history of Americas is much more interesting and complex than all that.

Flock is a retroactive dragnet on demand. Whenever you want to, you can go back in time and put a digital dragnet in an area of your choosing in order to identify someone you now know you want to find.

In fact, until Trump 2 they rarely thought about you at all.

Whatever it is, we need more.

If by "not really" you mean it's not all because of ads, some governments dabble in it too, you're right. But it's still overwhelmingly because of ads.

It's just incentives in general. Humans are self-motivated creatures, and in the absence of meaningful consequences they'll often do what they're incentivized to do, even if it harms others.

The internet is uniquely devoid of consequences (esp. reputational consequences, social faux pas, etc.) and makes effort expenditure minimal. So you get lots of bad behavior.

I think "ads vs not ads" is maybe the wrong way to model it. Ultimately people are just doing what benefits themselves across every dimension possible.


Campaign funding and lobbying being legal activities implies that governments participate in advertising. I can't separate those.

But you're right, I think that's what they meant.


Conservatives seemingly went from the libertarian extreme where everything under the sun is a "threat to liberty" straight to cheer-leading global authoritarianism, skipping the middle altogether.

Boise is a great city and the Micron HQ was very diverse when I worked there. Your comment also fails at basic logic: if 75% vaccinate their kids, then ~75% of straight white guys in fact do care about their kids getting terrible diseases. Also, in my experience ethnic and racial minorities aren't any less likely to be anti-vaxxers, so there are intersectionality failures going on here too.


I interned at that site about 20 years ago. Took me 30+ minutes to walk from one end (where their image sensor R&D was, before they spun it off) to the other end. As a 20 year old, it was amazing to walk past all the various clean rooms, watch the robots and the guys in bunny suits do their thing. A fun experience.


Yep, the "Micron Mile" where you can walk a full mile one end to the other and back, without going outside. Very nice in the winter for stretching your legs on the lunch break. The new clean rooms they have are amazing.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: