Why Would I Write

Category: Technology

  • The Selfie ‘Expert’

    I’ve been watching movies in the cinema quite often over the past few months and when you are early, you get to sit through tons of advertisements before the movie starts. I wish we got to see more trailers, but I guess those don’t make any money for the cinemas.

    Anyway, what I’ve noticed recently is that we get tons of ads for phones. While the selling points of phones have changed over the years, one thing remains – the phone’s camera. However, since we’ve reached a point where our phone’s rear cameras are as good as they can be, the focus has now shifted to the other camera on phones – the front facing camera.

    I’m not sure who started the trend, but almost all the phone adverts these days are about their selfie capabilities. It’s like the advertisers are only pandering to the generation of narcissists. What happened to all the other unique features that make a phone great? Battery life, storage, graphics/performance, customization features, UI, security and all would make great selling points. But I guess it wouldn’t pander to the Instagram generation of today.

    When I purchase a phone, the last thing I care about is its camera. Because I know that cameras these days have all pretty much reached a quality that is acceptable on most phones. I don’t take many photographs and Instagram filters can salvage my shitty shots into something presentable. Also, if you have a cute subject (i.e. my dog), you don’t really have to try very hard.

    Maybe I’m too old (LUL age as an excuse) and I care more about reliability than anything else. The last smartphone I purchased and am currently using is the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4. Why? It has amazing battery life – I can be out all day and using the phone actively and still have battery left to spare by the time I get home. I’m not a fan of lugging power banks around just to make sure my phone still runs.

    It is fast – apps run smooth, even multiple apps at the same time with the not too recently added splitscreen feature, and I had no problems with dual-SIM operation (I used to travel a lot for work). The display is standard – nothing to shout about, but it’s large enough to make watching YouTube videos and Twitch streams a pleasant experience. 4G and GPS works well, and there’s a slot for an additional memory card if I choose to use it (64 GB onboard is sufficient at the moment). Oh, it also charges really quickly and looks pretty sleek. And the fingerprint sensor is in my preferred position (behind). With the customizations I made to the launcher so I don’t have to use the default MIUI, it’s the perfect device for me.

    I guess I strayed away from the point of the blog post – basically, phones are much more than selfie machines and marketers should think of other ways to sell their phones. If everybody is doing the same thing, nobody is standing out from the crowd – who is going to remember your phone being advertised? The ads are going to continue and I’ll still sit through them, but I’ll finally be excited once they start showing new or different ones in the cinema, until then, I’ll try to arrive just in time for the film.

  • Battle Bay Review

    I’m not much of a mobile gamer, mainly due to the fact that most touchscreen games have terrible controls and that I’d rather game on my desktop instead of my phone. The best mobile games for me have been quick and simple puzzle games that don’t take a long time to load and play. Games you want to play while waiting in line for something or while taking a shit (though I’d much rather read books or reddit these days). In the past, I scratched the itch with games like Hoplite and Pixel Dungeon. Recently I’ve gotten back in 2048. It’s such a fun and simple game. Not a lot of thinking, but satisfying to make progress in. Easy to drop in and out of.

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  • Rude Awakenings

    Rude Awakenings

    This morning I was woken up by a phone call from another telemarketer. This time it was a lady who was trying to sell me an insurance plan by my credit card. Anyway, she started her pitch off the bat. It was a special plan that would pay out a lump sum to me if I was ever diagnosed with cancer, some heart disease or something else (stroke, I think?). I was half awake, I couldn’t remember what she said. Anyway, she was really persistent on the phone despite my continuous negative replies. It got kind of annoying, and I’m not sure if she was annoyed (because I made her explain the whole plan before shutting her down) but it made me glad that I’m not a telemarketer.

    But anyway, I was just thinking about the call the marketer made. How much information do they have about us? Or was it just by chance that the covered illnesses were something that I was at risk of (stroke in the family, cancer from me smoking). Also, they must have known that I could afford the insurance plan. I wonder if the list of diseases are different for each person they call. Reminds me of Watch_Dogs, where you can identify people you come across the street and learn about their history and current convictions.

    If we all had that ability, I wonder how it would affect our daily lives. I think past criminals wouldn’t stand a chance in society. Then again, they’d probably hack their information to show something else. Which reminds me of the watch list I read about in a Reddit thread. Supposedly, there’s a leaderboard out there with our names and how many points we have for suspicious behavior on the internet. Accumulating a lot of points in a short period of time will probably raise some flags and draw attention to yourself.

    Do telemarketers have a similar sort of list of people to call? Targets with higher susceptibility ratings and people to ignore. I’d like to get onto the latter list.

    Also, please stop using my email address to sign up for shit. Whoever you are. And no, you’re not going to be able to reset my gmail password or log in from another location because I have 2FA on. Sometimes I wish I signed up for my first gmail account with a different username.

    Yes, I still do reply to spam mail. Feel free to send this guy some donations: