361–370 of 538 posts
I deleted everything Google and switched to iOS a few years ago so Google would have less of my data. Now they are going to get detailed location, activity, and sleep history for all of those years anyway. You really can't win can you. I bet there is no option to download my data and nuke what they have before this happens either.
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> I bet there is no option to download my data and nuke what they have before this happens either. Are you based in the EU? If so then you can do exactly that under GDPR.
I’ve always wondered, how do they know if you’re in the EU? Can I change my address to somewhere in the EU and get my data deleted or will they check?
The heart rate monitor was so bad I returned it to the store in less than 24 hours.
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I hope that's true. I suspect that if it is, it only is until one or two teams does it successfully and monetizes that outcome. Then it's open season. That's a trend in computing. It's forever too hard, until all of a sudden it isn't for a very select few and they do amazing things[1]. Then a year or two later everyone is doing it. 1: Amazing is relative, and in this case may be less about customers getting something…
Health data is scary because of HIPAA (and the equivalent in non-US jurisdictions) not because it's inherently special or hard to make sense of.
Regulations are often implemented as a set of specific hard rules based on specific values (so it's easy to rule about them). The systems they regulate are almost always never so clear, and are based on competing gradients. Where these rules interact with natural systems (such as a free market) are often some of the most lucrative places for companies to develop new strategies.
Where some people see rules that prevent or kill existing businesses, other people see an opportunity for a new type of business. The whole financial sector is rife with companies that do just this. A simple example of how it could happen in this case is that there may be some non HIPAA covered data (that people may or may not think of as health data at this point in time) mixed in with the HIPAA data, and very carefully harvesting and monetizing that could be lucrative. Maybe later laws are updated to change this, or maybe it becomes the new normal.
Ah nooo please. Anyone but google. I love my Fitbit charge 3 and was thinking about replacing my Fitbit scale because my original model just died after 6 years. If google is going to buy Fitbit then I’m out.
100% so annoying - going to have to throw out my fitbit stuff if this goes through
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I haven't used Fitbit since the first iteration of the product, but why would you want Spotify on a device that tracks your fitness level?
I'm a marathoner and need to go on long training runs. My Garmin running Watch has music (Spotify) which I can play via Bluetooth. I don't want to carry around a phone during prolonged vigorous exercise. Spotify integration makes a lot of sense for fitness watches.
Ok, but listening to music is cheating.
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A watch that needs to be charged once in a few days is actually worse than one that could use a charge every night. Charge at night is a habit that can easily be adjusted to our daily schedule. btw Apple watch does last a full day (I meant 16+ hrs) with decent use, unless you are playing music out of it all the time or obsessively checking time/calendar. Only advantage of fitbit is that some models are easier to wear…
I want a watch that only needs to be charged once in a few days, because I want to wear it at night for it to track my sleep and wake me up and I could charge it while I shower (every 2 days, in case you're wondering).
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As someone who's taken the internal trainings a few times by now: NOPE. Health data is scary-scary and no team wants to taint itself with it, unless it's the core of the product.
It seems if they buy fitbit is because they are no longer really "scared" of it, they aren't going to buy it just to keep fitbit a completely separate product.
Now, that is for data that has no special legal protections. Whereas medical data is, for good reasons, subject to pretty heavy handed laws. Differing quite dramatically across all the diverse jurisdictions Google runs in. Sure, I have no clue what my employer's grand plan is here, but it will surprise me very strongly if medical data starts finding its way to established products. And note this is "medical data" according to the conservative common denominator across all the jurisdictions Google has to care about.
Ah nooo please. Anyone but google. I love my Fitbit charge 3 and was thinking about replacing my Fitbit scale because my original model just died after 6 years. If google is going to buy Fitbit then I’m out.
I've found that Garmin has higher quality hardware than Fitbit anyway. Every Fitbit I ever had ended up being replaced multiple times under warranty because the hardware was very low quality (or badly designed) and broke.
My friends and I had been using Garmin cycle computers and watches for a while, but lately we've been moving to Suunto and Wahoo devices - entirely due to software bugs.
My Fenix 5 watch freezes up 2 or 3 times a month. The screen will be frozen at a particular time for 5-10 minutes and it won't respond to any button presses, not even to turn it off. And they don't sync to the app without an internet connection. And the cycle computers freeze up on boot trying to download upgrades, even when you're in the midle of nowhere and haven't had an internet connection in days. Lots and lots of little annoyance bugs like those.
Definitely not designed for offline use, in any case.
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> hostile json format This is new. Is "hostile" referring to a data format that has been created to be as un-portable as possible? Feels like a more accurate description would be to just saw "poorly designed format" as you cannot know their intent (unless they published their intent of course)
Nothing to do with json, if someone wants then data can be always represented in hard to understand formats.