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The accidental genius of Yo

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41–50 of 94 posts

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#41
There's got to be a similar market for "push notification as a service". I wouldn't mind giving a company $20 for credits for 500 push notifications. I hit their API, they push to my phone with whatever text I give them.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#42

There's got to be a similar market for "push notification as a service". I wouldn't mind giving a company $20 for credits for 500 push notifications. I hit their API, they push to my phone with whatever text I give them.

I've been using Pushcut on iOS for this purpose, there's a lot of customizability offered including replying with actions. Add in using IFTTT to call the Pushcut notification webhook and then automation gets a lot easier than doing it by hand.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#43
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. t's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit. It’s still one bit. The time is not part of the transm…

Time is absolutely part of the transmission. It matters when you say "Hi" to someone. Differently timed "Hi"'s can say different things. Even if you repeat "Hi" many times, it's still just "Hi" but the amount of them also matters and becomes part of the transmission when looking at all of them together. I feel like many, especially developers, fail to see what is in between the data to matter as well as the data itse…

If we're in different locations and we run a wire between us, and I send a single pulse down the wire. That's one bit of information.

You as the receiver derive the other relevant information from that. A timestamp was not encoded and transmitted, a single bit (pulse) was transmitted from me to you.

That's the thesis of the article I believe. That single bit can "carry" a lot of additional information due to the context and understanding of the receiver. Information that wasn't actually transmitted in the message, but derived from it.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#44

There's got to be a similar market for "push notification as a service". I wouldn't mind giving a company $20 for credits for 500 push notifications. I hit their API, they push to my phone with whatever text I give them.

SMS (twilio) and most chat apps (slack, discord, Facebook messenger, Telegram,GroupMe, etc.) offer this functionality. Is there something you want that using one of these would not satisfy?

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#45
post #38

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact... /pedant

> The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. t's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit. It’s still one bit. The time is not part of the transm…

It is widely believed by neuroscientists that spike timing in animal brains (whether by aggregate rate or by individual spikes) does the majority of information encoding.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#46

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact... /pedant

“now!” would be just a timestamp. Any additional message content adds context, so your assertion is wrong.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#47
post #18
post #3

My shortcut to text my partner is called “Yo” and sends a “Yo”. Use it all the time. She knows when I’m leaving a store, or swinging by the house to pick her up, or when we’re in a store and ready to meet at the checkout lanes. I think frequently that the app could’ve survived and have been useful. The iterations they went through took it in less useful directions, but the idea itself didn’t need to die. Feels like a…

But how could they’ve monetized? Would you still use it with ads inserted?

As you enter a bar your phone buzzes. "I just got a Yo from Heineken!" If you're not disgusted at that point by an app tracking your location to sell you things, you will probably be more likely to order a Heineken.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#48

There's got to be a similar market for "push notification as a service". I wouldn't mind giving a company $20 for credits for 500 push notifications. I hit their API, they push to my phone with whatever text I give them.

The Pushbullet service was for this. But you could possibly use the Zapier free tier and Twilio SMS and build something even cheaper.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#49
post #3

My shortcut to text my partner is called “Yo” and sends a “Yo”. Use it all the time. She knows when I’m leaving a store, or swinging by the house to pick her up, or when we’re in a store and ready to meet at the checkout lanes. I think frequently that the app could’ve survived and have been useful. The iterations they went through took it in less useful directions, but the idea itself didn’t need to die. Feels like a…

The idea didn't die, the app did survive. You can still use it.
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