Weekly Typed Language

Dual-touch smartphone design concept

2014-04-25T13:18:00+03:00

Smartphones have a thumb problem. The touchscreen is a magical invention, but it definitely has its shortcomings.

The biggest problems is that your fingers are not transparent. They obscure the screen. Your fingers are also not very pointy. Their contact area with the screen is rather large and bulky, which makes it hard to select text or point at something small accurately. That’s what cursors were invented for, right? But smartphones typically don’t use cursors, because nobody wants to drag a mouse along with their phone. Laptops, on the other hand, solve the problem by using a touchpad.

Wouldn’t it be great if your smartphone had both a touchscreen and a touchpad?

But where would a touchpad fit on a smartphone?

Well, how about the back side? It’s not really being used for much else. You can do cool things with a touchpad on the back side of your phone.

You could point a cursor very accurately and without obscuring the screen.

A dual-touch phone is also the perfect selfie device - just tap the back to take your picture.

You could scroll the screen without hiding it.

A dual-touch phone allows you to invent entirely new ways of interacting with your device. There are all kinds of gestures you could do, like pinch to zoom with one hand. Or maybe use a rolling gesture (like rolling a pen between two fingers) to rotate the screen in 3D.

The sky is the limit when it comes to games. At the very minimum, you can get rid of on-screen buttons and controls that hide the actual game.

It’s hard to imagine all the different gestures and interactions you could have when you combine both back-gestures and front-gestures. I’d love to hear more ideas for stuff you could do on a double-touch smartphone, so feel free to share in the comments.

Apple, Samsung, somebody, anybody, please make this happen.

Pinterest infographic version of this post

Self-hack: enjoying doing the dishes

2014-04-25T13:18:00+03:00

Doing the dishes is annoying and gross and boring and I can’t get enough of it!

Dishes used to pile up in our sink. Laundry used to pile up in the hamper. Not anymore, and it’s all because of some very simple self-brain~~washing~~-hacking. I think I’ve turned my procrastination against itself.

Let me explain.

It has to do with operant conditioning - shaping behavior through reinforcement, punishment and so on.

Operant conditioning

We all know about rewarding good behavior and punishing unwanted behavior, but I’ve only recently become aware of just how well researched and precise the science of operant conditioning is. It’s actually fascinating. There are answers to a whole bunch of questions, like:

What’s more effective - carrot or stick?
How frequently should rewards be given for desired behavior?
When does a stimulus no longer produce the desired effect on behavior (i.e. “extinction”)?

Turns out there are answers to these questions.

Why gambling is addictive

I learned that, for one thing, rewards are generally more effective than punishments. Positive reinforcement also trumps negative reinforcement (which isn’t the same thing as punishment, by the way).

Another important fact is that random rewards are more effective than consistent ones. If you reward a lab rat with a food pellet every time it presses the correct button - this is called a fixed ratio schedule. If, instead, you vary the frequency of rewards, sometimes rewarding after pressing the button three times, sometimes after six times, and so on, you’re using a variable ratio schedule, which, it turns out, is way more effective. It is also more effective than interval schedules, like rewarding once every 30 seconds (that just makes the rat wait for about half a minute before bothering to press the button).

When you think about it, this a major reason why slot machines can get so addictive. If a slot machine paid out consistently, yielding 99 cents for every Dollar you bet, it would be no fun. But since it sometimes pays out, and sometimes not, sometimes a lot and sometimes just a little, we keep playing like lab rats. We love that variance. I’m guessing it’s also why no slot machine is designed to give you electric shocks when you lose. In short, random, positive reinforcement is a powerful thing.

Why Reddit is addictive

In a way, Reddit, Facebook, and most other avenues of online procrastination, are a lot like slot machines. You go link by link, image by image, in search for a nugget of awesome. Most are duds. Occasionally you come across something really enjoyable that you can’t wait to share for the twelfth time today with everyone on Facebook. If Reddit links were all equally compelling, we wouldn’t be wasting so much time on them. We would get bored a lot quicker (extinction). But we don’t, because Reddit’s reward schedule is random.

The internet is a slot machine that pays out in cat videos.

So what about the dishes?

Dan Ariely famously tells the story of how he used to have to take medicine that had terrible, painful side-effects. He rewarded himself by watching a movie whenever it came time to take the medicine. That was his treat. He self-hacked to create a positive association that alleviated his dread and suffering.

I hate doing household chores. It’s boring, time-consuming and often yucky. I, too, enjoy movies, but I can’t very well watch a movie while doing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom. But podcasts, I’ve found, are a perfect source of random positive reinforcement. Crucially, you can listen to them while doing basically any household chore. Even more importantly, I only listen to podcasts while doing chores. Them’s the rules.

I enjoy listening to This American Life, Hollywood Babble-On and Freakonomics Radio. Not every episode is amazing. Not every Kevin Smith dick joke is hilarious. But every now and then I hit a jackpot and find myself either giggling like an idiot while cleaning the kitchen, or so enthralled by an interview that I simply don’t want to stop doing chores.

Reverse procrastination

It’s gotten to a point where I actually find myself looking for more shit to do around the house, just to keep listening. Dishes are done? Well, that stove hasn’t been cleaned in a while… I now totally get annoyed when I see a clean, empty sink because that means I don’t get my random positive reinforcement. I’ve taken podcasts - an activity that used to be about passing idle time, very much like Reddit or Facebook - and turned it into a powerful motivator for chores I used to postpone shamelessly.

Anyway, that’s my self-hack. If podcasts aren’t your thing, there’s also audiobooks, radio, music - anything that randomly rewarding. I highly recommend you give it a try.

I Wish I Could Read Wikipedia Like This

2014-04-17T13:18:00+03:00

I love Wikipedia, but too often the articles are just not that easy to read. It’s not that my English isn’t good enough. My English good. There is Simple English Wikipedia, but it doesn’t cover as many topics and it’s not as thorough.

No, what bothers me about reading Wikipedia isn’t the language, it’s the editorial tone. Wikipedia is normalized.

Here’s what Wikipedia feels like to me:

Watt

The watt is the rate a source of energy uses or produces one joule during one second, …

Er… Okay… I think I remember what a joule is [click]:

Joule

A joule is equal to the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre.

[sigh] [click]

Newton

… the unit of force … needed to accelerate 1 kilogram of mass at the rate of 1 metre per second squared.

Okay. That makes sense, I think. So a joule is how much energy it takes to apply a force to accelerate 1kg, wait… force isn’t the same thing as energy? [click]

Diagnosis

Basically, reading Wikipedia, especially when it comes to science, is a tree traversal experience. It often takes more than a few clicks to reach understanding. You dive down, deeper and deeper with each click, then navigate back up and continue reading. It’s very easy to get lost and to lose your context. Don’t get me wrong, I realize it’s an encyclopedia and not a textbook, and every article can’t possibly explain every sub-article it links to. Yet this level of normalization yields a terse, unfriendly tone, which can be frustrating if you’re new to the subject and don’t understand many of the terms used.

The Alternative

What I want is a way to flatten articles to accomodate my own particular knowledge gaps. I want related terms to be explained to me inline, and just deep enough for me to grasp them and not get distracted from the main article.

(The above image is supposed to be animated. Open this article in a browser if it isn’t)

Notice that:

When you click on a term, it expands inline to show you the most minimal explanation first.
You can click on the ellipsis (…) to see a bit more of the explanation, if that first sentence wasn’t enough for you.
You can dive deeper into multiple levels, all without losing your context.

What I also like about this is that you can even end up with a customized article, flattened according to your needs. Maybe even print it or save it as a one-pager that covers all the related terms. Could be fantastic for students.

Feedback

Would you enjoy reading Wikipedia this way? I’m curious to know what other people think.

Pricing for Piracy

2014-04-09T13:18:00+03:00

Many people do not have a problem with pirating paid content, like downloading movies, music, software or books. Why is that?

I am not trying to start a debate on whether piracy is theft or whether intellecutal property is a real thing worth protecting. I am focusing on the moral intuitions of people who download stuff, and why they don’t feel too bad about it.

I can think of a couple of reasons.

Copy vs. Move Semantics

Downloading a copy does not destroy the original one. A somewhat obvious point, but if I take your iPhone, you don’t have it any more. If I make a copy of your movie, you still have your original. Copying does hurt the owner, because it can be argued that less people would be willing to pay for the movie if it can be copied for free, but the damage is still partial. If I take your iPhone, I take 100% of it. If download a copy of your movie and 99 other people do pay for it, then I “take” just 1% of the movie from you, in a sense. Which brings me to the more interest point.

The Potential for Revenue

The amount of money people make from selling copies of things is not a normally distributed variable.

Some things are normally distributed, like people’s height. Lots of people are in the middle of the curve, meaning roughly of average height. Fewer people are actually twice as tall as other people. No person is ever 100x taller than another person. Other things do not distribute normally, like people’s income. Some people do earn 1,000,000x more than others. Income is distributed according to a power law, and not according a normal Gaussian distribution.

Equitable Distribution

I think our sense of fairness has to do with expecting the world to be normally distributed. That’s why we don’t look at copying content in black & white terms. How much money the owner has already made, and how much money we have - these factors affect our sense of fairness about copying content.

For example, copying a music album by a strugling musician, for whom the income from each copy is quite significant, is something that many downloaders would feel bad about. On ther other hand, copying music by a billionair rockstar is something that’s easier to feel okay about. (I’m not justying, just describing how I believe people feel).

It also has to do with the price of content. If a struggling musician demands $10,000 for each copy of his album, suddenly copying his stuff doesn’t seem that bad, because his price seems outrageous. Similarly, if I am poor and cannot afford to pay for music or movies, then I also don’t feel so bad about copying it, even if the price is reasonable. Let others who aren’t as poor as me pay. Perceived price fairness is relative to how much money the buyer and the seller have.

The Current System

The problem with the way content is sold today is that the price is pretty much fixed. J.K. Rowling earns just as much for the first copy of Harry Potter as for the 400 millionth copy. Some justify this system by arguing that book publishers take on risks when publishing books, and they rely on these mega-hits to pay for all the failed ones. Again, I think I can argue against this logic, especially in a world where books are distributed digitally and the entry barrier for authors has been lowered, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make now. My point is that people feel okay about downloading a copy of Harry Potter for free because they know that Rowling already has more than enough money.

People want authors and musicians to succeed financially, but it’s not important for them that they become immensely rich. If a book’s price would fall in proportion to the number of copies sold, successful authors would still make a lot of money, they just won’t be making a million times more than the average author. Consequently, consumers would have a lot more money left to pay for more books by other authors.

Alternatives

This intuitive picture of how fairness has to do with a normal (or at least less extreme) distribution of wealth is a major factor that influences the pervasiveness of piracy. Designing an alternative system of pricing for content is an interesting exercise. For example, a music subscription service where people pay a fixed monthly fee. Revenue is then distributed between artist based on how many people listened to their music, but not in a strict linear proportion, but rather fitted to some moderate curve.

Today, the top seller makes about twice as much as the 2nd best seller, and so on. If people spend, say $20,000,000 on music every month, and there are 1,000 artists, then under the current system the top seller gets $10,000,000 and the worst seller gets practically nothing. Under an alternative system the top seller could get $50,000 and the worst seller $1,000. We would have hundreds of thriving artists, instead of 15 extremely rich ones. It doesn’t have to be as “flat” as this, of course. We can have it as as curvy as we’d like. But even under this example, earning $50,000 a month is a lot of money. Enough money to keep playing music.

So that’s just one model, and I think it can actually be feasible, in a world dominated by streaming services and Kindle and so on. We could also have a model where content is bought individually, not using a subscription, but the price diminishes with popularity, achieving a similar curve as above.

Summary

I believe piracy is going to remain an issue even if paying for content becomes just as easy as downloading it for free, and even if average prices go down (e.g. an average Kindle book costing $5). As long as income from copied digital content is distributed exponentially, people are going to be aware of how massively rich the top performers are and thus feel okay about copying their content for free.

Time Zones Considered Harmful

2014-03-24T12:18:00+02:00

We don’t need time zones.

Time zones bad.

Why time zones bad? Have you ever scheduled a phone conference with someone abroad? Was it pure joy? Did you remember about daylight savings time? Did you have to look up weird acronyms like PST and PDT and MST just so you’re sure you have the right time?

Have you ever had to code something with a DateTime library? Did you make sure every single place in your code serializes into UTC, but displays in local? Do you have any hair left on your head after debugging errors that only seem to happen in early April and only for customers in Nepal (which, by the way, has a timezone offset of +5:45)?

As I was saying, time zones bad.

So what is the alternative? Simple: everyone uses the same time. Just pick one. For example, London (UTC) time. Everyone’s clock shows the exact same thing; always in sync. Easy to program. Easy to communicate.

“What time should I Skype you? 9:00? Great. Talk to you then.”

Done.

When captain Kirk says “Captain’s log, stardate 43125.8” everyone in the galaxy knows exactly when shit happened. Nobody’s asking if it was Klingon time or Romulan savings time. Microsoft did not have to issue a Windows update that triggered a billion reboots just because some Vulcan priests decided that the Pon farr season of blood rage came a little earlier that year. It all just worked.

This fantastic sci-fi technology is something we could all enjoy right now, if we all just agreed to abandon this time-zone thing.

“But Assaf,” you object, “how would we know what time it is really for someone abroad?! It could be the middle of the night there, or something…”

Having to remember when the work-day starts somewhere in the world is exactly equivalent to remembering the time zone difference with that place. It’s actually easier because it does not require math.

Shall I call you tomorrow at 3:00?

No, I only start working at 10:00. Would 11:00 work, instead?

Sure. Talk to you then.

Done.

Having to consult a website that tells you what the time difference is going to be at a certain date is not easier than consulting a website that shows you the daylight hours of that place.

There’s nothing wrong with a world where some people wake up at 1:00 and some people wake up at 8:00. It’s actually simpler. When you think about it, there’s something really bizarre about all of us pretending that everybody wakes up at 7:00 everywhere in the world. We don’t pretend that it’s winter everywhere at the same time, do we? We don’t use season-zones — we just deal with the fact that the weather is different in different places, and we can certainly deal with the fact that the sun rises at different times in different places.