That the phone-makers would want to reserve some power from the apps, I suppose
This turns out to be less true than one might hope. The app developers are major customers of the phone ecosystems - sometimes more so than the end users. App sales and ad revenue inside the apps go to the phone ecosystem vendors (Apple, Google), and things that restrict the app in favor of the user are something that the developers will complain about.
Your phone is not really a computer under your control.
On the particular issues, apps have long been given the ability to prevent screenshots from being taken; apps that consider themselves sensitive or "high security" have often made use of this. As you note, another phone or camera works around this pretty easily, but it's always impressive how much you can reduce something by just making it a little difficult, even if not impossible. I wasn't aware that the apps would find out that you tried to take a screenshot, though.
As for QR codes on your screen... that's just bad software. Some Android versions for a while had a "analyze what's on my screen", though subject to the same limitations as the screenshot stuff, I think.
I find QR codes so hard to use because my hands shake, so I need to hold the phone with two hands to get a good scan, but then I have to click the damn link on the screen and it always takes several tries because for some insane reason the link doesn't stay there but disappears if your hand shakes! It's deeply infuriating. Why would you want the link to disappear?
Speaking of privacy, security, and convenience, I'm going to use TSA-pre for the first time today. Unless I mess up.
At least the camera upgrades mean that I can scan checks on the bank apps myself rather than getting RWM to do it for me. I used to not be able to get a good scan even holding with two hands! But the better camera means it's ok with slightly more shaking.
I guess I was supposed to have used a number when I bought the ticket?
6: Yep. You need to give them a number that TSA Precheck (or Global Entry, or NEXUS, or a couple of other things) gave you as a "Trusted Traveler Number" before the day of the flight.
You can add that number to your frequent flyer account and then it should be automatically added to future purchases. You can also add the number after purchasing the flight but before they send the info to TSA (maybe one or two days before the flight).
That would have been good to know two days ago.
Might not be too late for the return flight?
Maybe, but Omaha is usually not a line regardless.
On paper, BeReal encourages people to share their real lives; in practice, I wonder if it doesn't socially pressure people to maximize how much of their lives are spent doing things that photograph well.
Maybe in some spheres. My students just document Cal II or whatever, or tease each other about always being in their cars.
If you go to the ticket counter prior to your flight, they can usually add your number to your flight, and then print you a new boarding pass that will have your pre-check.
Thanks. But I'll need to see what the line is like for the ticket counter.
I did find the number and put it with my frequent flyer account for Southwest. Except they can't even keep track of their own flights.
To OP.penultimate, if it's an image file I can use Google Lens; if it's something I can't save as an image I can screenshot and then use Lens.
(In my phone's case, the downside is that the actual camera app only intermittently recognizes QR codes in viewfinder mode - I usually take a photo so I can use Lens on the photo.)
You could use Google glasses, if they still exist.
14: Sounds familiar. I know my family has visited some places that I don't think we would have if Instagram didn't exist.
I guess it was just a dream that we would all be so fascinating to other people that we could each have our own jennicams documenting our ever instant. Now we just dare to hope that there are a few people interested in seeing one random moment from each day of our life.
16: It worked. Thanks. Clean socks.
Do you look at your class while you're explaining derivatives and you'll see a student posing for a selfie, and you'll know that they just got a prompt from the BeReal app?
Dear God. Another reason to instill in my daughters a negative view of social media. Similar to the way my mother prophylactically refrained from teaching my sister to trim her substantial eyebrows in high school.
I'm trying for "Young Gandalf" myself.
Also - how would you characterize the students engaged in this behavior? Are they the social butterflies? The socially awkward? A particular subculture? Generally female / male? How worried should one be?
Tying this thread to the one about funding kids' activities, I resisted getting TSA pre-checked for years after Cassandane had it because I thought that level of speed should be available to everyone, not just people willing to pay for it. This annoyed Cassandane whenever we flew together because she had to handle the kid and luggage (or rather, she insisted on it) while I took the slower line. I finally gave in last year when we were planning the trip to Spain and dealing with that on top of customs and extra jet lag would have been too much.
BeReal, the new social media app that exploded in popularity over the past few months, is one of the biggest winners for this year's Apple's App Store Awards. It won iPhone App of the Year for giving people an authentic glimpse into their friend's and family's every day lives, the tech giant said in its announcement.
https://www.engadget.com/apple-2022-app-store-awards-094422535.html
But don't worry, nope, BeReal may already be passe. "Citing data from an analytics company, the publication suggested that the app's user numbers have nosedived by around 61 percent in recent months to under six million as the novelty factor waned and bigger rivals started to copy BeReal."
https://www.engadget.com/bereal-says-it-has-more-than-20-million-daily-active-users-172721921.html
27: relaxed, somewhat dorky extroverts?
The more intense security is what infrequent flyers want. It makes them feel safer to take their shoes off. Otherwise why in earth are we doing security theater if not for their benefit?
I'm an infrequent flyer and I don't want it. I thought it was for the W.-stans?
At a random time each day let's all post our SATsextracurriculars and recommendations.
But are you anxious about flying? It's for people who are genuinely worried that there might be terrorists on the plane. Everyone else should get precheck.
I can see the Mutual of Omaha building from my window.
how would you characterize the students engaged in this behavior? Are they the social butterflies? The socially awkward? A particular subculture? Generally female / male?
The answers to these questions will determine whether they are bad for doing it, or whether Someone Else is bad for forcing the poor children to do it.
On the social media / phone / camera thing, I've been going to a new gym for the past 3 or 4 months. It's quite a photogenic looking new gym (atmospheric lighting, dark) with a lot of gear aimed at people who want to do strength training. So, where most local gyms have 2 squat racks that are monopolised by a couple of gigantic guys with back acne, this one has more like 20 squat racks and enough other gear that it's always possible to train on the kit you want.
However, there are _so_ many people* filming themselves. With tripods and shit, not just with a friend holding a phone. I was finishing up my workout the other day, and there was a girl next to me who spent something like 25 minutes doing about 6 Bulgarian split-squats, because she kept coming back checking the tripod, moving it to get just the right butt-angle, doing a single squat, coming back, spending 5 minutes reviewing the video, checking the lighting, going again, etc. I'd reckon that almost every time I go to the gym there's at least one person filming themself.
* I was going to say women, as it is basically all women, but there was a guy filming himself doing calisthenics one time.
39: I'm really surprised by that - my local gym has an enforced no-cameras rule. The only place you can film is the pool - there are audience seats because local schools etc have swimming competitions - but there are big notices saying you can only film even there with prior permission.
What happens if someone's filming themselves and you produce a phone and start filming them too?
re: 41
It seems pretty ubiquitous. I think from the whole fitness influencer TikTok/Instragram thing. I don't care if I'm some schlubby figure somewhere vaguely in the background of someone's video, but I would care if I was directly in shot, I think.
The constant filming-at-gyms thing sounds so weird. It feels like a detail from a TV show or book meant to capture something deep about how art imitates life imitating working out or something.
re: 44
Yeah.
I am also surprised at how "done up" a lot of gym goers are. Really elaborate make-up, fake lashes, complex multi-strap outfits, etc or guys in sprayed on muscle t-shirts with strategic cutouts, tans, perfectly coiffed hair, etc. There was always people who dressed up a bit, but it seems more common.
On the flip-side, a lot of people seem to work out _really_ hard. Which may be a function of the gym I am going to, but some of those super-groomed people are lifting a shit-ton of weight, or dragging heavy sleds up and down, or the like. There's not a lot of people spending 30 minutes on the treadmill staring at their phone.
The sleds thing befuddles me. I didn't understand why people were dragging all this weight across the hallway. It means I have to wait to get my jacket off the rack.
I kinda like the sleds, except when they make a dreadful noise on certain surfaces, like cement parking lots. I think it's kind of fun how you get to lean and dig in.
A fellow gym-goer advised me that the worst time to go to my local gym is 3-4.30 pm because that's when school finishes and all the kids zoom over to the gym and start lifting.
School kids?? I swam a lot when I was a kid, because I liked it, but I don't think anyone lifted weights!
I don't think the gym I currently go to has any under 18s (or if it has, I haven't seen them), but the one I used to go to before had quite a lot of 6th form aged kids at that time of day, and it was indeed a bit of a PITA. Lots of teenage boys ego-lifting weights they can't actually handle--quarter range reps, with atrocious form--and generally monopolising kit in an irritating way, e.g. where you go and can't use a specific piece of kit because the same 3 teenage boys have been using it for 90 minutes.
I had one friend when I was about 16 who lifted weights, but yeah, it wasn't really a thing. We did sometimes do Olympic lifting for PE at school, but I only recall us doing that twice (for a month or so each time). My only distinct memory of that is some tiny kid in my year at school (I was pretty small, but he was tiny for his age) who could clean and jerk some absurd multiple of his own bodyweight (without any previous weight training experience).*
* my memory has probably confabulated it into something more impressive than it was, but it was definitely more than his bodyweight.
we have plenty! sometimes irritating let's socialise around the rack for 90 minutes, sometimes rather sweet!
They tend to be loud, dropping the stack often.
I wonder if both the kids and the fashiony heavy-lifters are a result of better-informed vanity as a result of the internet. If your goal is to look fitter, even in a reasonable not-a-giant-man-with-back-acne and you're not particularly athletically inclined, lifting weights is probably going to get you easier results than almost anything else. Maybe wherever teens get their information is onto that?
re: 51
I'm pretty sure that's right, yeah. For all my slight mocking, a lot of these people are in great shape, and also working really hard at the sort of things that are likely to get results, rather than slow walking on treadmill for an hour, or whatever.
47: There were some. Around age 16, the crew teams and boys wrestling lifted weights.
Speaking of threatening kids, there were a half a dozen teens horsing around at a bus stop. Then two of them started throwing small rocks at each other. I said something to the effect of " knock it off, people are here." The smallest boy muttered about kicking my ass, but they all went to the other side of the street.
Civil society. Is there anything it can't do?
I don't know. The kid who muttered threats had to be 75 pounds lighter.
53: for those of us who were unfortunate enough to attend schools without rowing teams, though, it is a bit of a novelty.
I think rowing would have been tricky in my school anyway, because the nearby options for rowing are limited to a) a river eight inches deep and thirty feet wide, or b) the North Sea, neither of which sound entirely practical.
Occurred to me the other day that school PE would be much better and more useful if it had actually been education rather than just 45 minutes of half-hearted circuits or basketball or whatever. Teach the kids actual useful stuff that will help them if they want to get fit, like "how and why you warm up before exercise" and "how to stretch off afterwards" and "proper form for weightlifting" and "what is core strength and why do you need it" and "what is cardio fitness and why do you need it". And, indeed, "if you pull a muscle or twist an ankle, here's how to help it recover fast". Kids don't need time to run around doing active stuff. They do that anyway in the playground.
I learned none of this stuff until I went into the army.
If people can learn how to avoid injuries without joining the military, it might hurt recruiting.
58: Yeah, that's an excellent point. I guess I learned a genuine enjoyment for playing basketball that served me well later in life, but that might be the only useful thing I got out of phys ed.
Given that the classes I was in were kind of lowest-common-denominator (to accommodate people like me) there wasn't even all that much physical activity. But I was in my thirties before I really had a grip on what actual physical fitness involved.
They do that anyway in the playground.
I'm not so sure that's true any more -- though it was certainly true for me in my youth.
58 my nephews had PE classes like that in Florida. The older one is now seriously into weightlifting/bodybuilding
Kids don't need time to run around doing active stuff. They do that anyway in the playground.
This is true of half the Geeblets.
I think it's always been less universal among girls. I loved running around the playground, but felt torn between the girls hanging out against the side of the building and the boys playing kickball or whatever.
62 is a good point - all-male school, so I just always assumed that small girls ran around in playgrounds just like small boys do, but I realise I've no actual knowledge one way or the other.
The girls didn't seem to like throwing small rocks at each other.
I think genuinely educational PE is probably even more valuable for the kids (and yeah, whether nature or nurture they're disproportionately girls) who aren't getting a lot of spontaneous exercise. I was a completely unathletic kid, and picking up that kind of stuff over the decades has let me develop into an unusually fit middle-aged office worker (ran a slow ten miles after work yesterday, not that I'm bragging but I'm definitely bragging.) When you're doing a lot of active stuff, it's easier to pick up useful knowledge by osmosis and socially, but when you aren't being explicitly taught is helpful.
I was recently reminded of the fact that when I was in elementary and middle school PE swimming classes were sex segregated because the boys swam naked. Thankfully by the time I was in high school this had ended. And of course I was too sick to swim almost all the time, or at least claimed to be. Do any of the older commenters, Stormcrow, CC, et al, have recollections of this or was this only in the NY area?
It was just your school and a pervy coach.
We had co-ed swimming (I think? I don't clearly remember but I'm pretty sure I'd remember segregation because it was unusual.) But I wasn't in an NYC public school -- government-run and free, but administratively off to the side.
And only ever had swimming in high school, not in elementary or junior high.
My wife grew up in western NY and at some point I mentioned how odd it sounded to me that schools had swimming pools. In her experience, all high schools had swimming pools; in my experience (northern Virginia), they were pretty rare. I only found out that my high school had a swim team (that practiced elsewhere) when I looked at the yearbook.
What did NYS do, or legislate, or whatever, that causes it to have so much swimming?
I honestly don't know if this applies to northern VA, or to the school context, but isn't there a North South divide on specifically the availability of public swimming pools for racial segregation reasons after the civil rights act?
My high school had a swimming pool, and that was non-rich area of central Scotland. I think, though, that was in least in part because it was quite a big school with a very large catchment area, so it was generally quite well equipped in many ways.
Some of our school sports coaching was good. Our school football teacher was an assistant to Craig Brown when he was Scotland manager (although that was after I left school), and there was quite a good competitive cross-country scene. There was very little of the general education for lifelong fitness that others raised above, though.
Swimming was co-educational, but some of PE was segregated by sex. Girls and boys did athletics, swimming, basketball and racket sports together, but boys did football and rugby and the girls didn't (netball and hockey for them).
There was no indoor pool in my town (and still is not).
Our school football teacher was an assistant to Craig Brown
It's amazing what good coaching can do. My kids' very tiny school won the city championship for boys rugby a couple of years with a team of not very large boys, because we happened to have a gym teacher who'd played at the national level and none of the other larger and more athletic teams knew much about the game.
Ha, the twins have been going to the gym after school lately with some of their friends. I think they mostly just swim rather than lifting weights, though, since they lift weights at school. The school also has a pool but they seem to prefer the gym one for some reason.
I realize I have zero memory of ever seeing a pool at my high school. It must have had one, it was a massive 2,000-student place with prison-like architecture. Perhaps I never went to the relevant parts of the building because I substituted my private martial arts as PE credit.
What do you know, I guess it didn't have one, despite being built in 1974. The school's current swim team has its own website (not just webpage), which surprisingly seems up-to-date, and it says they swim 3 days a week at 6am at a YMCA a few miles away, with a bus to the school after.
My high school (built in the same era and style) also didn't have a pool. Only a couple of schools did and I think the swim team practiced at whichever one was closest.
My school didn't have a pool, we took the subway down to the college we were affiliated with.
We didn't have a subway or a college.
My mom remembers the public pool closing in Lawrence, Kansas due to desegregation.
None of the schools had pools in Gainesville.
In fact, this very morning I voted in a bond election that will potentially yield a natatorium at the local high school.