Schadenfreude, The Samsung Edition

At Gizmodo, Brent Rose reviews the Samsung Gear Fit:

The software is unforgivably bad. Tragically bad. It feels as if the Gear Fit and the S Health teams barely spoke to each other at all. Which is especially bedeviling since Samsung made the conscious choice to sell a wearable product that only works with Samsung products. At least when Apple locks you into an ecosystem, things actually (mostly) work.

The Gear Fit’s pedometer is inaccurate, the exercise app doesn’t really integrate with S Health, and the sleep data doesn’t go anywhere at all. If you’re outside you need to turn the screen up to full brightness, but it will only stay in that mode for five minutes before reverting to medium brightness. Incredibly frustrating if you’re going for a run that lasts more than five minutes. Touchscreen controls tend to be very unresponsive, too.
This is what happens when Samsung doesn’t have Apple to copy from. They produce dog shit.
Nice work, Samsung.
[schadenfreude: a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people]

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Human Experience

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How Siliconishly Meta

WSJ: AngelList’s Newest Experiment: a $25 Million Fund to Invest in Angel Investors:

A new experiment in startup funding could have widespread ramifications for the way venture capitalists place bets on young companies.

On Tuesday, crowdsourced fundraising site AngelList unveiled a new fund that has raised about $25 million from limited partners who traditionally invest in venture-capital funds. The fund, called Maiden Lane, will bet about $200,000 each on the site’s top investors and on select startups picked by them.
…aaaaand Silicon Valley sticks its head up its own ass.

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Business

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An Unnecessary Path

Patrick Thibodeau:

A study of New York City’s tech workforce found that 44% of jobs in the city’s “tech ecosystem,” or 128,000 jobs, “are accessible” to people without a Bachelor’s degree. The category covers any job that is enabled by, produced or facilitated by technology.

For instance, a technology specific job that doesn’t require a Bachelor’s degree might be a computer user support specialist, earning $28.80 an hour, according to this study. That job requires an Associate’s degree.
People who gravitate towards tech jobs tend to be the types who tinker and try to learn stuff on their own anyway.
Then when you factor in sites like SkillShare and Codeacademy where you’re learning tech in it’s ‘natural habitat’, this report makes a lot of sense.
via SlashDot

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Career

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