Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

[MJ2004]

This was my last straw. I deleted the app from my phone this morning as soon as I saw the "x" had replaced "Twitter".

I have accounts on Threads, Discord and Mastodon, but it's a mess with many people, while complaining, still on Twitter.

[ponchi101]

No! Don't go! Elon wants to run ALL YOUR FINANCIAL SERVICES!!!!!! It will be swell!
(good for you)

[ti-amie]

The BBC has set up it's own "instance" or server on Mastodon. Unlike the FT that did this first and took it down the only people who can post in it are those who work for the BBC. The FT let anyone post on theirs and of course chaos ensued.

I'm seeing calls for not only major news outlets to follow suit but for more governments and government agencies to do the same in the FediVerse. That way some slug who's on one can't decide to create a fake account and throw Elmo $8 for the "privilege" of doing so and therefore creating confusion, chaos, and spreading disinformation.

[ti-amie]

Most of the 100 million people who signed up for Threads stopped using it
"We're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected," Zuckerberg said.
JON BRODKIN - 7/28/2023, 2:07 PM

Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5 and signed up over 100 million users in less than five days, buoyed by user frustration with Elon Musk-owned Twitter.

"Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," Zuckerberg told employees yesterday, according to Reuters, which listened to audio of the event.

Third-party data suggests that Threads may have lost many more than half of its active users. Daily active users for Threads on Android dropped from 49 million on July 7 to 23.6 million on July 14, and then to 12.6 million on July 23, web analytics company SimilarWeb reported.

"We don't yet have daily numbers for iOS, but we suspect the boom-and-bust pattern is similar," SimilarWeb wrote. "Threads took off like a rocket, with its close linkage to Instagram as the booster. However, the developers of Threads will need to fill in missing features and add some new and unique ones if they want to make checking the app a daily habit for users."

Although losing over half of the initial users in a short period might sound discouraging, the Reuters article said Zuckerberg told employees that user retention was better than Meta executives expected. "Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off 'normal' and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality," Reuters wrote.

Chief Product Officer Chris Cox also spoke at the company event, reportedly saying that Meta is considering "retention-driving hooks" such as "making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads." Threads is part of Meta's Instagram platform, so users can create a Threads profile as part of their Instagram account.

Zuck: Threads still needs “basic functionality”
When contacted by Ars today, a Meta spokesperson pointed to Zuckerberg's comments from Wednesday's earnings call. Zuckerberg said:

On Threads, briefly, I'm quite optimistic about our trajectory. We saw unprecedented growth out of the gate and more importantly we're seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected. And now, we're focused on retention and improving the basics. And then after that, we'll focus on growing the community to the scale we think is possible. Only after that will we work on monetization. We've run this playbook many times before—with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Stories, Reels, and more—and this is as good of a start as we could have hoped for, so I'm really happy with the path we're on here.

Zuckerberg also told investors that "Threads has been dramatically more than we expected in terms of the adoption and the rate of that... we had a small team working on [it] for a while, but it really kind of blew up and created a big opportunity immediately."

Zuckerberg said "there's still a lot of basic functionality to build" for Threads and talked briefly about the challenge of attracting users to new standalone apps. "We've tried a bunch of standalone experiences over time, and in general, we haven't had a lot of success with building kind of standalone apps," he said.

Threads could succeed in part because of user backlash to Musk's changes at Twitter, now officially called "X," Zuckerberg seemed to suggest. "It could just be that this is such an idiosyncratic case because of all of the factors that are happening around Twitter or X, I guess, it's called now," he said.

Threads is available in about 100 countries, including the US and UK, but is not in the European Union yet because of concerns over compliance with EU regulations. Threads has drawn privacy-related criticisms because of the amount of personal data collected by the app.


https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... -of-users/

[MJ2004]

They released Threads too soon. I get that they're trying to capitalize on the Twitter debacle, but exposing audiences to a new product before "necessary" key features are in place is a terrible idea.

I didn't use it until the ability to switch to "Following" was added. That said, I have noticed a slight steady uptick. Some, but certainly not all, of the people I follow are on Threads, and most are not as active as they are on Twitter.

But if anyone has the power to market a new platform, it's FB/Meta. I still have hope.

[ti-amie]

They released Threads too soon. I get that they're trying to capitalize on the Twitter debacle, but exposing audiences to a new product before "necessary" key features are in place is a terrible idea.

I didn't use it until the ability to switch to "Following" was added. That said, I have noticed a slight steady uptick. Some, but certainly not all, of the people I follow are on Threads, and most are not as active as they are on Twitter.

But if anyone has the power to market a new platform, it's FB/Meta. I still have hope.

I know you should never say never but I got rid of FB a few years ago and will hope to never go near any Zuckerberg associated online application.

[MJ2004]

I know you should never say never but I got rid of FB a few years ago and will hope to never go near any Zuckerberg associated online application.

Same. I haven't used FB in many years. Now without Twitter though I've been checking Instagram and Threads more often. Lesser of two evils? We can't win either way.

[ti-amie]

Unrelenting Hurricane Dora set to make history by becoming a typhoon
Dora has already made headlines for its role in intensifying Hawaii’s devastating firestorm

By Dan Stillman
August 11, 2023 at 2:29 p.m. EDT

Category 3 Hurricane Dora has made headlines this week for having partially contributed to the winds that whipped up a ferocious firestorm in Hawaii. Now Dora, already having set a record for longevity in the Pacific Ocean, is about to make more history, more than three weeks after being born in a different ocean more than 10,000 miles away.

If Dora maintains hurricane strength, as the Central Pacific Hurricane Center expects when it crosses the international date line late Friday, it will become Typhoon Dora and only the second tropical system on record to remain at hurricane strength across the eastern, central and western Pacific basins. Hurricane John, the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record, previously accomplished the same feat in 1994.

The international date line is an imaginary line at 180 degrees longitude that separates two calendar days and marks the boundary between the central and western Pacific Ocean. A tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph is called a hurricane in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic, but a typhoon in the western Pacific.

Dora’s journey began all the way back on July 17 when it first emerged as a cluster of clouds and showers, or a tropical wave, in the eastern Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. From there, the tropical wave took a southern track across the Atlantic and did not further develop because of dry and stable air. After crossing Central America on July 28 and 29, the system grew stronger and more organized as it entered the eastern Pacific Ocean, becoming a tropical depression on July 31 and being named Tropical Storm Dora on Aug. 1, once its winds reached 39 mph.

Having traveled nearly 10,000 miles in total, including 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, Dora was the longest-lasting Category 4 hurricane on record in the Pacific before weakening in recent days to a Category 3 storm. Many meteorologists believe the low pressure associated with Dora contributed to the winds that rapidly spread devastating wildfires in Hawaii this week, although there is some debate about how much influence the storm had as it passed about 500 miles south of the Hawaiian islands.

It’s not unprecedented for tropical systems to cross over from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Last year, both Bonnie and Julia made the leap from one ocean to another, marking the first time two storms in one season maintained tropical storm intensity as they crossed over.

However, most hurricanes coming from the eastern Pacific weaken once they enter the central Pacific because of cooler ocean waters, dry air and wind shear, which are winds that increase with altitude and tend to rip storms apart. Dora, though, took on a more compact, doughnut-like shape known as an “annular” hurricane when it reached Category 4 strength.

“That’s important because annular tropical cyclones can wall off the negative factors such as dry air or wind shear longer. They tend to weaken slower than more conventional tropical cyclones,” explained meteorologist Jonathan Erdman in an article on Weather Underground.

Because of increasing shear, Dora is forecast by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center to steadily weaken over the next several days, morphing from a major typhoon to a remnant zone of low pressure with winds of only 35 mph. Remaining over open waters, it is not a threat to land.

Record warm ocean waters have probably contributed to Dora’s longevity and its parent tropical wave across two oceans and 25 days and counting. Those same warm ocean waters have prompted forecasters to increase the number of named storms they are predicting in the Atlantic Ocean this hurricane season.

As for the Pacific Ocean, Dora isn’t the only storm forecasters are monitoring. Typhoon Lan is a Category 4 storm in the western Pacific that is forecast to hit Japan on Monday.

Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Zoom Earth
@zoom_earth
·
Aug 9
Same view with satellite imagery:

[dryrunguy]

I guess I'll put this here? Anyway, I had no idea.

What is a switch? The increasingly popular device can turn a pistol into a fully automatic weapon.

https://www.insider.com/switch-can-turn ... 20the%20US.

[ponchi101]

Ok, but the article does not say "what are they", in the sense of "how do they work".
That is insane, anyway. But we know that the GOP will never allow for any progress on that.

[Owendonovan]

Gun culture completely escapes me.

[ponchi101]

It is impossible to understand. And I can't rule out that the glorification that so many movies do about guns is not, at the very least, a contributing factor.

[ti-amie]

The latest from Elmo's Xitter...



I guess I'm not the only one who goes on there and immediately blocks blue checks and ads. I've been blocking ads since forever though.