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SWMBO has been telling me I need to lose weight for several months. So I went on-line to Noom.com this afternoon. I went through all of their B.S. and signed up for a 6 month program. I plunked down my $159.00 and expected to be emailed the Program guidelines. The website said I would hear from them right away.
When nothing came after 3 hours I went on-line to registration support to find out what the issue was. After an extended "Chat" session I was informed that I had to use my phone to download an "APP" to participate in the program. This immediately fired me up as I don't run "Apps" on my phone. I use it to make calls, and receive calls, and send and receive text messages. The Texting thing is torture, as the form size is incredibly, ridicuously small and unusable for me. I have big fat clumsy fingers.
Why would the dimwits that wrote the phone app, not realize they could have developed an application that could be run on both a phone or a desktop, or laptop at the same time.  Is it all the "cool kids" doing it? Don't they realize that most of the people out there wanting to lose weight, or struggling with Diabetes, are "Senior Citizens" like me, and did not grow up with mobile phones, texting or "apps". And I'd bet that most of them feel the same way I do. There are many people out there that can not afford to even have a mobile phone to begin with.
If any of you guys work(ed) for Noom, please let me know what they/you were thinking.
I am flabbergasted that they would exclude and alienate such a large portion of their market. I cancelled my subscription as soon as I found out what is involved. I learned a long time ago that businesses want as many customers as possible, and the goal is to make it easy for the customer to use your service or product.
BTW: Whoever did their website should have put a great big message on every form "You can't use this program without using our Mobile Phone App! There was NO indication anywhere that the program could onyy be used on a mobile phone. The irony is they sure as hell have a complicated "App" running on their website!
If you know anyone in charge at Noom ask them to call me.
Finally, I know I am a cranky, old, S.O.B. and freely admit it. Telling me this is the case, and that I should move on with the times, would be a waste of effort.
Change is not always good. Especially when the only reason is to be"cool".
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There are a couple of sites I frequent which are good, yet the management has decided that mobile "apps" are better and seem to be killing their web sites in favor of mobile "apps" -- it's horrible and it's likely that they will lose lots of paying users.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: ...yet the management has decided that mobile "apps" are better
at targeting ads, and tracking users. They are not wrong.
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I have terrible news for you, the number of people who can afford a $159 weight loss program and who do NOT have a smart phone must be tiny, your decision not to load "apps" into your phone is just you being a grumpy old bugger.
I just wish the young whippersnappers would used a decent sized font.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Examples of this are EVERYWHERE. As a result of Covid, many restaurants have introduced order+pay apps so you don't need to interact with a person or touch menus etc. I can just about understand that BUT why implement it as an "app" (horrible term) rather than simply put the form on a (mobile-friendly) website? So much easier - nothing to download, no hardware / software requirements, easier to update, etc.. etc.. Also, because I don't use my phone for apps, I really don't need - or want - "mobile data". I use my phone, like you, to make phone calls. It's a pay-as-you-go and I top up £10 every couple of months or so, if that. So yes, I can use a website on it - if there's WiFi available. Many of these restaurants that have their own app don't even have wifi!
But it gets worse... In the UK we have the "track and trace" app (which we're all supposed to use, everywhere). But it only runs on recent versions of Android or iOS. I have a 7-year old (very small + compact, with long battery life) mobile that runs Android 4. Yet the idiots put in some requirement or other into the app that requires the latest (or latest less one?) version of op system. (I guess that *may* be the app store requirement, but I don't think so - there are a few apps I've tested that download and run, like WhatsApp). In this case the Government is virtually forcing people to trash functional hardware and spend ten times the original cost on an "upgrade", together with all the environmental (plastics and energy etc) damage involved. [In fact it may be that it requires a recent version of Bluetooth which it uses to detect proximity - but they could SAY so and allow the proximity aspect to be disabled whilst still retaining the "scan in" QR aspects]
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Me too. I got my phone in 2005, amd it still does everithing I want it to.
When I get to a restaurant that requires scanning an OCR code, I tell them to bring me a paper menu, and if they don't, I just get up and leave.
And yes, I am just a grumpy old fart.
Zaphod
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I agree with you (in my early 40's). I won't pay with Venmo because payments only work on phone apps. I don't trust my phone for financial stuff. I'll use Paypal's desktop app, but otherwise you'll have to find another way to get money from me.
Hogan
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I'm with you.
Web sites that will only allow a "mobile phone number" for a confirmation; no other number or email address.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I recently leased a Chevrolet Bolt EUV; one of the nice things about it is that I can check the status of the battery, etc., remotely. As of September, they're dropping that access from the website; it will only be available via an app. That app is particularly obnoxious; about every 3rd or 4th time I try to use it, it just hangs on startup. So far, the only fix I've found is to delete the app and reinstall it.
In addition, to be prepared for any trip beyond the base range of the car, I've had to add 7(!) apps to my phone - MyChevrolet to talk to the car, ABetterRoutePlanner (ABRP) to plan the route including charging stops, PlugShare to check to make sure that the charging stops ABRP picked actually exist and are working, plus Blink, ChargePoint, Electrify America and EVgo so that I can actually use the chargers. Apparently very few of the chargers are set up to allow you to swipe a credit card; they all want you to use their app instead.
I really enjoy driving the car, but I'm less than thrilled with having to depend on a smartphone to be able to do much beyond local trips. At least the car has wireless charging capability that works with my phone, and Android Auto to let me mirror the phone display on the car's much larger screen.
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Just sell the Chevy and buy a Tesla and you won't have to mess with any of that mess.
If pigs could fly, just imagine how good their wings would taste!
- Harvey
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I just have to say how much I love this editor.
I just downloaded and installed an extension for editing Bethesda Papyrus scripts for Fallout 4 and Skyrim modding.
Is there anything I can't edit with this thing? I love it so much. I used to love Visual Studio, now it's a distant second.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I use it for editing C++ code on Linux. I don't like the configuration method for the compiler, but that has to be done only once. IMO, on Windows VS is still the best development environment.
As they say, YMMV.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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since I have Visual Studio enterprise version, I have not tried this VS Code yet...
diligent hands rule....
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I rely more on the "IDE" part than the editor. It might have been the other way around at one time.
Editing a project, VS "knew" my resource references could be found in another dll without me making a specific reference to it (which would have created a cycle). Many other "small" things.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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That a developer can be made much more productive with a high performing machine?
When they give me a weak machine, it takes forever to build, it limits the number of development tools I can have open, and it interrupts my train of thought.
Right now I have a laptop with only 16 GB of RAM. It's not nearly enough. 
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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And apparently we're being moved to using VMs via thin clients. 
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My last position within this company required us to use VM's via these same laptops.
It was like torture because even the keystrokes had noticeable latency. So typing was extremely frustrating.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Patience. Evidently your company isn't totally brain dead, because you've gone from a VM to a machine with 16GB.
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I've just had my work laptop upgraded.. I've NOW got the 16Gb RAM. 
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I find it amusing that "managers" think it cool to (only) have a laptop on their desk, while the grunts (in some places) have to get by with desk top machines, multiple monitors, etc.
But, when all you do is type memos ...
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I always preferred a desktop, you could not take it to meetings, demonstrating anything meant either deploying it or they came to you (and you made sure there was limited room and they had to stand) and they used to be faster and quieter.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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"Management realize" the two words are a contradiction. All management lives in cloud-cuckoo land. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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The 16 GB of ram, then you add in all of the VPN, Malware, Anti-Virus, and monitoring bloatware that they need to secure the laptop and you have the modern day equivalent of a 486SX running on 640K of memory.
Just my .02
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While they have blazing fast machines to do their bean counting Excel spreadsheets.
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If I'm doing important managey work in Excel, I totally need a new AMD Threadripper with 128 GB of memory loaded with 10 TB of SSD drives.
How else am I going to do Excelly type work, and write clever posts about important managey stuff on Linkedin.... 
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