Apple has been on the march to fight for better privacy requirements of people’s data on social media. They even put some action where their mouth was recently, by changing their privacy practices to have users opt in some sharing of their data via apps rather than opt out so that the default wasn’t to share their data like with many other platforms. However, if they want to be really serious about it all, they have the perfect avenue to not only do this, but also maim one of their tech rivals in Facebook, who survives on data sharing (often through targeted ads) without significant revenue stream elsewhere like Apple has with hardware, software, and more.
model
What’s the Cost of that per Hour? A Simple Guide to Assess Value
We basically consume things as we live. As one simple way of assessing value when deciding whether or not to buy something, I calculate the price I’ll pay for it by the hour and put it in context of some other things to see how it stacks up. It’s a simple assessment of what the price is, divided by much time it could take up in my life, and compare to something else.
Example
A new tablet. $300, use, on average, over half an hour per day for two years. That’s $300 for at least 365 hours. For simple math, I go for 400 hours so $0.75 per hour. Compare that to a movie without extras that’s about $5 to $7 per hour (Canadian prices). High speed Internet at home that is about $0.50 per hour for me. A full sized piano keyboard that’s currently at $2 per hour. Current four years old desktop that is going under $0.50 per hour.
The call to buy or not is arbitrary pending other factors I’ll go over below, but this gives me a lot of context. I go for it but I commit to keeping that tablet for at least 2 years (and I recall this if I get a new one sooner than 2 years).
Other considerations
Of course, other considerations must be taken into account for the calculation:
- Use with other things. I may not use my tablet at all times without other things like app purchases. That’s fine. Calculate the other things for what they’re worth. Nobody ever only consumes one thing at all times in their lives.
- What else can you get for the same or better value that you might want to get instead? This often stops me as I opt for some other thing.
- Compare similar things. This is valuable for new, rare and/or unique things, especially the costly ones like those on vacation. For such things, compare what you can imagine in looking forward to the thing or experience, and compare it to something similar in theme (not necessarily same sort of thing because unique stuff is hard to find similarities for comparison). For considering things or experiences you were purchasing again, ask if that was worth the money at that rate.
- Stuff you can’t calculate. There is a lot of things you can’t calculate, like the social value to make new friends, or see some person you’re interested in getting to know better among a group of friends at a movie, that can overrule, or be worth the value of the something more costly, or novelty of a new experience that could lead to more things, a fun memory, etc. That’s great! Go for it! Just keep the total in check for what you can afford in your life. That’s a bigger calculation that’s not actually hard to estimate, but you’d need to know some details about how much you spend, save, want to save, etc. Keeping enough financial data about yourself is the hard part there, but I have that to help me.
- Other things still. Whatever you can dream up to consider, whether to overrule or help make the decision more systematic and rational. Sure, add it in! It is your calculation!
- Go with your guts if all else fails. As stated.
It’s far from a perfect system or model for deciding whether or not to buy things, but for starters, I think it’s a damn good one!
The Value of a City Miniature Model
How much value can a miniature model of a city have? Why don’t you ask the citizens and officials of San Francisco? They have a roughly 40 feet x 40 feet model of the city from the 1930s that is a buzz in the city today for conversations around the city’s history, present, and democratic urban planning for the future. That’s despite the model having been recently rediscovered and restored, some 80 years after it was built and 70 years after it had been put away? But if you can’t talk to the San Franciscans, or the right ones, have a listen to the 99% Invisible podcast below and hear for yourself!
Every city needs a decent city model, it would seem to me. There seems to be something about seeing the entirety of something in front of our eyes that changes our minds and feelings about it. Think about the Blue Marble photo of planet Earth taken over 50 years ago. It still inspires many. But so few cities have such a model, probably for the worse, and that’s too bad.
Who Will Be First to 3D Print Pluto at Scale?
NASA has just released some amazing high resolution files of Pluto.
Pluto Close-up by NASA
The resolution is more than good enough to create a 3D print of the planet, at something like a room sized scale, and maintain all of the details captured, in my opinion. If done smaller, you’ll even lose some details! That is, the information might be finer than the 3D printing technology that is currently available!
So the only thing remaining for me to ask is who will be the first?
I think that would be quite something to see, Pluto in 3D compared to just a speck of light we knew of its appearance only a short prior to whenever they get enough information to print the 3D model!
The Virtual Model of You on MyStyleRules.com
Dec 23 2015 update:
A site representative has addressed issues I had brought up in this post in the comments. Please be sure to read it to complement what was mentioned here. Thank you to the reviewer for addressing the issue.
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I happened on this site via Pinterest the other, called MyStyleRules.com. I’ll let their short promo video summarize what they’re all about before offering some comments after having tried it out. I also have lots of questions for anyone who wants to try and answer them.
Digital Citizen 