• 1 Post
  • 27 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: September 29th, 2023

help-circle







  • I use Strava a ton. This update sucks.

    Strava has positioned themselves as two things:

    1. Social media for fitness
    2. Data aggregator with a nice API

    So there are a lot of people, like myself, who bike and use a Wahoo bike computer, or bike inside on Zwift, or run outside with a Garmin or Apple watch, and push all those activities to Strava because everything integrates with it.

    Then, if you want to, you can easily tap into all that data with another platform like TrainingPeaks or Intervals.icu (I bike more than run but there are more for runners). These platforms do really fun data analytics that Strava doesn’t provide, and also have coaching integrations so your coaches can log in and you can authorize them to see your workout results, which helps them build plans for you.

    Two changes from this update fuck up everything:

    • Strava data can’t be shared with anyone by a third party app. Even if I want to allow it. I can’t opt in to share my own data with people I deem appropriate. So my coach can no longer see anything about my activities.
    • Data pulled from Strava can’t be processed in any way. At all. This isn’t talking about feeding random AI models. Platforms like Intervals.icu, which is run by one guy and just provides lots of useful algorithms and graphs of fitness trends, now can’t do anything if your data comes from Strava. Strava is not implementing anything on their end to replace these. They’re just removing the ability to use implementations made by others.

    In short, as a guy who likes training and tracking my fitness, this breaks everything for me. Many many people who casually run or bike or swim or whatever will be in the same boat as me. This sucks.

    EDIT:

    They have framed this as a user protection. It isn’t. No one could see my data that I hadn’t provided explicit permission for via the third party app of my choosing, after voluntarily entering my own API key.

    What this does do is likely set them up to offer a paid API in a few months, so everything that is free and has been free since it’s inception will now cost these third party applications per-request to retrieve. Which is bullshit, because this data is not Strava’s - it’s mine.

    This on the heels of their shitty AI summary bot experiment which was not opt-in but opt-out. There’s a 0% chance Strava built their own AI LLM so even while they’re shutting out access I explicitly invited, they’re piping all my workout data, including any activities I mark as private, straight over to OpenAI without my explicit consent unless I go through the effort to opt out.






  • This is a very odd and out of touch comment with what the game currently is and what is being produced by the devs. Have you even played it recently? All the new Varlamore region stuff is aimed at early and midgame players.

    And yes, the game progresses towards grinding endgame encounters… Like every single MMO ever. If you’re friend is a maxed out account farming for ultra rare drops, I don’t think you can say that what he is doing is “the content the game has to offer for people”. What would you prefer instead? What do you think it should be like, if not this?








  • I mean… They have grown. The studio is bigger, they don’t have other revenue sources like Blizzard does really (also Activision Blizzard is owned by Microsoft, if you’re worried about a games company being owned by someone else that just wants profit…), and shit costs more now than it did 10 or 20 years ago. I wish it didn’t but inflation is a thing, and that thing affects the food and housing bills of the employees at companies.

    For what it’s worth, OSRS has made some absolutely amazing improvements in the last couple years. Almost every single update has hit perfectly with nothing but minor errors or complaints. New expansions and regions, new quests, new raid, weapon and damage rebalances, new bosses, new community events and special game modes, new updates to their clients both mobile and desktop, and most importantly a significantly better bot-busting system over the last few months.

    This shit isn’t cheap. That’s a LOT of parallel systems and work, and OSRS continues to have 0 micro transactions outside of membership. True, RS3 and its cesspool of mtx helps fund OSRS, but I don’t know how far that goes since the player count there is stagnant.

    Now your opinion and choice to not support a company is always valid, that is up to you. But I don’t think it really is a “bullshit” price increase. I’m OK with OSRS costing $2 more per month if it means that this current cadence of content of QOL updates marches on. Jagex has been absolutely nailing it and I’m very happy with them, and that’s worth money to me.