There's a Scott Alexandar story that plays with this exact topic: Ars Longa, Vita Brevis [1]
To your point, I think you're right. I'm not in mathematica, but the value of good pedagogy on shrinking the time it takes to get people to the forefront of any field feels like it's heavily overlooked.
This article is borderline malicious in how it skirts the facts.
This wasn't a case where KeePass was compromised in any way, as far as I can tell. This appears to be a basic case of a threat actor distributing a trojanized version via malicious ads. If users made sure they are getting the correct version, they were never in danger. That's not to say that a supply chain attack couldn't affect KeePass, but this article doesn't say that it has.
I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I appreciate a good piece of gear and the feeling of having things just work. I think anyone who's been on a hunt and one day found a perfect something knows that spark of satisfaction every time you use it.
On the other hand, and this is probably isn't right, the brandification and fetishization of gear doesn't sit right with me. I ackownledge it's unfair - there should not be any difference between being proud of some thrifted hat and some fancy running shorts. Yet it still tripped me up.
Regardless, I can 100% corroborate the meat of the post. Running is, by far, one of the best ways to explore a new or old place. There's something about the pace of it that helps you notice details that you miss on a bike or when walking. At least, despite biking, walking, and driving through my last neighborhood for years, I'd regularly pick up on new things during runs.
Can anyone speak to the reliability of using metropolitan statistical areas for something like this? Having lived across on both sides of the tracks in a few, grouping them for something like this seems like an interesting choice. One that I probably wouldn't agree with, but I'm out of my depth
I had the same problem when I switched off Google. I didn't have a ton of data, and I just wanted content for past search purposes, so I didn't dig into how the data would be transformed but I can at least offer my scuffed solution.
I installed a third-party client (Thunderbird, but I imagine any would work) on a local box, signed in with both emails, and just copied the mail over from one to the other. Low-tech, but it worked quite well. I may have forced some local cache/download for the original email, but I can't recall. I'll check later if it preserves headers and the like. I assume it would, but it wasn't that important to me.
I actually thought about writing at some point about the process of getting off gmail and all the funny things I ran across.
I can't personally vouch for it as I'm still stuck in Google Photos and would prefer to self-host it, but Ente may interest you. Open source, end-to-end encrypted, self-host or cloud.
That's very true, and I'd love to see some actual documentation on how they get to pace numbers.
I'm in the same boat with regard to 5K/10K pace, but I reckon it's probably not a huge issue in the long run. While plans specify those times, I think it's more about shorthand for effort zone where 5K is "this hard" and 10K is "a little bit less hard".
VO2 max improvement is a good point, though, and I'd probably agree. If I had a hazard a guess, Garmin would say that their training productivity tracker/race estimated are the preferred way of presenting that data. as an aside, I think VO2max has sorta been coopted as a "fitness number" when it actually represents a very specific thing that may or may not be emblematic of actual performance in the majority of cases. It is nice to have a a single value to look at that can sum up whether what you've been doing lately is productive, though.
That could just be me coming from the world of cycling where watts are king and there's far less variability. In my mind, all these running stats are mushy, but that might not actually be the case.
I'm hardly a serious runner, but I'd say the pros you laid out for Garmin are quite nice, and the cons are inconsequential to your average fitness tracker user. I'd probably argue they're inconsequential to everyone but the absolute elite and, for them, are pointless.
Sleep tracking is hard to action on for the average user outside "you slept this long" and none of the writst-based devices are that good anyway.
Pace to sub 5 is a little more annoying, but probably not useful for the majority considering most people are just running, not craning over their watch the whole time.
VO2 max is also a wild estimate, and I'd hazard it's not particularly accurate for the average person. It's off by close to 20% for me, and I should be a pretty good candidate.
On the flipside, you can get tons of data out of a Garmin that costs significantly less than an Apple watch. Plus, the majority of Garmins sold are fitness devices with some smart features, with Apple watches being primarily a smart watch. While maybe not justified (I think the Apple watch features are quite nice) I'd expect that's a major part of the reason Garmin has the rep it does.
If someone is buying a device to run, most would recommend the cheaper, light, simple, specialized, long battery life watch over the opposite. If you already have an Apple watch, it's probably a no brainer.
For the high-end Garmin devices, it's a little more complex, but not many people are considering a US$800+ device without knowing the nuances of the discussion, or having enough money to not care.
The author actually brings this up in the article, and it seems that they are not likely to be deleted (baring vandalism due to their unique status being surfaced, I guess).
Spoiler for the interested, and it could be an artifact of the dataset the author used, but one of the commonalities between the least viewed articles is that their subject matter falls into a category that isn't usually eligible for deletion under Wikipedia content guidelines.
To your point, I think you're right. I'm not in mathematica, but the value of good pedagogy on shrinking the time it takes to get people to the forefront of any field feels like it's heavily overlooked.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/09/ars-longa-vita-brevis/