Am definitely human.
I read a similar story about how a child (of parents who were fighting a lot) had a teddy bear who came alive at night to “fight the nightmare monsters” which were, somehow, real. That poor teddy looked worse for wear as time went on, it was a real tear jerker. (I’m totally not tearing up just thinking about it, you’re cutting onions ya bastard)
Good questions.
That first one’s a real head-scratcher: who would ever want to be the very first member on a dating app? I hear Tinder had “launch parties” but then I’m sure they had about 100% more funding that I do (which is none). In fact, what even is the smallest useful density of users? It’s obviously quite varied across geography, it won’t matter if there are 100.000 real people if they’re all in Belgium (sorry, Belgium).
One approach to lessen scammers is to require phone numbers rather than email addresses, and yes I’m aware that “lessen” does not equate “fix” – not by a long shot. There’s plans for supporting national eID’s of various target countries, but that should/will be a voluntary thing for users, but not every nation has a solution that “random apps” can build an integration with. Another remedy, I’m afraid to say, is to have no free tier - in fact my plan is to have only a paid tier, but also only one paid tier (reasonably priced, even) so everyone get’s access to everything on a level playing field. Then peer review and moderation (if people can be made to be arsed about it).
Lastly, one way to answer that is the wry practical perspective of (a) having few users (in the beginning at least), (b) don’t aim globally, © efficient data schema, (d) offer relatively low-res photos (eg. 800px should be “good enough” for a 3-inch-wide display), plus a bunch of other practicalities. Seriously, you don’t need “real time”, if you can’t be patient enough to wait for ¼ second between swipes, you’re probably not going to be a fun date anyhow. The real selling point is the features, not the performance.
«Dating apps don’t sell love. They sell the feeling that it is one premium upgrade away.» is exactly the sentiment I want to combat. If the user can trust that there isn’t “just one more payment” holding them back, what might they truly want out of a dating app? I’m guessing one thing is “honesty”.
I am very carefully trying to find a space to share with people that I’m building yet another dating app. Ugh, yes, but…
I cannot believe that these offerings must be so expensive, and so enshittified. Where is the open source mentality?
I don’t want to be blocked for selling things (I’m really not), but I hope to find a place to start a conversation about what an actually user friendly offering could look like.
I’m using personal calling cards, so not in a business context. Mine only have the few pieces of information I can trust to never change (name, phone, email) and are made to look very vintage - but have a QR code with the same info on the back, because I know that people want digital.
My overall experience is that it’s very convenient in the moment, and leaves an impression of a rare and slightly quirky exchange. I’ve never had a negative reaction.
Oh boy, story time. This was six years ago (and a machine translation of what I wrote back then).
My daughter doubts that the tooth fairy exists.
She mentioned this today on the way home from school. Then we had a little chat about how “believing in X” versus “X exists” relate to one-other.
I then asked if we could find out if the tooth fairy exists? We could, for example, set a trap: then we could see for ourselves! My daughter thought that was too cruel and anyway, imagine if something happened to the tooth fairy? All right, but we can make something that won’t harm the fairy … but no, she doesn’t want the fairy to get caught. Fine, then we can put the tooth on a plate of flour so we can see the tracks? No, because fairies can fly! Then maybe we can make a little “roof” so the tooth fairy has to land and crawl? Yes, that was accepted.
…But how big is such a tooth fairy really? I have to admit that I’ve never considered that … have you? I made a roof out of a plastic container, but Inara thought that a fairy is definitely smaller, so we settled for a corner of the roof - yes, now the fairy can’t fly under!
I’ve also talked to Inara about whether “no footprints” means “the tooth fairy doesn’t exist” and whether “footprints” means "the tooth fairy exists (or whether there might be fairies even if there are no footprints). So now we’re waiting anxiously to see if we can see any traces tomorrow! (Hint: yes, there are traces: you can see that the tooth fairy has been on her knees and tried to reach the tooth, but couldn’t. So there’s a small letter instead of a coin.)
Oh yes, how we lie to the coming generation… Forgive me, daughter!
The following day after school, she had brought a friend home and I casually asked if she’d checked on the trap? She had not! They both raced up to her room and I could hear the shouts of glee. They definitely believed in the tooth fairy! But also, my daughter was somewhat distraught and wrote an apology letter for having teased the fairy and ask for forgiveness. Such a sweet kiddo. Still is.
I’m just curious about the choice of elements used to construct those letters in the signage, as those beams and angles aren’t in the game (even the testing version) although the devs have udsættes about an upcoming update with steeper roofs (which, I suppose, implies steeper beams, too).
I wonder if it’s any mod? I’m on Linux and AFAIK mods don’t work under Proton.
Krita is such a horrible crashy mess - most of the time all I need is good old MS Paint (plus free rotate) but I after two decades of Linux I’ve yet to find a paint app that doesn’t overcomplicate everything with layers and selectors and modes. 😭