Rant on yozy//NET

Re-evaluating Sports Science

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The last couple of weeks have been a whirl.

Recap

Solomon Nelson¹ has published a video essay tearing down Mike Israetel’s PhD thesis².
Using Milo Wolf³ as a mouthpiece, Mike has made a response video . Mike claims that Solomon has reviewed an old draft of the document. This draft was allegedly—by no one’s mistake— uploaded by Mike to the University’s servers. Milo has read an alleged “much later version” where most of the mistakes were corrected.
Jeff Nippard⁴ commented on Solomon’s critique with a truly ignorant comment:

Bro was out here adding semicolons to mikes rough draft from 13 years ago thinking he did something

– Jeff Nippard
Greg Doucette⁵ has chimed in (because of course he did) suspecting that the “much later draft” was a forgery.
It turned out that the “much later version” was indeed a forgery and was even older than the version that Solomon has reviewed. Mike Israetel admitted this himself in an Instagram post.

Why does this matter

We could dismiss what is happening here as your Tuesday YouTube drama. However, I think that it has some larger impact.

Sports science peer review is bottom of the barrel tier. The field is already criticised for poor studies due to small sample sizes and bad methodology, while needing to deal with extreme inter and intra subject variance Adding abysmal review standards and the “science” label evaporates.

Jeff Nippard’s behavior also makes it clear that scientific method plays a second fiddle to the protection of the group.

What I’m saying that sports science is useless.

What I’m going to do

With more studies are being published⁶ disproving previously touted methods for optimizing training⁷, I am going back to the tried and tested methods of bros. Yes, bros have won.

The new, revised, training recommendations

Consistency – Showing up day after day, month after month, year after year is the only way to build reasonable amount of muscle.
Technique – Can’t lift if you hurt yourself.
Close to Failure – In order to grow muscle, the training has to be challenging.
Volume – The more you train, the better the results. No top end has been found, keep your technique in check so you don’t get hurt.

That’s it. Everything else (e.g.: progressive overload) is corollary of these four basic steps

Solomon Nelson is a fitness coach and influencer, he is in cahoots with Lyle Mcdonald. ↩︎
Dr. Mike Israetel is a sports science fitness influencer with a very large following. ↩︎
Dr. Milo Wolf is a sports science based fitness influencer that often works with Mike. ↩︎
Jeff Nippard is the most influential natural sports-science-based influencer. ↩︎
Greg Doucette is a supplement peddler, fitness coach and IFBB Pro that likes to scream a lot. He hates Mike Israetel. ↩︎
The irony of using scientific studies to dump on science is not lost to me. ↩︎
Recently a study has show that time under tension does not matter. Which means that slow eccentrics are no better than quick ones. ↩︎

Web applications cannot replace native ones

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 11:23:58 +0100

Increasing amount of tools are written for web, many presenting themselves as replacement for standard desktop applications.

For simple stuff this is fine, few people would like to install an application for every shop or transport provider.

Complex programs running in tabs hit an insurmountable hurdle: “they cannot implement correct keyboard shortcuts”. And it is a problem that nobody has figured out yet, it is a fundamental issue that will never be fixed.

Some examples that come to mind:

How would you open a tab in your web app? ⌘T opens a new browser tab. What about a new window⌘N?
How do you undo? In Safari ⌘Z undoes closing of a tab.
If your application provides a save option, what would you use? ⌘S will try to save a useless HTML document.

Another problem is selection. ⌘A selects everything, this is never what you want to do in an application, but it can be something you want to do on a webpage. This means you need to break one behavior or the other.

The new RCS standard is just better SMS, and that is a bad thing

Thu, 10 May 2018 21:15:00 +0200

Google has managed to herd device manufacturers and telcos to support a new standard for messaging: Rich Communication Services (RCS). In short it is “SMS, but good”, with support for images and other rich media. After gChat, Hangouts, Google+, Meet, Allo or Duo, we can be skeptical on whether it will be adopted.

But I think it will. In order to understand why, let’s look at iMessage. When iMessage launched people already had means to communicate with their families, colleagues and friends: WhatsApp, Skype, Hangouts, Facebook WeChat… SMS usage varied country by country, depending on whether the service was paid per message. RCS will be integrated just like iMessage: when you send a message to a phone which supports RCS, it will be used instead of SMS.

When iMessage was introduced I had sporadic use of SMS and I knew few people with iPhones. But as that number grew, so did the amount of blue bubbles. Feature-wise iMessage was comparable to other platforms. What makes the Messages¹ app stand out is that it is present by default and cannot be deleted.

In a similar fashion, the Android Chat will replace SMS. RCS is not a new silo; it is the long needed update to an outdated system.

RCS–the messaging app killer

So many single purpose apps!

Each social network starts with an original idea but in the end the users will stay if it has a compelling messaging component. To build such a service, it is necessary to know your connections. Initially it was possible to borrow the social graph from Twitter and Facebook, but they have closed the pipes. New players piggy-back on the phone’s contact list to create a rudimentary graph of connections that is tied to telephone numbers. This is a great advantage for RCS it already has access to your contact list as it is your new default messaging service.

As people upgrade to RCS, they will discover that they do not need to have Messaging App X for “that one person”. As nobody wants to have a folder full of instant messaging apps, many will be replaced by RCS by erosion. When you replace the application you use for one person by RCS, they have one fewer reasons to use it. As times goes on, only the very large networks will survive.

What is the bad news?

When people left SMS for other services they have got encryption for free. Some services provided end-to-end encryption², some only at the transport level. With the exception of Signal, few people choose messaging services based on privacy — many do not even know what it means for them.

With RCS, this feature will disappear and many will lose the protection provided by encryption without knowing it. When SMS was created, security was not a thing in personal communication. Anybody who got hold of your phone could suck all of its information.

But our phones did not know everything about us back then. Today, there are lot of actors that would like to get their hands on them sweet messages: criminals, governments and criminal governments.

What can be done?

Nothing. We will see how this will play out but I fear that after RCS is entrenched, many messages will be floating around in plain text. I hope that the current secure services will solve problems that RCS can not, providing a compelling reason to stay off it.

The app used for iMessage and SMS, the equivalent of the future Android Chat. ↩︎
End to end encrypted messages (Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage), guarantee that nobody, including the platform provider, can read your messages. ↩︎

Thoughts about spam notifications in iOS

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 15:00:00 +0100

I try to keep my notifications minimal. Only those which are important should get through.

But when I receive notifications like this my blood boils:

Spam notification from Prime Video, for an episode I have already watched.

Amazon is not the sole culprit. When I received several notifications from The Fork I have confronted them on Twitter. They have promised to do something about it, and then a few days later I was spammed again… with the same notification.

Although this is forbidden by Apple App Store Review Guidelines, Design section 4.5.3, big firms do not care.

I think the main problem comes from the fact that these cost nothing and are invisible to apple. I think we should be able to report these to Apple, in the same way it is done for spam e-mail.

Where to put the report button?

Putting a button on each notification would be an overkill, it would be easy to hit it with a fat thumb.

It could go into the slide over or 3D touch menu in the notification center. But the problem is that if a notification pops up while the phone is unlocked, and you tap it by reflex, it gets a free pass. These are maddening.

My idea would be to put a section inside the Privacy tab. This view would display last few notifications you have received, with an option to report them to Apple and an option to ignore notifications with the same text from this application. At first, this would not have much impact, but over time Apple could use this data to pressure App publishers and maybe even start training Siri to act as a spam filter.

The one argument for keeping the 3.5mm jack

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 13:20:36 +0000

The rumour about Apple removing the 3.5mm jack in the future iPhone has wreaked havoc around the Internet. There are several arguments for and against it, but I think there is only one that is valid: it would make it impossible to create accessories for iPhone without going through the MFI process.

Case in point, Apple has recently featured this application in their advert “Ridiculously Powerful”.

This application would probably never exist without the possibility to leverage a cheap and universal interface with the device.

If you want to sell iPhones, colors matter

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 11:01:22 +0000

So I was looking around during the big launch day and stumbled upon some terrible terrible promotion material.

Wrong settings in Photoshop, maybe?

Left image is by Apple, right image is used in the Bouygues store. Sizes are original.

What is wrong with ebook prices

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 19:10:02 +0000

After the whole dung-storm about price fixing of ebooks at Apple I wanted to add my own rant.

When digital music came out CD publishers were unhappy; why? Because digital download prices were much lower that CD prices, people did not have to lift their ass of their couch and had the music right away.

What do we get with digital downloaded books? This:

First to clarify: the book currently runs a $10 discount on the paperback edition, normally it sells for $29.99. Regardless though, how is it more convenient to get the book for more in digital format than a physical copy? No matter the shipping cost you still save money on getting a hardcover. And let us not even mention the used book for $0.01…

Note: Apple does not sell this book as an iBook, the book in question is The inmates are running the asylum by Alan Cooper

Apple's (future) presence in China

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 22:01:33 +0000

Rumours about the new lower-cost plastic iPhone are so prominent that we can, rather safely, take the “iPhone 5C” for granted. Its target is purportedly the cost conscious customer, and according to many articles, Asian emerging markets (read China).

On my recent trip there I came to wonder if this is really the right move to increase presence in China. Walking around, one realises that Chinese people do not necessarily seek cheap stuff; when buying phones the thing that matters most is the size. People do not care that they can not put their massive 6.3" Samsung MEGAs into their pocket because it never leaves their hand. (I wonder what effect on health this will have on the long term)

It is quite unlike Apple to create derivate devices for specific markets. iOS, for example, is the same in every country with all social networking options available everywhere. However it is not a coincidence that all car makers make specific (bigger) versions of their vehicles tailored for Chinese taste. Such an enormous population is well worth additional upkeep expenses.

While the new iPhone will inevitably attract new customers, I would not bet it will help Apple gain much traction in China. The alleged new iPhone will not be cheap, and the price is not the main reason why people in China do not buy iPhones. One reason is the size, the other is that Chinese input method in iOS sucks. What they need is an ugly maxi-phone, which they could sell at a premium price. And buy Sogou.

Betteridge's vengeance

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:43:29 +0000

By Shaunacy Ferro, Are Angry Legos Harming Our Children?

The paper estimates that on average, there are 75 Lego bricks for every person on Earth. “We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play,” the researchers write. “The children that grow up with LEGO today will remember not only smileys, but also anger and fear in the Minifigures’ faces.”

Another headline, another “no”. I remember painting over the lego faces to give them any expression I wished them to have. Bad guys were quite angry.

First world problems

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 01:09:56 +0000

Have you ever thought you might be liking too much stuff on Facebook? Have you ever thought that it might be such an important issue that you need to stop doing it? And write about it on a popular tech website?

Well, some people have, as written in this article. Seriously, if people do not have a real problem to cope with they will find one. If we have a job, a home, and a decent life let us complain about how we must do stuff that did not even exist a few years ago.

Lend Kendall:

I’ve hit the “like” button thousands of times out of obligation, for worry that I might hurt someone’s feelings or make them feel ignored.

Really? What kind of obligation do you have to random people on the Internet? Luckily Facebook does not have (yet) a feature showing you who read your posts like they have for chat.

Redesigns for the worse

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:03:55 +0000

With the iPhone 5S release approaching feature wish lists and redesigns of iOS7 are legion on the Interwebz. Undoubtedly many people find that iOS in its current state lacks features, looks old and boring, and more generally “has to catch up with the competition”.

Usually the argument goes in the lines of “the home screen is just a list of icons” or “Apple must put widgets on the screen” or even “iPhone should centered around people, not apps”. Many proposed changes poke around the lock screen, many of them add a lot of eye candy, most of them are just wishful thinking.

It seems that lot of designers want to be part of the apple experience, want to show their skill by “improving” the user experience of an applauded product. The problem is that they base their designs on opinions of a minority (albeit very vocal) of geeks and tech enthusiasts. They criticize Apple’s design decisions without looking at the reason behind them.

Let us look at some examples and see what’s wrong with them:

Case: the iOS7 redesign video

A few days ago Federico Bianco has published a video of his ideas of how iOS 7 should look like. General reception, if we take comments on forums such as Mac Rumors, was positive. But it these comments were several very good remarks.

Lock screen

The first thing that comes in mind after seeing all of those lock screen features is security. Judging from several security holes that have surfaced in the past months it is apparent that the less features the lock screen has, the better. In its current state it can display time, notifications (that you have chosen to appear there), let you call emergency numbers and take a picture. For any other action you need to type in your passcode. Now, of course not all people use the passcode protection but most people do and it is a good practice that should not be discouraged.

After the redesign one can reply to texts, call arbitrary numbers, switch off wifi and my personal favorite: put the phone into airplane mode. What a joy when some random bloke can cut your phone off as a prank whenever you leave your phone out of sight for a minute. Apple has put a lot of effort so that without passcode people can not access even your photos and this dude lets everybody happily use your call minutes.

Widgets

The widgets Mr. Bianco proposes are a nice touch, in theory the allow you to peek at some of the information the application provides and in some cases take some rudimentary action. In practice the implementation is quite poor.

One very important thing to consider when using the double tap/click is the action that happens when the user is too slow. For example if we consider the selection on iOS then if the double tap is too slow one would move the cursor with the first tap and open the selection menu with the second. Once there one can select the word with a single additional tap.

In the case of double tap opening widgets, a wrong gesture would open the app. No big problem as you can get the information from inside the app as well as from the widget, as long as it does not take too long to open which would be a major frustration. Instead of earning half a second you would lose two.

The one thing I do not get with all these on-screen widgets is their utility. Why would I throw out place for apps to put some random information instead? What is the point of putting them on the main screen when in order to access it you need to close your current app?

Apple does already have a perfect place for widgets, the only missing thing is opening the API. You have guessed it: the notification center. The NC is the best place to put all kinds of widgets for several reasons:

It is already there
It is accessible from everywhere
People are already familiar with it
Jailbreak community has already shown that it works

If Apple would open the API then a lot of people would be happy.

Settings drawer

Another active corner = another hidden feature. There is clearly a huge demand for quicker access to settings. However I would see this more either as a widget (made by Apple, there is not much hope that apps will ever get access to phone settings) or inside the app switcher alongside music controls.

Mission control

Task switching was remade by a great ton of designers such as here in this video. Some of them are already available for the jailbreak community, like the much appraised Auxo.

The common point of all of this switchers are snapshots or live previews of the applications. In the case of Auxo they are completely useless as they are hardly twice as big as the app icon. The icon itself is shrunk. It is beyond me how somebody thinks this is a good idea. A snapshot preview consumes considerably more memory than an icon and it is much harder to quickly recognize.

As for live previews, they bring up the problem of real multitasking. Although background running apps could, in theory, provide a live preview, for most of them that would be impossible. Simply because the background process is not the same and the renderer for the application does not run and should not run because of performance issues.

The shelf

This is the best idea in the video in my opinion. The major issue I have with it is the fact that it sits on your dashboard as a folder. The news stand like shelf can only show 3 files on the iPhone at the same time, which is really not enough if you consider the quantity of the files that would end up there.

I really like the idea of system-wide file repository, as long as it is organized by type and searchable and not in a folder-like structure.

Case closed

Well, my rant is finished. It was largely based on comments and articles I read previously such as the piece on Unsolicited redesigns. Of course redesigning something is a boatload of fun, however it would be nice if people first asked themselves “why” has the original author done it one way or another before trying to improve on it.

Creating a document management program that actually works - Part 1

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:42:20 +0000

I have tried several document management programs, applications, systems - whatever you want to call them. Finally I have decided to abandon all of them for a bunch of folders, which is not exactly ideal. Thing is, I really like working with libraries rather than the filesystem itself. It is much more convenient, but also brings a lot of crap to the house. You can not really move a library, if it is in a binary form you will have hard way synchronizing it over several computers (YES! I want my files in Dropbox).

I have decided to make a document management system on my own. I have currently no idea how will it look in the end, because I do not know yet about what I want it to do. Nevertheless I will rant here for a while and maybe some day I will find out on how to do this thing right.

What should a good document management system do?

There are many things a document management system should do, but there are even more things it should not. There lies the problem with most of the applications.

As an example of a good library manager I would cite Amarok, Quodlibet and iTunes (the latter only for the music collection).

While using the application you do not have to worry about where the files are, what is their format and stuff like that. When you are not using the application you can, however, navigate in the files easily.
The metadata is actually saved in the documents (id3 tags, for example) so even if you lose your library (the database), it is very easy to reconstruct. (quodlibet does not use any database whatsoever)

As examples of bad document managers, let us have a look at iPhoto or Evernote.

The files are saved “somewhere”, there is no way of poking into the file structure of the application database without breaking something.
They provide a lot of features, which is good, but there is no way of adding some. If you use an external application to edit a photo in iPhoto library you are losing most of the features : the new version is not linked to the original, no way to revert back, no nothing.
If you lose your library then reconstructing it all over again from the originals is a huge pain in the ass.
Some things you would be able to do with vanilla files are no longer an option.

Basically what I am trying to say is that while a good management system should not require you to use the filesystem in any way, it should use it in order to get things done. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here.