Note they are using real people's faces without permission (through randomuser.me / uifaces.com) for the avatars in those 'funny' sample notifications.
They do have permission though. The people used granted permission when they submitted their face to uifaces.com, in fact they even went so far as to submit their faces to the "authorised" section on uifaces
> those awesome folks allow their faces to be used on live products
They might not have ever imagined that their faces would be used in this manner, but they did give their permission.
If you read further down the Twitter feed, it's clear that this particular person didn't think she'd granted such permission, and the whole setup looks questionable on other grounds as well.
Putting someone's face next to suggestions of serious problems like drug abuse or STIs on a public site without their knowledge or explicit consent at least raises ethical questions, and then trying to argue that it's obviously a joke when apparently the person in question has been receiving concerned mail from friends who didn't know that makes it pretty clear that any joke has gone too far. The dismissive attitude of the site developer just makes it worse.
I did read the entire thread, the site developer offered two different solutions. But the other commenters seemed to dismiss both suggestions, preferring to fetch their pitchforks instead.
His “solution” would be to hack it to avoid that specific person's image, which is not really solving anything, other than the site author’s own problem.
The footer of uifaces still says _mockups_ and the FAQ/TOS haven’t been available for a while. This is clearly playing legal sword fighting and unethical.
I'm not sure I'd consider anything he suggested a good solution, though.
What he's done, and the aggressive/dismissive way he's handled a perfectly reasonable request afterwards, are what very expensive defamation lawsuits are made of. That is as it should be, IMHO, given that notwithstanding the developer's personal opinions about visitors understanding, the consequences of his actions demonstrably did reach someone close to the person whose photo was used and cause real distress and concern.
> Putting someone's face next to suggestions of serious problems like drug abuse or STIs on a public site without their knowledge or explicit consent at least raises ethical questions
This was the plot of a Friends episode like 20 years ago. Joey's face is used in a herpes ad in the subway.
I think he got paid but the issue is the same. Give someone carte blanche to use your likeness and there might be some negative consequences.
Give someone carte blanche to use your likeness and there might be some negative consequences.
But clearly in this case the lady didn't believe she'd given carte blanche to use her likeness even in such an obviously offensive manner, as she repeatedly mentions only expecting it to be used in mockups.
Moreover, such evidence as anyone has linked to from that Twitter feed seems to support her side of the story more than his so far. There is no explicit licence available anywhere that I can see, apparently there used to be some sort of separate area where people offered their photos for production use as well, but that no longer seems to exist, the FAQ no longer seems to be working, and there's no indication that this particular lady's photo was in that section.
In any case, the onus is definitely on the guy whose site is posting her photo next to that kind of content to justify his actions here. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this could seriously upset someone even if he is covered legally, and so far it's not even clear that he is covered legally. As I said in another comment, this is what very expensive defamation lawsuits are made of.
Cute app but I have to share something I learned a week or so ago: you can silence all notifications if you click the Notification icon in the top right corner. Then scroll UP and turn on Do Not Disturb.
Mac pro tip: Option-click everything. It's remarkable how many secrets are lurking behind near every UI element.
And once you've option-clicked, also option-shift-click, command-click, control-click, etc.
An easy favourite is the Wifi menu bar item. Option-click to see all sorts of useful info about your current connection, including IP address, MAC address, connection speed (Tx Rate), the amount of noise, etc. And when you've option-clicked the menu, hovering over network names shows you the key info about that network.
Yeah, pretty much every icon in the menu bar has an Option-click alternative. I very often Option-click the volume button, which lets you select input and output devices without opening the sound preferences pane.
I don't get why Apple just doesn't provide more UI tips, like tooltips on first use of the UI. There are so many little things like this that would be great to know. For example on Windows Dialog popups, the labels for each option underline the letter for the keyboard shortcut. Did you know that Apple has keyboard shortcuts for dialog popups too, if you press CMD+letter? It took me years to figure that one out.
1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by writing a shell script, compiling your own custom X server, and then monitoring the screen state for full-screen apps. For Windows or Mac, you just remote desktop to your Linux box with built-in software.
2. It doesn't actually reroute the notifications. Most people I know want to be able to perform presentations without the visual clutter of notifications, but they still carry a phone to check their Instagram while presenting. This does not solve their notification issue.
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
In reality, this is a great landing page and a cool idea for an app. Also, I have nothing but respect for people who share their honest, thoughtful assessments on HN. The future is tough to predict.
> It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
Does everything have to be a moneymaker? Like you said, this would be trivial to setup yourself. It's a nice piece of software that provides some advertising for his other products.
Seriously though. For those of us who need our chat on despite the frequent unpopular rants of our sister/brethren, I welcome this attempt to filter.
Btw - excelent landing page!
The only reason I might like muzzle a bit more is that you don't have to remember to turn it on & off (according to the landing page, I have not yet tried it).
Actually it isn't. It does not talk about a lot of important details/questions one might wonder before downloading the app, like:
- "how does this app do it"
- "how is this app any different than macOS's Do Not Disturb feature"
- "where's the source code for this app, why would I trust this software with full access to my compute (it requires that)"
If there's one thing I realized as a technical person/programmer: it's that other people do not think like this at all. Barely anyone give a crap about source-code, it could be written in an amalgamation of COBOL, ActionScript, windows .bat files and C#/.NET to glue everything together. As long as it does what it does without causing major trouble, it's fine for them.
I guess you could add a link to a FAQ with answers to questions you might be interested in for those who do care.. and they do have that, so it's no problem whatsoever.
A lot of folks who may download this app are unlikely to care about any of those questions. They only care that their problem is solved. If they landed on this website during their searches for an app to snooze notifications, the above the fold first paragraph answers that succinctly, promptly followed by a download button.
I’d very much focus on something more business-oriented and believable, like a question about a report and in an extreme case, possibly speaking about a client in a less than professional tone.
“meet me in the bathroom” is not within the realm of feasibility for anyone I know.
I don't think that's the point. Many of us have ourselves or seen someone we know go up to present and have private notifications be displayed as they hustle to turn on Do not Disturb. While they aren't as extreme as this, these are funny and make the viewer recall a time when they were in this situation, and perhaps see how much better they'd be if the downloaded the app.
So I get that you can Option + Click on the Notifications icon in the upper right to turn on Do Not Disturb... but I love that this does it automatically for you.
And it's free. No brainer. Yes, this app is great.
https://twitter.com/ohhoe/status/970753038406373377