René's URL Explorer Experiment

      {"@context":"http://schema.org","@graph":[{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:15:07.965Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":8},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_productdesign-wearables-garmin-activity-7492856113789571073-SLNf","text":"Seven days with the Garmin Cirqa. Best hardware in the category. Worst app. I'm keeping it, and that's the whole story.\n\nTHE HARDWARE. FULL STOP.\nIt's built. Properly. Not Whoop's premium plastic, but nothing here feels cheap. The band is better designed and better made than Whoop's, which started fraying inside a week. Seven days. On a paid subscription.\nThe sensor mounts like a watch strap. Old-school. It doesn't move. Fitbit Air clicks in and out, which is nicer to swap, and that's the only thing Fitbit wins on build. Sensor output is Garmin. Boring. Correct. That's the entire pitch.\nBattery: 3 to 4 days behind Whoop. Fitbit Air is 2 days behind the Cirqa, in half the body.\n\nTHE CHARGING PORT. TOLD YOU.\nMetal contacts. Skin side. Worn permanently. Irritation.\nThe fix is a two-euro rubber plug from AliExpress. A €199 device needs an aftermarket part to be wearable. Garmin, this port made sense on a watch you took off at night. This never comes off. Whoop slides the battery over the top and nothing metal ever touches you. That's a different read of the product.\nAnd yes, it's stainless steel, stainless steel is a nickel alloy, and I stand by everything I said about Nickelback.\n\nTHEN I OPENED THE APP.\nGarmin Connect is where this thing falls apart.\nSomeone at Garmin decided the app was flexible enough to carry a device with no screen. It isn't. Everything that works as a sidekick to a watch collapses when the app is supposed to BE the product. No glanceable state. No hierarchy. Three taps deep for things I need every morning.\nBest example: a €199 heart rate band will not show you live heart rate mid-workout unless you pay for Connect+. Amazfit does it at $99.\nWhoop doesn't beat Garmin here. Whoop leaves a crater. Fitbit Air sits in the middle.\n\nSO WHY THE HELL AM I KEEPING IT?\nBecause the app is not the product. The data is.\nGarmin's sensor output is solid, and that's the part I cannot fabricate. The reading experience is the part I can replace. I'm piping the data into trenlo, the coaching platform I'm building, and reading it there.\nBad UI on good data is a problem I can solve. Beautiful UI on a fraying band is not. For a screen-free tracker the app is a default, not a destiny. Whoop's is gorgeous and completely sealed. Garmin's is bad and open enough to route around.\n\nIf you build things, the second one is worth more. If you don't, buy the Whoop and be happy. Genuinely.\n\nVERDICT.\nCirqa is my daily driver, next to a mechanical watch. Zero screens on my forearm. Fitbit Air stays as a curiosity. Whoop went home. Enduro 3 is for sale.\nThe winner wasn't the one that scored highest. It was the one whose worst part was the part I could replace myself.\n\nAnyone else routing around a vendor app instead of living in it?\n\n#productdesign #wearables #garmin #buildinpublic","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_productdesign-wearables-garmin-activity-7492856113789571073-SLNf"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-07-24T19:16:54.411Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":7},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_garmin-just-joined-the-screenless-club-years-activity-7486499672870727681-3JQ7","text":"Garmin just joined the screenless club. Years late.\n\nThe Cirqa is €199, no subscription, 10 days of battery, and nearly every health metric Garmin ships in a €500 watch. It runs the older Elevate Gen4 sensor. In practice that means no ECG, and almost nothing else.\n\nWhy so late? Because they had to move. WHOOP built the category. Fitbit Air commoditised it at $99. Amazfit undercut everyone. Garmin already had the app, the ecosystem, the sensors. The only thing left was admitting the screen was optional.\n\nI ordered one. It joins the WHOOP 5.0 and the Fitbit Air I've been wearing.\n\nOne thing the reviews won't tell you: the charging port. Garmin kept its proprietary 4-pin connector, and there's a defensible reason. This is a bad port on a device that lives in sweat and seawater. POLAR learned that the hard way.\n\nBut a screenless band is a different product. The pod sits on your skin 24/7. You never take it off. That's the entire proposition.\n\nThose contacts are stainless steel. Stainless steel is a nickel alloy. Garmin's own position is that its parts meet EU nickel release limits, which is a statement about how much nickel gets out, not about whether nickel is in there. It is. And if your skin is sensitive, \"within legal release limits\" and \"fine against your skin, all day, every day, for months\" are not the same claim.\nGarmin's support forums have years of threads to prove it, complete with third-party covers people buy for the charging pins.\n\nIf you were born in the 80s you remember Nickelback, and you know that anything containing nickel is crap.\n\nWHOOP solved it structurally. The battery slides over the top of the sensor. Nothing metallic ever meets skin.\n\nThat's not a spec-sheet difference. It's a decision about what \"wear it always\" actually costs the person wearing it.\n\nTesting starts when it lands.","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_garmin-just-joined-the-screenless-club-years-activity-7486499672870727681-3JQ7"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-07-13T09:01:36.230Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":11},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_same-night-same-wrist-two-verdicts-google-activity-7482358560220200962-5wMW","text":"Same night. Same wrist. Two verdicts.\n\nGoogle Health: \"A poor night's sleep. It looks like you had a challenging night of sleep.\"\n\nSent at 11:27 PM. While I was asleep. Sleeping badly, apparently, according to a notification I couldn't see because I was busy sleeping.\n\nWHOOP, next morning: \"Optimal rest. Sufficient and consistent sleep.\"\n\nWhoop was right. And before anyone says \"calibration\": both devices sit on the same wrist, every day, for the same two weeks. Same body, same nights, same data window. One read it correctly. One decided at 11:27 PM that I wasn't sleeping while I was sleeping.\n\nTwo algorithms, one body, opposite conclusions. So who do you trust?\nHonestly? Neither. Not blindly.\n\nI'd rather have my coach look at this. A human who knows my routine and doesn't panic over one weird data point. In trenlo, your coach sees exactly that. The trends, not the fortune telling. Algorithms guess. Coaches decide.\n\nPS. The dog on the lock screen is Borys. He doesn't care about wearables. He wears an AirTag on his collar and sleeps optimally every single night, no subscription required.","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_same-night-same-wrist-two-verdicts-google-activity-7482358560220200962-5wMW"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-07-10T06:59:40.536Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":13},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_everyone-reviews-wearables-i-wore-three-activity-7481240712420753408-x5eD","text":"Everyone reviews wearables. I wore three at once for two weeks and confused everyone at the gym.\n\nWHOOP 5.0. Fitbit (now part of Google) Air. Garmin Enduro 3. Not for content. I was building a feature for trenlo and needed to understand this data from the inside.\n\nQuick verdicts, no drama.\n\nApps. Whoop is the prettiest and the most cluttered. Garmin Connect knows everything and looks like 2014. Google Health is clean. Too clean. There's not much there yet.\n\nComfort. Whoop and Air disappear on the wrist. Air wins, I keep forgetting it exists. Enduro 3 is a brick. It's also a watch, so fair.\n\nBuild. Air: light and plasticky. Whoop: the most premium of the three. Garmin: a tank.\n\nBattery. Garmin, 3 to 4 weeks. Whoop, somewhere in the middle. Air, the weakest.\n\nAI. Plot twist. Whoop's cluttered app hides the most accurate, context-aware insights I've seen. Garmin doesn't really play this game. Fitbit has a long march ahead.\n\nData quality. Honest version: I can't verify accuracy without clinical-grade equipment. Neither can you. What I can verify: the data is repeatable and the trends hold. That's what matters. Oh, and sleep stages are not measured. They're guessed. By algorithms. Keep that in mind before you reorganize your life around a deep sleep score.\n\nSo which one should you buy?\n\nWrong question.\n\nData is only as good as the decision it changes. In trenlo it flows to your coach automatically. The coach reads the trends and adjusts your training. A human makes the call, not a widget.\n\nI spent two months building this feature. Integrations were the easy part. Normalization was the hell. Three vendors, three definitions of recovery, three ways to count one night of sleep. Making that comparable is the actual product work.","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_everyone-reviews-wearables-i-wore-three-activity-7481240712420753408-x5eD"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-03-11T07:44:40.308Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":15},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_productdesign-buildinpublic-vibecoding-activity-7437403104272326657-gDxy","text":"\"AI\" is a dead word. We killed it.\n\nEvery startup. Every pitch deck. Every LinkedIn post promising to \"leverage AI\" for something that's really just a database query.\n\nThe term collapsed under its own hype.\n\nResearchers saw it coming. They had to invent \"AGI\" just to talk about the thing they originally meant. The real concept needed a new name because the old one got strip-mined for marketing.\n\nThat's semantic collapse. When a word means everything, it means nothing.\n\nI noticed it in my own vocabulary.\n\nI don't say \"AI\" anymore. I say Claude. Opus. Sonnet. Cursor. Lovable. Specific models. Specific capabilities. Specific limitations.\n\nThe moment I say \"AI,\" I've already lied. I've abstracted away the only thing that matters — what the tool actually does and where it breaks.\n\n\"We're integrating AI\" means nothing.\n\"We're using Claude for code review with human oversight on security\" means something.\n\nThe vagueness is the point. It lets companies claim transformation without delivering it. It lets leadership announce \"AI-first\" strategies while the people who'd actually use the tools wait for access.\n\n39% of companies cut headcount \"in anticipation of AI.\" Not based on results. In anticipation. Only 2% cut based on actual performance.\n\nThat's not an AI problem. That's a language problem. The word gave cover for decisions that had nothing to do with the technology.\n\nSo I stopped using it.\n\nIf you're actually building, you probably have too. You know the difference between Opus and Sonnet. Between Cursor and Copilot. Between what ships and what's just a slide.\n\nPrecision is resistance.\n\nBe dangerous. Do good.\n\n#productdesign #buildinpublic #vibecoding","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_productdesign-buildinpublic-vibecoding-activity-7437403104272326657-gDxy"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-03-05T09:30:27.907Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":14},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_productdesign-vibecoding-buildinpublic-activity-7435255400867909632-gZuY","text":"Everyone's debating if AI will kill design. It's the shipping, stupid.\n\nFor years, designers could hide behind handoffs. Make the mockup. Pass it to engineering. Hope it gets built right. Blame the devs when it doesn't.\n\nThat era is ending.\n\nThe designers thriving right now aren't the ones with the best Figma files. They're the ones who stopped waiting for permission to build.\n\nI spent years handing off work I couldn't finish myself. The market told me to specialize. \"Focus on design. Let developers handle the rest.\"\n\nSo I did. And I hated it.\n\nBecause I'm not a designer. I'm a builder. I just forgot for a while.\n\nVibecoding brought me back. Now I ship my own tools. I built an accessibility auditor for my team at Delivery Hero. I'm building a fitness app with a friend. I prototype in code, not just pixels.\n\nNot because I'm special. Because the barrier to entry collapsed.\n\nYou don't need a CS degree anymore. You don't need three months learning React. You need curiosity and a willingness to look stupid while you figure it out.\n\nThe designers who learn to ship will have options. The ones who keep waiting for the perfect handoff? They'll keep waiting.\n\nThis isn't a threat. It's an invitation.\n\nThe tools are free. The tutorials are everywhere. The only thing stopping you is the belief that \"shipping\" is someone else's job.\n\nIt's not.\n\nLearn to ship.\n\nBe dangerous. Do good.\n\n#productdesign #vibecoding #buildinpublic #designengineering\n","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_productdesign-vibecoding-buildinpublic-activity-7435255400867909632-gZuY"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F.","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},"datePublished":"2026-03-04T07:30:07.922Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"http://schema.org/LikeAction","userInteractionCount":11},"mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_buildinpublic-productdesign-vibecoding-activity-7434862730194415616-c5tN","text":"Build in public is becoming LinkedIn theater.\n\nI do it. I believe in it. I've shared the wins, the bugs, the moments where I had no clue what I was doing.\n\nBut somewhere along the way, it turned into a content strategy disguised as authenticity.\n\nYou know the posts I'm talking about:\n\n\"Our startup only grew 40% this month 😔\"\n\"Failed again. Only made $50K on this launch.\"\n\"Feeling vulnerable today — here's my $2M ARR dashboard.\"\n\nThat's not transparency. That's marketing wearing a hoodie.\n\nHere's the part nobody admits:\n\nBuilding in public can poison your decision-making. You start shipping features because they'll make a good post, not because users need them. You optimize for engagement instead of craft. You perform struggle instead of actually struggling.\n\nI've caught myself doing it. Sitting there thinking \"this would make a great update\" before asking \"does this actually solve the problem?\"\n\nThe moment I noticed that — I felt sick.\n\nAnd the survivorship bias is brutal. You see the wins. You don't see the thousands who built in public, got zero traction, and quietly deleted their accounts. The algorithm doesn't reward failure that doesn't perform well.\n\nHere's the uncomfortable truth:\n\nThe best builders I know aren't posting daily updates. They're heads-down. Shipping quietly. Not optimizing their vulnerability for likes.\n\nBuild in public if it sharpens your thinking. If it creates real accountability. If it connects you with people who actually give a shit.\n\nBut the moment you're performing instead of building — you've already lost.\n\nThe work should fuel the content. Not the other way around.\n\nBe dangerous. Do good.\n\n#buildinpublic #productdesign #vibecoding\n","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fski_buildinpublic-productdesign-vibecoding-activity-7434862730194415616-c5tN"},{"@type":"WebPage","reviewedBy":{"@type":"Person","name":"Piotr F."},"url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski"},{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Person","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressCountry":"PL","addressLocality":"Warsaw Metropolitan Area"},"alumniOf":[],"awards":[],"disambiguatingDescription":"","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","contentUrl":"https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4D03AQHNx8wdIOk-BQ/profile-displayphoto-scale_200_200/B4DaAoActCK0Ag-/0/1787377604147?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=-VRba2bFowMu6vzKPwC71L6bEKa72EKzRwA55Nm_lzM"},"jobTitle":[],"knowsLanguage":[],"memberOf":[],"name":"Piotr F.","sameAs":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski","url":"https://pl.linkedin.com/in/fski","worksFor":[],"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/FollowAction","name":"Follows","userInteractionCount":3266}}]}