I agree, the Kit Kats outside of the U.S. are quite different from their U.S. counterparts. Although, to me, the taste of the Nestle-manufactured non-U.S. Kit Kat bars are far inferior to the Hershey-manufactured U.S. Kit Kat bars I grew up with. This might be down to the difference between those of us who are supertasters and are most focused on flavor, and those of us who are nontasters and are most focused on texture [1] . I notice that the author's points of contention revolve predominantly around texture, not flavor (chocolate heaven for him is "so rich, so smooth, so crunchy"), whereas when I think about the differences in the Kit Kats, my brain is entirely focused on taste and could care less about texture.
Being long-term situated outside the U.S., I frequently find myself wishing the Hershey-made Kit Kat bars were available to buy up and take to the movies here, but instead end up passing over the comparatively less appealing Nestle version and purchasing M&Ms, which mostly taste the same the world over (though I haven't had them in Hong Kong), instead.
Hershey's uses paraffin (wax), copious amounts of oil, and so forth to ensure that their product has a uniform texture. If a "nontaster" would prefer any product, it would surely be Hershey's, not a good European chocolate bar.
M&Ms don't taste the same the world over. They taste very different abroad. So you might want to rethink your claim of being a supertaster, since you apparently can't taste most of the differnces the rest of us can!
I grew up with Hershey's, and it was obvious to me from a very early age that it was nasty. I could barely even bring myself to eat pure milk chocolate from them. The only thing that was bearable was if they put peanuts or something else in it to hide the taste.
As a kid, I always assumed that it was because they loaded it up with corn syrup and industrial fats rather than actual cocoa butter. And it turns out I was right... only about 11% cocoa in the "chocolate." It's like Taco Bell and their meat which they're legally not allowed to call meat because it's mostly not from an animal. Using soured milk is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae, as the Angry Video Game Nerd would say.
1. Are you calling yourself a Supertaster?
2. No one can argue with preference. But as linked to earlier in these comments, it is well documented that the U.S. has a very very lax policy on what is allowed to constitute "milk chocolate." Any manufacturer not taking advantage of said lax standards would be idiots. Of course, anyone trying to argue that American chocolate literally has better chocolate flavor and that they know because they are a supertaster is quite wide of the mark indeed. American chocolate != real chocolate.
Your argument is that because I don't realize that some other brand of chocolate is superior to Hershey's chocolate, I'm not a supertaster?
Please read the Wikipedia article, or any research on, what a supertaster is. It is not a "person with more distinguished tastes", since these are wholly subjective and cultural constructs. Just as you believe in your own superiority for preferring Swiss chocolate over American chocolate (might you have refined taste in wine as well? [1]), a Chinese citizen no doubt realizes how superior his tastes are to yours for preferring his largely sugar-free chocolate to your (in his eyes) sickeningly sweet, additive-laden, and clearly unrefined dessert of choice.
And if your argument is that Hershey must certainly be producing what it produces in order to "take advantage of lax standards", you've much to learn about the nature of big business. Visit Asia some time, and you'll notice quite quickly how American chain Pizza Hut, which has adapted to the tastes of the locals by changing its recipes and producing all manner of pizzas largely unappealing to Americans but very appealing to Asians, is rapidly outcompeting other American chain Papa John's, which has stuck with its original American recipe, remaining tasty to Americans... but not so tasty to most Asians. Branded food businesses win by serving the market, not by cranking out crappy tasting morsels that cost less to produce. Those that go the latter route fail in their respective markets.
If Hershey is producing what it's producing to "take advantage of lax standards" and not because it's what the market wants, then the American chocolate industry is wide open for someone more willing to produce in line with what Americans want - and with a market as large as the dessert market in a nation of obese individuals, that'd be a pretty tempting niche to fill (maybe Nestle could do the job?). Yet, unless you can point to tremendously high barriers to entry keeping new entrants from the market, or somehow forcing Americans to buy Hershey instead of some of Dove, Nestle, Ferrero Rocher, etc., your premise seems flawed; the far simpler solution is simply that Hershey is winning the chocolate race in America not because it's skirting the rules, but because it's producing what its (so obviously unrefined) customers all want.
Sorry I criticized your claim of being a supertaster.
But before we go off on a tangent about how certain markets encourage production of low quality goods, let's go back to your original claim that somehow qualitatively some people prefer texture over flavor. As I already pointed out, except for the functional difference between supertasters, food preference is purely subjective and not worth arguing about.
What is objective is the amount of cacao and milk fat (amongst other ingredients) used in the manufacture of chocolate candy. If what you desire is something with actual chocolate in it, American manfuactured candy (pick your brand, it doesn't matter), it will, objectively, contain less chocolate on average than most other places in the world.
What Hershey's does to their milk chocolate is called adulteration. It is manipulating the amount of the key ingredient in something to produce it is as cheaply as possible. It's the same thing fast food vendors do to their meat to make it go farther.
It may very well be true that American tastes prefer lower-quality chocolate, but that's a chicken and egg problem that I'm not prepared to debate.
I actually find it ironic that you would suggest that supertasters who prefer taste over texture would prefer American Kit Kat bars, as everything I've been led to believe suggests that those who actually prefer taste would lean towards the chocolate with higher milk fat and cacao and less palm oil and wax. The later would provide a more consistent mouthfeel, but would sacrifice taste (which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what happens with American chocolate).
Of course, because supertaster is not a better/worse proposition, but just a different experience with tastes, perhaps there's something about the bitterness of high percentages of cacao (like coffee, green tea, or grapefruit juice) that is unpalatable to someone with a heightened sense of taste.
Well, I can't dispute the claim that Chinese Pizza Huts are disgusting to Americans and Chinese Papa John'ses aren't; that's pretty much how I feel about them.
Pizza Hut's success isn't necessarily down to adapting its pizzas, though. They do two other things differently: the Pizza Hut menu includes chinese dishes like fried rice, and their branding/decor is super-fancy, whereas the decor at Papa John's says "pizza place".
Also, Papa John's isn't exactly hard to find (in Shanghai, anyway). It's one of a few joints (like Ajisen and KFC) that I think of as ubiquitous.
So any manufacturer who doesn't produce a product at a minimum level of the government policy is an idiot?
It's as if you don't trust consumers at all. We need government policy to define exactly what chocolate needs to be, otherwise no one will make anything good.
How bout this? Buy a nice bar of Godiva chocolate. Or one of the many premium chocolates you can find at most grocery stores or online.
That's a fair point. Though I would argue that it's awfully hard to find an American chocolatier that doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Ghirardelli. Godiva is Belgium by origin, though their headquarters are now in NYC (Turkish owned, however).
If a corporation is looking out for shareholder value, producing chocolate with the least amount of the most expensive ingredient is a savvy move. Even more savvy when the bulk of your clientele doesn't know your chocolate is so bad. Thus, it's quite hard to find an American chocolatier that actually produces high quality chocolate. You can argue about the evils of gov. regulation till the cows come home, but the reality is that you can't really trust consumers because, as a group, we're really bad at communicating our desires and corporations are really good at informing our decisions.
Hell, Hershey's doesn't even temper half of their shit, that's why old Hershey's bars (or other chocolate candy bar) develop a white powder over time. That's the milk solids separating from the cacao. This doesn't happen in high-quality chocolatiers.
This might be down to the difference between those of us who are supertasters and are most focused on flavor, and those of us who are nontasters and are most focused on texture
Gee, or maybe it's the fact that you enjoy what you grew up eating.
It may be that you prefer the inferior American chocolate. But Nestle brand KitKat are definitely better tasting (not sure what texture has to do with it) I know this is only anecdotal but you are probably the first person I've ever seen claim they prefer the Hershey's brand over the Nestle's brand.
Are you lumping people into either "supertaster" or "nontaster" category?
Texture is an important part of the experience. Mouthfeel is something that they test for.
In the UK try a bar of Cadburys and a bar of Galaxy. To me the Cadburys bar is grainy and the Galaxy is smooth. Other people may feel Galaxy is greasy, I guess.
Neither of them have the 'snap' of a good chocalate.
My favourite used to be Michel Cluizel. There's a bit of a problem with high end chocolate, as there is with audiophiles or wine tasting. "It sounds nice" or "it tastes nice" are all that matters (after you have a minimum quality) but high end products make odd claims. I am doubtful of the effect of 'single plantation beans' on the end product. I'd like to see double blind trials on that.
Some people actually prefer the palm oil in the Nestle KitKats, just as Cadbury tried to tell everyone.
I suspect it's a similar phenomenon with people who prefer HFCS Coke to cane sugar Coke. If you're used to palm oil, cocoa butter will make your chocky bar taste "off".
I'm surprised at the incivility this comment's provoked in several of the respondents here. My guess is that those who are responding with hackles up and swords raised are misinterpreting the terms "supertaster" and "nontaster" and feeling slighted / offended… which really does nothing but show they've missed the point.
This is not some kind of hierarchy. A "supertaster" (25% of the population; NOT a rarity, for people talking about "claims" as if I said I helmed one of the Fortune 50 or could see through walls) is not superior to someone with a normal amount and distribution of tastebuds in his mouth or someone with a lower than normal amount. He does not have an exquisite palate, and he doesn't have naturally better "taste" than others. In fact, it makes your "taste" far worse: coffee, vegetables, fruit, fish, and the majority of fine dining options are all but unpalatable.
As for people accusing me of liking Hershey's milk chocolate itself - I don't like Hershey's chocolate bars or kisses. Never did. We're talking about the difference between two kinds of Kit Kat bars here, not all of Hershey's vs. all of some other chocolate brand.
My comment was a counter example to the article. The author made a very subjective post - which is fine - but then went on to argue that Hershey is clearly engaged in some sort of conspiracy to deny people delicious Kit Kats, which is not fine unless everyone shares his opinion that the alternative to the Kit Kat Hershey makes is more delicious… and not everyone does. My response could go one of two ways:
1. I could be angry and emotional (as some of my respondents were here), and call the guy a clown and an incompetent, and argue that he's all wrong because Hershey's Kit Kat is fine just the way it is, or
2. I could sit and see if I could come up with a possible reason why two people, one who's "accustomed" to Kit Kat in the United States, and the other, who also grew up accustomed to eating Kit Kat in the United States, had such different reactions on consuming Kit Kat outside the United States. Based on the author's description of his experience eating Kit Kat, which focused entirely on mouthfeel, he seemed to be judging "taste" by texture, which is what taste is to a nontaster.
To those who resorted to insults because their feelings were hurt, next time, before you break out your pitchfork, sit down for a moment and see if you can reason out the (non-emotional) difference between you and an article or comment author, rather than turning to insults, which are entirely unproductive and make you look like someone crying in his milk.
When you're trying to use Google Apps for business, for one, and you go to email.MyURL.com and get redirected to a standard Google login screen where you now have to click a button to not sign in as your personal account, then come back and sign in as a business account, plus also add the "@MyURL.com" at the end (didn't used to have to do this), and you're doing that with multiple different accounts, it gets pretty tricky pretty in a hurry.
Of course many Americans number in the 3.5 billion most poor people on earth.
Source?
The actual data on this appears likely to refute your claim:
Yes, that’s right: America’s poorest are, as a group, about as rich as India’s richest. [1]
That's at least the better part of a billion right there America's poor are wealthier than in India. According to the graph in the article, America's poorest are also wealthier than nearly all of China (1.3 billion officially, 1.5 billion unofficially), and 2/3 of Brazil. Not including the rest of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.
Am I the only one who spends 16 hours in front of a computer (mostly) working 6 days a week, managing staff exclusively through email and oDesk, and loves it? Maybe it's because I view the entrepreneurship stage as the filling between two sides of the cookie sandwich, with tons of partying, debauchery, and socialization in the years before I got into it, and tons of it on the other side once the damn thing's finally making enough money to hire a real management team to watch the stables for a while, while I go out and take a years-in-the-making vacation to end all vacations... then come back and get to work until I don't feel like working on business anymore.
I also don't use Facebook, Twitter, or anything else along those lines... if you want to reach me, you can email me, and I'll respond when I check email once every few days, or if you're one of the very few people who has access to my phone, you can call or text me and we can chat or grab dinner. No cyberstalking or hours lost to staring at social media inanity wondering why I'm not a part of all the pretend-excitement people portray themselves as engaging in for me. Wonder if this vicarious living through people's puffed up social lives on social media isn't a big part of why the author feels so left out.
The problem there happens when you get a few years in and realize that "the other side" is far from guaranteed, and that there's a good chance that you've spent 16 hours a day, 6 day a week for the past several years working for nothing. Most people do have needs in their lives besides just working, and when you deny those needs for years at a time, eventually it builds up and you quit. The unfortunate part about this is that very frequently it's right before your startup would've succeeded - you can't predict when or whether your startup will succeed, and so you have no idea of knowing whether this hurdle is just the dip before your eventual smashing success or whether it'll be like every other hurdle with no end in sight.
There definitely is something very relaxing about focusing on only one thing, but it only leads to long-term success if you've picked the right thing. I know entrepreneurs that worked for a decade on their companies, and then folded them up without ceremony because they'd poured their life into them and yet they were generating significantly less revenue than a day job would.
16 hours in front of a computer (mostly) working 6 days a week
This is not sustainable no matter how much you love it. There is simply not enough time left to live healthy life - rest, exercise, be in a good relationship. Please do not do the same mistakes I made. I used to say what you say and I used to love my work. But I burned out. Love turned into hate. I had to quit - I just could not do it anymore. And I was left with severe depression, anxiety attacks, health problems and worst of all - loneliness. I did not have time for social life and now I have no love in my life, no sex, no intimacy, no meaning, nothing worth living for. I wasted few years of my youth that I will never get back and I just hope that somehow (with a lot of help from my therapist) I will be able to recover and enjoy life again... but it seems almost impossible now. I am in a really bad place right now... and I see you going there as well and loving it.
Sorry to hear that you feel this way. I can guarantee you that you can change your life by 360 degrees if you set your mind to get where you want to be.
Your startup didn't turn out to be the next billion dollar idea? Guess what, life goes on. There is many better things you can experience in life.
Forget the past, just forget about it. The moment you remember something bad from your past, remind yourself that it's not helping you and you have a future life to live. Are you 200000 pounds over the weight you want to be at? Guess what, YOU can change that if you set your mind to do it.
Are you socially awkward? YOU can change that too. Go out, don't limit yourself on what others think about you. Who cares, it's your life and you can live however you want to. Just do the things that you always wanted to do and thought were impossible. Change your mindset, set your goals, and work hard to get there. I promise you they will come much faster than you think.
I joined HN just to post this and encourage you ;)
I fear becoming what you described, I'm feeling what you described 3-4 months of of the year and it seems to increase a bit each year. Trying to force myself a bit less work, and more of the enriching things in life - it helps, just need to be consistent.
The good news for you is that your'e still breathing, so your opportunities to find love and fun exist. Be well...
"This is not sustainable no matter how much you love it"
Agreed, I went through the burn out too.
Got out of it by starting my work day with a 1 to 2 hour walk in the morning. It serves two purposes at once : first your body recovers gently from the hours spent sitting on a chair, second you go to sleep before midnight and can start over the next day.
I completely agree. I'm just 23 and I burned out, last year I decided going on my own, freelancing and launching own products. That was a hard year, a lot of stress, anxiety attacks. I made a huge mistake. Hopefully I'll try to change this.
This thread hits home with me. Its been a year since I went all into building my product. Its taken some time since I'm a solo founder and I am willing to accept that. It sucks. Sometimes you start questioning what you're doing. I started getting sudden anxiety attacks late last year. Abnormally long work/coding hours take a toll on your health. My most recent anxiety attack lasted 3 hours. Anyway, if any of you are in the sf/bay and want to hang out talk about product or whatever, I think there's a lot we can relate to. There needs to be more positive encouragement in our community.
Yeah, this is pretty much the way I've operated for the past few years. I can identify with many of the things the OP wrote--this stuff is really hard and emotionally draining.
I often joke that I wouldn't be doing this if I were smarter. When people say "You have to be crazy to be an entrepreneur", they're not kidding. That said, there isn't anything else I'd rather be doing.
And actually, it stretches past being an entrepreneur. The technology and information we have access to now creates opportunities that simply did not exist just 10 years ago and geography is increasingly irrelevant.
Further side note: I'm a big fan of history. I think that there's essentially this rising worldwide class of freelancers-turned tech entrepreneurs involved in a variety of "lifestyle" businesses where lifestyle = $300k+ p/year in income. In the future, this whole sector will be a lot more crowded and it will be very normal for people to have a bunch of different side businesses involving the internet. But this really is a significant historical trend and an emerging new social class I think, and I'm sure there will be a lot of debate about whether it's good or bad for society as a whole just as it has been with the move from farms to factories.
Same here, I love nearly every minute of it. If I sold out tomorrow, I'd start another project and work the same hours.
Here's an idea for a HN developer. Setup a site where entrepreneurs can hangout and chat daily. This next point is going to sound crazy, but only have the site online for 1 hour (or maybe two 1 hour sessions) a day. This way, we're not distracted to check the site on a constant basis, but it's more of a 1 hr daily meeting, where you can jump in, network, chat about your project, what you're working on, technologies, etc. Associate everyone with their related app or business, so you'll see 'Michael Gnade (IndieGameStand.com)', etc.
Can't remember the name, but heard a while back about a system that gathered independent freelancers/entrepreneurs in small groups (3-4?), and set up regular capped-length conference calls (20m?) where by convention each spoke for just a few minutes. It was creating a chance for check-in and follow-through – accountability to peers, even if not collaborators – without the open-ended digressions of other meetups. The person who mentioned it spoke highly of it – so there's definitely something to your suggestion, if the participants and boundaries are set well.
A definite no for me as well, because online contracting is almost infinitely better than most of the jobs I've had: painting houses, moving furniture, working in a Mac repair shop. The only two jobs that came close to the freedom I experience now were a contractor at hp for a year and six months contracting at a small company that provides mainframe services for banks.
The main downsides for me now are the feast or famine nature of working for one's self and isolation from teams of really smart people. I've found that this is mitigated by working on side projects that are close to my heart and move me from what life is to what life can be.
So on that note, I've stopped working nights and weekends so I can dabble in those projects and spend time with friends/family. The other thing that has helped immensely is delaying most to-dos and requests until the next day. So I usually handle the previous day's email the next morning unless it's an emergency.
Also I've moved my attention up to gigs that pay at least my overtime rate. A professional in Idaho should be making at least $40k per year to meet expenses which means I charge at least $30 per hour. I'm also realizing that the real money is made by taking gigs for more than this and hiring others for their overtime rate, because I probably need to multiply my efforts by however much is needed to start a family or contribute to my parents' care in retirement. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the added responsibility though. If someone has any thoughts/experience with that, or how they transitioned from freelancer to client, I'd love to hear it.
I agreed with you until the part about entrepreneurship being a means to a goal. To me, entrepreneurship is the goal. Live in the now, not the future. Enjoy the process, etc.
I've got a team of 40+ (50% remote) with management for the stables, and I still work just as hard as when it was just me and my dog. But my end game isn't to lead by vacation, it's to drive this fucking company forward. I can't tell if you're doing it right, doing it wrong, hubris, a noob, or simply just awesomer than myself.
I think it's good to have a positive attitude, but I've been grinding for 8 years (the filling in my cookie sandwich is getting pretty thick) and maintaining a constant positive perspective is an impossibility.
An impossible question to answer - changes by the minute, it seems. When we get to finish line, I hope to have a positive answer. Will always beat a real job tho...
Exactly. I was always an exemplary employee, but always had an underlining annoyance with myself because I was wasting what little time I have on this planet building somebody else's business - made me sick. So did everything I could to get and stay out.
Facebook may be targeting more traditional big brand advertisers than it is small business advertisers (who need ads to convert to sales in a much tighter window). e.g., the Coca-Cola commercial you see on TV probably doesn't make a single person get up out of his chair, go grab his car keys, and drive to the store and buy a Coke. Yet, over time, get exposed to enough of those ads, and when it's time to buy, your hand instinctively goes for the one your brain is bombarded with ads for all day.
Then again, Facebook ads give advertisers much less of an "in your face, brainwashing you against your will" impact than TV commercials do.
This might just be a case of a revenue model that simply doesn't fit the platform. It may be that Facebook is going to have to figure out another way to justify its high P/E ratio.
>> the Coca-Cola commercial you see on TV probably doesn't make a single person get up out of his chair, go grab his car keys, and drive to the store and buy a Coke.
>> Yet, over time, get exposed to enough of those ads, and when it's time to buy, your hand instinctively goes for the one your brain is bombarded with ads for all day.
I don't really think that has anything to do with it. At work we having both Coke and Pepsi vending machines. Most people prefer the taste of one or the other, to the point where if a place only serves Coke and they prefer Pepsi, they won't order it. Not unlike beer in America (Bud Light vs Miller Lite, etc)
Soft drink choices come down to availability most of the time. Chances are if you are at an event such as a sports game or concert, they've already made the choice for you. Same goes for a restaurant, McDonald's has Coke and Taco Bell has Pepsi.
> I don't really think [brand advertising] has anything to do with it. [...] Soft drink choices come down to availability most of the time.
Coca Coca spends about $3 billion a year on advertising. [1] I couldn't find a breakdown for how much is brand-building versus other goals, but I think we can agree it's a lot.
That suggests two hypotheses: A) People in charge of a $3 billion budget for an incredibly profitable and long-lived company know what they're doing, or B) An anonymous non-expert on the Internet has correctly realized that advertisers are just fooling themselves, and he (and everybody else) is above being manipulated by brand advertising.
I'm going to go with B. Just because "everyone is doing it" doesn't mean they know what they're doing. Coke spends a ton of money on advertising because they want more sales and common wisdom says the way to get more sales is to spend a ton of money on advertising. It might work, it might not, but it isn't a simple 1 to 1 thing and it works differently on different people.
On a personal note, I grew up drinking Coke (because my dad preferred it), and I generally prefer the taste of Coke most likely because it's what I grew up drinking. I've seen Coke ads, and I've seen Pepsi ads, and neither one makes me want to drink one or the other or go buy one or the other. About the only thing it might do is influence me to go get a Coke if I was already feeling a bit thirsty although even if it was a Pepsi ad it would probably still make me want to get a Coke. In this case it would be a win for Soda vs. some other kind of drink like say a Starbucks coffee, not specifically Coke vs. Pepsi.
There was a really great discussion on Reddit (of all places) about the purposes and results of advertising. One of the things someone brought up was that a lot of times, ads are there to reinforce your existing preferences and purchasing decisions, and not to influence your making of them.
> Holy fuck. You're right. I bought a car recently, and while the TV spots had nothing to do with my decision, now when I see them, I sing along with the song and cheer at the TV and shit.
It turns people who bought your product in to people who are fans of your product, which makes them more likely to become repeat purchasers (and less likely to seriously consider other brands when it's time to purchase).
Completely off topic, but reading this ^^ has made me go and grab a Coke from the office fridge. Can't say I wasn't thirsty but can say seeing the word Coke several times above did have an effect.
Related to A - there's an old quote from John Wanamaker, father of advertising: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." It may not be clear to anyone (even Coke themselves) whether facebook advertising, or any other channel, is effective; they just know their total efforts are working very well.
I'm not so sure, at least on the beer front. I grew up in St. Louis, home of Budweiser. Everything in the city is named after one of the members or former members of the city, and just about every event in the city is sponsored by Anheuser-Busch (owner of Budweiser). I have since left the city, but if I'm looking for cheap, crappy beer that's available at any bar, I reach for a Bud-something-or-other.
Sorry, I feel compelled by the Holy Spirit of drinkability:
This is the famous Budweiser beer. We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive Beechwood Aging produces a taste, a smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price. Brewed by our original all natural process using the choicest Hops, Rice and Best Barley Malt.
Haha I'm sorry! I didn't know that, that's why I said "what?" I don't read the bottle because I am a huge beer snob who doesn't ever touch a Budweiser.
But I'm just one of those beer snobs who really likes drinking a good brew, not one that talks about "camel overtones" or other stuff or whatever that means. Reading beer reviews makes me angry.
I pledged a fraternity and one of the brothers made us all learn the slogan from the Budweiser bottle, so now whenever anyone mentions Budweiser I think of it, and it is really funny. I'm honestly not sure if I've ever drank Budweiser since college, but its outstanding drinkability rating, I will not forget!
I realize there are brand images and advertising is part of that, and I'm definitely not saying they should reduce the advertisement budget to zero. I'm just saying most people like either Coke or Pepsi, and other than when you're a grocery store, the choice has already been made for you. Hell, it's rare to see a Coke vending machine next to a Pepsi one in most places.
I don't think the person you replied to is 100% on the money, but assuming he is, the companies would still need to advertise so that the venue or the restaurant purchased that product.
And the venue / restaurant is going to choose what they think people like, so smart brands would still advertise to the end consumer.
Yes and no. I imagine (yes, that means I made it up) that with a big enough brand, venues can piggyback on your life-style mass marketing. Both in terms you brainwashing their customers to ask for it, and in the more subtle way that carrying your brand will allow the venue to associate itself with your image (eg. Bollinger, Carlsberg etc).
Facebook style ads CAN convert in a tight window, the problem is people are looking in the wrong place for them. Nobody checks out their timeline, sees a coke ad and immediately clicks to buy. Those ads don't "convert".
What does happen is the cumulative effect of those ads put your brand (coke) top of mind. Later when somebody is searching for "snacks" on google and paid search ad comes up, that person is more likely to chose Coke than RC Cola.
You need to look at effect your "brand" advertising is having on your paid search conversion rates. The industry is trying to solve this with "attribution" schemes ie figure out which ads every converted person has seen. (shameless-plug) But my company, Optimine has a much cooler and simpler approach using incremental modeling.
You are influenced by your friends and culture. Brands try to penetrate both. You have just offloaded some of your choice/reference to friends and internet when your ready to look. They they get you.
> You are influenced by your friends and culture. Brands try to penetrate both.
Not so much. I have few friends, and their opinions don't influence my buying decisions. I could care less about brands. Show me the money (cheapest option of greatest quality, based on independent research usually wins).
I understand I'm an outlier. I'm just looking at it as an older millennial who doesn't use the radio or TV (paid pandora, video is all consumed online through mediums with no ads) and who is phasing out the use of Facebook (and rarely, if ever, logs into Twitter).
The thing is, everybody thinks they are impervious to advertising. Everybody thinks they always choose the "cheapest option of greatest quality, based on independent research." They're just mostly wrong, is all. They either don't understand the way their purchasing decisions actually get made, or they choose to tell themselves they are made differently than they are.
Which isn't to say that you're not the exception, just that generally speaking everybody thinks they're the exception. So how you think you buy things doesn't mean much; you'd have to have someone outside your own head look at your purchasing patterns to know for sure.
A single data point is too small to reason about. But lets say there was an ad campaign that was blocked at a high rate, or even just placed poorly where nobody was seeing it or something. Our scheme would assign those impressions a low value, ie it would come out that cranking impressions or lowering impressions isn't effecting conversion rates anywhere else, so why not turn the ad off.
I've been using Stripe for just over a year now to take payments for a 6-figure-a-year business. We've had no reversals whatsoever. The only time Stripe has removed payments have been in the case of the occasional chargeback, which we typically win; payments seem to get docked the moment you file your response to the dispute, and get credited back the moment you're notified the dispute has been won.
I was a little nervous when first setting up with Stripe too, so we enabled it for a few hours and let a few sales go through, then switched back to our old merchant account and payment gateway while we waited to make absolutely sure the sales went through with Stripe. 7 days later, the payments hit our bank account, and we switched everything over to them - been happy ever since. They have a great dashboard, and everything's far easier to deal with and manage than it was with our old merchant account. Only downside is the pay delay - merchant account deposited most funds in our accounts within 2 days; Stripe takes 7. But if you're doing pretty consistent numbers, this isn't too much of a burden to cash flow, since you've got the funds from a week ago coming in every day.
Part of the reason we’re at the top of the food chain is that we are chemically rewarded when we are industrious – it is evolutionarily advantageous to be productive.
And we’re slowly and deviously being trained to forget this.
Good article, yet the author seems to be making the same mistake so many make - to assume that our present generations are being eroded away and forgetting how to be productive because the masses are hypnotized by social media and news on demand.
If you stop for a minute and look at what's being spread via social media and TV/Internet news, you quickly realize it's the exact same things that hunter-gatherers probably spend 99% of their downtime gossiping about too: this person said that thing; this guy slept with that girl; this guy has so many resources and isn't that so unfair to the rest of us; the guys in charge of tribal society have secretly been spying on all of us, isn't that scary... social media and online news isn't changing anything more than the mediums we gossip through and making said gossip more permanent and apparent and less ephemeral and transitory than it's previously been. But just because it's still there doesn't mean people are spending much time obsessing over the gossips of yesterday; just like those in tribal societies, the news of yesterday is quickly forgotten, and soon supplanted by the urgent, pressing news of TODAY.
I'm pretty sure in Archimedes's or Newton's days most people weren't sitting around removed from society on their parents' farms inventing calculus, or holed up in towers devising calculating machines and giant ship incendiary weapons... rather, they were going to the county dance, swilling home-brewed beer with the neighbors, and gossiping about the same things we gossip about today: wasn't it scandalous how Ellyn was behaving with the men at the dance? Isn't it a crime how much the poor are taxed by the local lord, while he lives in luxury? How unfair it is that the law applies so unevenly between peasant and lord! Can you believe that Brom and Beatrix are fighting again?
Despite the very long period of leisure that medieval peasants had during wintertime, not a whole lot of scientific or technological progress came out of the peasantry. While I agree there's little more satisfying than building something yourself, I'd differ with the article in suggesting that the masses of people today are in fact no different than the masses of people of times past - a minority produces new things, while the majority handles the day-to-day of maintaining what we've already got, and spends its leisure time consuming the output of those producers who've successfully managed to produce things others want and/or things useful to those others.
I don't know about other people, but I probably would much more productive all the bustle that the internet brings about, and I'm very much aware of the problem (and I try to improve).
On the other hand, the internet has exposed me to so many wonderful things and ideas that it was probably all worth it. I just try to be mindful what I put into my brain these days. It's really easy to tether over the edge and waste a whole lot of time.
Actually, Apple was really dumb in this instance. Google bought Android in 2005, Apple brought Eric Schmidt onto it's board in 2006. So, either Apple was hoping to get some insight into what Google was doing with Android and hoping Schmidt might slip up, or they just shouldn't have brought an advisor on who was the CEO of a potentially major competitor. I was always amazed that that happened.
Conveniently, there is a bullet point list of 5 items in the middle of that article. You are free to disagree with any of those points: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Incorrect. If I read the article, and then dismiss the content simply because it was written by Rob Enderle, then that's ad hominem. On the other hand if I notice the article is written by well-known-fool Rob Enderle and don't bother reading it, then that's just good time management.
Note for the last headline:
"Rob Enderle, an industry analyst whom Dell hired to consult on the new entertainment strategy, said he is still discussing with Dell whether profits would come mainly from the subscription service or from devices tied to it."
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:exd_wDD...
Much as I'd like to see some kind of "tidal wave of people doing this", purely in the interests of sending a message to somebody somewhere that data sniffing = not cool, I don't personally know anyone who's taken the time or energy to move all his data off of bugged U.S. servers onto bugged European or Asian ones or attempted to host it himself in less-efficient email clients, etc., nor plans to, nor do I hear very many people online talking about doing this, nor planning to, nor have I done this myself, nor do I plan to.
There's a lot of pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth going on right now in the blogosphere, but strikingly few people actually doing anything, and the actual movement looks more like a tiny ripple in an otherwise calm tide pool than it does a 100-story wave.
I suspect that until better, easier-to-use services come along than the ones being skewered in this post, most people are simply going to stay right where they are.
And once those services do come along, and attract a large enough user base, I'm pretty certain they will in turn attract agencies like the NSA (or whatever the local government equivalent may be, if not in the U.S.), showing up with hands out and secret court orders up.
If privacy was paramount to people, no one would be on Facebook (I'm certainly not, and haven't been for years). Yet, Facebook, much as everyone constantly complains about its blatant disregard for users' privacy, seems to be doing just fine, with its billion or so users and its $80 billion valuation.
The Internet is living, breathing, functioning proof that, at least to 99.9999% of human beings, utility > privacy. Unless the U.S. government starts skimming off the top of people's bank accounts, I don't think there's going to be much of a mass exodus any time soon - the motivation simply isn't there.
U.S. policy is greatly influenced by corporations. Let's assume that an alternative non-american gmail shows up with most of the key functionality in place but with extensive user privacy being a selling point. I for one would switch in a heartbeat. I think a lot of other technically minded people would as well. Many of which are probably influential when it comes to technology decisions among their peers. It doesn't have to be a mass exodus. A trickle of influential can turn into a tide. We've see it before, especially with internet companies.
Google's a data company. They're definitely going to see this and if it's non-trivial then they're going to react. Lawyers and lobbying ensues. Policy may be affected.
I admit I'm kinda waiting for someone to say: "We're exactly like GMail/Dropbox/whatever but we take security seriously and we're outside US jurisdiction. Click this button and we'll migrate your data for you."
I guess I just don't value my boring private data enough to put much work into this right now. But if I ever need a new cloud service, being outside the US will definitely count as a big plus.
Large companies have a pretty strong set of rules to guide them in the EU DPD en privacy laws of individual countries, that means that they need to subcontract with others in such a way that they can fulfill this.
From a few months ago if you were serious about trying to comply with the law in Europe then by now you are either migrating to EU hosting, you've already migrated or you are planning your migration. If not you run the risk of being found non-compliant at some point in the future or to get very pointed questions when a new investor decides to step on board or when you're in a position to sell your company to a larger entity.
This is not going to be advertised, it isn't going to be in the headlines, it is just happening underwater and out of sight. But it definitely is happening. Individuals making those same choices are doing so for different reasons than corporations.
I completely agree that the technologies used for self-hosting have been neglected during this era's obsession with what I call the "plain cloud." As you point out, convenience is paramount. The plain cloud has seen the lion's share of R&D and has been sold to consumers as the pinnacle of convenience.
However, I contend that had an equal amount of R&D been invested in a distributed cloud (what we used to refer to as "the Internet," not to be snarky)--especially one that provided federated encrypted data backup among trusted friends and family, a model that would embrace high-bandwidth symmetric connections to consumers' homes and the notion of self-serving--we'd be better off now.
In other threads at HN, I believe this has been covered sufficiently, so I'll cut that short.
I think your first paragraph may be correct insofar as there are many of us who were already doing self-hosting of our data. Those concerned with privacy were already assuming the situation was fairly bad, although I think even we were surprised at how bad it is.
My data is no more interesting than the OP's. Boring e-mail, boring family photos, boring unpopular music, boring documents. Yet out of principal, I self-host it. Self hosting is not that remarkable, but it is a rapidly disappearing practice. As recently as five to ten years ago nearly everyone in the world self-hosted their personal data.
Since my first DSL line in 1998, I've always splurged a bit for a symmetric connection. Since then I've found it disheartening that symmetric connections were and remain marginalized. Today, I can connect to my home VPN relatively easily from any of my devices to access my data. It could certainly be a lot better (I've ranted elsewhere that VPNs suck; they've not seen genuine R&D in ages).
Running a personal mail server is pretty simple too. With so much *-as-a-service out there, I admit that some people are losing the will to install a service of their own, but assuming you do a little bit of research, some modern options are more or less install-and-play, with decent anti-spam.
Again, had a distributed cloud continued to see bountiful R&D as the plain cloud has, the self-managed options would be 5-10 years more mature today. Had Thunderbird not been effectively neglected for the past ~4 years, it would probably be a (slightly) nicer e-mail client.
> I don't personally know anyone who's taken the time or energy to move all his data off of bugged U.S. servers onto bugged European or Asian ones or attempted to host it himself ...
Hi there. This is, in fact, exactly what I've been working on over the weekend.
I have ~8 GB of mail spread across three e-mail accounts hosted by Google (excluding my original @gmail.com account, which I never use). I've now got my own server set up and about 0100 UTC today (Monday) I "flipped the switch" (changed MX records) and have been keeping an eye on it since then.
I did an initial run with imapsync to move the bulk of the mail over and, after 0100 UTC (when the TTL expires) I'll do another run to make sure I've gotten anything that ended up in the mailboxes on Google's servers since then.
Afterwards, I'll delete all of the messages in those Google accounts and, finally, remove the whole domain and such. I'm sure that Google will still have a copy of all of that for a good while but, at some point, they'll delete it.
In the grand scheme of things, I know that it isn't really going to make a difference. It's more symbolic than anything but I can feel a little bit better knowing that my data is more secure/private than it was.
I've been meaning to do it for the last few months and I'm happy that I finally devoted the time to making it happen.
(For the curious... a RHEL derivative, configured according to the CIS RHEL6 Benchmark and DoD/DISA RHEL6 STIG (for the most part), running Postfix and Dovecot (w/ SSL/TLS and a "real" certificate although I'm starting to think I'd be more comfortable if I had just made my own) w/ AMaViS and ClamAV thrown in as well.)
+1, the NSA is one player amongst all the countries, corporations, and ...work colleagues who might be interested in your files. There are more commercial agencies around than we'd like to think, who are given 10 grands to ruin your reputation or make your laptop disclose your next commercial move...
I don't think the worst consequences are in people moving their data off services now -- the real impact is how this affects long term IT strategy. Even small changes to the slope of the adoption curve now will result in massive accumulated losses over time.
A lot of companies with a lot of data are asking themselves whether or not to put that data in the cloud. Storing data in the US right now is a bit like suggesting you store your confidential files in 1980s Soviet union -- only, they would probably have been a lot safer in the 1980s Soviet union.
It's scary that they don't care but not surprising. We live in a world where the majority of people with privilege are comfortable with the fact that racial profiling still pervades the criminal justice system. In fact, such a statement will be viewed as controversial and debate will be diluted by meaningless argument about whether racial profiling exists or whether the use of the term, "privilege," is even fair. Privacy, I believe, faces the same conundrum: it's a problem but the consequences of it are so divorced from the individual that most people won't even think about it.
The rub for me is not that some NSA goon could snoop on where my gaming group is meeting up next week. It's that they could use the scale of their surveillance powers to profile and target groups of individuals in much finer strokes. They don't need to mobilize a state police force to stop random persons and check their papers anymore. It's much more quiet now and less noticeable. We can let our imaginations run rampant about what they could do with this information but I think there's evidence of what they do use it for already and the reality is often much more frightening because it seems so benign.
When conducting 702 FISA surveillance, the only information NSA obtains results from the use of specific identifiers (for example email addresses and telephone numbers) used by non-U.S. persons overseas who are believed to possess or receive foreign intelligence information.
Foreign terrorists sometimes communicate with persons in the U.S. or Americans overseas. In targeting a terrorist overseas who is not a U.S. person, NSA may get both sides of a communication. If that communication involves a U.S. person, NSA must follow Attorney General protects the privacy of U.S. persons.
The collection under FISA section 702 is the most significant tool in the NSA collection arsenal for the detection, identification, and disruption of terrorist threats to the U.S. and around the world.
It's probably all true. I'd wager the majority of information gathered from surveillance activities under the FISA is to spoil terrorist threats against the U.S. However denials like this have a way of avoiding the definition of, "terrorist threat," or explaining the scope and restrictions the information so gathered must be used.
I suspect they might use the aforementioned section of the FISA to enable the extradition and persecution of whistle-blowers as terrorists. This would allow them to black-van these people and remove them from the world. However one can only speculate that this is true. And therein, in my opinion, lies the danger.
append pbcopy if on a mac:
echo "my quote" | fold -s -w 77 | sed "s/^/ /" | pbcopy
When conducting 702 FISA surveillance, the only information NSA obtains
results from the use of specific identifiers (for example email addresses
and telephone numbers) used by non-U.S. persons overseas who are believed to
possess or receive foreign intelligence information.
Foreign terrorists sometimes communicate with persons in the U.S. or
Americans overseas. In targeting a terrorist overseas who is not a U.S.
person, NSA may get both sides of a communication. If that communication
involves a U.S. person, NSA must follow Attorney General protects the
privacy of U.S. persons.
The collection under FISA section 702 is the most significant tool in
the NSA collection arsenal for the detection, identification, and disruption
of terrorist threats to the U.S. and around the world.
also, to address the lies you're spreading:
I have no idea about 702 fisa surveillance, but what we do know is:
1 - the nsa collects intelligence
2 - if you, as an american, communicated with a foreigner, you're fair game.
2b - if you, as an american, communicated with an american who communicated with a foreigner, the nsa collects your communications.
2c - if you, as an american, communicated with an american who communicated with an american who communicated with a foreigner... the nsa collects your communications.
2d - why yes, if you're observant, you might think this is virtually every american.
3 - if they accidentally collected your, as an american, communications, they keep it. "Accidentally".
4 - since all pigs are liars, they distribute this to, amongst others, the irs and the dea, along with a guide to whitewashing where the information came from. So the dea can, what do you know, pull over a random van for a busted tail light or not signaling a lane change or signaling a lane change to early or just cause they feel like it -- there is always, 100% of the time, a reason for a cop to pull over a car if they want to. Then they randomly find drugs! Who knew, must be just a coincidence! [1]
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to recreate the
investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information
originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's
Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an
investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of
exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or
biased witnesses.
I have never heard of anything like this at all, said Nancy Gertner, a
Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to
2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling
than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been
collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping
terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
It is one thing to create special rules for national security, Gertner said.
Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up
investigations. [1]
5 - yes, regarding #4, all pigs are liars, and this would be lying directly to the court. Not that they will be prosecuted for it.
6 - since this already migrated from "omg terrarism" to drugs, you may wonder where it will end. tip: it won't just be with drugs, it never is.
My guess is that these cases are dysfunctions with aspects of the growth / maturation process, rather than outright stoppage of aging. If you look up images of Nicky Freeman, the 40-year-old referenced in the article who "looks like a 10-year-old", he in fact looks more like a 40-year-old with the size and stature of a 10-year-old:
Being long-term situated outside the U.S., I frequently find myself wishing the Hershey-made Kit Kat bars were available to buy up and take to the movies here, but instead end up passing over the comparatively less appealing Nestle version and purchasing M&Ms, which mostly taste the same the world over (though I haven't had them in Hong Kong), instead.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster