What people don't realize is that extra-judicial "persuasion" is also commonly applied for strategic business interests. I recall a discussion with a someone at an electronics company a while ago where they described recent breaches and leaks of IP to Chinese state companies by unwitting employees pressured by these extra-judicial police.
(Notably, some of the most vocal opponents of Macron go as far as to accuse him of treason for personal gain in this case, though their case is IMHO kind of thin.)
Tom Enders, his compliance officer John Harrison, DARPA's & silicon valley's Paul Eremenko and others have been accused of (ab)using this probe with the result that Airbus' strategic information (including business one) became openly accessible to the USA, and through them, to their competitor : Boeing.
I'm not seeing the similarities to what the parent comment describes.
The people accused of participating of wrongdoing in these articles weren't pressured to participate by threats to their families from their "home" government. They did it for personal gain.
Small powerboats. The biggest market for recreational boats is the 3.5 to 5m trailer boats. What people don't realise is while the market appears to be saturated with generic boat manufacturers, almost every boat buyer wants some kind of customisation that is often trivially cheap and quick to do with the right equipment.
The key skillset required is the ability to weld (for aluminium boats) and a garage set up to hold up boats while they're being assembled or customized.
Every time any Chinese diplomat opens their mouth, something incendiary comes out these days. There will be books written in the future and these times will be used an example on how to lose friends fast. The absolute reverse of soft power.
This has consumed my morning. I've been humming out all of random tunes of my childhood from folk music to pop that I never knew the name of. It works.
This survey almost certainly wrong. 9 out of 10 people when given a leading question will probably say they think buying the latest smartphone is a waste of money, but the whole point of marketing shows that's not the case.
Average upgrade cycle is 24-36 months now. 75-85% of that is a "current" model. The caveat here is that "latest" device and flagship devices are not the same thing. For example, the latest oneplus can be either the flagship 8T or the new mid-range Nord.
A 24-36 month upgrade cycle means people aren't buying the latest smartphone every year. I don't think that the latest smartphone is a good value, and that's why I try to hold on to mine for a few years before buying a new one.
Maybe so, but there is still friction in that approach in terms of advertising, evaluating potential buyers , exchanging goods, handling money.
I don't know how iPhones handle the transfer process but anyone I know with an Android phone also dreads setting up a new phone because there's always something manually tedious that needs to be done.
> I don't know how iPhones handle the transfer process but anyone I know with an Android phone also dreads setting up a new phone because there's always something manually tedious that needs to be done
FWIW I've used Android phones for the last decade+ and my setup consists entirely of signing into my Google account once (and setting a wallpaper, if I feel like it).
You are still paying 1/3 the price of a new phone a year for that privilege, which is no small sum these days. Most people I know including myself are getting like 5-6 years out of their phones now.
Alternatively, I buy $100-$200 smartphones (I prefer ambitious phones that didn't sell at MSRP and then get marked down; Fire phone, Nextbit Robin, Essential PH-1, had to buy regular phones after that; considered the new iPhone SE, but after the PH-1, I'm not buying anything without a headphone jack I can't lose, and I'd rather not do anything without usb-c). Those usually last 12-24 months and then you get a fresh one.
and these phones never at any point in time had the performance or capabilities of the flagships so it's a lot like when I was shocked to realize these budget laptops everyone is so proud of themselves for "stealing" had cpu benchmarks still unable to compare with my 8 year old desktop
I should know, I did a few years of the $200ies and then got a $400 Xiaomi Note 10. Difference is absolutely beyond night and day for some uses
I agree. I have a Pixel 2 XL and was considering OnePlus Nord, but I think I'm fed up with Android and will buy some model of iPhone 12 as soon as it's released. People might say that iPhone is a "luxury item" but for me and surely for many users, not having their phone randomly disconnect with Bluetooth devices/restart/take literally 5 seconds to launch the camera does not count as "luxury", but instead is a bare minimum for something you use heavily day-to-day. Therefore spending e.g. 600 euros more is a no brainier especially given the payment can be made over 2 years. I won't upgrade my phone every year but 36 months sound about right.
By the way the similar logic applied to my laptop and I felt much more at ease and productive after returning to Mac after three years with X1 Carbon + Arch Linux. The cost was easily worth it (the one thing I missed is a proper window manager like Xmonad but I can get by with Amethyst just fine).
Majority of people don't need fast cpu. Majority of people need fast phone or those better capabilities even less.
I had 5 years old phone and bought new one only because of battery going out and the phone screen on the verge of breaking. Yes new one is faster and have better camera. No, I would be actually fine with the same model as before.
I’d argue more people need faster phones more than faster computers because more people need a phone more than a computer.
There’s some weird status thing with people preferring to be digital masochists unnecessarily. Like people who used to loudly tell everyone they don’t have a TV, good for you?
Getting a high end phone every year when you can trivially recoup most of that cost from flipping the old one lowers the bar.
Sure you can choose to use outdated hardware for years if you want to, but a lot of people would rather not.
The thing is, you gain nothing of value by that new phone every year. It is not masochism when you feel zero pain.
Also, but that is my personal pet peeve, new phones are too big for my hands. I had to buy new, it is smallest that was available and still uncomfortably big.
The smaller phones that were before were more comfortable and i could control them with one hand. So currently it is even loss that i had to buy new.
Fire phone had a Snapdragon 800, Robin had an 808, and PH-1 had an 835. Those were all flagship chips, and they were all cheap when I bought them. I'm hoping someone else comes by with a new flagship to firesale, but maybe investors figured it out. :/
Exactly. I bought mine new 4.5 years ago and it's still going strong. I had to get a new battery put in recently, and there have been occasional bugs crop up (lately it seems to have decided to reboot when a timer goes off) but apart from that it is all good.
Furthermore you can buy a new smartphone every 24 months and still not buy the latest model. I on average buy a new smartphone about every 24 to 36 months but I tend to buy used smartphones.
Just because someone thinks it’s a waste of money or poor value doesn’t mean they won’t buy it anyway.
I have an iPhone XR and, while there’s nothing about it lacking in daily use, I still have persistent thoughts of it as an older low resolution phone that I should upgrade.
It can objectively be a waste of money but practical concerns require people to buy new phones. Users have no control over the fact that the OS and apps get ever more resource hungry despite marginal generally unimportant improvements in utility.
I think most people don't upgrade their phone until something breaks, maybe that's what is driving cycle length. That underlines the marketing genius of non-user replaceable batteries, which are usually the first thing to go.
Agreed, though I also add "unbearably slow" as a form of being broken. Whether you view this as the cost of running newer software/webpages with fancier animations, a collective form of donations to developers using less efficient languages/frameworks, or an externality pushed onto users by the ad industry may vary.
Fountains pens are an experience and a statement. It's fussy in that it takes much longer to dry than most ball point pens, and it has a clear preference for pricy paper. In return, it makes a mundane part of life (writing notes etc) much more fun and personal. My signature ink is the Iroshizuku Asa-Gao. It's a punchy blue ink that comes in a gorgeously slick bottle. Every time I see the bright blue ink on paper, it makes me happy.
Regarding paper: I bought a Rhodia Webnotebook - no, I don’t know why they called it that - and my fountain pen loves it. It’s the first time in basically my whole life that handwriting has been pleasurable.
Just got a three pack of Iroshizuku in! The tsuki-yo, kon-peki, and take-sumi. Only tried the first so far but it's lovely. Maybe I need to get the set with asa-gao soon?
One of my favorite aspects of Diablo was the randomly generated levels. Imagine a space strategy game, where your "civ" is randomly generated giving you a random tech tree, with random ships of random attributes.
That would so much more depth and replay-ability and make it much much harder to over optimize.
I found a free espresso machine on craigslist (Gaggia Classic). It was old, rusty and "wasn't working". Spent time researching the model, took it apart and de-rusted and cleaned every part. Now it makes delicious coffee. Totally worth it
Cricket is a rare game where the condition of the tools used to play the game (the ball) is allowed to alter over the duration of the game. This differs from almost all other sports such as baseball, where new balls are used after every hit or less, and in tennis, where new balls are used after a set number of games.
Imagine how different baseball would be if they only used 1 ball per side for the entire game. Within a few innings, the ball will have much more variance and unpredictability.
