Funny, while I was growing up as a kid, same situation, we STILL managed to have home cooked meals 99% of the time..
Good for you. Guess what? Your situation is not identical to mine. We have a lot of home cooked meals but we also actually like eating restaurant food too. We could probably get it done if having every meal cooked at home mattered to us but we have other priorities and it is more time efficient for us to eat out some meals. We also happen to live in a location with some pretty darn food restaurants.
Seemed normal for us, and frankly, most everyone I knew growing up in my neighborhood with working parents ate home cooked meals Imost from scratch) with no problem.
Some places that is common. Others not so much. I can easily show you plenty of locations were home cooking is the exception rather than the rule. I coach a youth sports team and the parents are all over the map when it comes to how they feed their families.
What's wrong with the families today...this isn't rocket surgery.
Nothing is "wrong" with them any more than something is wrong with you. Just because people make different life choices and have different situations doesn't equate to right or wrong. A lot of families don't look like a Norman Rockwell painting and that is just fine. Your argument is wrong because the premise is false.
Cooking for one, it's probably cheaper to eat out for some meals.
You don't need the "probably" qualifier. It's DEFINITELY cheaper for quite a few types of meals. Not all, but a large number of them.
Cooking for five. It's never cheaper to eat out.
Not true at all. Again it depends on the meal. I can feed a family of 5 very cheaply at the local pizza joint for example. Not saying the food will be better but there is no single answer to the question.
An unknown number of people have special eating needs.
There is a LOT of well validated science research on this topic. While we don't know everything, it's not as if our research is ignorant on the topic. We certainly have very good data on the prevalence of many special dietary requirements in the population.
The Gluten Free and Paleo Diet consumers are a symptom of this great change.
That's not a change. Those are food fads, mostly driven by an epidemic of hypochondria, not validated scientific evidence. Very few people actually have problems with metabolizing gluten and there is no evidence of change in this regard. There is very solid data available. A recent study indicated that 86% of people who thought they had a problem with gluten do not in fact actually have a problem. The paleo diet is based off the unsupported theory that we should eat what humans ate thousands of years ago. Never mind the fact that we have evolved since then and so has our diet.
I and many others can no longer eat the 'Standard American Diet'. Period.
There is no such thing. America is a big place with diverse tastes and menus. There have always been people who have trouble with certain ingredients (milk, wheat, etc) but that is nothing new and will likely never change.
It takes exactly 6 minutes to grill the chicken to 170 degrees
Maybe if you slice it to be as thin as deli meat and don't care much about the end result. Properly cooking a reasonably thick chicken breast will take quite a lot longer than that. Roasting a whole chicken typically takes 30-40 minutes in an oven. Oh, and unless you are cooking dark meat, 170F chicken is (slightly) overcooked.
Ok, so it takes 32 minutes.. big deal.
32 minutes can be a lot of time to some people. Right now I have a young child under the age of 1 at home and my wife and I both work alternate shifts. There are quite a few days where 30 minutes to prepare even a simple meal is an unattainable luxury to us. If you can do it it is time well spent but it's not an easy thing to do sometimes. Not to mention I'm not particularly interested in eating exactly the same thing every day for an entire week. If you can then more power to you but I have a hard time with that.
Point being, it's still a hell of a lot quicker than spending 75 minutes a week driving to get food, only to have to scarf it down once I get back to the office.
Where are you driving? I have three fast food restaurants literally within walking distance of my office and even if I drive there every day it would take me less time than the 30 minutes you spent prepping food at home. Not to mention that several nearby restaurants deliver. Don't get me wrong, I'm very supportive of making your own food but it's pretty hard to beat the convenience of restaurants and fast food. It certainly doesn't save time to cook at home.
To us, US culture is rather strange. You really go out to eat each day, every day?
And to us, German culture is rather strange. Doesn't mean it's bad but it's definitely quite different. Understand that eating out in this context might mean getting lunch at the local fast food joint for lunch which is fairly common. Germany has an average of around 135 restaurant visits per person per year which is less than the US but still about one every three days.
And if you "cook" at home, it’s ready-made convenience food? How do you even survive? Isn't that extremely expensive? Don't you miss real food?
You talk about the ready made food like it's made of arsenic or something. It's fine. Not optimal but certainly will keep you going. And no it isn't really terribly expensive and for many people it's what they actually prefer.
And "hard working" is a BAD thing. Only stupid people and slaves work hard.
Really? You think Germans don't work hard? That's not exactly their reputation. Elon Musk seems like a pretty hard working guy and he is neither stupid nor a slave. Go ahead and find me a lazy CEO of a successful major corporation. Hard work is only a bad thing to people who are disinclined to work hard. (that means lazy) Working hard does not mean you cannot also work efficiently.
The best company is one, that is so good at that, that everyone can sit back and relax, while the money comes in.
And precisely zero of those exist in the real world.
My wife would make baked goods by pouring a mound of flour on the counter, making a crater and adding the other ingredients by "feel".
That's still a recipe. It's just not one written on paper. People who bake at home and who cannot control all the environmental conditions (humidity, temp, etc) for baking kind of have to do it by feel and experience. Particularly if they do things like measuring flour by volume instead of weight. (Professional bakers basically always measure by weight because granulated products like flour and sugar have variable packing densities) This has a lot to do with why home baked goods tend to be quite variable in quality even with experienced bakers.
The reason this market is dominated by prepackaged convenience foods is government subsidies. Take all that pasta and cheese; it's just subsidized wheat and milk industrially converted into a highly palatable food that is cheap because it's largely already been paid for with tax dollars.
This is not correct. That same wheat and cheese in their "raw" form share the same government subsidies but people don't buy those. The reason processed foods are cheap is because they can be produced at massive economies of scale, they don't require special handling or storage or refrigeration, they can use artificial (read cheap) ingredients, packaging is standardized, and they don't perish on shelves. A large company can buy cheese FAR cheaper than you or I can because they buy more of it and they can process it into food products FAR cheaper than you or I can because they have specialized mass production equipment to do so. So much cheaper that even with the packaging and marketing and branding it's still cheaper than you can do it yourself from raw ingredients even if you don't count your meal preparation time.
While there are problems with government subsidies in foods in relation to healthy versus unhealthy options, this is a minor consideration in regards to why processed foods are as cheap as they are. McDonalds can sell you a hamburger with a bun and condiments for $1 for reasons that have almost nothing to do with tax policy. It's all about economies of scale and standardization of products, packaging and handling. I can make a BETTER hamburger than McDonalds but I cannot make a cheaper one. Tax policy is not the reason why.
No wonder so many people get trapped in a cycle of poverty.
You think eating out is what traps people in poverty? You might want to learn about poverty traps and their causes. There are lots of causes of poverty. Eating out is not a meaningful cause.
That's more than every other day! And the latest figure is still more than every other day.
If you look at the number of restaurants out there (and the obesity statistics) this should not surprise anyone. People like to look down their nose publicly at McDonalds and the like but the simple fact is that vast numbers of people eat at these places routinely regardless of what they actually say. You think they stay in business because people are eating at home? People LIKE to eat out, they like fast food, and honestly a lot of the food tastes better than what many people can cook themselves.
WTF people, the fastest way to save money is to not eat out; doesn't everyone know that??
Several points on that. Basically your thesis isn't necessarily supported by the facts. 1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that eating healthy tends to be more expensive than eating badly, at least in the short term. Even if you do manage to save money (which can be done) it's going to come at the cost of an investment of time and energy. 2) There is also evidence to suggest that eating out can be cheaper than eating at home for many. 3) Eating at home requires having the time to prepare the food. Speaking as someone with a young child and a working wife this time can be hard to come by for many people even if you would prefer it. 4) Eating at home does not necessarily equal eating healthier nor does it necessarily equal costing less. It CAN but it often doesn't. 5) Many people don't know how to shop economically in grocery stores and grocery stores have no incentive to help. 6) Food culture is as subject to fads as anything else. One should expect to see variation over time in where and how people eat their food.
Not in the mobile phone handset market they aren't. They technically sort of still exist but they are a fraction of a ghost of what they once were. They used to have over 50% marketshare in what passed for a smartphone 10 years ago. This number is not a decent approximation of zero. That's a long way to fall.
They; unlike apple ; do a lot more then just phones.
Apple has hundreds of billions in cash available to them. Apple can overnight buy their way into nearly any industry they care to get involved in. They could buy Ford AND GM AND Tesla in cash if they wanted to. They make more PROFIT in a quarter than eBay makes in REVENUE in a year. Apple could lose their entire market share in smartphones tomorrow and they would survive. You can say Apple is a one trick pony and I'd probably agree with you but it's a REALLY good trick and they have the cash reserves to survive anything this side of Armageddon.
Pretty sure Nokia would be in business had they not been bought, and then shuttered, by Microsoft.
Unlikely. Nokia was already suffering from a bunch of self inflicted wounds before they got in bed with Microsoft. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that Symbian or MeeGo would have gained meaningful traction in the market. They lost a march to Apple and Google in operating systems and never really caught up. Partnering with Microsoft wasn't in principle a terrible idea but it was horribly executed. If I had been a shareholder in either company I would have been incredibly angry. I've seen very few companies crap the bed quite as hard as Nokia did around 2008-2012.
Pretty sure they were doing fine until they became a victim of Microsoft trying to get into the phone industry.
No they were not. The moment the iPhone dropped Nokia's market share in smartphones started to fall and as Android picked up it just got worse. It's not clear whether they could have fended off iOS and Android but it was very clear that they were no longer "doing fine" even at the time.
They might have still managed somehow but once the Burning Platform memo was issued they basically announced publicly that their current products had no future while they had no replacement based on Microsoft's system ready to ship for a long time after that. It was one of the most insanely stupid blunders I've ever seen.
Fun fact, in a manner of speaking, we already have a way to do this.USB ports on the bottom of the phone.
True but it's not an ideal way to do it and the phones were never designed with that in mind. It also requires making a rather fragile pass through connection so you can charge your phone which shouldn't be necessary. It's something of a clumsy hack rather than a purposeful design. I'd like to see something purpose built to take full advantage of the idea without messing up the form factor (think electric contacts flush with the case with a sort of magsafe technology connector). That said, I'd certainly take using the existing USB/Lightning ports over nothing at all.
LG tried something similar with the G5 and it wasn't a big hit. I don't know the reason. Probably because the phone itself didn't sell too well.
I would imagine because they didn't do it right and didn't make a big deal out of it. I wasn't aware they had even bothered to try. Realistically it would probably have to be Apple or Samsung or Google to get involved to really make it a reality - nobody else has the market share or brand cache including LG. Ideally it would be Apple since they are the main trend setter but I don't see Apple doing it because they seem to think expandability and customer choice are the work of the devil and they treat cases and other accessories as afterthoughts if they bother at all. (their battery case is a HORRIBLE design) Doing what I suggest involves building an ecosystem which isn't easy.
If you do a lot of photography then buy a proper camera.
Already have a Sony A9 but thanks for the unhelpful suggestion.
There are lots of times where a smartphone is FAR more useful than the best "proper" camera. Every pro photographer uses their smartphone camera routinely. Smartphones are more compact and light, take better than decent quality images and video under many circumstances, are unobtrusive, have VASTLY better capabilities for sharing and backing up images, bigger and better screens than any "proper camera", far better interfaces for point and shoot, and more besides. As the saying goes the best camera is the one you have with you and I ALWAYS have my smartphone with me but I'm not lugging a 3kg full frame mirrorless camera + lens everywhere I go. "Proper cameras" are can get better images if you work at it but smartphones have totally kicked their ass in the low end of the market.
Honestly the major camera makers (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc) are seriously dropping the ball with regard to interface and image sharing on pro grade and enthusiast grade cameras. They are universally terrible without exception regardless of brand. I shoot Sony and their menu system is horrendous but Canon and Nikon and the rest aren't meaningfully better. And the options for getting photos off your phone to a PC where you can use them are even worse. My camera actually has a built in RJ45 ethernet jack but the only thing you can do with it is to FTP the files. No automatic backup via wifi, minimal or clumsy geostamping, poor integration with tablets/smartphones, terrible interface software. Smartphones killed the point and shoot and are hurting the "pro" camera market because they have made the workflows for actually using pictures absurdly bad. They still expect you to pull out the SD card and transfer them like we are back in the days of floppy disks. Hell, my $4000 camera doesn't even have USB-C or USB3 for fucks sake.
Don't follow some idiot fad from Apple. Possible the most ubiquitous plug across the entire planet and you omit it?
A fad indicates that it will eventually pass. Tens of millions of phones are being sold every year without the headphone jack. It's not coming back so I suggest you get over it. It's a single tasking and relatively large connector which makes very little sense on a machine with a tight space budget and acceptable replacement options available.
USB? I dunno, it might rival the audio jack, maybe for install numbers.
"Rival"? Try vastly exceeds. Almost every low power device I have has a USB port. Computers, cameras, headphones, chargers, mice, keyboards, tablets, smartphones, etc. You know how many of my devices have a 3.5mm audio jack? Maybe 3. My oldest car, an ancient amplifier and one of my older PC monitors. Maybe I'm forgetting one but you get the point. You are hugely overestimating the ubiquity of this particular port. If you need it there are plenty of ways to connect to one even with devices that don't have the port. Bluetooth and USB adaptors are widely available and cheap.
I have no interest in bluetooth / wireless audio. I LIKE the cable.
That's a perfectly valid choice but please don't pretend the rest of us should have to go along with it.
The only reason there is no headset jack and an ugly, losable dongle is to strongly compel people to fork out for expensive wireless earbuds.
"Expensive"? You CAN pay a lot if you want to but it's hardly a requirement. You can get wireless earbuds for less than $20. The price differential with wired earbuds of similar quality is generally minimal if you bother to do any shopping.
As for losing the dongle, how would you do that? If you have one that you use you're going to put it on your headphone jack and probably leave it there. You're about as likely to lose your headphones as you are the dongle. I will agree however that dongles are a shitty hack "solution" and that a better solution would be to integrate the headphone jack into the case for people who want the capability.
And actually there are other reasons to remove the jack besides cynical merchandising. For one, a lot of people don't actually use the jack. I'm one of them. It's a complete waste of space in a phone for me. Obviously many people do use them but millions more are existing quite happily without the jack. It's a single tasking relic of an interface on a device with a tight space budget. It's not hard to think of alternatives uses for the space. If it's important to you then by all means get a phone that has one but please don't pretend it is any sort of universal requirement.
They're idiots, all. It's not a "headphone jack," it's an analog audio jack.
It's used almost exclusively as a headphone jack by 99%+ of users. You are technically correct but calling it a headphone jack isn't actually wrong.
It works with headphones, but having bluetooth headphones doesn't help with connecting a phone to an older car or a stereo.
You can buy a bluetooth adapter with a 3.5mm jack to give any device this capability for less than $20. I did this with an older truck of mine that had a 3.5mm jack but no bluetooth. And it's a LOT easier to deal with that plugging in a loose audio cable to my phone every time I get in the vehicle.
BT audio is more complex, costly, and inconvenient.
Oh bullshit. The cost differential is a few dollars at most and your smartphone is going to have bluetooth anyway. It's not complex and it's actually FAR more convenient in a lot of use cases. Personally I absolutely hate wrangling cords which is ironic since I make wire harnesses for a living.
And the "we traded a jack for more battery life" is pure and simple bullshit.
Not really sure how you came to this conclusion. If they pulled out the jack and dedicated that space budget to a batter then it is the absolute truth. It's going to be a marginal improvement but it's one I personally would take every time since I don't use the jack. Obviously others feel the same way.
The DAC in that adapter sucks way more battery than the infinitesimal bit gained by removing the jack.
That is nothing more than an assumption on your part without evidence provided to back it up.
No. The last time I actually plugged a set of headphones into my own smartphone was about 4-5 years ago and I can probably count on my fingers the total number of times I've ever used ear buds since I started using a smartphone. I have a set of bluetooth headphones if I want to listen to something privately. My car also has bluetooth and USB so the headphone jack is completely unnecessary to me. I don't listen to music or other sound when I work or exercise. The removal of the jack from my smartphone didn't affect my work flow at all. I used the word "seldom" to be truthful but I could have said "never" and it would have been accurate enough.
A headphone jack takes up a neglible amount of space compared to its use
Maybe for you but that's not universally true. I almost never used the headphone jack so it was a total waste of space for me. In a compact device with such a tight space budget there is no such thing as something that takes up negligible space. I get that many people like and utilize the 3.5mm jack and the benefits are not lost on me. But the simple fact is that tradeoffs are going to happen and no company can please everyone. And the evidence is clear that a LOT of people don't care about the 3.5mm jack at all.
I don't see any legitimate argument for dumping it.
That's because you are only looking at the issue from your own perspective. If I were to use my own perspective I would argue exactly the opposite that there is no legitimate argument for including it. After all I don't need that particular bit of kit. Both views are equally valid if we aren't considering the needs of others. In reality a vast number of people don't care at all about the 3.5mm jack and likewise a lot of others care very passionately. Companies need to try to serve what they think their customers really want which might not be what you or I personally want.
What I really think is the best answer is for them to make an elegant interface for cases so that OEMs and third parties could make cases with all sorts of cool optional equipment (batteries, cameras, headphone jacks, etc) for personal needs. I'd LOVE to have a case with a larger battery and a "real" camera in it because I do a lot of photography. I don't care about the headphone jack but you do and then you would have a way to get it while keeping the core phone elegantly small. Most of us put our smartphones in cases anyway so why is nobody taking full advantage of that fact?
OnePlus CEO Carl Pei confirmed to TechRadar that the OnePlus 6T won't have a headphone jack. Instead, it will feature a larger battery that will be "substantial enough for users to realize.
If that's what their customers actually prefer that is a sensible course of action. Personally I seldom used the headphone jack on phones so I'm quite pleased to have the space budget utilized for other items like batteries. You may feel differently of course and that's totally fine but there are a LOT of people who do not actually care much about the 3.5mm jack. The fact that Apple sells tens of millions of iPhones without the jack is proof enough of that. People that need/want the jack are passionate about it but not as many as you might guess from the complaining.
Personally I think the best answer is to move the headphone jack to the cases that virtually every smartphone is put into anyway. Think about it. Imagine a smartphone that has a standard interface (contact or wireless) to connect to the case. Then you could put all sorts of useful equipment (headphone jacks, bigger batteries, ethernet or other ports, better cameras, good speakers/amps, extra storage, multi-meters, oscilloscopes, etc) into the case based on your particular needs at the time. It's kind of like the unix philosophy in hardware. You have a minimalist core system and then people add the components to it that they actually need. Since nearly everyone adds a case to their phone anyway it seems foolish to not make full use of that fact and put some real capabilities into the case. Plus it would seem to be a real economic opportunity since people LOVE to personalize their phones. I do a lot of photography and I would love to have a case with a much bigger camera lens and battery that integrated seamlessly with my phone. All the smartphone maker would have to do is provide a good interface and API for the hardware makers to play with.
I think you just agreed with the person to whom you replied. Because they have nothing to do with specific instances, they do indeed have nothing to do with slavery in any country.
Something doesn't have to reference specific instances of the practice of slavery to be an unfortunate choice of vocabulary. If there were no other words to adequately describe the technical relationship then of course clarity should win out. But the simple fact is that there are a multitude of other equally accurate terms available and in active use that could be used which don't carry the social baggage. Switching to something else is just a matter of being nice and thoughtful really.
Are some people being over sensitive? Probably. But on the other hand part of being a polite and decent human being is thinking about your own behavior and trying be empathetic towards fellow human beings. My day job is doing engineering for wire harness manufacturer and I run into the terms master/slave and male/female almost daily. I've wondered many times why we continue to use these terms when we don't need to. Parent/Child and Pin/Socket work just as well and are just as clear but with zero social baggage.
I mean, shit, if you're going to get pissed, ask why it's Master and not Mistress.
Mistress/Slave would be far more whimsical if done right though I'm not sure it really improves matters.
"Now Limbaugh is using Hurricane Florence to argue that man-made climate change does not exist.
I hope he keeps doing this so we can give some of his idiotic listeners some well deserved Darwin awards when they fail to evacuate. Pity that Limbaugh himself isn't likely to be among them.
Because it's not necessary and the terms carry a lot of racial baggage at least in the US.
Because it perfectly describes the relationship between the devices?
Because it is not the only means to perfectly describe the relationship between the devices. Other terms work just as well so why use the one with all sorts of needless baggage?
With all due respect to the USA, you need to get over that shit.
I'm sure we will when the effects of our history stop affecting modern life. Racism is still a very real thing and so is slavery. It's fine to acknowledge the reality of these behaviors but we don't need to normalize them or pretend that they aren't the horrifying things they actually are. That said, if you actually get triggered over the terms in that context then you probably need to lighten the fuck up.
I agree master-slave is problematic, but what are you going to use in place?
There are almost countless alternatives available. Seriously, you can't think of any?
Do they really want to open this can of worms?
I think they are trying to close a can of worms. Since we have alternative terms available, why do we need to use ones that explicitly reference one of the most reprehensible practices of our species?
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Funny, while I was growing up as a kid, same situation, we STILL managed to have home cooked meals 99% of the time..
Good for you. Guess what? Your situation is not identical to mine. We have a lot of home cooked meals but we also actually like eating restaurant food too. We could probably get it done if having every meal cooked at home mattered to us but we have other priorities and it is more time efficient for us to eat out some meals. We also happen to live in a location with some pretty darn food restaurants.
Seemed normal for us, and frankly, most everyone I knew growing up in my neighborhood with working parents ate home cooked meals Imost from scratch) with no problem.
Some places that is common. Others not so much. I can easily show you plenty of locations were home cooking is the exception rather than the rule. I coach a youth sports team and the parents are all over the map when it comes to how they feed their families.
What's wrong with the families today...this isn't rocket surgery.
Nothing is "wrong" with them any more than something is wrong with you. Just because people make different life choices and have different situations doesn't equate to right or wrong. A lot of families don't look like a Norman Rockwell painting and that is just fine. Your argument is wrong because the premise is false.
Cooking for one, it's probably cheaper to eat out for some meals.
You don't need the "probably" qualifier. It's DEFINITELY cheaper for quite a few types of meals. Not all, but a large number of them.
Cooking for five. It's never cheaper to eat out.
Not true at all. Again it depends on the meal. I can feed a family of 5 very cheaply at the local pizza joint for example. Not saying the food will be better but there is no single answer to the question.
An unknown number of people have special eating needs.
There is a LOT of well validated science research on this topic. While we don't know everything, it's not as if our research is ignorant on the topic. We certainly have very good data on the prevalence of many special dietary requirements in the population.
The Gluten Free and Paleo Diet consumers are a symptom of this great change.
That's not a change. Those are food fads, mostly driven by an epidemic of hypochondria, not validated scientific evidence. Very few people actually have problems with metabolizing gluten and there is no evidence of change in this regard. There is very solid data available. A recent study indicated that 86% of people who thought they had a problem with gluten do not in fact actually have a problem. The paleo diet is based off the unsupported theory that we should eat what humans ate thousands of years ago. Never mind the fact that we have evolved since then and so has our diet.
I and many others can no longer eat the 'Standard American Diet'. Period.
There is no such thing. America is a big place with diverse tastes and menus. There have always been people who have trouble with certain ingredients (milk, wheat, etc) but that is nothing new and will likely never change.
It takes exactly 6 minutes to grill the chicken to 170 degrees
Maybe if you slice it to be as thin as deli meat and don't care much about the end result. Properly cooking a reasonably thick chicken breast will take quite a lot longer than that. Roasting a whole chicken typically takes 30-40 minutes in an oven. Oh, and unless you are cooking dark meat, 170F chicken is (slightly) overcooked.
Ok, so it takes 32 minutes.. big deal.
32 minutes can be a lot of time to some people. Right now I have a young child under the age of 1 at home and my wife and I both work alternate shifts. There are quite a few days where 30 minutes to prepare even a simple meal is an unattainable luxury to us. If you can do it it is time well spent but it's not an easy thing to do sometimes. Not to mention I'm not particularly interested in eating exactly the same thing every day for an entire week. If you can then more power to you but I have a hard time with that.
Point being, it's still a hell of a lot quicker than spending 75 minutes a week driving to get food, only to have to scarf it down once I get back to the office.
Where are you driving? I have three fast food restaurants literally within walking distance of my office and even if I drive there every day it would take me less time than the 30 minutes you spent prepping food at home. Not to mention that several nearby restaurants deliver. Don't get me wrong, I'm very supportive of making your own food but it's pretty hard to beat the convenience of restaurants and fast food. It certainly doesn't save time to cook at home.
To us, US culture is rather strange. You really go out to eat each day, every day?
And to us, German culture is rather strange. Doesn't mean it's bad but it's definitely quite different. Understand that eating out in this context might mean getting lunch at the local fast food joint for lunch which is fairly common. Germany has an average of around 135 restaurant visits per person per year which is less than the US but still about one every three days.
And if you "cook" at home, it’s ready-made convenience food? How do you even survive? Isn't that extremely expensive? Don't you miss real food?
You talk about the ready made food like it's made of arsenic or something. It's fine. Not optimal but certainly will keep you going. And no it isn't really terribly expensive and for many people it's what they actually prefer.
And "hard working" is a BAD thing. Only stupid people and slaves work hard.
Really? You think Germans don't work hard? That's not exactly their reputation. Elon Musk seems like a pretty hard working guy and he is neither stupid nor a slave. Go ahead and find me a lazy CEO of a successful major corporation. Hard work is only a bad thing to people who are disinclined to work hard. (that means lazy) Working hard does not mean you cannot also work efficiently.
The best company is one, that is so good at that, that everyone can sit back and relax, while the money comes in.
And precisely zero of those exist in the real world.
My wife would make baked goods by pouring a mound of flour on the counter, making a crater and adding the other ingredients by "feel".
That's still a recipe. It's just not one written on paper. People who bake at home and who cannot control all the environmental conditions (humidity, temp, etc) for baking kind of have to do it by feel and experience. Particularly if they do things like measuring flour by volume instead of weight. (Professional bakers basically always measure by weight because granulated products like flour and sugar have variable packing densities) This has a lot to do with why home baked goods tend to be quite variable in quality even with experienced bakers.
The reason this market is dominated by prepackaged convenience foods is government subsidies. Take all that pasta and cheese; it's just subsidized wheat and milk industrially converted into a highly palatable food that is cheap because it's largely already been paid for with tax dollars.
This is not correct. That same wheat and cheese in their "raw" form share the same government subsidies but people don't buy those. The reason processed foods are cheap is because they can be produced at massive economies of scale, they don't require special handling or storage or refrigeration, they can use artificial (read cheap) ingredients, packaging is standardized, and they don't perish on shelves. A large company can buy cheese FAR cheaper than you or I can because they buy more of it and they can process it into food products FAR cheaper than you or I can because they have specialized mass production equipment to do so. So much cheaper that even with the packaging and marketing and branding it's still cheaper than you can do it yourself from raw ingredients even if you don't count your meal preparation time.
While there are problems with government subsidies in foods in relation to healthy versus unhealthy options, this is a minor consideration in regards to why processed foods are as cheap as they are. McDonalds can sell you a hamburger with a bun and condiments for $1 for reasons that have almost nothing to do with tax policy. It's all about economies of scale and standardization of products, packaging and handling. I can make a BETTER hamburger than McDonalds but I cannot make a cheaper one. Tax policy is not the reason why.
No wonder so many people get trapped in a cycle of poverty.
You think eating out is what traps people in poverty? You might want to learn about poverty traps and their causes. There are lots of causes of poverty. Eating out is not a meaningful cause.
That's more than every other day! And the latest figure is still more than every other day.
If you look at the number of restaurants out there (and the obesity statistics) this should not surprise anyone. People like to look down their nose publicly at McDonalds and the like but the simple fact is that vast numbers of people eat at these places routinely regardless of what they actually say. You think they stay in business because people are eating at home? People LIKE to eat out, they like fast food, and honestly a lot of the food tastes better than what many people can cook themselves.
WTF people, the fastest way to save money is to not eat out; doesn't everyone know that??
Several points on that. Basically your thesis isn't necessarily supported by the facts.
1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that eating healthy tends to be more expensive than eating badly, at least in the short term. Even if you do manage to save money (which can be done) it's going to come at the cost of an investment of time and energy.
2) There is also evidence to suggest that eating out can be cheaper than eating at home for many.
3) Eating at home requires having the time to prepare the food. Speaking as someone with a young child and a working wife this time can be hard to come by for many people even if you would prefer it.
4) Eating at home does not necessarily equal eating healthier nor does it necessarily equal costing less. It CAN but it often doesn't.
5) Many people don't know how to shop economically in grocery stores and grocery stores have no incentive to help.
6) Food culture is as subject to fads as anything else. One should expect to see variation over time in where and how people eat their food.
Im pretty sure Nokia is just fine.
Not in the mobile phone handset market they aren't. They technically sort of still exist but they are a fraction of a ghost of what they once were. They used to have over 50% marketshare in what passed for a smartphone 10 years ago. This number is not a decent approximation of zero. That's a long way to fall.
They; unlike apple ; do a lot more then just phones.
Apple has hundreds of billions in cash available to them. Apple can overnight buy their way into nearly any industry they care to get involved in. They could buy Ford AND GM AND Tesla in cash if they wanted to. They make more PROFIT in a quarter than eBay makes in REVENUE in a year. Apple could lose their entire market share in smartphones tomorrow and they would survive. You can say Apple is a one trick pony and I'd probably agree with you but it's a REALLY good trick and they have the cash reserves to survive anything this side of Armageddon.
Pretty sure Nokia would be in business had they not been bought, and then shuttered, by Microsoft.
Unlikely. Nokia was already suffering from a bunch of self inflicted wounds before they got in bed with Microsoft. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that Symbian or MeeGo would have gained meaningful traction in the market. They lost a march to Apple and Google in operating systems and never really caught up. Partnering with Microsoft wasn't in principle a terrible idea but it was horribly executed. If I had been a shareholder in either company I would have been incredibly angry. I've seen very few companies crap the bed quite as hard as Nokia did around 2008-2012.
Pretty sure they were doing fine until they became a victim of Microsoft trying to get into the phone industry.
No they were not. The moment the iPhone dropped Nokia's market share in smartphones started to fall and as Android picked up it just got worse. It's not clear whether they could have fended off iOS and Android but it was very clear that they were no longer "doing fine" even at the time.
They might have still managed somehow but once the Burning Platform memo was issued they basically announced publicly that their current products had no future while they had no replacement based on Microsoft's system ready to ship for a long time after that. It was one of the most insanely stupid blunders I've ever seen.
Stopped reading here.
Good.
Fun fact, in a manner of speaking, we already have a way to do this.USB ports on the bottom of the phone.
True but it's not an ideal way to do it and the phones were never designed with that in mind. It also requires making a rather fragile pass through connection so you can charge your phone which shouldn't be necessary. It's something of a clumsy hack rather than a purposeful design. I'd like to see something purpose built to take full advantage of the idea without messing up the form factor (think electric contacts flush with the case with a sort of magsafe technology connector). That said, I'd certainly take using the existing USB/Lightning ports over nothing at all.
LG tried something similar with the G5 and it wasn't a big hit. I don't know the reason. Probably because the phone itself didn't sell too well.
I would imagine because they didn't do it right and didn't make a big deal out of it. I wasn't aware they had even bothered to try. Realistically it would probably have to be Apple or Samsung or Google to get involved to really make it a reality - nobody else has the market share or brand cache including LG. Ideally it would be Apple since they are the main trend setter but I don't see Apple doing it because they seem to think expandability and customer choice are the work of the devil and they treat cases and other accessories as afterthoughts if they bother at all. (their battery case is a HORRIBLE design) Doing what I suggest involves building an ecosystem which isn't easy.
If you do a lot of photography then buy a proper camera.
Already have a Sony A9 but thanks for the unhelpful suggestion.
There are lots of times where a smartphone is FAR more useful than the best "proper" camera. Every pro photographer uses their smartphone camera routinely. Smartphones are more compact and light, take better than decent quality images and video under many circumstances, are unobtrusive, have VASTLY better capabilities for sharing and backing up images, bigger and better screens than any "proper camera", far better interfaces for point and shoot, and more besides. As the saying goes the best camera is the one you have with you and I ALWAYS have my smartphone with me but I'm not lugging a 3kg full frame mirrorless camera + lens everywhere I go. "Proper cameras" are can get better images if you work at it but smartphones have totally kicked their ass in the low end of the market.
Honestly the major camera makers (Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc) are seriously dropping the ball with regard to interface and image sharing on pro grade and enthusiast grade cameras. They are universally terrible without exception regardless of brand. I shoot Sony and their menu system is horrendous but Canon and Nikon and the rest aren't meaningfully better. And the options for getting photos off your phone to a PC where you can use them are even worse. My camera actually has a built in RJ45 ethernet jack but the only thing you can do with it is to FTP the files. No automatic backup via wifi, minimal or clumsy geostamping, poor integration with tablets/smartphones, terrible interface software. Smartphones killed the point and shoot and are hurting the "pro" camera market because they have made the workflows for actually using pictures absurdly bad. They still expect you to pull out the SD card and transfer them like we are back in the days of floppy disks. Hell, my $4000 camera doesn't even have USB-C or USB3 for fucks sake.
Don't follow some idiot fad from Apple. Possible the most ubiquitous plug across the entire planet and you omit it?
A fad indicates that it will eventually pass. Tens of millions of phones are being sold every year without the headphone jack. It's not coming back so I suggest you get over it. It's a single tasking and relatively large connector which makes very little sense on a machine with a tight space budget and acceptable replacement options available.
USB? I dunno, it might rival the audio jack, maybe for install numbers.
"Rival"? Try vastly exceeds. Almost every low power device I have has a USB port. Computers, cameras, headphones, chargers, mice, keyboards, tablets, smartphones, etc. You know how many of my devices have a 3.5mm audio jack? Maybe 3. My oldest car, an ancient amplifier and one of my older PC monitors. Maybe I'm forgetting one but you get the point. You are hugely overestimating the ubiquity of this particular port. If you need it there are plenty of ways to connect to one even with devices that don't have the port. Bluetooth and USB adaptors are widely available and cheap.
I have no interest in bluetooth / wireless audio. I LIKE the cable.
That's a perfectly valid choice but please don't pretend the rest of us should have to go along with it.
The only reason there is no headset jack and an ugly, losable dongle is to strongly compel people to fork out for expensive wireless earbuds.
"Expensive"? You CAN pay a lot if you want to but it's hardly a requirement. You can get wireless earbuds for less than $20. The price differential with wired earbuds of similar quality is generally minimal if you bother to do any shopping.
As for losing the dongle, how would you do that? If you have one that you use you're going to put it on your headphone jack and probably leave it there. You're about as likely to lose your headphones as you are the dongle. I will agree however that dongles are a shitty hack "solution" and that a better solution would be to integrate the headphone jack into the case for people who want the capability.
And actually there are other reasons to remove the jack besides cynical merchandising. For one, a lot of people don't actually use the jack. I'm one of them. It's a complete waste of space in a phone for me. Obviously many people do use them but millions more are existing quite happily without the jack. It's a single tasking relic of an interface on a device with a tight space budget. It's not hard to think of alternatives uses for the space. If it's important to you then by all means get a phone that has one but please don't pretend it is any sort of universal requirement.
They're idiots, all. It's not a "headphone jack," it's an analog audio jack.
It's used almost exclusively as a headphone jack by 99%+ of users. You are technically correct but calling it a headphone jack isn't actually wrong.
It works with headphones, but having bluetooth headphones doesn't help with connecting a phone to an older car or a stereo.
You can buy a bluetooth adapter with a 3.5mm jack to give any device this capability for less than $20. I did this with an older truck of mine that had a 3.5mm jack but no bluetooth. And it's a LOT easier to deal with that plugging in a loose audio cable to my phone every time I get in the vehicle.
BT audio is more complex, costly, and inconvenient.
Oh bullshit. The cost differential is a few dollars at most and your smartphone is going to have bluetooth anyway. It's not complex and it's actually FAR more convenient in a lot of use cases. Personally I absolutely hate wrangling cords which is ironic since I make wire harnesses for a living.
And the "we traded a jack for more battery life" is pure and simple bullshit.
Not really sure how you came to this conclusion. If they pulled out the jack and dedicated that space budget to a batter then it is the absolute truth. It's going to be a marginal improvement but it's one I personally would take every time since I don't use the jack. Obviously others feel the same way.
The DAC in that adapter sucks way more battery than the infinitesimal bit gained by removing the jack.
That is nothing more than an assumption on your part without evidence provided to back it up.
So you use the headphone jack.
No. The last time I actually plugged a set of headphones into my own smartphone was about 4-5 years ago and I can probably count on my fingers the total number of times I've ever used ear buds since I started using a smartphone. I have a set of bluetooth headphones if I want to listen to something privately. My car also has bluetooth and USB so the headphone jack is completely unnecessary to me. I don't listen to music or other sound when I work or exercise. The removal of the jack from my smartphone didn't affect my work flow at all. I used the word "seldom" to be truthful but I could have said "never" and it would have been accurate enough.
A headphone jack takes up a neglible amount of space compared to its use
Maybe for you but that's not universally true. I almost never used the headphone jack so it was a total waste of space for me. In a compact device with such a tight space budget there is no such thing as something that takes up negligible space. I get that many people like and utilize the 3.5mm jack and the benefits are not lost on me. But the simple fact is that tradeoffs are going to happen and no company can please everyone. And the evidence is clear that a LOT of people don't care about the 3.5mm jack at all.
I don't see any legitimate argument for dumping it.
That's because you are only looking at the issue from your own perspective. If I were to use my own perspective I would argue exactly the opposite that there is no legitimate argument for including it. After all I don't need that particular bit of kit. Both views are equally valid if we aren't considering the needs of others. In reality a vast number of people don't care at all about the 3.5mm jack and likewise a lot of others care very passionately. Companies need to try to serve what they think their customers really want which might not be what you or I personally want.
What I really think is the best answer is for them to make an elegant interface for cases so that OEMs and third parties could make cases with all sorts of cool optional equipment (batteries, cameras, headphone jacks, etc) for personal needs. I'd LOVE to have a case with a larger battery and a "real" camera in it because I do a lot of photography. I don't care about the headphone jack but you do and then you would have a way to get it while keeping the core phone elegantly small. Most of us put our smartphones in cases anyway so why is nobody taking full advantage of that fact?
OnePlus CEO Carl Pei confirmed to TechRadar that the OnePlus 6T won't have a headphone jack. Instead, it will feature a larger battery that will be "substantial enough for users to realize.
If that's what their customers actually prefer that is a sensible course of action. Personally I seldom used the headphone jack on phones so I'm quite pleased to have the space budget utilized for other items like batteries. You may feel differently of course and that's totally fine but there are a LOT of people who do not actually care much about the 3.5mm jack. The fact that Apple sells tens of millions of iPhones without the jack is proof enough of that. People that need/want the jack are passionate about it but not as many as you might guess from the complaining.
Personally I think the best answer is to move the headphone jack to the cases that virtually every smartphone is put into anyway. Think about it. Imagine a smartphone that has a standard interface (contact or wireless) to connect to the case. Then you could put all sorts of useful equipment (headphone jacks, bigger batteries, ethernet or other ports, better cameras, good speakers/amps, extra storage, multi-meters, oscilloscopes, etc) into the case based on your particular needs at the time. It's kind of like the unix philosophy in hardware. You have a minimalist core system and then people add the components to it that they actually need. Since nearly everyone adds a case to their phone anyway it seems foolish to not make full use of that fact and put some real capabilities into the case. Plus it would seem to be a real economic opportunity since people LOVE to personalize their phones. I do a lot of photography and I would love to have a case with a much bigger camera lens and battery that integrated seamlessly with my phone. All the smartphone maker would have to do is provide a good interface and API for the hardware makers to play with.
I think you just agreed with the person to whom you replied. Because they have nothing to do with specific instances, they do indeed have nothing to do with slavery in any country.
Something doesn't have to reference specific instances of the practice of slavery to be an unfortunate choice of vocabulary. If there were no other words to adequately describe the technical relationship then of course clarity should win out. But the simple fact is that there are a multitude of other equally accurate terms available and in active use that could be used which don't carry the social baggage. Switching to something else is just a matter of being nice and thoughtful really.
Are some people being over sensitive? Probably. But on the other hand part of being a polite and decent human being is thinking about your own behavior and trying be empathetic towards fellow human beings. My day job is doing engineering for wire harness manufacturer and I run into the terms master/slave and male/female almost daily. I've wondered many times why we continue to use these terms when we don't need to. Parent/Child and Pin/Socket work just as well and are just as clear but with zero social baggage.
I mean, shit, if you're going to get pissed, ask why it's Master and not Mistress.
Mistress/Slave would be far more whimsical if done right though I'm not sure it really improves matters.
"Now Limbaugh is using Hurricane Florence to argue that man-made climate change does not exist.
I hope he keeps doing this so we can give some of his idiotic listeners some well deserved Darwin awards when they fail to evacuate. Pity that Limbaugh himself isn't likely to be among them.
I bet when Apple increase the size of its smallest phone again you will again say that the new format is the ideal for you.
Not unless my hand gets larger. But thanks for trying to paint me as a blind fanboy to hide your own bias.
Why is it problematic?
Because it's not necessary and the terms carry a lot of racial baggage at least in the US.
Because it perfectly describes the relationship between the devices?
Because it is not the only means to perfectly describe the relationship between the devices. Other terms work just as well so why use the one with all sorts of needless baggage?
With all due respect to the USA, you need to get over that shit.
I'm sure we will when the effects of our history stop affecting modern life. Racism is still a very real thing and so is slavery. It's fine to acknowledge the reality of these behaviors but we don't need to normalize them or pretend that they aren't the horrifying things they actually are. That said, if you actually get triggered over the terms in that context then you probably need to lighten the fuck up.
I agree master-slave is problematic, but what are you going to use in place?
There are almost countless alternatives available. Seriously, you can't think of any?
Do they really want to open this can of worms?
I think they are trying to close a can of worms. Since we have alternative terms available, why do we need to use ones that explicitly reference one of the most reprehensible practices of our species?