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Stop Ruining It

seths.blog

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Re: Stop Ruining It

#61

Post by andsoitis »

soupspaces wrote: post #58
Hugsbox wrote: post #6

> Trust isn’t something a brand builds with an ad campaign. It’s what’s left if the marketers don’t ruin it. So much this. Are ads still a measurably good investment for businesses? I'm assuming they wouldn't run them anymore if not, but they feel so out of touch these days that it's really hard to imagine them really working on anybody. Sorry for the side-tangent, just felt like that last bit of the post really drov…

What if ads weren't about money in the first place and that was the excuse used for surveillance?

> What if ads weren't about money in the first place and that was the excuse used for surveillance?

Care to explain, to pick one advertiser, how Nestlé is primarily running a surveillance scheme when advertising one of their products, rather than trying to get me to buy more of it?

Re: Stop Ruining It

#62

Post by vitally3643 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #53
graemep wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its always been hard to know. "about one-half the money I spend for advertising is wasted, but I have never been able to decide which half." dates back more than a century Some spend is just in case. Some spend is for prestige (we are on TV!). Some is for vague reasons that cannot be measured.

Except for targeted online ads based on browsing/search history or other spying, most advertising is just brand/product awareness, hoping to create a memorable impression.

What really baffles me is that among people my age in the sorts of circles I interact with, that memorable impression is overwhelmingly negative. Seeing an ad at all creates an immediate negative association. "This brand/company feels they have the inviolable right to assert themselves on me and forcibly take up my attention and time". It's wild that this sentiment either hasn't percolated up to advertisers, or (more likely) they just don't care.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#63

Post by RaftPeople »

Legend2440 wrote: post #25
fifticon wrote: post #15

This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…

>Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs Speak for yourself. Tabs in file explorer and notepad are my favorite windows feature in decades. I can't believe it took them this long.

Ya, I just started using them in File Explorer recently and I really like them because I frequently had multiple windows open within the same tree, this is much cleaner. I can't believe it took me so long to actually click the "+" and try it.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#64

Post by carlosjobim »

vitally3643 wrote: post #59
ryandrake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when it happened, but there was a definite inflection point some time in my software career, where we all stopped asking "What does the user want to do with their computer?" and moved over to "What do we want the user to do with our software? And, it's been downhill since then. We stopped treating the user as the driver of the car, and pushed him into the passenger seat. Now users are just along for the…

We stopped considering the user as a human being and started thinking of them as a spherical wallet in a vacuum. The user exists purely as a source of revinue and absolutely no other consideration is given.

I wish! Most companies try to make it extremely difficult for visitors to actually purchase their product online.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#65

Post by blt »

Sound systems do have an omnipresent "only as good as your weakest link" feeling.

A lossless source (or analog, whatever your preference) and great speakers/amps can't overcome a bad sounding room - or a piece of music that was mixed/mastered poorly.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#67

Post by rapnie »

vitally3643 wrote: post #59
ryandrake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when it happened, but there was a definite inflection point some time in my software career, where we all stopped asking "What does the user want to do with their computer?" and moved over to "What do we want the user to do with our software? And, it's been downhill since then. We stopped treating the user as the driver of the car, and pushed him into the passenger seat. Now users are just along for the…

We stopped considering the user as a human being and started thinking of them as a spherical wallet in a vacuum. The user exists purely as a source of revinue and absolutely no other consideration is given.

> We stopped considering the user as a human being

Imho once you say "user" you are already halfway on that path. Look how impersonal your sentence is. Users are an abstract concept that belongs to the app, which in turn is created by the developer who has all kinds of dreams for that app. Just keep calling them people, persons, or specific stakeholder names that correspond to the role they have, and their identified needs. The app serves people, and not the other way around. Not calling people users is a step towards avoiding their disempowerment.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#68

Post by TremendousJudge »

kennyadam wrote: post #37
justinsaccount wrote: post #27

Wait, the example held up for "Stop ruining it" is a company that sells snake oil audiophile bullshit?

The product descriptions on audiophile equipment are always gold! "Designed as the foundation of every great music system, our Power Plant AC regenerators embody an uncompromising commitment to excellence. By rebuilding power from the ground up with state-of-the-art engineering and meticulous precision, they deliver the stable, pure energy essential for revealing music in its truest form." The product image for this…

wow that's actually insane, the fact that they would have an "improvement" dial is ridiculous by itself, but also the picture looks extremely fake? is this a scam website? leaves me wondering what the product actually looks like

btw it costs $9,999 according to google

edit: I couldn't help researching it, the picture looks like that because the device doesn't actually have analog needles, it has an lcd screen with analog needles rendered onto it. I guess they had to cut costs somewhere, because their customers are very budget-conscious. so probably an actual picture of the device looked unpalatable to the marketers, and they decided that the crappy photoshop would be fine.

Re: Stop Ruining It

#70

Post by kazinator »

Paul McGowan makes bullshit:

"Four models. One topology — designed by Darren Myers, engineered by Bob Stadtherr. Driven from a state-of-the-art active power supply that delivers performance benefits no traditional transformer-based passive supply can match. Class A bias of 50 watts means your music spends 99% of its time in the most linear region of the amplifier's operation"

Yikes; run the other way ...

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