Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Portable X-ray to shop?
Oh it's terrible.
I looked at a flimsy 2m USB-C to USB-C cable in the supermarket this morning. Compatible with Apple and Android. On rear the only thing specified was "rated 100W".
Cables are ONLY rated by current, and if for data, the number pairs/revision and maybe speed (Ghz etc). Never by power.
|
I do like some quotes from there:
Quote:
|
Big companies can develop technology. They just can't do it quickly.
|
Quote:
|
It's obvious that biotech or software startups exist to solve hard technical problems, but I think it will also be found to be true in businesses that don't seem to be about technology. McDonald's, for example, grew big by designing a system, the McDonald's franchise, that could then be reproduced at will all over the face of the earth. A McDonald's franchise is controlled by rules so precise that it is practically a piece of software. Write once, run everywhere. Ditto for Wal-Mart. Sam Walton got rich not by being a retailer, but by designing a new kind of store.
|
https://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
https://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html
Quote:
|
The only thing technology can't cheapen is brand. Which is precisely why we hear ever more about it. Brand is the residue left as the substantive differences between rich and poor evaporate. But what label you have on your stuff is a much smaller matter than having it versus not having it. In 1900, if you kept a carriage, no one asked what year or brand it was. If you had one, you were rich. And if you weren't rich, you took the omnibus or walked.
|
Quote:
|
The same pattern has played out in industry after industry. If there is enough demand for something, technology will make it cheap enough to sell in large volumes, and the mass-produced versions will be, if not better, at least more convenient.
|
Besides the fact that on megastores there are almost just cheap kind of cables (e.g.), and the firsts results on a big online store might be same thought, imho there is a tendence for what I see to have a different policy. Like I see on two supermarkets (yes, supermarkets as the ones that has foods too) brands,
casually both companies from northern EU, where (won't buy them bread, but) when they put an offer for some multiple-plug-adapters, or cables, or similars (also some working tools, screwdriwers, pliers..) they are quite good.
I mean the quality of the plastic, feelings on hands, the rubber, and yes durabilty too, thought.
Nothing in there is casual, and perhalps them decided to change policies about, because after a while people recognise and won't buy a thing that crashes just while pulling it out of the box.
https://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html (wasn't to know there was a book from those).