Tag: Consumers

One Man’s Trash Is Everybody’s Problem

 

This summer, archaeologists from The Public Archaeology Facility of Binghamton University in New York State are digging up the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair near Bethel, New York. They hope to uncover an accurate and comprehensive scheme of the place as it was originally laid out for that enormous event nearly 50 years ago, and then turn over their findings to the museum on the site in time for the 50th anniversary in August 2019. Besides broken glass and other relics from the event, the archaeologists dug up numerous pop tops from aluminum beverage cans.

 

Unlike the stay-tab which replaced it in the late 1970s, the pop top tabs from the late 1960s and early 1970s were meant to be pulled entirely off the top of the can by the consumer. The consumer then had a piece of waste in addition to the waste the can itself would become after emptying, and many consumers simply dropped the pop tops on the ground, where they not only littered the environment but on account of their sharp edges became a safety hazard for anyone in bare or lightly shod feet, as Jimmy Buffett noted in his song “Margaritaville”. Some people dropped the pop tops into the can either while they were drinking from it or afterward, and then some of those people were unfortunate enough to swallow the pop top or otherwise injure themselves when it resurfaced during their drinking.

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A litter trap on the Yarra River in the vicinity of Melbourne, Australia. Photo by Biatch3.

 

When a Reynolds Metals engineer named Daniel F. Cudzik invented the stay-on-tab, or Sta-Tab, in 1975, he solved the littering and safety problems of pop tops. Some inconsiderate people still tossed the cans wherever they liked when they were done with them, and unfortunately it appears a certain percentage of people like that will always be among us, but the problems originating from improperly disposed cans have lessened since the 1960s with the adoption of better designs and recycling programs. Since then, and particularly after bottled water took off in popularity in the 1990s, plastic beverage containers have taken over from aluminum cans as a major littering and safety problem.

Engineers and designers have created biodegradable water bottles in the past several years, but so far the bottled water industry has not embraced their inventions, and may never do so without consumers pushing themselves and the industry in that direction. Part of the reason for delay is the relatively abstract nature of the problem for many consumers. Yes, empty plastic water bottles may litter roadsides, where they are unsightly, but they don’t really pose a physical danger to people, unlike aluminum pop tops and cans with their sometimes sharp edges. The physical danger from plastics all seems to happen to animals, many of them far away and out of sight, such as the ones who live in the oceans, where all that plastic garbage ends up and lingers for decades. It was only recently that scientists discovered we, like our animal cousins, are also ingesting plastics, though in our cases we are more dainty in our discernment in that we choose only to take in micro-plastics, meaning those we cannot see. What goes around, comes around, and there’s no escaping it.

In Mike Nichols’s 1967 film The Graduate, Mr. McGuire, played by Walter Brooke, has some advice for Ben Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman. In a later scene, Hoffman’s character floats on a raft in the pool at his house and sips a beverage from a can which has two v shaped openings in its top, the marks of having been opened with a can opener, or church key, the most common way to open such a can before pop tops became widely available on beverage cans in the mid 1960s.

Most people can be coached to some degree to change their behavior, and once they are understand viscerally that a problem exists because of their past behavior, many of them can become open to change. They have to feel the problem personally, though, because an abstraction doesn’t always get through to them. A minority of others are hardheads, and little can be done to persuade them to change their ways beyond legal sanctions and public shaming. The mounting problem of plastic litter shares this model of personal and public behavior with the looming dangers of a warming climate. For too many people the problems remain abstractions because the effects can be distant, indirect, or slow moving. The rest of us can’t wait for those people to come around, because they may only do so when they are up to their necks in seawater while standing in their front yards, fighting off all the plastic junk bobbing in the water, and obstinately refusing to reconcile their beliefs with what they see and feel around them.
— Techly

 

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The Right Tool

 

Attempting a do it yourself (DIY) repair of something around the house or of a vehicle is mostly regarded by onlookers as well as by the eager amateur repair person as virtuous, valiant, and frugal, though after much frustration the do it yourselfer may not mind foregoing the admiration of family and friends in exchange for a functional repair. People get in over their heads and underestimate the value of technical skills honed from years of experience that the professional possesses, as well as often expensive specialty tools. Too many times the amateur tackles a problem using a limited arsenal of tools, and perhaps more critically, limited knowledge and zero experience.

DIY Toilet in Nature
DIY Toilet in Nature. Photo by Formerchemistuow. Sometimes the right tool is a telephone for calling on the help of a professional.

 

What is the problem? It’s a simple enough question, but one which an amateur will often follow circuitously through trial and error, while the professional, having likely seen the problem before, will cut right to the core of the issue. One of the best tools an amateur can employ when confronted with a difficult repair is the judgment to know his or her limitations and when the time has come to call in a professional. Sometimes that judgment is taken away from the do it yourselfer by manufacturers, particularly of electronics. The demise of Radio Shack, once a resource for electronics hobbyists and people buying parts for repairing their equipment themselves, is as much a testament to the connivance of manufacturers in shutting out amateur repair efforts on their devices as it is to the incompetence of Radio Shack management. Consumers have also acquiesced in the past generation to the accelerated obsolescence of electronic devices, and are far more inclined than they were forty or more years ago to replace malfunctioning equipment rather than repair it, either by themselves or by hiring a professional.

A montage from The Andy Griffith Show 1964 episode “Bargain Day”, in which Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by Andy Griffith, continually exhorts Aunt Bee, played by Frances Bavier, to call the repair man to fix their broken freezer. Aunt Bee, in a penny wise and dollar foolish way, fusses and drags her feet about calling the repair man because of the expense, meanwhile risking the loss of an entire side of beef she had hoped to store in the freezer.

For do it yourselfers, quick diagnosis of the problem needing repair is key, because otherwise they are prone to waste time, energy, and expense in labor and materials casting about blindly in hopes of isolating the problem. The professional will likely save that trouble and expense. Not always, but most of the time. Where a sophisticated diagnosis is required, such as it can be with electronics, the professional is likely to possess the proper equipment. Not all amateurs have the wherewithal to run out and buy expensive diagnostic equipment for what may only be a one time use. More and more of the devices we bring into our houses require special knowledge and tools to fix, if indeed a fix is possible or economical, and unless the defects they develop can be recognized by us quickly we are probably better off leaving the repair to a professional. The alternative is to limit ourselves to mechanical and electronic devices that were available one hundred years ago, when a person with a standard set of household tools could still effect many needed repairs without undue aggravation. In the twenty-first century, the end of Radio Shack ought to signify for most of us where we stand in our willingness and ability to repair things ourselves.
— Techly

 

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Far from Home Cooking

 

Some of the processed food for sale at grocery stores and restaurants purports to be like home cooking, and other processed foods make a name for themselves by advertising their intention to go beyond what’s available from home cooking. The Doritos Locos Taco from the fast food restaurant Taco Bell, and the Double Down Chicken Sandwich from Kentucky Fried Chicken are advertised as so different and so unlike what home cooks could easily whip up that to get the full experience at a decent price consumers might as well visit the restaurants and order those items because it’s easier than trying to duplicate them at home.

 

Mina Van Winkle, head of the Lecture Bureau of the U.S. Food Administration, explains Victory gardening and food processing to support the war effort LCCN2016650259
This 1917 photograph depicts Mina Van Winkle, head of the Lecture Bureau of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I, explaining Victory gardening and food processing to support the war effort. Photo from the Library of Congress.

When processed food first became widely available to American consumers in the period between the two world wars, the aim of the purveyors was to assure consumers the products were as good as home made and perfectly safe. There was no specific attempt to manufacture exotic foodstuffs, though from the start convenience was a selling point. The trend continued after World War II, with refinements learned by manufacturers in producing canned foods like Spam on a massive scale for service members overseas. Food processors marketed TV dinners in the 1950s with assurances of quality and convenience, not with any idea that they were different or better than what a home cook could produce given the time and inclination.

STAY ON THE JOB. PROCESSED FOOD IS AMMUNITION - NARA - 515482
World War II poster from the Office for Emergency Management of the Office of War Information.

It was in the post World War II years that fast food operations, some of them, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, with beginnings in the years before the war, really began taking off in popularity, expanding across the landscape along with the newly built interstate highway system. Their offerings were traditional, and like the processed convenience foods for sale at supermarkets they mainly stressed the convenience of their food and that it was as good as homemade. It was for pricier restaurants to claim their food was better and fancier than homemade. Consumers visiting fast food establishments mainly wanted assurance the food was cheap, fast, safe, and of a quality on a par with homemade.

"YOU TOO ARE NEEDED IN A WAR JOB. WORK IN A FOOD PROCESSING PLANT." - NARA - 516235
World War II poster from the Office for Emergency Management of the Office of War Information.

In the past 20 years all that has begun to change as consumers have drifted away from cooking the majority of their meals from scratch themselves to either resorting to convenience foods from the supermarket or eating out. The emphasis has changed in the marketing of supermarket convenience foods and fast food restaurant offerings from nearly apologetic claims that they are as good as homemade to stating that they are beyond that and are now in varying degrees gourmet, healthy, exotic, and even comparable with fancy restaurant food at half the price. Their claims are not all hyperbole, and for the most part a well-made TV dinner of today tastes better and is a better value than a comparable TV dinner of 30 or 40 years ago. Food scientists and technologists have indeed done wonders.
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A typical TV dinner of the post World War II era. Photo provided by Smile Lee.

The question remains, however, whether consumers are any better off or healthier for having largely abandoned home cooking in the first place. Yes, the taste and quality and variety of convenience foods from the supermarket and fast foods from inexpensive restaurants have never been better, but at the same time people have never been fatter, with all the health problems that come with being not just overweight, but obese. It seems there’s a hidden price to all the convenience and deliciousness whipped up by food scientists in the labs of giant food companies like Nestlé and Yum! Brands (owners of Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, among others). That’s something worth pondering the next time you’re shopping the frozen food aisle of the supermarket or cruising a commercial strip for a fast food outlet for your next meal – whether the exotic, fancy dishes they’re offering at low prices are really as good a value as they want them to appear to be, with their mile long list of indecipherable ingredients and unrealistically slight portion amounts, which make their salt, sugar, and fat percentages look more reasonable than they really are. No one but the rich can get away with eating fancy, rich foods every day, because they have the money for all the doctors and health spas it takes to balance out an indulgent lifestyle. They’re not eating the cheap, ersatz stuff anyway.
— Techly

 

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The Price of Natural

 

The word “natural” on packaged foods does not mean much anymore since there are no standards to uphold it, unlike the case with “organic” on a label, but one area where consumers have been paying attention and making their preference known over the past 20 years is in the labeling of vanilla extract. A significant enough number of consumers have come to prefer vanilla extracted from real, natural vanilla pods that agribusinesses like Nestlé have switched from synthetic to natural vanilla. Synthetic vanilla is a chemistry laboratory product isolated from compounds in wood pulp or petroleum, and for decades in the latter half of the twentieth century it was the preferred choice of most consumers because it was cheap relative to natural vanilla extract, it’s flavor was at least acceptable, and for the most part consumers were not paying attention and didn’t make a distinction between the synthetically derived product and the natural one.

 

Food ingredient and nutrition labels provide more information to the consumer now, and more people are becoming label readers. Not all of them may know the provenance of synthetic vanilla extract, but a large segment decided they would prefer the natural stuff, and they voted with their dollars. The result was an increase in demand, something growers, the majority of them in Madagascar, were not prepared for since demand for their product had steadily dwindled for decades and they had cut back production or gotten out of the business altogether. Natural vanilla had always been an expensive spice, typically second only to saffron in price on the world market. Competition from synthetic vanilla producers had depressed prices, however, and combined with the drop in demand many farmers saw little profit in the lean decades.

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Vanilla planifolia flowers. Photo by Michael Doss.

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Vanilla planifolia vine growing up a tree on a plantation on the island of Réunion, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, and is a major producer of natural vanilla. Photo by David Monniaux.

The rather sudden spike in demand for natural vanilla in the past 20 years caused a scramble to reinvest in production, a process which lagged behind demand by as much as five years because of the the time and labor involved in growing and processing marketable vanilla pods. The type of vanilla most popular around the world is Vanilla planifolia, a climbing vine orchid native to Mexico and Central America. Oddly, even though the plant is native to Mexico, and Mexico continues as a big producer of natural vanilla, the place that grows the vanilla most people prefer is Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast of Africa. Soil and other environmental factors must play a role in the end result, because while the type of vanilla orchid is the same in both parts of the world, consumers express a definite preference based on variations they can detect in taste. At any rate, Madagascar currently produces up to 80% of the world’s natural vanilla.

Vanilla planifolia needs to grow three or more years before it will flower, and then each flower remains open for only one day, at which time in Madagascar it must be hand pollinated because of the lack of resident animal or insect pollinators. In Mexico, there is a species of bee that tends to the vanilla flowers. After pollination, nearly a year passes before the pods containing the seeds develop, and after that there is washing, sun curing, sorting, and other handling that goes into producing the dried black pods which have the tiny, flavorful seeds that are the ultimate object of all this careful tending. The labor intensiveness of producing natural vanilla, added to the time involved, drives its price up. It would be a mistake, though, to think individual laborers are well-paid for their work on such an expensive agricultural product; as always, it is typically the people in the middle, the traders, who reap the greatest rewards.

Vanille - La Réunion
Dried, cured vanilla pods in a basket on the island of Réunion. Photo by tirados joselito.

A year ago in March, a cyclone made landfall on Madagascar with the force of a category four hurricane. Dozens of people were killed, and it was feared damage to the vanilla crop would worsen the worldwide shortage which had driven prices up to a record $600 per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in 2017. The most recent low point in the price was 2002, when dried vanilla pods sold for $20 per kilogram. That’s the price for the agricultural product, of course, not the price after it has been further processed into the vanilla extract available to consumers at supermarkets. It turned out damage to the vanilla crop in Madagascar was not as bad as commodity brokers originally expected.

The opening of the 1984 David Lynch film Dune, with Virginia Madsen as Princess Irulan.

Still, for individual consumers living in cool climates outside the natural growing range of Vanilla planifolia, hedging against a volatile, expensive world market for natural vanilla, with too many of its bets placed on the crop in one place, Madagascar, hedging against all that by growing this orchid in a pot by a windowsill may be a bit of a stretch, considering the advice of some growers who say the plant needs to grow more than ten feet before it will produce flowers, and even then there’s no guarantee of getting pods that will yield recognizably tasty vanilla seeds. It might be a better bet to buy a lot when the market is low, or in other words, hoard it. Vanilla extract always contains a hefty percentage of alcohol, after all, as people who are apt to sneak a drink now and then have always known, and the alcohol is an excellent, natural preservative.
— Izzy

 

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Name Your Price

 

Now that Christmas is past, shoppers will be out looking for bargains as retailers slash prices in an attempt to clear inventory off their books before the end of the year. That brings up the subject of pricing, which beyond the obvious need to cover costs and generate profits, leaves some leeway in the ongoing, never ending psychological games between sellers and buyers.

 

Why $9.99 instead of $10.00? What about the typesetting of that $9.99? Is $9.99 better? How about 9.99, dropping entirely the suggestion that the seller is asking for real money from the buyer? Gas stations price fuel at even finer increments, using tenths of a cent, such as $2.299/10 per gallon. These pricing systems seem like they have been around forever, and it’s surprising to learn they are no older than 150 years, and in the case of gasoline pricing no older than the 1920s or 1930s.

1894 - Koch & Shankweiler Newspaper Ad2 Allentown PA
An 1894 newspaper advertisement for Koch & Shankweiler clothiers in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The fractional pricing is almost all in quarter dollar increments.

Retailers started pricing items at fractions of a dollar rather than rounding the price to the nearest dollar in the late nineteenth century partly in response to inflation which raised their costs past one dollar for many things, and partly to convey to shoppers that they were getting a bargain. When inflation raised the cost of most items in a department store past a dollar, some retailers responded by rounding up the price to the consumer to the next dollar, while others retained fractions in their pricing. Eventually the retailers who retained fractions found they sold more than the retailers who rounded up, and the same principle applied to items within their own stores where they tried the different tactics. For reasons that psychologists and sellers dispute to this day, buyers like fractions of a dollar in pricing, and they respond by purchasing those items over the ones that are priced at rounded dollars, even though those prices may be only one cent higher.

Vintage Radio Advertising - Crosley Radio, "Crosely Again Lowers Prices", "Big Reduction in Famous Trirdyn and Other Radios", From the Literary Digest, January 17, 1925 (9700961943)
A Crosley Radio advertisement in a 1925 edition of The Literary Digest. Prices were at whole dollars or at half dollar fractions, underscoring how even in the early twentieth century fractional pricing was uncommon. Photo from Flickr user Joe Haupt.

At first retailers thought fractional pricing attracted bargain shoppers, and therefore they used the tactic principally for sale items. By the 1920s, however, fractional pricing became commonplace throughout retail marketing, regardless of whether items were on sale or not. The one area where sellers rarely use fractional pricing is for high profile, luxury items, presumably because those shoppers look down on bargain hunting, and because at a certain high dollar amount adding a fraction to the end of the price becomes ludicrous. The only aspect that needed fine tuning was the exact fraction that worked best as a compromise for sellers and buyers. It appears that fractions in the ninetieth percentile have worked best, which is why prices at half dollar fractions, which were once popular, are rarer now than they once were.

As for gas stations’ pricing fuel down to tenths of a cent, that practice dates to the 1920s and 1930s when government entities first started taxing gasoline to raise money for road building and maintenance. The government taxed the fuel sellers, and the sellers passed the cost on to consumers. When gasoline cost ten or fifteen cents per gallon as it did in those times, it made sense to fine tune fractional pricing down to tenths of a cent. The business of selling gasoline retail has always run on slim margins, which is why those businesses have always diversified, first by offering automobile mechanical services, and now more commonly by selling convenience items at a high markup. Gasoline retailers have learned that consumers will drive a mile down the road to save a penny a gallon on fuel, and since the gasoline on offer is essentially a loss leader for the higher priced items the retailer sells, it makes sense even in these times of fuel prices in the range of dollars for retailers to retain the tenth of a cent fractional pricing that could make the difference in their profitability from month to month.

The 1980 comedy Used Cars, directed by Robert Zemeckis, included this television advertisement for one way of dealing with high prices. Note that the Mercedes luxury car price is rounded to $24,000. Warning: foul language.

The latest development in the continuing tug of war between sellers and buyers that deserves mention is the one in which grocers have challenged the math skills of shoppers beyond simply rounding fractions off to the nearest dollar by posing more complicated division skills, such as 4/10.00, 5/12.50, or 10/16.90. These are not terribly difficult math problems, and many people would not need a calculator to figure them out. This pricing ploy is instead an attempt by the retailer to get the consumer to buy more of the item not only by suggesting it is a great value, but also by confusion over what the price is per unit.

Particularly when the consumer has to compare one item priced in such a manner to a similar item priced in the same way, the laziness and confusion of the shopper works to the advantage of the retailer. In that case, even buyers who do not have a calculator with them should take comfort in understanding that by law in most places they do not have to pick up the suggested amount in order to take advantage of the advertised price. A “Buy one, bet one free” promotion, for example, does not necessarily require the shopper to pick up two items in order to receive the benefit of buying only one item at half price. As always, however, caveat emptor – buyer beware – and check with the store manager to be sure of the applicable policy.
― Vita

 

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Not Everyone Likes Pai

 

Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), requires confirmation by the Senate as a board member before the end of the year to continue with the agency. If he is not confirmed for another four year term and is removed from office, the current president will most likely replace him with another Republican and advance the nomination of that person or another of the board’s two Republican members to the chairmanship. In the end, getting rid of Chairman Pai may not alter the current course of the FCC toward revoking Net Neutrality rules and allowing the merger of the Sinclair Broadcast Group with Tribune Media, but his removal does offer the opportunity to change course, however slim that may be.

Since his advancement to the chairmanship at the beginning of the year, Mr. Pai has worked to dismantle Net Neutrality under the Orwellian rubric “Restoring Internet Freedom”. The public comment period on the proposed rule change closed at the end of August, and now everyone awaits the decision of the five member board, three Republicans and two Democrats. It’s difficult to say what may be taking so long, considering that Mr. Pai has the votes, and by his actions earlier in the summer it appeared the fix was in anyway. Perhaps he’s having a hard time drafting the new regulations and lowering the bar enough to reflect proper deference to the major players like Comcast.

In the 1972 film Cabaret, Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey sing “Money, Money”.

The other major issue on Chairman Pai’s agenda is the merger of Sinclair with Tribune Media, which he favors. To advance his position for taking away regulations that treat Internet Service Providers as common carriers and therefore subjects them to rules of Net Neutrality, Mr. Pai uses language about protecting the consumer and getting the government out of the way of innovation, yet when it comes to allowing one enormous broadcast company, Sinclair, to become even larger and therefore monopolize some smaller media markets around the country, he suddenly and conveniently forgets his previous arguments. Monopolies have historically neither looked out for consumers in any way other than to take their money, nor have they had any incentive to innovate in any way other than how to take even more money.


The comments from the public in favor of keeping Net Neutrality regulations in place have outstripped the comments against, and to the limited extent the public has been paying attention to the Sinclair/Tribune merger, most are against it. Will the FCC, and in particular Chairman Pai, listen to the public or to corporate interests? It’s not hard to imagine the answer to that question if you subscribe to the wisdom of the comedian Lily Tomlin, who said “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” Be that as it may, the public retains the option through Congress to say to Mr. Pai “You’re fired!”
― Techly

Dick York Bewitched 1968
“My, What Big Ears You Have”, a 1967 episode of the sitcom Bewitched, with Dick York as the beleaguered Darrin Stephens, whose mother-in-law has cast a spell on him that causes his ears to grow every time he lies.

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Hopheads

 

The craft beer industry has expanded since the 1980s from a handful of breweries to thousands, increasing consumer choices along the way and boosting local economies over the profits of huge corporations. In the 1970s, the brewery industry in the United States was diminishing to fewer choices for consumers as small, local breweries went out of business or were bought out by larger competitors, and their distinctive brands of beer disappeared.

The effect could be seen in national television advertising of the time, where only a few big brands could afford to compete. Even the beers on sale that did not appear to be sub-brands of the major players were not much different than them in flavor and makeup, only in price, usually being cheaper knock offs. To get a taste of something different and a little better in the late 1970s, American beer drinkers turned to European imports. The beer market had become like the wine market, where American brands were viewed as okay for everyday drinking, while the European product was considered superior in quality.


That started to change in the early 1980s with the startup of some local craft breweries that eventually gained national prominence, notably Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada in northern California. American beer drinkers once again had a choice among domestic varieties, even as the biggest national brands became more than that, expanding into multinational corporations. The return of local and regional breweries, and in a few cases breweries that reached a national market, added consumer options because the new breweries were not interested in competing with the multinational outfits in producing the same old watery lagers.

Narrenzunft Tettnang Hopfennarr Narrentreffen Meßkirch 2006
A figure decorated in representations of hops at a festival in Germany in 2006. Photo by Andreas Praefcke.

A funny thing happened, however, on the way to a new land of craft breweries specially tended by artisans who labored as much for their own enjoyment as that of their appreciative customers. For one thing, the big multinationals took note of the new phenomenon, also known as competition, and decided that unlike how they had bought up small competitors in the decades before the 1980s and subsumed the competitors’ operations within their own, they would now ride the craft brewery wave by retaining all the packaging, logos, and lingo of the smaller outfits when buying them out. Consumers would be none the wiser as they made their selection in the store, and when they got home and cracked open one of their favorite “craft” beers they still might not notice the difference, despite changes in brewing and bottling facility practices, particularly if the consumer’s taste buds were swayed more by psychological factors than by honest opinion.

The other thing that has skewed the craft beer movement is the tendency for snobs and macho men to take over and ruin the fun for some of us. The same culture that has made spicy food its domain seems to appeal to a minority of brewers and beer drinkers who always want to competitively up the ante on the hoppy bitterness of craft beers. That wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for the unfortunate side effect that these people tend to be snobs with undue influence on some consumers. “It’s so bitterly hoppy that it’s undrinkable,” the brow-beaten craft beer supporter complains. “Drink it and enjoy it, or you’re a philistine,” exclaims the snobby beer person, a category that didn’t exist until twenty years ago.

Beer Wars, a 2009 documentary by Anat Baron that examines how the big breweries have co-opted the market share of many smaller breweries.

Such people have been around for ages, trying to belittle others who are susceptible to their nonsense, all so that they can then feel more exalted in their self-proclaimed expertise. They’re usually men, and they have haunted wine circles in this country long before beer became a drink of anyone other than the common people. You can find them in restaurants which specialize in spicy foods, such as Thai, Indian, or Mexican, always advocating for heat regardless of flavor, because that’s the manly thing, you sissy. In a somewhat different way, they are also familiars of the online gaming community, and of computers in general, and long before that, when know-it-all males were still accustomed to getting their knuckles dirty with grease, the world of automobiles and mechanical contrivances.

Never mind them. The great thing about the craft beer movement of the last thirty years is that there are brewers now producing beers for every taste. If you still can’t find what you like, then the staple lagers of the big multinationals will always be available. Drink those if that’s your thing. If you do like the beers of the craft breweries, though, and you like the idea of supporting smaller businesses, please do read the fine print around the back of that cardboard six-pack package to make sure your dollars are going where you intend, and not into the coffers of the big watery lager breweries, pretending to be what they’re not.
― Izzy

 

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Old Before Their Time

 

The newest model of Apple’s iPhone is due out this month, and for people with deep pockets, or for those who absolutely have to have the latest and greatest from Apple, that’s good news. No doubt it will be an excellent product. But will it be worth the high price tag of $1,000 for a device that will be useful only two or three years before the user discards it? Apple’s smartphones have always been high priced, and they haven’t had any trouble selling them. Apparently enough people think iPhones are worth the high price to keep Apple churning out new models.

 

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“No Walking Smartphone” sign in Okinawa, Japan. Photo by Connie Ma.

And churn is what it’s all about for the phone manufacturers, who want consumers buying the newest model to replace models that are only one, two, or three years old. It’s not all planned obsolescence, a sneaky plot by the manufacturers, because some of the churn is driven by the pace of changing technology and by consumer’s desire to have the latest and greatest. There are things phone makers have done, however, to make an older model phone prematurely less useful, such as creating barriers to repair by independently operating technicians. So much of the hardware is proprietary and locked down in one way or another by the manufacturer, with parts and service available only from their own very expensive shops, that consumers usually come to the conclusion they might as well buy a new model.

The situation in the electronics industry regarding independent versus factory authorized repair shops is comparable to an automotive repair scene where nearly the only option available to the consumer is the auto dealership because independents have been nearly frozen out by the manufacturer’s practices. The difference is that, unlike with cars, which cost $10,000 or more, many consumers seem to feel that electronics, the prices for which are generally below $1,000, are items better replaced than repaired, considering how the manufacturers have rigged the economics. Smartphone manufacturers in particular have widened and exploited this chink in the market.

Laptop and desktop computers are also sophisticated electronic devices, yet consumers don’t generally feel the need to replace them every two years. They are also more easily repaired or modified by independent agents or by the consumer, by adding higher capacity Random Access Memory (RAM) modules, for instance. The software lasts longer, too, with some users still relying on ten or fifteen year old operating systems, though that can be a dubious proposition for some less technologically savvy users who don’t know how to keep their software’s security up to date. None of these attributes appear to apply to smartphones, even though the frugal consumer will note that higher end smartphones fall in the same price range as the average laptop or desktop computer.


Smartphones by their nature have a small form factor, and that can make it difficult for manufacturers to pack every consumer’s every desire into each new model, at least until technology progresses further. It’s hard to believe, for instance, that between a smartphone’s internal data storage and a fingernail sized card that a user can load into the device, the data storage capacity of smartphones is now in the hundreds of gigabytes, up from several dozen just a few years ago. The computing capacity of these handheld devices now surpasses that of the average laptop or desktop computers available to home users at the beginning of this century. There’s little question then that, dollar for dollar, smartphones are a good value when comparing their computing power and usefulness with laptops and desktops.

2012.11.26 mobile relationship
Mobile Relationship, a 2012 cartoon by Manu Cornet.

What is in question is why a smartphone should give a consumer only two or three years of use before needing replacement. That’s an expensive proposition for people who are struggling to meet the mortgage payments on a modest house. Do those people need iPhones instead of other phones that cost two or three hundred dollars? Of course not, especially since some of the high price of Apple products is driven by fashion, not usefulness. Now that many of the telecommunication carriers have adopted up front or installment payments for their phones instead of rolling the price into a monthly plan on a two year contract, effectively hiding the price as far as the consumer was concerned, maybe the question of why that consumer can expect less than half the useful life from a smartphone than from their home computer will come up more often, and if the question is asked by enough buyers, especially if they withhold some of their dollars by skipping this year’s model, then maybe the phone manufacturers will amend some of their questionable practices.
― Techly

 

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What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?

 

It’s fair to say subscribers to cable and satellite television services dislike their providers in large numbers due to high prices and poor customer service. With the option of internet streaming television service becoming more popular every year, cable and satellite subscribers are increasingly resorting to getting their television service the newest way and dropping the old service, though ironically they can sometimes still be tied to the cable company because it provides their internet service. For some people, particularly those with a low bandwidth limit on their internet service, the oldest way of getting television service can be the best, which is to say receiving broadcast television with an antenna.

 

Family watching television 1958
Family watching television, 1958; photo by Evert F. Baumgardner.
What, no rabbit ears? They must have had a rooftop antenna.

 

There is no such thing as an HDTV (High Definition Television) antenna except in the minds of marketers and confused consumers. An antenna is an antenna is an antenna. Standard definition and high definition digital signals are merely the format of the content that TV stations broadcast, not the method. The method is the same as it was when the format content was analog, and that is electromagnetic frequencies in the MegaHertz (MHz) band of the spectrum, in Very High Frequency (VHF) or Ultra High Frequency (UHF). Any antenna can pick up analog and digital signals as long as it is optimally configured to pull in those frequencies. That is known as the antenna’s “gain.”

 

It is the tuner in the television set that needs the capability of properly displaying the digital signal. That is why older analog television sets needed a digital converter box when the the digital television transition occurred in 2009. No one needed to go out and buy a different antenna then, but that didn’t stop unscrupulous or ignorant salespeople from selling plenty of “HDTV” antennas to confused consumers.

 

Because many of the new antennas being marketed as “HDTV” have a mod, futuristic profile, looking much different than the old rabbit ears indoor antennas and the old coat hanger outdoor antennas, consumers can come to believe they are not like those antennas, and marketers are happy to let them believe that. In truth, much of the new antenna designs are due to making them omnidirectional or UHF-only, both of which are not necessarily improvements over the old designs.

 

Log periodic VHF TV antenna 1963
VHF TV antenna, 1963; photo by Edward Finkel.
VHF-only antennas were used when few UHF stations were on air.

 

Omnidirectional antennas pick up signals over 360 degrees, but that also means they pick up a lot of interference and are weaker at picking up a strong signal from one direction. The old design, a large coat hanger antenna on the rooftop is still best at picking up a distant signal from one direction and tuning out interference from other directions. The UHF-only design allows an antenna to have a low profile because of the characteristics of the UHF signal, but at the obvious cost of not being able to pick up VHF signals. Manufacturers did this in the belief that after the digital transition there would be far fewer TV stations broadcasting over VHF because the digital signal is more efficient over UHF, and because they felt consumers would prefer the smaller profile.

 

Consumers prefer small profile antennas for some settings in particular, such as apartments and in neighborhoods with a homeowners association, where landlords and homeowners association boards would like to have them believe they are not allowed to put up a high gain antenna outdoors. Section 207 of The Telecommunications Act of 1996 says landlords and association boards cannot get away with blanket prohibitions. This is especially worth noting because clear reception of a digital signal requires a higher gain antenna than is necessary for receiving an analog signal. A preamplifier on the antenna can help, but because a preamplifier increases signal noise as well, it is best used for boosting the signal as it travels down a long cable run to the television set, rather than as a stopgap to make up for low gain from the antenna. A strong over-the-air signal is worth the trouble it can require, however, since the resulting television picture is much sharper than an equivalent cable or satellite derived picture. In order to carry hundreds of channels, cable and satellite companies need to compress their signal data, losing definition. Broadcast signals are not compressed.

 

Antena de TV - TV antenna (3149926874)
Modern UHF-only TV antenna; photo by Flickr user shaorang,
from Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz, España.
UHF elements in front are backed by corner reflector elements.

 

Whatever you do when you cut the cable or satellite TV cord, think twice before falling for the “HDTV” antenna ads currently airing. Like all con games, they rely heavily on the greed of the mark in believing he or she can get something for nothing. To that end, the TV huckster does not say directly that the mark can get all the same channels cable and satellite services provide, but through clever wording he allows the unsophisticated mark to infer that and jump to conclusions. The wreckage can be found in online forums. Tempting as it can be to jeer at these consumers for getting what they deserved, they are more deserving sympathy in the recognition that it has taken only one generation to pass for them to forget or never realize there once was a way to watch television without paying for it. These people often are purchasing the product because they are too poor to continue paying high cable and satellite bills. The marks more deserving contempt are some of the better educated high rollers who, ignoring reality, willed themselves to believe Bernie Madoff really was getting them something for nothing. They might have been better off cutting out the middle man and investing directly in the booming market for “HDTV” antennas.
― Techly

 

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Fired Up and Ready to Go

 

Samsung recalled their new Galaxy Note 7 smartphones last year after some of their lithium ion batteries overheated and either caught fire or swelled and caused other damage. The amount of batteries having problems was quite small in proportion to the amount manufactured, but once the reports got out, the resulting bad publicity constituted a fire of its own that Samsung needed to extinguish. Lithium ion batteries overheating and causing damage or dangerous fires is nothing new, and the problem is not limited to the batteries in Samsung smartphones or particularly in the Galaxy Note 7. What is relatively new are the quick charging and wireless charging features of some newer smartphones, including the Galaxy Note 7.

 

2011 SEMC BA750 back
Back of lithium ion battery,
showing safety warnings;
photo by Solomon203.

 

As batteries go, lithium ion types are particularly volatile and susceptible to malfunction from mishandling or careless manufacturing. That has been the trade-off for batteries that are lightweight, relatively energy dense, and capable of going through hundreds or even thousands of charging cycles without suffering from the memory defects of previous compact battery types like nickel cadmium. Consumer demand is for long battery life combined with quick charging, in a phone that is slim and light, and in the past few years cell phone manufacturers have responded by including quick charging and wireless charging features, while maintaining or even increasing battery capacity.

 

Wireless charging, while it has many benefits such as the capability of being a universal method of charging that eliminates dependence on proprietary wired chargers, is relatively inefficient and therefore loses more power to heat than wired chargers. Heat is bad for batteries, particularly lithium ion types. Quick charging technology that can add a 50% charge to a phone’s battery in 15 minutes requires strict attention to software design in both the charger and the phone to monitor the process, lest it cause overheating. Think of how it is possible for a NASCAR pit crew to dump over 20 gallons of fuel into a race car in less than 10 seconds using only gravity and special attention to venting, and do it safely, and then think of how complex the monitoring system must be for quickly charging a smartphone battery – which includes a flammable electrolyte – when you consider that charging introduces electricity into an essentially chemical process. It’s a wonder the proportion of failures isn’t higher than it is.

 

It turns out the defect in the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was largely a design error of squeezing too large a battery into the phone. Or the compartment in the phone was too small for the battery. Either way, because of the tight fit the positive and negative plates within the battery got closer to each other than they should, overwhelming the separators meant to keep them apart, and causing some of the batteries to overheat to a disastrous degree. No doubt Samsung’s corporate culture is to blame for this, because unlike other manufacturers they test their batteries in house, and in this case they were rushing to compete with Apple’s impending release of the iPhone 7. The design error was either overlooked in the rush or considered not serious enough to warrant a redesign delay that might keep Samsung from beating out their chief competitor in the smartphone market, Apple. Whatever the issue was, this time Samsung’s attempt to get a jump on Apple backfired.
― Techly

VoltaBattery
Alessandro Volta’s battery on display
at the Tempio Voltiano Museum
in Como, Italy; photo by GuidoB.

 

 

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