I remember stopping one time when it was twenty below zero this winter, no one was at the pumps and the same commercial was playing and not a single pump's sound was in sync with another. I felt like I was in a movie about a dystopian future.
Somewhere out there, advertisers are paying dollars for those commercials, and in many cases no-one is listening, or worse - it's causing active irritation to the people who are.
If you think of the commercials as oil, and the speaker systems and infrastructure as pipelines, then cases like this where commercials are on incessant loop are like an unbridled oil spill.
Unfortunately, many advertisers likely aren't metric-savvy enough to realize they're being scammed and not getting a return on their investment; the folks selling the airtime likely take a skim of their deals and use it to wine and dine the advertisers' own staff.
Purchase and persuade one or two layers of staff and management, and you're unlikely to get too much organizational pushback.
Instead, there should be costs placed on the measurable negative externalities here: the stress caused to people who experience this noise pollution, the devaluation of the otherwise quiet, productive environments it seeps into, and the opportunity cost from the resources wasted on building the infrastructure to make it possible in the first place.
Visuals you can look away from. Audio is a form of torture.
I really appreciate Costco gas stations for their no bullshit, pay money, fill gas strategy.
Kind of like an open plan office, you mean.
Actually, you're in the dystopian future itself, it's just that "it's unevenly distributed." https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Future+unevenly+distributed&t=fpas...
The movie will come later.
Assuming they'll still make movies afterwards.
It's from a well-known Gibson quote. Using it the way a3n did is the hacker equivalent of a literary reference, easily recognisible to the well read.
Although in this case, it's simple enough to understand just by reading. Disengage google. Engage self.
Did they mean that they were holding in their hand, somehow, the actual future? That their hand was in tomorrow? No, they did not. What they meant was that the item they were holding would become commonplace in the future.
Think of a technology that became widespread from small beginnings. Let's use electricity as our example. There was a time when electricity was only available to the consumer in some large cities. One could have then said that electricity was the future. When people said that, did they mean that electricity had someone traveled back in time? No, they did not. What they meant was that in the future, electricity would be more commonplace, more widespread. In that situation, in some places - place with freely available electricity - the future had already arrived. In some places - places without freely available electricity - the future had not yet arrived. The future was unevenly distributed.
This isn't Metafilter.
It is Hacker News, though. Expecting people hanging around Hacker News to be familiar with some of the Hacker canon and culture isn't unrealistic.
At least in my country you'll get into trouble if you tear down billboards, alter advertisement panels/electronics and alike.
"Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you? You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company."
From a practical perspective, try pressing the second button down on the right. This will mute on most models.
I'd link to the relevant Black Mirror episode, but I'm sure we've all seen it.
> Dear <CUSTOMER NAME>,
> Your gas filling experience has been subsidized by our advertising partners (though of course the price went up 10% because we have to build tech to support this), as a result we are currently unable to supply gasoline while the pump based advertising is not being observed. You may contact your local gas station attendant but sadly due to our desire to comply with <HIPAA/other unrelated regulation> they will be unable to abort the ad servicing. Please be aware that the Terms of Service for this pump may change without warning and that by using our gas pump you have agreed to purchase at least one item featured in the advertising roll - failure to do so will be considered a breach of contract and may result in a fine of up to $100,000.
> Here at Friendly Gas we're all about maximizing the value to the customer!
> Thank you for your service,
> John Smith, Friendly Gas CEO
And... it might be a bit hard to enforce the breach of contract portion, but pretty sure everything else in that is legal in today's world.
source: learned by mashing all of those buttons in blind rage trying to get it to stop.
I was not happy.
And I wish I was exaggerating. Seven seconds.
Pro tip I came across online a bit back: pressing one of the buttons on the right will mute the screen. In my experience the button one down from the top on the right works.
"Free"
> If I have to listen to ads, that means the gas is free.
"Free"
Two subtly different but related (and debatable) definitions of the term.
It's like one of those companies that feels the right to force a full page ad on websites that needs to stay up for x seconds, or requires some special user interaction. It is (very unfortunately) effective and making people remember your brand but people hate you for it.
or, go to a random non-high-end department store or supermarket in Japan. Every couple of meters there's a ghetto blaster advertising something with "background" music on full blast, while there is already loud background music from the store itself. Extreme levels of cacophony and one of the couple of things I hate about that place with a passion.