pascalxus

it really can be. It can be as vigorous as a walk down the street which is tremendously beneficial to your health. I know we've been conditioned to believe that excercise needs to be something specific like running or swimming, or tennis, etc. But, you just need to move your body. even gardening can be beneficial - the benefits of squating down are vastly underestimated.

but it needs to be a reminder for something you actually want. I've never purchased a coco-cola or any other soda in my entire life and never will, no matter how much they advertise to me.

Now, if they advertised some nice veggies or fresh fruit that could work but how often do you see ads for that? and how much are those veggies going to cost after all that advertisement? will it be cost effective in comparison to the veggies that didn't advertise? (i'm guessing not, otherwise they'd have done it by now, right?)

Ads are targeted at the masses. If most/all your interests deviate from the norm, ads won't be effective.

the fact that it's a macbook means you can develop apps for apple products whereas any other labtop that would be extremely difficult to do, if not impossible.

It's a fallacy to think that higher priced items are higher quality: people fall for this all the time. Those high priced jeans and that 20$ fancy pizza might be made of equally bad stuff as a 5$ little ceasers, you won't know unless you investigate.

And, low quality isn't always bad. Even the cheapest t-shirt and jeans in the world can last years if not decades: I know because I have them. I don't need to switch to another product because of "low quality".

Maybe I'm just less susceptible, but I've never thought: "am I enjoying my veggies less because I'm doing it wrong?" due to a sign in the grocery store.

As for milk, people talk about the 100s of milk choices. I don't see that at all. I don't drink cows milk. I see there's only 2 types of soy milk to choose from. And both of them contain added calcium sulfate. I have to go to a specialty store just to get unadulterated soy milk.

And, I simply don't let ads tell me what's pleasurable and what's not.

Now, reminder advertising could theoretically work on me. If there was an ad reminding me to buy certain types of veggies (cucumbers, spinach, broccoli, etc) just as I was running out. But my tastes and interests are so far removed from the average person that 99.99% of the ads are for things I would simply never buy and thus they are ineffective (how often do you see ads on the TV for fresh veggies or fruits or beans? ~ I rarely if ever see one).

Almost Everything people know about dairy is false, I've been saying that for years. The list of lies goes on and on: "Great for your bones", "part of a balanced breakfast", "High in calcium" (it is but your body can't absorb most of it), "good for your health (it's actually strongly linked to prostate cancer)", "Vitamin-D" (vitamin-D isn't even a vitamin, it's a hormone your body can produce all on it's own with exposure to sunlight).

So all those messages from the dairy industry are falling on MY deaf ears. Ads don't tell you about their product (at least not honestly most of the time), they tell you more about the people buying the product.

And, on top of all that, for all the talk of ads being everywhere, i don't get many intrusive ads. I don't have cable or any other paid subscriptions. there's almost no billboards where i live. the books i read don't contain any. hackernews has very few ads, etc.

if advertisers knew anything about me at all, they'd avoid targetting me to save money on useless ad spend. lolz maybe that's why I don't get much ads.

I'm not your typical consumer. I buy the cheapest thing of each category unless there's an overwhelming reason not to. Computer: macbook pro (not because of ads but because I had to in order to develop for apple products), phone: Iphone - got it for free as a handme down from my wife. Very few of the groceries I buy have labels on them: it's all fresh fruit, veggies, things from the bulk section, almost nothing in the grocery store I've bought is advertised. I don't eat processed food or any kind of food that comes in a box or prepackaged bag. When my fridge breaks down I will buy the cheapest fridge I can find unless there's data that shows some fridges are more reliable than others. I buy maybe 2 pairs of pants per decade, and when I do buy clothes it's usually at used clothing store, and I don't pay any attention to what the label says other than the size and type of material.

Brand almost never ever comes into my decision making process. that's why its so hard for me to believe. I buy the cheaper one every time unless there's overwhelming reason not to. Frankly, I don't understand how this isn't the default behaviour for everyone.

The only areas where advertising works on me is on the following (when they actually give me information about products I actually want): occassionally on movies (but even then it's a small percentage ~ most of the time i get whatevers i find on fandango ~ i've even missed some movies i wanted to watch because the ads didn't reach me or I forgot), occassionally the restaurant coupons (half price), metromile, maybe banking (since that actually does require trust) .

Metromile is wasting their money by retargetting me. I'll leave the second I find another insurance that's cheaper - I have absolutely 0 brand loyalty for almost everything. If anything, they're just reminding me to check around for cheaper services that may pop up.

Utility bills -> no choice therefore ads don't matter. Housing -> found on zillow . Zillow itself, someone told me about it (not advertisement).

phone plan - i really had to hunt to find usmobile - 8$/month for 100 minutes, 100 messages. I can't even imagine how much money the telecom industry has squandered on me without any effect at all.

ISP - At&t hits me ads all the time, and everytime I'm just reminded about how evil they are and I check around to see if there's any other better broadband providers besides the one I'm using right now. so their ads are actually having the opposite of the desired effect, same with comcast.

The reason all these ads don't affect me is because they all appeal to Emotion and unverifiable information. And that's not how I generally make my decisions.

For example, when at&t says they have the best network, that's completely useless to me because I can't verify that it's true, or at least it's hard to do so.

Because most ads appeal based on emotion and I don't use emotion to make my buying decisions, it means they simply don't work.

Your might be right about most people. (advertisers love to tell this to their CEO but they've been wrong about this before - just look at the 20 million dollar case study with Ebay and their wasted ad spend on google ads).

But, it really doesn't work on me 99.9% of the time. I know because I review all my spending habits and I can clearly see 1/2 of the products I buy don't even advertise. Ever seen an ad for cucumbers or tomatoes or other real food? or rotten robbies gas station? i have no idea what label is on my clothes. etc.

And even on the rare occasions when it does work, the vast majority of the ads still are completely wasted. How many times have I seen an ad for metromile, when I'm already a happy customer of theirs. their targetting must be awful.

Sometimes I use the product because I'm forced to: like when sharebuilder got bought out by etrade. how many times will I see the completely useless etrade ads over my lifetime? i mean I'm already their customer (by default), so all their ad dollars are completely wasted.

I have a hard time relating to these findings.

Advertisement almost never works on me. And, the few times it does work on me, I'm actually quite glad and appreciative because I only buy products I really want or really need.

If I look at all my credit card, amazon and ebay purchases for the last several years, which i do often, i see it's just the things I need/want: gas, maintenance, groceries a few times going out to eat, etc. almost 0 merchandise, those things don't make me happier.

It's pretty rare that I see an appealing advertisement (to me). but it does happen.

ads don't really say much about the product. but, I do find them interesting because they say a huge amount about segments of our population: their hopes, their dreams, their perceptions, how they want to be seen, how much they care what others think, etc. it's a great case study for humanity.

Name/brand recognition doesn't mean it "worked". In order for it to have worked, you need to actually spend money on the product or cause someone else to spend money on the product.

Not much. Cleaning your house counts as excercise too. It's every bit as healthy as walking and then some because your using your whole body, and squating and moving around.

it barely exists. Most houses don't look nice at all, that 's just because there's little demand for nice looking houses - it's just space people are after with lots of concrete and garages.

It's true that newer phone used to be better than older phones.

But, we're getting to the point where newer phones really aren't any better than older ones.

These stories are so common, when I read it, I was thinking it was a precise description of my own brother. My brother who earns 6 times less than I purchases a 1000$ Samsung phone whereas I don't buy any phone at all and just use the handme-down from my wife, for 0$. It's a 5 year old iphone6 but still works Great. His other expenses are much lower though: for example, he has subsidized housing which means he pays almost nothing for rent. and he has no car, since he can bike to work.

Advertisment almost never works on me, so it's hard for me to imagine it's so effective on everyone else.

Yup, my 4 year old sings in the car whenever we're on a trip. Only problem is, you don't get to pick what's playing and there's NO volume control. lol.

That we're somehow wealthier than ever is a great misconception.

GDP per capita and even GDP per capita adjusted for PPP is also misleading because it uses the wrong basket of goods: focusing on things that dont matter.

People forget, wealth is not money. Wealth is the things you buy with money. Wealth is when you can afford the essentials of life: Shelter, food, water, medical insurance, education and transportation (with the costliest ones being Shelter and medical insurance). Consider the number of working hours the average person needs to expend to afford shelter and compare that to 500 years ago. I think you'll find that there hasn't been much improvement. In fact, in CA and bay area, I think you'll see that we're working even longer hours to afford basic shelter than 100s of years ago.

I don't know why this is being downvoted, this is an excellent question. it's commonly known that companies/stocks are priced using all available information thus an advantage the company may have is already priced in, hence why some highly successful companies trade at very high PEs.

Good on you for attempting to solve this problem.

This part of your comment is absolutely key and worth repeating: "My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. That is the real challenge"

i mean, i know airpds are the new platform on top of which things will be built.

"what the tech can do"? you mean the airpods?

what else is there?

It's an excellent write up and there's great lessons in there for all of us. And, it's great that he started talking to actual doctors, if only he had done that first. I know i've made that mistake many times.

As for the medical industry: the idea is to keep people sick as long as possible. You can't make money from people who get better or people who die.

This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but:

Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1 carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to the World health organization.

I think we should be asking: What problem does it solve? why is that problem important? and why would someone use that new solution rather than what they're already using.

Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too.

People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even be willing to try alternatives.

Impossible meat has a great start and I think their market share will continue to increase. But, there's an immense amount of variety in the meat market and the alternative meat industry still has a huge amount of work to do to address it.

And, don't forget, there's always CalFile. I've heard it's provided by the Gov for Free!! One of the posters here had mentioned it earlier in the year and I don't want to forget

Chinese nationalism is deeply engrained in their belief system. It's also taught from early ages as well.

This time is different: Interest rates are the lowest they've ever been and the money spigot is on full blast. In such an environment zombie companies can continue to exist for a very long time, continuously getting new rounds of funding despite having very low or no profits at all.

>> from the article: "No matter the actual business of the company at hand, it’s probably calling itself a tech company and reaping the rewards of that sweet, sweet VC cash."

We saw very rapid development in technologies in the 20th century. In the 21st century tech is still rapidly developing but far far less impactful. It seems the only areas we've really made large progress in is Entertainment and medical capabilities. If you look at US GDP growth per capita for the last 20 years, we're down to about 1%, far slower than the preceding 100 years.

People kind of assume that tech development will always be there and even increase but I don't think that's an assumption we can make.

To be truely impactful, the development needs to be in areas that are important to humanity. Where are those areas? it's all in Maslow's heirarchy of needs. Most human beings (99% ~ even those in supposedly 1st world countries) are at the bottom-most level: Shelter, Food. In this modern world, you need 3 other things as well: Transportation to go to the job, education to get the job, and medical insurance to keep the money you earn. to be truely impactful, innovation needs to happen in one of those 5 major areas: shelter, food, transporation, education or medical.

As much as I'd be greatful for being paid to start a blog, I'm not sure what the point of it is. Aren't there like a bazillion blogs out there already that are absolutely desperate for traffic.

And on the other hand, as a consumer of such information, I find it harder and harder to find original indie blogs. I'm still looking for a good blog search engine that allows me to find blogs on Niche topics. does anyone else have this problem? or is it just me? the best i can usually find is something on quora.

The decision of the Mayor back in 2012 to attract a bunch of Tech companies to the city that wanted growth the LEAST, is highly questionable. It's just such a contradiction of what the locals wanted. And, now we're paying the price, litteraly.

In SF, I used to think the answer was to build more housing, lots more. But, after hearing from sooooo many NIMBYs and so much extreme angst against any kind of growth, I've come to realize that SF doesn't deserve tech companies or any companies for that matter. It's time to accept what the locals want and start acting like it. Remove the incentives for companies in SF and start applying disentives.

Tech needs a new home, a new city, perhaps one that hasn't been built yet. Perhaps one where innovation will be welcomed instead of stifled. One, where inclusiveness is all encompassing (and applies to housing) and not just a catchphrase used to be politically correct. One that isn't covered in poop. A city where enough housing supply can be built for everyone.

why not just tax all phone calls with a 1 cent tax. that should stop most robocalls.

If you can get 600K at FB or Snap, you must be a top 3% candidate, according to FYI.levels, right?

That's awesome that you got so much success from interviewing at FAANGS. But, I'd say you've done a lot better than most people could. So, give yourself some credit.