For those who don't know, journalling apps universally suck. Especially when it comes to security.
Day One, the canonically recommended app, doesn't even locally encrypt their entries, so basically anybody can access it despite the veneer of a password on the app.
1. It has generated significant attention- which has value.
2. Like a BMW 1-series, I imagine the idea is that once people have the "beginner" version, they'll aspire to upgrade to the real thing. It gets people "on the boat".
3. Rolex sells a cheaper version of their flagship watch under the Tudor brand- it's virtually identical and hasn't diluted Rolex's brand value.
4. The funky colors is probably less to do with style and more a guarantee it'll never be confused for the "real" version.
That all said, I would definitely still be salty if I owned a Speedmaster. But I applaud Swatch for making bold and interesting moves- which doesn't exactly happen much in the luxury industry.
Because it’s a marketing stunt involving an investment I made; an investment I made with the implicit understanding there’ll be some protection for the brand’s dignity.
How would the brand lose "dignity" by doing a coop with their mother brand? Do you perceive the value of a OMEGA watch by the marketing instead of the watch making?
I don't really understand what you're talking about- but yes, the watch industry- like all luxury industries, is primarily driven by marketing. It's not a scam, it's just the nature of the industry.
Do you think Action Comics #1 would drop in value if DC reprinted it? No. It's worth $3 million because the collectors care about the history that represents and the rarity of finding the original. Otherwise it's just ink on shitty paper. Collectors are deciding the value of the original and it can't be manipulated by merely making a new version. Omega would have to start selling the real thing for less money to tank the price. A clone can't do that.
People aren't going to stop buying the original either. Think about knock off designer handbags. It's easy to get a really high quality fake. But no one is buying the fakes if they can have the real thing. A watch collector sure isn't buying the fake since the movement would play a big part in owning that specific model. You want the same model that went to the moon. Not the plastic version.
Even if the supply of the clone is not constrained, I bet some colours are more popular than others, leading to some natural rarity. And in 50 years if they stop making these things and regular people throw them away, that Pluto watch will be worth more than the Mars and a complete collection will be worth even more. All they have done is create another thing for watch enthusiasts to collect.
Let's not get into a long-winded debate about something that's well established, researched and at this point, proven.
There's a reason why Patek doesn't sell a $1000 version of their watch, or why Porsche doesn't make a Corolla competitor.
If you disagree, then you're free to do so. Just understand you're disagreeing with people with a lot more practical experience, knowledge and skin-in-the-game than you.
I don't know about watches, but Porsche does make a Corolla competitor; the VW Golf. I'm sure the analogy isn't perfect, but obviously large manufacturers want to compete across market segments which is why the same company makes Audis and Bugattis as well.
Also, as someone who's not that into watches - the Neptune and Mercury Swatches are gorgeous.
Porsche:VW::Omega:Swatch is a pretty good analogy, actually. In both cases you have a large conglomerate with different brands targeting different price points.
But they didn't compromise the Porsche brand to do so.
Brand prestige is huge. A much better example here is the Volkswagen Phaeton. A truly stunning product at a great price point - significantly better than the luxury cars it competed with - but it failed because no one wanted to spend their luxury money on a brand associated with affordable normal products.
Phaeton existed in a weird segment, it was like a gimped S-class for the price of an E-class.
It failed because there wasn’t a huge market for gimped S-classes among the E-class buying segment.
The only people interested in Phaetons ended up being corrupt mid-level politicians in eastern Europe, they had full time drivers but didn’t want to be seen in a S-class.
Also keep in mind that for the price of a V8 phaeton you could’ve had such cars as a V6 LS.
Had the phaeton been just a bit nicer, it could very well have survived. But that’s not the car VW built.
> There's a reason why Patek doesn't sell a $1000 version of their watch, or why Porsche doesn't make a Corolla competitor.
The minimum cost for an Omega watch is around $5,000. The Moonswatch that we're talking about here in this discussion is a Swatch. It may additionally have the Omega name on it, but anyone and everyone knows that it is a Swatch, produced to normal Swatch standards, on a Swatch assembly line. It has nothing to do with the line of mechanical Omega watches besides having the name on it.
The existence of an officially licensed Porsche toy car does not degrade the value of a real Porsche. Same for this Swatch.
You are using the same logic that would cause somebody to make statements like "Ads don't work on me because I know they're ads".
Don't treat people like they are rational, because they aren't. If you seriously think the Moonswatch isn't canabalizing Omega's brand cache- just ask yourself: If Casio put out the exact same product with the exact same design, would people be lining up to buy it?
You don't actually need to answer that, because as somebody else pointed out, the Pagani Speedmaster already tried it, and it clearly didn't work.
People aren't buying this because they like the design, they are buying it for the Omega logo.
Try to justify it however you will, but at the end of the day, that $250 watch is an Omega watch in the eyes of those who buy it. It might not be a "real" Omega, but it'll still be an Omega watch. And that's too bad for those with "real" Omegas. Because nobody wants to be lumped in with a bunch of hypebeasts and dead-beats who spend an afternoon lining up for a toy watch.
I have a more expensive watch but my daily d(r)iver is a Seiko SKX009. Indestructible and with a bracelet upgrade it looks great. And here in Asia you see a lot of marketing for Seiko, and tons of shops. And there’s always Grand Seiko if you want to make watch snobs STFU. Or mods if you want to out-nerd the watch nerds.
I don’t own a Toyota yet but I probably will buy one soon!
I still don't understand what you mean with the loss of dignity what is the loss of dignity? Do you mean that the arbitrary value you put on OMEGA watches should not be compromised by offering a cheaper version?
I'm not sure what there is to not understand? But yes, Swatch should not have released a cheaper facsimile if they wanted to maximize Omega's brand value.
by the simple fact that nobody will think more of Omega with this collaboration, some people will think less of it. Net-of-net, it'll be a decrease in general opinions, which leads to a general decline in market value.
Rolex sells a cheaper version of their flagship watch under the Tudor brand
Cheaper in this case means starting at around 3-5k$ not 300$. Also you have to be pretty into watches to know that Tudor is a Rolex brand. It's not really something they advertise.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about. But I think it's pretty basic common sense that nobody censoring information will explicitly admit to it.
This is the exact same response you'd get if it had everything to do with ~censorship~ attempting push back on anything that reduces a propaganda vector.
The difference is that in Western society (assume you're Western), we've agreed that people should have the right to think for themselves and decided what is right and wrong- so it should be up to them to decided what is propaganda and what isn't.
I must be confused because I don’t see how. Isn’t it the exact opposite?
GP is essentially saying “that’s what you’d say if you were lying” and I’m responding with a silly, opposing example of “that’s what you’d say if you were telling the truth”. They are both meaningless statements. The second serves to point out the meaninglessness of the first.
> it’s hard to imagine a modern day industry that isn’t “exploitative”
I think that’s the general sentiment, at least among young people. The statement “if you define x as exploitative then everything is” is exactly indicative of a systems problem and the solution can’t be shrugging and doing nothing unless you’ve already accepted your lot in life.
The near impossibility of sourcing goods that aren’t the result of worker mistreatment everywhere in the supply chain is nuts. You can’t vote with your wallet and you can’t vote with your votes.
The problem here is that by their sentiment, there has never been a single industry, at any point in history, that hasn’t been “exploitative”.
This is what happens when your definition of “exploitative” is based on a relative metric. Exploitative literally means “having a life that’s worst than average”- which by definition means there’ll always be people who are exploited.
There was a time where exploitation meant literally chattel slavery, now it means working a sub-optimal job. You even hear of how Investment Bankers are “exploited” because they work long hours.
Although I agree with the general sentiment of this article-
journalists gravitates towards their career not for the job itself. I think he's making a pure speculation on the "journalists have rich parents" point.
I think it might be something much simpler, like "journalists often can't find another job based on their english-adjacent degree; and the barrier to entry for journalism is very low".
Of course, when the barrier to entry is low- and most candidates are indistinguishable- you hire your friends; which inevitably leads to homogenization.
There was a thread on Twitter a while ago pointing out a slew of journalists who frequently wrote articles attacking tech companies and specifically how each of them came from wealthy families. This idea that journalists are by and large people from well to do backgrounds is an idea that has been floating around for a couple years now.
Edit: Here is a tweet in that vein Balaji in particular had a lot of tweets on the journalists are often from wealth idea.
I love it when "critical" of tech companies is transformed into "attacking". The tech industry is now the biggest industry in the world, ranking billions in profits every year, having the power to influence elections, human rights violation, etc. Of course they should be criticized and not get a free pass.
Too many years they were only reported as "startups" doing "good".
> The tech industry is now the biggest industry in the world
Is it though? I can’t find reliable sources (likely because “tech” isn’t specific enough), but some site says tech is 10.5% of US GDP. That’s not even close to being the biggest industry.
People were specifically upset with unfair negative articles it wasn’t about factual criticism.
The New York Times doxing a popular pseudo anonymous blogger for example Slat Star Codex, there were articles dragging people for making charitable donations just a lot of stuff that was more gossip and hit pieces injected with the journalist’s opinion and not news.
Also articles dragging tech for not being “diverse” when journalism has a much bigger lack of diversity problem.
> there were articles dragging people for making charitable donations
You mean articles stating correctly that donations are not a sustainable way of financing and tech billionaires should instead pay higher taxes? Cause that's the articles I remember and that's not an unfair article. Just one you and others may not agree with.
Then why not write an article advocating a higher taxes policy? Taxing doesn’t magically make money multiply in fact a donation managed properly can endow a charitable organization indefinitely that is never the case with government taxation since taxes are always spent and never invested. Your argument makes no sense.
I don’t understand how reporters apparently don’t advocate for higher taxes. Wealth tax has been a radar on political reporting beat for ages. Elizabeth Warren campaigned on it and tons of ink was spilled analyzing on if it would work, how it would work, and headlines made over bill gates being “scared” of it or whatever.
Additionally, it can be true that one endowment to a charity can keep the charity perpetual while also criticizing that charity overall is not a sustainable model of good in society broadly. One of the things that come to mind is that a billionaire is unlikely to fund an anti-billionaire charity, for example a charity for renters rights and renter organization Eg. Rent strikes and the like.
Reporters are always advocating based on what they believe are facts from their backgrounds. That’s why media in America are always covering less wealthy countries as “war-torn x dealing with militant y” and never the same language to America. There was a hilarious thread in which a Kenyan reporter did headlines on America the same way America reported Kenya.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with the other. I don’t even know why it was brought up as an alternative.
It would be unfair if the article was demonizing, say, Jack Dorsey for not paying enough in taxes, unless Jack has gone out of his way to lobby to get his tax burden lowered. Otherwise, he is merely living within the rules of the system, and the article should be attacking the politicians who are responsible for our tax laws.
The New York Times wrote article about the blogger in the same exact way articles about people in journals have always been written. Just because the blogger is generally in tech does not mean the New York Times has to treat him in some complete different way then any other subject.
Being critical of something immediately makes you into a “hater”. People have been trained to either be all in on something or to completely reject it. It’s really not allowed to be in the middle. “Pick a side”.
The problem is that alot of the "criticism" seems be around economic protectionism not actual criticism. They are critical that a tech company dare allow an a person from the unwashed masses to have as big of a megaphone for their speech as the gilded elites from an established journalistic outlet
Is it attacking people like Elon Musk to point out that he wants others to not be able to benefit from the same sorts of government assistance his companies have benefited from or is it simply pointing out he isn't being consistent?
No I believe the specific thing that set people off was a hit piece against the female CEO of Away a relatively small company that sells luggage. They tried to cancel her because she tweeted something about how she though many media outlets had low standards of reporting and much of their content bordered on liable.
They then wrote negative articles about her saying she should have been using her time to talk about other issues like BLM or Gay rights. The whole premise was ridiculous as if tweets are a limited resource.
> you hire your friends; which inevitably leads to homogenization.
This is very common, in many industries. Maybe moreso, with journalism (I am not very familiar with that industry).
Also "you hire people that don't make you uncomfortable."
I strongly suspect that this also happens with software development. "Cultural outsiders" (like me), have a very hard time getting in the door. I am quite sure that one reason that many older folks don't get hired, is because CEO <= 30, and doesn't want people around, that make them even slightly uncomfortable. Since they're the boss; what they want, they get. In "classic" corporations, CEOs are generally in their 50s, or older, and don't feel particularly challenged by older folks. They have to hire younger folks; even if it makes them uncomfortable.
I've learned the value of a "heterodyne" workplace. There is definitely friction, caused by clashing cultures, but the product is often wonderful.
>This is very common, in many industries. Maybe moreso, with journalism (I am not very familiar with that industry).
I am somewhat familiar being on the board of a student newspaper. And it's extremely true in journalism. The students who went on to being journalists (or editors etc.) all did it through connections. You probably don't get a job on something like the editorial page of the WSJ by sending your resume around.
> I think it might be something much simpler, like "journalists often can't find another job based on their english-adjacent degree; and the barrier to entry for journalism is very low".
I have read enough bad documentation to know there is a hot market for documentation writers. Now, if only english-adjacent degree holders knew about ... well, the documented stuff.
The barrier is extremely low; now anyone with a wordpress can call themself a “journalist” and there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop them. They really don’t even need the English degree although sometimes it can be evident when they do not.
And the fact that there's a chain of other responders disagreeing with your take suggests that it isn't.
Either way, I don't have a horse in this fight. You may as well be right in your assessment.
The fact of the matter though is this - the original blog post is completely uninteresting. If you have wealth and money - you can pretty much build anything anywhere. There's nothing in that house that is a technological marvel/achievement or anything in its construction method that warrants unique news coverage on HN or elsewhere.
I guess we can file yours under "callous indifference". Someone complains about the societal issues that allow a couple to build a SECOND mansion like this in the woods while millions of people are homeless and your response is to paint them as "jealous".
OP isn't complaining about societal issues; OP is trying to drag a couple just because they have demonstrated some modicum of success and happen to be "white".
They literally mentioned nothing about societal issues, except the implicit racism in their assumption that whiteness somehow inherently detracts from people's accomplishments.
You've already changed your argument from "they never said anything about that" to "okay they said it but I think they were making assumptions". Log off. Go touch grass.
By "go touch grass", I assume you're probably a younger person. You certainly have the reading comprehension of one.
I'd re-read this thread carefully and then take a moment to consider: is this really a hill worth dying of embarrassment on? You can always just walk away.
White priviledge is not something that would be on my mind(for all I care, they could be black), but unsustainability, destruction of nature and self-righteousness to do so... I would really wonder why such article has appeared in HN, as it is going against current global social narrative and NH is not really far-right nutwings, but rather on the left-spectrum.
IMO, modern home should leave as less impact on nature as possible - be it materials used to build it or energy demands to run that house.
Enough said