I was eating some chocolate when I imagined a world where Hershey’s was widely accepted, even by elitists, as the best chocolate.
Is consumer elitism just a facade for pretentious contrarians? Or are there things where even most snobs agree with the masses?
Also, I mean that the product is intrinsically considered to be the best option. I’m not considering social products where the user network makes the experience.
Edit: I was not eating Hershey’s. Hershey’s being the best chocolate is a bizarro universe in this hypothetical.
Hershey in a sentence with “chocolate” without a negation? This is weird.
When someone offered me a piece of Hersheys “chocolate” ages ago I spit it out and asked if this is perhaps spoiled. No, it wasn’t spoiled, this stuff actually tastes vile. I don’t know how Americans can stand this stuff…
Amazon’s delivery time is insane. I use other services like eBay for the most part, but when I need something fast idk who else to use besides Amazon.
And the ability to schedule deliveries to happen on a day of the week when you’re likely to be present. And the notifications that your delivery is near, so you can be ready to pick it up (important for expensive items).
Never actually tried that because delivery times are so insane. When I’ve wanted to schedule a specific day, I’ve gotten same day or by 6am delivery, making it moot
In terms of why some of the “goto” brands aren’t the best, it’s generally because they were the best, got popular on merit, and then business folk come along to suck the life out of it, spending brand goodwill while gouging customers and cutting costs.
Some food product recipe changes to cheap, more shelf stable crap for mass production and easy logistics. Some device gets locked into a paid subscription. All the helpful service people get fired and replaced with chat bots and offshored/outsourced staff. Metal components replaced with cheap plastic that degrades. Shipping times increased so they can make everything an ocean away and give the boat time to travel. Also run big marketing pushes so it’s really hard to find the quality offerings.
There’s just so many ways you can have big margins on big revenue by screwing customers while going they haven’t noticed the decline in quality. Very hard for investor class to leave good product alone.
I’m thinking about things where the brand name has become “the name” of the thing. Kleenex & Google come to mind. Here in the SE corner of the USA, we say “Coke” instead of soda or pop.
Apparently, there’s a name for this. “Generic Trademark”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
Also, I really like Hershey’s. Family grew up not far from their site, was always the chocolate we had as kids. So I like your bizarro universe. :D
Younger me, working in a warehouse job came across one that I found hilarious.
We used pallet sized boxes to move stuff around. But it was really more of a short cardboard tube, square shaped but only flaps on the bottom, there was no actual top or bottom side.
And what was it called? It was a “gaylord”.
I thought for sure that they were pushing me as the new guy, but everyone I came across used the term so naturally and consistently. Even when I worked at a separate site for a while, everyone there used it too. I never looked into it farther, but I eventually accepted it.
I don’t remember if I ever did it with a straight face, but that’s what I called them.
Cpu architecture. X86 is just a lot easier to deal with compared to risc-v arm, or Apple.
I’m hopeful it will change though, and I’m rooting for risc-v.
Really? I would have thought that by the easy-to-deal-with metric, anything RISC would win.
It’s not necessarily the instruction set, it’s the platform architecture, the fact there’s such a thing as a standard BIOS. You can run Windows, Linux, Haiku etc on practically any PC. There’s Linux for ARM, why can’t I run Raspberry Pi OS on my Galaxy S10e? It’s because, though the instruction set is similar, the platforms very intentionally have nothing to do with each other.
Interesting. What do ARM platforms have? BIOS and friends, as important as they are, always kind of come across as a precarious tower of baked-in technical debt.
(I know a Galaxy in particular uses a locked-down SoC you can’t really touch in the first place)
ARM platforms have whatever the developer of that system that day came up with, same as literally everything except x86.
Strangely enough, we do have Microsoft to thank for it. They didn’t want to do the work to enable all that crap nor did they want to enable all the vendors to do their own thing, so they were adamant about standards and if you wanted Windows support, you had to follow standards.
Meanwhile on embedded every little vendor goes wild. In the server space. ARM has taken on a similar scope, but ARM embedded is a mess and ARM server chip makers keep changing as no one gets a foot hold.
Actually I think we have IBM and their laziness to thank for it.
The original 5150 PC was pretty much an afterthought by Big Blue’s standards, they slapped it together from off the shelf parts and bought the OS from some pissant upstart company called Microsoft on a non-exclusive license. The only IP that IBM actually had in the machine was the BIOS. Compaq developing a non-infringing yet compatible BIOS made the x86 PC a multi-vendor platform, which made it more attractive to adopt than the likes of Commodore who made a series of incompatible computers even within their own ecosystem. Note how the only thing Microsoft has ever consistently done that was worth a damn was backwards compatibility…it’s the only thing keeping them in business.
True, though after Compaq broke the weak exclusivity, Microsoft took over stewardship of all these things like ACPI standards and such. Intel certainly contributed but Microsoft really had the force to make vendors have to honor those standards and norms.
From a users perspective everything runs on x86.
Oh, I see.
If we’re referring to battery life x86 doesn’t win very often sadly. There’s a reason most handheld devices on earth use ARM.
Well, originally it was largely because no x86 implementation implemented decent deep idle behavior. Even as there might be some x86 implementations now that could credibly serve handheld market, the ecosystem is built around ARM so no one has a reason to deviate from that recipe.
Lego is the best of the blocks/bricks. Nothing else is close in quality.
Some of the others are 90% there on quality, which is enough for me to ditch Lego. I can’t accept their insane pricing anymore and the color consistency is also getting worse.
I’m not familiar with the others. Who’s 90% that we should look out for?
Kraft singles American cheese. If you like American cheese (which is not everyone and that’s fine) then the off brands are garbage, to me.
Xerox.
Velcro.
And up until a few years ago, Google.
Case and Point: We call the non-brand versions of the products by the mainstream product name and not the object’s name. We ended up calling all copies “Xeroxes,” all hook & loops “Velcro,” and when we tell someone to search for it on the internet, we say “Google it.” Becsuse, for a time, these were the best versions of their class.
Key word there is “for a time”.
Case and Point
Case in Point
imagined a world where Hershey’s…as the best chocolate
Damn, that would be a sad world, I guess 75% of the chocolate companies must have got destroyed or something, cause Hershey’s taste like corn and it’s disgusting
Cars.
The more boring, mass produced, commonly available, mass-purchased, bare bones bitch of a second-hand car will probably last the longest because of more spare parts available, cheaper labor and more reliable maintenance due to very common repair processes, and a crazy amount of information available online.
Hershey’s chocolate has a vomit aftertaste. Lindt chocolate is so much better.
Does Hershey’s have a regional taste shift like coke does, based on where it was made? Atlanta coke vs Toronto coke is night and day. Hershey used to be made from Canadian milk shipped down in trucks.
Hershey has always had a sort of vomit aftertaste. The presence of butyric acid is the culprit. This compound is created when milk undergoes a process called lipolysis, which breaks down fatty acids to extend the chocolate’s shelf life. Butyric acid is also found in human vomit, Parmesan cheese, and rancid butter. This is a direct result of Hershey engineering the chocolate to have a long shelf life. During the early 20th century, when refrigeration wasn’t reliable, the chocolate brand Hershey’s adopted a milk-stabilization process involving controlled lipolysis. The method kept milk usable for large-scale chocolate production as it traveled across country, but it also created butyric acid as a by-product. Butyric acid is perfectly safe to consume.
I always wondered if part of the problem is the long shelf life. I swear I’ve tasted some hersheys that was good. Perhaps it ages safely but rancid?
The aftertaste is very subtle, one might describe it as tangy. If you are an American and have never had foreign chocolate, you’ve probably only ever had chocolate with with milk that has undergone lipolysis; and you’d likely never notice it. For the first 5 years of my life I was raised in foster care by naturalized Europeans, so my formative years involved Swiss chocolate whenever I had it. Swiss chocolate uses milk that has not undergone lipolysis, and their chocolate is very smooth due to a process called conching. Conching is a mixing process with lots of heating and aeration which allows organic acids to evaporate creating a very uniform and smooth textured chocolate without bitter or tangy afternotes.
Not at all. While I am American and thought hersheys was chocolate when I was a kid, I left that behind. I actually stopped eating chocolate for many years because it was just so bad. Then a Lindt Chocolatier opened in the lobby where I was working at the time, and it was good. Entirely different.
These days I eat chocolate again bit am quite picky and am willing to spend more for something that actually tastes good.
Except Ghirardelli. People claim that’s good and I agree relative to Hershey, but it really isnt.
It’s probably mostly cost. Hershey is dirt cheap and sold everywhere. Chocolate that tastes good might be several times the cost and you have to goto special stores
Food staples. I know cans are old technology, but they fucking work. They’ll last at least literally forever, and depending on the item come surprisingly close in quality to the fresh or homemade item. Dried beans and pasta are also a great deal.
Leatherman plier-based multitools. They invented the category and they continue to be the top choice. You can get cheaper tools that are adequate, but Leatherman always has some of the best designs, reliably high quality, and outstanding support. I’m constantly trying new tools from all over, but I always end up carrying one Leatherman or another.
My Skeletool is one of my favorite possessions. I was genuinely upset when it broke (doing something very aggressive with it, not because of any flaw) but it turned out their warranty is legit and I got it back good as new. They even gave me new bits for it when they sent it back.
I used to agree with you, but their prices have gone up and they’ve been transforming themselves into a high end lifestyle brand.
My Charge is now almost 20 years old and still going strong, so I’m nit saying their products are bad, but I’m not seeing real innovation come out of them and I’d honestly say for most people a Wave clone is probably good enough. They’re totally phoning it in on small tools as well, China is way ahead of them on design.
For me, the Free series was a significant innovation, but it all depends on what aspect matter to you.
Swiss Army knife with tools predates the leatherman by a century, leatherman might have been first with pliers but did not invent the category.
I did specify that I was talking about plier-based tools in my original response.
I grew up with Swiss Army knives, back before Leatherman was in business. (Yes, I am that old.) I still carry a Rambler with me everywhere I go.
My thing is they discontinued a lot of the tools I like. I carry a Skeletool and a Style CS, that pair works out great, but they don’t make any of the Styles anymore. I also really like my Squirt ES, another they discontinued.
That has frustrated me too. The Style PS was my idea of a perfect keychain tool, but they killed it in favor of the older, and less capable, Micra.
The screwdriver on the Style series, the PS, CS and tiny little Style all have it, is unique among multitools. It’s long and thin so it can reach down into recessed screw pockets and it comes to a tip sharp enough to turn eyeglass screws. It was perfect, so of course they got rid of it.
Have you tried the multitool made by Victorinox?
Yes, I have both a SwissTool and a Spirit. They are excellent tools. I’ve carried them both at, at one time or another, but I keep going back to Leatherman after a while. I don’t think they are better or worse, it’s just a matter of what particular uses you have.
I’ve found Gerber to be a very close second. Depending on what you’re looking for in a multitool, I think some of their stuff is better.
Gerber has made some very good multitools. They have also introduced some significant design improvements over the years. Among other things, they were the first to build one (Legend) where the tools opened outward instead of inward, which seemed like an obvious improvement to me.
My only complaint is that Gerber’s quality has been inconsistent. During some periods they’ve put out cheaply made tools. During others they’ve produced tools that were the equal of anything else on the market.
That’s totally fair. I’m not super familiar with them myself, but some of my colleagues used to rave about the brand. I also haven’t really carried a multitool for the better part of the last five years, since I changed careers and work in an office now lol.
I like their offset driver design and wish leatherman would come up with something similar- it sucks balls to drive a little screw with any of the leathermen I’ve owned.
Camping supplies, especially backpacking gear (and especially ultralite gear).
But most of the top equipment brands have legitimate, no questions asked, lifetime warranties.
Also, camping stores. I’ll pay a bit extra to get my gear from REI because the employees will spend hours making sure you get a backpack or boots that fit you perfectly.
You can get similar stuff from no-name brands on Amazon, but it’s not going to be the same quality.
Yeah, as afflicted by compromises as some popular products become in the name of profit, the random brands on Amazon/temu show how even worse it can be. Usually the big brand shows at least a little restraint to avoid burning their brand value to the ground too quickly, but the no names with their knockoffs go full throttle into the ground.
Microsoft Windows.
Someone posted about a link where I can check for Linux compatibility on my games, it’s like protondb or something. And, I started to look up games that would work for Linux should I decide on switching. As soon as I found that three games weren’t going to work 100% on Linux, particularly Mint for example, then Linux was not going to be my choice.
I built my computer with the purpose in mind, that it was going to run nearly all of my games without a hitch. It does that. Windows does that for me. I can deal with software alternatives which was another thing I research if this theory of switching was plausible. But, I couldn’t deal with the idea that not everything I want to simply run, won’t do that on my Linux distro of choice, not without going through a lot of steps first. Whereas with Windows, it’s a matter of clicking this and it’s there for me.
People need to respect the preferences of others. There are people out there, who value their time and patience. When they want things to run, they want what it will take for that thing to simply run on without going through any hoops to do so.
I’ve pirated my Windows copy, so I didn’t give Microsoft a dime. In fact, I encourage people to pirate Windows than give Microsoft anymore money than they have. Linux may have some advantages and I like it that it is there for people to go to for whatever reason. I just hate it when there are people who’re going around just telling people what to use because they use it.
Oh I see, you want to
dieget downvoted to hell.As soon as I found that three games weren’t going to work 100% on Linux, particularly Mint for example, then Linux was not going to be my choice.
Is that because your games need a rootkit to let you play, or is it an actual incompatibility? I’ve been running Bazzite at home for over a year now with minimal issues.
Linux may have some advantages and I like it that it is there for people to go to for whatever reason. I just hate it when there are people who’re going around just telling people what to use because they use it.
People recommend moving away from the company that abuses it’s users and is enshittifying it’s OS to the point it’s becoming slop. And I’m not a windows hater, I support it professionally and have for over a decade. But the writing is unfortunately on the wall, so finding ways to make your system work better for you is a good idea before Microsoft really fucks you over with a bad update that bricks your system.
I mean, if all you want is a video game box, and you don’t care about privacy, security, or customizability, Windows is more compatible, sure. I wouldn’t call it better.
The games I enjoy (e.g. Portal 2, No Man’s Sky, Split Fiction to name a small few) all get noticeably better performance on Mint via Proton than on Windows. But games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, etc. with their invasive anti-cheats will never work on a system that respects the user’s privacy.
So if what you want is compatibility, sure, Windows is king. But you do pay a price.
Honestly, I’ve “solved” this by accepting defeat. My gaming PC is only used for gaming, and I consider it to be roughly on par with an Xbox or Playstation or work laptop. Any data on it should be considered public.
I do literally everything else on my Linux box, which I actually feel OK about. Yes, I could dual boot, but honestly, having my stuff airgapped from the crazy intrusive “security” is nice.
This is the way
You’re right. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. But for those few games that don’t run you get:
- A truly FREE OS
- No data tracking
- No advertisements
- No OneDrive
- No forced updates
- Complete control over your system, including visuals
- Tons of FOSS
Computers are more than video game machines. I made the final switch away from Windows because I wanted to be treated like a person, not a customer.
It’s a lot more about philosophy than functionality. When something doesn’t work in Linux, I know it’s a genuine mistake someone made and that it wasn’t intentional. M$ has infinite money and they can’t even figure out how to keep the Sleep function working while at the same time forcing you to sign up for an account that they can choose to cancel for any reason whenever they feel like.
You don’t own your PC on Windows.
- OS is free from pirating
- Is tracked anyways, so doesn’t see the point of changing OSes just to be tracked less on one thing
- I don’t get advertisements unless I’m on the internet and if I’m not using adblock plus the version of Windows I pirated, I see less of them anyways
- Never used
- Probably the only thing
- Totally subjective and sometimes total control has a lot of risks than rewards and irrecoverable consequences
- Nah
- There are entire communities ready to prove you wrong on the piracy issue, also you can just windows games through WINE/Proton or a virtual enviornment
- Nothing to hide has been and will always be a farce of an argument. Be proactive so you don’t feel trapped in surveillance.
- Congrats, on a firefox-derived browser with Ublock origin (or a Chromium-derived browser like Helium with Ublock origin), you’ll see even less ads!
- shame
- wow, how dismissive
- That’s why there’s so many distros to choose from, with some explicitly immutable to prevent said risks (at the cost of reducing the amount of customization possible, similar to Windows restrictions)
- double shame
See? This is what I am talking about, this browbeating shit I see from linux users. It is insufferable and you all sound like advertisements and I hate advertisements. Linux technically has advertisers and it is people like you.
The difference with Windows advertisements and Linux advertisers is, I can close and ignore the Windows advertisement. With Linux, you fuckers just follow and hound on everyone that so much even mentions Linux and how they talk about THEIR computing preferences.
“WHURRT?! U NOT USE LINUX! U ARE SHEEPLE WHO DON’T USE LINUX!! UR DICK WILL BE ALL HARD IF U JUST USE LINUX!”
I never EVER hear this shit from Windows users, only loser no-life Linux ones. Fuck all the way off.
Can you honestly say that you didn’t come to this thread looking for this fight?
I dual boot Kubuntu and Windows Enterprise LTSC for the best of both worlds, at the price of a little bit of redundant storage. There’s pros and cons to both. I think being able to recognize that is all the other user was initially saying, rather than pretending like they’re not there.
It’s also why I feel like the answer isn’t in the spirit of the question: each of the major OSes hit a different type of user, and you just admitted that the snobs and elitists mostly exist on the Linux side (and Mac), which is true.
