It doesn't say that they accounted for possible changes in item quality. Tide detergent claims that their new 80-oz bottle of laundry detergent can wash 64 loads just like the previous 100-oz bottle because it's more concentrated, and I suppose NPR (if they'd retained a sample of the previous product) could have brought that to a chemistry lab to test and verify that claim, but I have no idea how you'd objectively prove that an ounce of salsa had truly remained the same product.
Sure, but they are accounting for size shrinkage which the original poster was saying they didn't.
I don't really know how you can account for quality either. User surveys? Ingredient sourcing? But then again I think this kind of reporting is just a general barometer. Some other comments are pointing to data sources that might do more of this.
The amount of detergent per load is set by the manufacturer, who can injection mold that measuring cup in whatever size they want. FTA:
> The amount of liquid had shrunk to 92 ounces from 100 ounces before the pandemic, and the price had risen by a dollar. After that, the cost stayed the same, but the contents shrank to 84 ounces in 2024 and then to 80 ounces in December.
> The label continuously promised enough detergent for 64 loads of laundry.
> ...Tide specifically got the "most significant upgrade to its liquid formula in over 20 years," according to the company, with a "boosted" level of active cleaning ingredients and updated dosage instructions.
> "The result is superior cleaning performance in a smaller dose," a Procter & Gamble representative said.
Do you take them at their word for that? I'm specifically wondering whether the 84 ounce, 64-load bottle with a cap that measures out 1.3125 ounces per load contains the exact same liquid as the 80 ounce, 64-load bottle with a cap that measures out 1.25 ounces per load. I prefer powder detergent with a prewash dose, I know my clothes get clean, but I don't know that anyone outside a lab would be able to inspect clothes post-wash and notice the difference in cleanliness caused by the removal of 0.0625 ounces of detergent.
They have three ways to protect or boost profits: Raise prices, decrease quantities, or decrease quality. NPR and the
Eh, if the post office - which is a pretty efficient operation - thinks it costs $0.61 to mail a postcard, it probably costs Amazon more than $0.25 to ship someone a lime.
I recall using this occasionally in the 90s even.
There was also a period where I would regularly "one ring" my parents as code to call me back. IIRC that was because my cell plan had unlimited (or at least more) incoming minutes.
Collect calls would have been a thing until cell phones got very common because you had to use pay phones when you were outside and you somehow never had quarters.
It's really easy to anthropomorphize an LLM or computer program, but they're fundamentally alien systems.
I'm pessimistic that future paradigm AIs will change this anytime soon - it appears that Noosphere89 seems to think that future paradigm AIs will not have these same limitations, but it seems obvious to me that the architecture of a GPT (the "P" standing for "Pre-trained") cannot "learn," which is the fundamental problem with all these systems.
There's negligible "genetic" difference between German and American gastrointestinal systems. No DNA mutations occurred in your grandparents that caused all of their children and children's children to be overweight.
There may be cultural or behavioral issues - attitudes and habits around cooking, expectations of what a meal includes or does not include, taste preferences on what's too sweet or too fatty, etc - but it's not genetic.
I have noticed that the self-directed part has been deemphasized in favor of selling to adults (with more money than they'd spend on plastic toys for kids), but you can still totally buy the "Classic brick sets" and "Creativity" toys, or just bulk bricks by the pound.
In those bulk sets, there are now way more colors than just the primary and secondary colors that original sets came in, way more flat tiles and wedges with stickers or screen-printed imagery from the branded product lines, but kids don't seem to mind.
My 9yo has a bunch of bulk bricks as well as planned sets - Minecraft in particular - and when he gets a new set, he builds it to the instructions, brings it out to the living room to show off his creation, and then before he's walked back to his room he's in the process of adding new stuff or taking it apart to integrate into the rest of the jumble of bricks. I think there are only two builds (both from this Christmas) that are currently intact, and they probably won't last long...
> I have noticed that the self-directed part has been deemphasized in favor of selling to adults (with more money than they'd spend on plastic toys for kids),
LEGO has over 500 sets available every year. It's a crazy number, coming from someone who grew up reading every LEGO catalog I could find.
You're probably only seeing those few flagship sets because they get advertised and shared on social media. There are literally hundreds of small sets out there now.
For the adults here, the number of LEGO sets available to us as kids was a fraction of what's available today. The number of sets out there is staggering.
On the plus side, there are so many sets that it's now easier to find sales. As a kid saving up money it felt like sales never happened. Now I grab small sets on sale for 30-40% off all the time to keep as easy gifts or for my own kids.
Not sure if they do this, but I'd actually really like if they included instructions for things you can make with just the brick sets - just to help you get started or to come back to later.
fx with a box of 1000 bricks, instructions for 2 or 3 things that can all be made from the bricks in the box (maybe not all at once)
Rebrickable is awesome. One of my children loves building with instructions and will do relatively little free building with Lego, and Rebrickable makes it very easy to find alternative models (often with questionable stability, though) that can be built from the same set. It also features a search of alternative models you can build with all the sets (and bricks) you have.
I don't know if they still do, but historically LEGO boxes often include pictures of alternate builds with the same pieces, although including instructions for alternate builds is rare. There's a set of Creator 3-in-1 sets that do.
I am quite sure some technics sets from the 1990s had at least two builds with them. Fondly remember a similar thing you described to three in one, smaller set for a motorcycle that could be other things and my cousin having an absolutely huge crane truck set that could be something else.
edit nevermind I can't find anything on the second one, maybe my cousin combined two or more sets to build something custom but it speaks to other points about parts being more universal in the past.
Does this mean that my son's Spike Prime set (with Scratch/Python programming and motors) is now obsolete, like Mindstorms EV3, Mindstorms NXT, PowerFunctions, WeDo, Coding Express, StoryStarter, BuildToExpress, and Lego Education Spike Legacy that came before it?
I'm sure we'll keep playing with the Spike - the Scratch and Python environments are great - but it's a shame to see all this continued fragmentation in the Lego ecosystem.
Not at all. These seem to add light and sound effects to models but there's no mention of motors, reprogrammability, or communication with Spike whatsoever.
A BLE mesh network of wireless sensors would be great for Spike but it doesn't seem like that's what they're building.
and all of the motor standards that keep coming and going. I have 4 different power and motor systems from lego, but still wasn't able to power my new lego Christmas train this year because the latest "Powered Up" seem to be discontinued (or at least have been "temporarily out of stock" for a year now.
not to mention that if you visit lego's site in safari desktop, it defaults to the mobile version, and checkouts are broken!
Those robots are not "navigating AROUND the clutter", there are no consumer-deployed object recognition physics models that let a robot say "that's a ball that will roll, that's a shirt that will tangle, that's a sheet of paper that may slip", they're just charging chaotically through it. If you allow skittering robots, do you exclude a 90s RC car with the trigger taped down?
I would agree with you if the author wrote, "I don't count as home robots small four legged robots as they don't navigate around clutter, they just go over it" but the author didn't write that.
The author quoted two constraints (safe around children, must include a form factor able to preform an action) not specified.
The author projected that a lab demo of capabilities would not occur. I don't see safety for children as necessary for a lab demo.
Butane stops vaporizing at -1C (31F), isobutane at about -10C (10F). Propane's boiling point is even better, at about -40C/-40F, but it self-cools and doesn't develop the required pressures to run a torch.
I know this because my otherwise dependable camp stove is a 3-season affair. For winter camping, you basically need a white gas system (liquid fueled, manually pressurized or gravity fed).
I suppose I'd reach for an acetylene torch in a cold workshop.
> The key to higher living standards for average people is to produce lots more output, which requires more automation.
Building and deploying that automation requires capital. As a result, it's largely the people who control that capital who benefit from it, not the individual workers whose productivity is increased by it.
There were people who added value to a manufacturing process by being highly skilled welders (earning $30/hr) who can push MIG wire at 30 inches per minute. On a good day, they actually average 20 inches per minute OEE because they also need to load and unload the fixture, take lunch breaks, and so on. Those welders become (or are replaced by) weld-jig-operators, who can load a buffer of incoming parts, unload a buffer of completed parts, and replace emptied spools of wire, clean up the work area, and so on, while the $400k weld cell with a trio of ArcMate robots pushes 80 inches of wire per minute.
Yes, that's a 4x productivity gain, but does the welder now earn $120 hour? No, the new operator now gets a pay cut back to $20/hr because you can train a replacement in a week (unlike a welder, who needs years of practice to manipulate a torch that skillfully). Meanwhile, the owner of the company profits at ~$100/hr, recoups their big capital investment after a year, and rakes in the profits after that to buy another yacht, or maybe a newspaper.
I agree that the worker becoming more productive due to some capital equipment generally won't see any benefit from doing so (unless it requires special skills to operate). But I think the argument is that the end consumer will eventually benefit from the increased productivity.
In your example, yes, the factory owner can take their $100/hr of profit. But among the various factories, some owner might take $25 of that profit and instead undercut their competition to grow their order book. Other factories respond in kind, and the consumer is getting cheaper products.
Guess what, this is a huge gain for the unskilled worker who can get trained in a week for that formerly high-skilled job. And then the capital owners are hugely incented to expand production and hire all those unskilled workers, pushing the wage floor up in the process.
reply