It's not the customer experience that's the issue. It's the 'Apple tax' pricing and the proprietary everything. Not a judgement, mind you, as everyone has their own balance of price vs form vs customizability vs function vs etc.
That deal was on January 25, 2006. He became a board member and:
"The transaction was an all-stock deal – making Steve Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder (he owned 50.6% of Pixar at that time; he owned more than 70% of the company when Pixar’s first proxy statement was filed in 1997 but had been diluted by share issuance / option grants over the years). Disney’s proxy statement filed in early 2007 shows that Jobs owned 138,000,007 shares of Disney – enough for a nearly 7% stake in the company. The 10-K for 2006 shows that Disney stock ended the year at ~$30 per share – making Steve’s stake worth more than $4 billion."
Heh, funny, since I get mostly "Get rich fast" ads with pictures of stacks of Euros with ad number 2) from your description the only one that's the same :)
In any case it seems to tell a lot about geolocation targeting.
I'd normally hold my head in shame and think about what else I've been looking at to trigger these ads, but I know my work browsing is strictly professional :)
edit: Just checked on the site on a fresh EC2 Windows instance with no browsing history/cookies and got the same ads.
Hahaha. Glad I don't work where you work. Do you think some of those are are just retargeted to you based on your interest? Me thinks so, because I got ads for gyms and cleanmymac. No boobs here.
Here is a solution:
1. Install adblock
2. If your employer considers images of everyday things like that to be NSFW, get a new employer. :-)
I will follow this up. I'm guessing that by clean, you mean no porn. However, your search history, even in a professional context, can say a lot about you.
1) Search stack traces on google much? You are probably a developer.
2) Visit buzzfeed, vice.com, or other news sites, even on your lunch or coffee break? Click on certain stories that might skew to a male audience?
3) Have facebook or twitter open? Then you've just handed them the keys to the demographic kingdom.
Believe me, even at work the ad-networks know, at minimum, you are probably male -- hence -- boobs.
Yes, blame the publisher. Nobody sensible would allow other web properties to inject rubbish like this -- and it could literally be anything -- into their site. If they're going to do it, they should be held to account for it.
Since this all of a sudden has become a hot topic eclipsing the subject of the article, here's the list of ads served to me from top bottom:
1) Some shirtless dude on the beach probably on an island in Thailand. (PASS)
2) Before/After pics for a weight management program for a woman wearing a sport push up bra and yoga pants. Not seductive at all especially with fat bulging like this (PASS)
3) A racing model wearing a sexy Halloween style police outfit leaning on a fancy sport car. The model looks seductive but I am more interested in the car (FAIL)
4) A portrait pic of fair skinned woman with hazelnut eye color and dark brown hair color that looks like a young Megan Fox. Definitely attractive but absolutely not racy (PASS)
5) Some rich dude along with his butler in a speed boat leaving or entering a yacht through some kind of marine garage. Looks interesting but not risque material (PASS)
PS: I use Tor and this session is all about GitHub and HN so that might explain the nature of the ads served to me.
#1 - why aren't you using AdBlock, or Ghostery, or Privacy Badger. Any of those would block these ads
#2 - Since you are not using the tools above, you are sharing a lot of your browsing data to trackers elsewhere on the web that aggregate the content and present you with what they think you will like. No judgement, but maybe start using incognito mode for your NSFW browsing. I turned off my blockers and none of the ads I was shown were anything like what you describe.
Well, if the previous poster was actually at work, they may well be on a machine that they can't install software or browser extensions on - that's the case with my employer issued laptop, for example.
After seeing your comment, I opened the article again, scrolled down, and didn't see anything like you were talking about. Then I remembered that I have uBlock Origin installed. It sounds like you might want to consider a similar ad-blocking extension.
Of all the the big tech companies that have a stake in content delivery platforms, Apple has been the most quiet in terms of actually creating/commissioning its own content. This would certainly be a big swing in that direction and put them far on the opposite side even ahead of Amazon.
Facebook and YouTube has all their original user-generated-content, and Microsoft has their failed 'Xbox Originals', like the Halo television series.
'YouTube celebrities' are very successful, and Facebook has actively been been trying to court these YouTube celebrities to post exclusively on Facebook.
Apple is seemingly the odd out not creating their own original video content, but Beats One is interesting as original _audio_ content, which no one else is doing.
Aligning yourself with a company that has a notorious history of screwing its customers and providing less than decent customer service I think would instantly take that bulletproof Apple reputation and tarnish it immediately.
This alone makes me think this is another Apple head fake into the area of content creation.
Time Warner Cable (cable service) and Time Warner Media (HBO, CNN, Warner Bros Studio, etc) are distinct companies. The media business spun out the cable division years ago. Apple would be buying the media assets.
Time Warner is also looking at spinning off parts of it's business. I could see Apple acquiring the content-creating businesses (such as HBO) and leaving the, for example, cable delivery business with TW.
The article is not convincing enough. Till this point, they're just market rumors. Wait to hear some confirmation from Bloomberg or WSJ before analyzing it more seriously.
PS: Anyone noticed that the second part of the article reads like it's written by a robot, one of those AI reporters?
I don't buy it. Apple's business is fundamentally selling hardware that is differentiated with software and services and this acquisition would be too large and crazy to pay off for Apple's fundamental business.
Not a fresh rumor. My take is still the same: this isn't doesn't make sense because Time Warner is local to the US and only parts of the US at that and Apple is a global company.
53 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 92.8 ms ] threadIf this happens it would put them in competition with them.
"The transaction was an all-stock deal – making Steve Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder (he owned 50.6% of Pixar at that time; he owned more than 70% of the company when Pixar’s first proxy statement was filed in 1997 but had been diluted by share issuance / option grants over the years). Disney’s proxy statement filed in early 2007 shows that Jobs owned 138,000,007 shares of Disney – enough for a nearly 7% stake in the company. The 10-K for 2006 shows that Disney stock ended the year at ~$30 per share – making Steve’s stake worth more than $4 billion."
http://www.gurufocus.com/news/315903/steve-jobs-investment-t...
The images are:
1) Woman wearing shirt that exposes most of her breasts.
2) Man kissing a woman's neck while both are in bed. Man appears to be shirtless, woman is in bra.
3) Woman in bikini with her hands holding her breasts up.
4) Woman in cutoff white shirt having breasts sprayed with a hose.
5) Female cheerleader (this one is not so bad).
I'm not sure why any of that belongs on a business article about Apple eyeing a Time Warner acquisition.
Install uBlock.
In any case it seems to tell a lot about geolocation targeting.
edit: Just checked on the site on a fresh EC2 Windows instance with no browsing history/cookies and got the same ads.
Maybe that's the point ;) With no history, they're using what works best :D
Here is a solution:
It's less of what my employer considers NSFW and more of what I don't want on my screen at work.
It is a generational problem, mostly for the mellenials.
They have been brought up in a toxic and rigid culture multiculturalism and political correctness.
But I'll stop here before it really spirals down into non-HN territory. :-)
1) Some shirtless dude on the beach probably on an island in Thailand. (PASS)
2) Before/After pics for a weight management program for a woman wearing a sport push up bra and yoga pants. Not seductive at all especially with fat bulging like this (PASS)
3) A racing model wearing a sexy Halloween style police outfit leaning on a fancy sport car. The model looks seductive but I am more interested in the car (FAIL)
4) A portrait pic of fair skinned woman with hazelnut eye color and dark brown hair color that looks like a young Megan Fox. Definitely attractive but absolutely not racy (PASS)
5) Some rich dude along with his butler in a speed boat leaving or entering a yacht through some kind of marine garage. Looks interesting but not risque material (PASS)
PS: I use Tor and this session is all about GitHub and HN so that might explain the nature of the ads served to me.
Also see my reply to another comment that I opened the ir.net site in a brand new virtual machine with no history and got the same ads.
'YouTube celebrities' are very successful, and Facebook has actively been been trying to court these YouTube celebrities to post exclusively on Facebook.
Apple is seemingly the odd out not creating their own original video content, but Beats One is interesting as original _audio_ content, which no one else is doing.
Aligning yourself with a company that has a notorious history of screwing its customers and providing less than decent customer service I think would instantly take that bulletproof Apple reputation and tarnish it immediately.
This alone makes me think this is another Apple head fake into the area of content creation.
PS: Anyone noticed that the second part of the article reads like it's written by a robot, one of those AI reporters?
The Apple Car rumors make a lot more sense.
Not a fresh rumor. My take is still the same: this isn't doesn't make sense because Time Warner is local to the US and only parts of the US at that and Apple is a global company.