13 ms·

Google sends Cr-48 to "Will it Blend?"

134 points by antimatter15 16y ago

phlux 16y ago
While funny etc. We have so much waste in the world as it is - the last thing we need is the toxic waste of a perfectly good machine being blended and thrown out. I have never had respect for the 'will it blend' concept, regardless of how funny one may find it. It is simply wasteful.
- huntero 16y ago
  It's advertising. Admittedly, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I would imagine that the economic impact of this advertising is worth more than the cost for Google to send a CR-48 to be blended.
  - phlux 16y ago
    >...economic impact of this advertising is worth more than the cost for Google to send a CR-48 to be blended. I know what it is called - but it is still clearly waste. I was not referring to the economic impact but rather the environmental. Sure, we can all say "who cares" -- I do, which is why I ask. Have you seen the garbage problems we have? The toxic waste dumps that are china and other places. I am not trying to be some tree hugging hippy here - I just dont see the need/value of such advertising. If they want to advertise - why not go give the things to even more people who want/need it? How about give one to every student in a school of their choice? This is utter stupidity on the part of the advertising industry and proves how little value they provide society other than more and more thought pollution on top of the actual pollution they produce.
    - JonnieCache 16y ago
      It is not just simply an environmental cost - there are other costs associated with the preponderance of disposable possessions, and the leaking over into the category of disposable of things that were once considered permanent. To start with, it is simply wasteful for the reasons you describe. However it also contributes in a small way to the paradigm of exponential growth that permeates everything about human civilisation, which we as hackers know represents certain death. EDIT: I'm not saying google have created a "disposable computer." However all this advertising definitely shifts us culturally in that direction.
      - phlux 16y ago
        I'd love to have a laptop whose sum parts are made out of reusable/biodegradable materials as much as possible. Corn/potato based cases, even if they need to be replaced often - or solid aluminum ones that are a set form factor and I simply replace the guts every time I upgrade. I wish that apple would require/request/desire that any old apple product gets returned to them for disposal/credit when it reaches true EOL. It has been said too many times by others greater than myself; Our garbage and waste will be the downfall of our species.
        JonnieCache 16y ago
        >I'd love to have a laptop whose sum parts are made out of reusable/biodegradable materials as much as possible. I present the cardboard computer (case): http://recomputepc.com http://recomputepc.com Unfortunately it's prohibitively expensive compared to conventional options, as you would expect. And you obviously can't fab the boards from card and the chips from potato, as it were. >It has been said too many times by others greater than myself; Our garbage and waste will be the downfall of our species. We can learn to recycle our waste. Mining landfill is going to be big business one day. It will however be much harder to repair the environmental and human damage caused by the extraction of the raw materials in the first place.
        jonhendry 16y ago
        "I present the cardboard computer (case): " The case is probably the most recyclable part of a computer, unless there's something funky about the plastics used. An aluminum MacBook Pro case could be melted down, or, hell, probably used as-is as raw material to machine new small parts.
    - antimatter15 16y ago
      That's not necessarily true. Advertising helps sell products, and getting the idea of Chrome OS into people's minds will lead to more people buying it. And through Google's professed indirect and obscure schemes leads to more internet usage and advertising exposure, leaving more revenue for Google to give them to children. It might seem strange, but it seems that much of what Google does seems to follow such logic. This video was part of the Chrome Demolition Lab http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ and the four colors on the bottom strip are labeled "Learn", "Apply", "Recycle" (the green one) and "Legal". Recycle says "Electronic waste is piling up globally at a rate of 40 million tons a year. That's the same weight as 5 loaded buses every minute. Enter your zip code to locate electronic device recycling centers in your area" "The US produces 8% of the world's electronic waste per year (8% = 3.2 Million tons)" "Americans only recycle 13.7% of their electronic waste, leaving 2.9 million tons per year" "That's a big pile of electronic waste. So far this year 038,992,672 (increments by one every second)" The legal tab says "Google does not now, nor has it ever, endorsed or encouraged in any fashion, the hazing of or harming of electronic devices for entertainment purposes, anger management or stress relief. The demolitions and tests are performed using prototype notebooks. Chat interaction and user data are not being recorded. Do not try this at home. Please Recycle."
    - barrkel 16y ago
      You do not have nearly enough information to make this determination. If tablets like this reduce the demand for bigger laptops and desktops, making them more popular through various forms of marketing may in fact reduce overall environmental impact.
      - alphaoverlord 16y ago
        I dont know. Every time I stream grooveshark, I wonder how much less energy I would be using if I just had the same 10 songs locally.
      - phlux 16y ago
        I don't? Here we see a device go straight from production to destruction intentionally and to a state where recycle/rebuild/re-use is impractical. Sorry but all these arguments for advertising supporting the complete destruction of useful resources are misguided retarded and stupid. Downvote all you want - but I'd prefer it were you that drank the water into which these toxic particles shall leach. Fuck advertising.
      - jonhendry 16y ago
        "Various forms of marketing" - of the nearly infinite range of marketing approaches, "wasteful destruction" is only one, and oddly enough, most successful marketing campaigns never stooped to that level. And even when damaging the product is the approach taken, it's not usually a pointless stunt. When Timex abused their watches in commercials, the point was to show that the watches would keep working. The blending thing is just stupid web-meme fan service, that is unlikely to make a notable contribution to selling Cr48s. Or blenders, for that matter.
    - benatkin 16y ago
      When I saw a BlendTec commercial for the first time, I thought: "that's wasteful!". Then I thought about it some more and realized that it was a tiny fraction of the waste that's being produced by viewers. I realized if viewers would keep their electronics 10% longer it would make many times as big a difference as putting a kibosh on this commercial series. So it actually raised awareness for me.
      - DanielStraight 16y ago
        It's not a tiny fraction, it's an undetectable fraction. Keeping electronics 10% longer wouldn't many many times as big a difference, it would make many orders of magnitude more difference. Commenting that this is waste is like commenting that all the astronauts coming to the launch site in personal vehicles is a waste of fuel. You're about to burn in 10 minutes more fuel than anyone will likely ever use in their entire life. It doesn't matter at that point. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that since you can't change the big picture, you shouldn't do anything at all. I'm just saying you shouldn't blow things out of proportion.
  - thingie 16y ago
    It might still be cheaper than some kind of elaborate ad with a lot of actors, scenes and stuff, and even have lesser environmental impact (one laptop is much less waste than, say, flight to some distant place to take the shots for an ad). So, yes, it can actually make sense. But still, I just don't like the culture which shows that it's perfectly ok to smash and destroy stuff just for pleasure and marketing. Imagine that they would blend people in the show. Can't we have some respect for our machines as well?
    - hugh3 16y ago
      It's just a bunch of atoms. It was a bunch of atoms before the manufacturers got to it -- mostly goo, some rocks, a bit of sand. They rearranged the atoms into a different order. Then Blend-Tec guy put it into a blender and rearranged the atoms again, now it's dust instead of goo. What has been lost, apart from a bit of irreplacable time out of the lives of everyone involved (including me writing this comment and you reading it)?
      - JonnieCache 16y ago
        >What has been lost, apart from a bit of irreplacable time out of the lives of everyone involved (including me writing this comment and you reading it)? Short answer, we've gained entropy. Over time, entropy will be the end of us, and therefore it is our responsibility as lifeforms to hold it back wherever we can. Otherwise what's the point? May as well just give up on the whole spontaneously emergent complexity deal altogether if you're just going to go wrecking up the place.
        hugh3 16y ago
        If we live long enough to be eventually killed by entropy, then I'd say we have officially Won. It's like when you get to the final level of Pac Man and it crashes.
        moultano 16y ago
        Entropy is what kills every one of us. Entropy is what makes us "run out" of rare metals. There are a lot of ways for entropy to kill us that don't involve the heat death of the universe.
  - ryanhuff 16y ago
    <i>It's advertising</i>. How meta. As I ponder the implications of Google engaged in this publicity stunt, I wonder. Was this device, sent off to sacrifice, my CR-48, lost in shipping? As my desk maintains an empty spot, so carefully cleared, in anticipation of the arrival of the CR-48, perhaps now, my eagerness and expectation will turn regret, as I consider the future that may never be... Google, I beg you, send me my CR-48. <sob, tear>.
- DavidSJ 16y ago
  By what criteria do you distinguish wasteful environmental impact from justified environmental impact?
  - Andys 16y ago
    Heh - indeed. Is blending any less wasteful than someone using this notebook to download a bunch of porn, post a few hundred vacuous tweets, and then toss it on the trash heap after 11 months when a newer slimmer version comes out.
- robryan 16y ago
  While we sit here thinking about this though much worse waste is going on it the world unseen. My uni gets big dumpsters and throws out 100's of computers each year. Granted they are usually getting old though.
  - phlux 16y ago
    So here we have: New-laptop->blender For your comment we have: New-machine-->user------------------------->trash/other-user/some-other-market WTF don't people understand about how wasteful this is? Also, this machines toxic+precious components are being munger to the point where any hope of recycle is lost. If you aren't already paying attention, countries like China are securing the next 50-100 years worth of natural resources, required for the information age lifestyle, in Africa in such a way that the US will be relatively 3rd world in the next 25 years (with respect to our ability to produce that which we need). So even though we are focused on the micro - the problem and question are macro. Please tell me I am misguided, and prove it.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - Helianthus16 16y ago
      Can't prove it, that's the sort of thing that's dependant on how guided/misguided you are. ;) Look at it this way. Our society can operate at at a high scale of efficiency, where everything is used to maximum utility and absolutely nothing is wasted, or it can operate extremely inefficiently. It _only_ makes sense to consider the societal-wide efficiency--as you say, the problem and question are macro. So we can posit some ranking, some percentage of total efficiency. However, 'Will it blend' is hardly large enough to make a huge dent overall in the larger percent. The resources lost from one netbook per time segment are not comparable to the resources lost in even a tenth of a percent decrease in efficiency, if you pardon the approximation. Furthermore, 'maximum utility' is rather difficult to determine because 'utility' is variable. It turns out that apparently there's enough 'utility' in making "Will It Blend?" videos that we could even argue that this is positive efficiency! Do you also get upset when cars and pianos are destroyed for movies and tv shows? Would you have us exert _more_ energy to generate the illusion in order to save good tools?
- benatkin 16y ago
  The environmental cost per viewer is infinitesimally small, so I don't buy that argument. An argument about it leading viewers to carelessness would be a sad statement about humor.
- axod 16y ago
  The average mail shot wastes more in envelopes stamps, CO2 from delivery van etc etc. Chill out.
guiseppecalzone 16y ago
Google did another advertisement where they destroy at least 5 laptops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&feature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&feature I used to think that "Will it blend" was funny. Maybe the novelty of it has warn off. Instead of laughing, watching this video made me wince.
- riobard 16y ago
  I had the same weird feeling watching that video. There is something fundamentally wrong there. I'm especially worried about the last part when the little girl destroying the last CR-48: she was so calm to do that without a blink. I was shocked. This is not the way we teach our children. [edit]: there's a tagline said by the demo guy in the video: “good thing I get a new one every time”. This kinda thinking bothers me.
  - gloob 16y ago
    What about it bothers you, exactly?
    - riobard 16y ago
      My take is that the lower powered devices tend to be retired much faster. I would expect on average a CR-48 would last (in the sense of people actually using it) much shorter than a, say, MacBook Pro. Also a used MacBook Pro (or a comparable high end machine) tends to sell better as a second hand. You probably won't want a second hand CR-48 after two years usage I guess? On the other hand, the raw materials used to build a CR-48 or a MacBook Pro are almost equivalent. They also contain comparable amount of toxic heavy metals. At the end of the life eventually they'll be shipped to some villages in China to be disassembled to get the expensive metal like gold and silver, but the rest will be burned and buried, causing long term pollution and damage. I know this is too much environmentalist talk and not making business sense, but I just cannot ignore the sad facts after watching a video about the life of people who live those villages…
      - 16y ago
kurtsiegfried 16y ago
I find it somewhat ironic that this video will not play on my CR-48.
- antimatter15 16y ago
  It's meant to be played from http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ which is in flash and should (from what I've read) be excruciatingly slow anyway.
  - mey 16y ago
    Thermite is sadly not an option.
  - alinajaf 16y ago
    If you swear at that chat bot enough times with enough profanity it forwards you to a google search for 'cleaning supplies'.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  I wouldn't say that's irony- sounds to me like your CR-48 just doesn't want to watch the execution of it's brother.
  - melvinram 16y ago
    lol reminded me of this: http://www.jokeawhenever.com/archive/media/pictures/horror_movie.jpg http://www.jokeawhenever.com/archive/media/pictures/horror_m...
- mivok 16y ago
  Go to about:flags and enable media player, then it will play pretty well (although it's a little laggy when played full screen)
- sshconnection 16y ago
  I just watched it on mine. You need to go to settings and enable the media player. It pops up a little player like the download and im windows.
signal 16y ago
What was that Google mantra again? Evil has many shades of grey but wasting a computer that could literally educate an entire schoolhouse in Africa and keeping this old, stupid joke going must be somewhere south of good.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Who's to say this old, stupid joke of a publicity stunt won't sell them enough cr-48's to give TWO cr-48's to schoolhouses in Africa instead of the one they started with? That's what business is, the classic best answer to "you have one egg. How do you make two?"
  - signal 16y ago
    My point is that there are more positive ways to make two than by destroying one. If Google is just interested in getting publicity for the cr-48 they might as well join Cheerios on Days of Our Lives.
bdb 16y ago
This is particularly awesome because my Cr-48 came with a piece of paper that said something like: "Do not crush, incinerate, blend (guess we'll never find out if it'll blend...), ...(several other things)..."
- cypherpunks01 16y ago
  The full first paragraph of the Safety Notice: This product contains sensitive components. Do not drop, disassemble, open, crush, bend, bake, deform, puncture, blend (guess we'll never know if it'll bend), shred, incinerate, paint, bring to the moon, or insert foreign objects into the device. Do not spill liquids, rocks of any size, or food on the device. Do not expose the device to water, moisture or rap music. It keeps going... :)
  - alex_c 16y ago
    The entire thing (from Reddit): http://i.imgur.com/hA2Fd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hA2Fd.jpg
jrockway 16y ago
I actually wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, but I didn't get one. Oh well. I keep forgetting that it's Microsoft that says "developers, developers, developers, developers".
- apetresc 16y ago
  You're joking, right? The fact that you weren't one of the thousands to receive a free laptop makes Google developer-unfriendly?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Yes, my post was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. The article is about putting the laptop in a blender; comments should be read with that in mind.
    - Natsu 16y ago
      Well, at least you're not alone in having no luck.
- cypherpunks01 16y ago
  Uh, well I wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, and they did send me one... Microsoft has never given me anything except excruciating IE 6/7/8/9 bugs.
quux 16y ago
Now blend the cloud!!!!
- simonsarris 16y ago
  Wouldn't that just be blending things from a datacenter? Lest we let it slip our mind, the cloud is a still a group of real places, its just data/processing not near your location.
- moondowner 16y ago
  "I wonder where the cloud is?" When he finds the servers he'll blend them too :)
guyzero 16y ago
Does this video series actually sell any blenders?
- natrius 16y ago
  No one would've ever heard of Blendtec without them. I'm sure they've sold more than enough to recover the couple thousand dollars they've spent on the videos.
- bpd1069 16y ago
  Its all about mindshare, I am sure this series places BlendTec in your top 10 list of blenders. If you have never seen the series, it would never get on your top 100 (if there are that many).
- unsignedint 16y ago
  I've spotted few of those blenders at Starbucks. Not sure if these videos are ones convinced vendor relations people though...
- sanswork 16y ago
  The guy in the videos(the company founder) has said its had a noticeable effect on sales.
- Griever 16y ago
  With that question in mind, BlendTec is the only blender company that I know of. Granted, I don't exactly pay much attention to the blender market, but I think that's the point.
- ugh 16y ago
  I’m pretty certain that this marketing campaign stars prominently in the wet dreams of many marketing guys and girls. The iPhone and the iPad “Will It Blend?” video have ten million views each on YouTube, other videos usually clock in at between a few hundred thousand and a few million views. The videos themselves have shoddy production values, I would be surprised if producing one costs more than a few thousand dollars. All this makes for a ridiculously low CPM. Oh, and those ten million views are high quality contacts, they all actually wanted to watch the video, unlike, say, a pre-roll ad on YouTube that’s forced on them. A pre-roll ad on YouTube has a CPM between $10 and $15. Blendtec could have spent $100,000 on the production of their iPhone video (I doubt they spent even a tenth of that) and still pay less than a company which tries to get an ad on YouTube the normal way. (Those companies pay for the production of the spot, just like Blendtec, but they also pay Google for running the spot.)
code_duck 16y ago
Well, that was a stupid waste. At least I can take solace in the knowledge that this man is inhaling a significant quantity of toxins.
gvsyn 16y ago
Only question with the blending, have they ever tried blending another blender (same model etc)?
- riledhel 16y ago
  OOOhhh blender recursion!!
  - acangiano 16y ago
    It's blenders all the way down.
- retroafroman 16y ago
  http://www.virtualshackles.com/102 http://www.virtualshackles.com/102
icco 16y ago
I'm still waiting for the iFixit teardown. Maybe Google will send them one?
bigwally 16y ago
a youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IHNeyHjtM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IHNeyHjtM
albemuth 16y ago
I couldn't apply for one of these (though I really wanted one) because I'm not on the US, good to see them put to good use.
metatronscube 16y ago
What a waste! especially since I have little to no chance of getting picked to try one out :( Oh well.
wildmXranat 16y ago
Do NOT breathe that in.
Apocryphon 16y ago
That's no Chromebook! That's a black MacBook running Chrome!

134 points by antimatter15 16y ago

phlux 16y ago

While funny etc. We have so much waste in the world as it is - the last thing we need is the toxic waste of a perfectly good machine being blended and thrown out. I have never had respect for the 'will it blend' concept, regardless of how funny one may find it. It is simply wasteful.

huntero 16y ago
It's advertising. Admittedly, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I would imagine that the economic impact of this advertising is worth more than the cost for Google to send a CR-48 to be blended.
- phlux 16y ago
  >...economic impact of this advertising is worth more than the cost for Google to send a CR-48 to be blended. I know what it is called - but it is still clearly waste. I was not referring to the economic impact but rather the environmental. Sure, we can all say "who cares" -- I do, which is why I ask. Have you seen the garbage problems we have? The toxic waste dumps that are china and other places. I am not trying to be some tree hugging hippy here - I just dont see the need/value of such advertising. If they want to advertise - why not go give the things to even more people who want/need it? How about give one to every student in a school of their choice? This is utter stupidity on the part of the advertising industry and proves how little value they provide society other than more and more thought pollution on top of the actual pollution they produce.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    It is not just simply an environmental cost - there are other costs associated with the preponderance of disposable possessions, and the leaking over into the category of disposable of things that were once considered permanent. To start with, it is simply wasteful for the reasons you describe. However it also contributes in a small way to the paradigm of exponential growth that permeates everything about human civilisation, which we as hackers know represents certain death. EDIT: I'm not saying google have created a "disposable computer." However all this advertising definitely shifts us culturally in that direction.
    - phlux 16y ago
      I'd love to have a laptop whose sum parts are made out of reusable/biodegradable materials as much as possible. Corn/potato based cases, even if they need to be replaced often - or solid aluminum ones that are a set form factor and I simply replace the guts every time I upgrade. I wish that apple would require/request/desire that any old apple product gets returned to them for disposal/credit when it reaches true EOL. It has been said too many times by others greater than myself; Our garbage and waste will be the downfall of our species.
      - JonnieCache 16y ago
        >I'd love to have a laptop whose sum parts are made out of reusable/biodegradable materials as much as possible. I present the cardboard computer (case): http://recomputepc.com http://recomputepc.com Unfortunately it's prohibitively expensive compared to conventional options, as you would expect. And you obviously can't fab the boards from card and the chips from potato, as it were. >It has been said too many times by others greater than myself; Our garbage and waste will be the downfall of our species. We can learn to recycle our waste. Mining landfill is going to be big business one day. It will however be much harder to repair the environmental and human damage caused by the extraction of the raw materials in the first place.
        jonhendry 16y ago
        "I present the cardboard computer (case): " The case is probably the most recyclable part of a computer, unless there's something funky about the plastics used. An aluminum MacBook Pro case could be melted down, or, hell, probably used as-is as raw material to machine new small parts.
  - antimatter15 16y ago
    That's not necessarily true. Advertising helps sell products, and getting the idea of Chrome OS into people's minds will lead to more people buying it. And through Google's professed indirect and obscure schemes leads to more internet usage and advertising exposure, leaving more revenue for Google to give them to children. It might seem strange, but it seems that much of what Google does seems to follow such logic. This video was part of the Chrome Demolition Lab http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ and the four colors on the bottom strip are labeled "Learn", "Apply", "Recycle" (the green one) and "Legal". Recycle says "Electronic waste is piling up globally at a rate of 40 million tons a year. That's the same weight as 5 loaded buses every minute. Enter your zip code to locate electronic device recycling centers in your area" "The US produces 8% of the world's electronic waste per year (8% = 3.2 Million tons)" "Americans only recycle 13.7% of their electronic waste, leaving 2.9 million tons per year" "That's a big pile of electronic waste. So far this year 038,992,672 (increments by one every second)" The legal tab says "Google does not now, nor has it ever, endorsed or encouraged in any fashion, the hazing of or harming of electronic devices for entertainment purposes, anger management or stress relief. The demolitions and tests are performed using prototype notebooks. Chat interaction and user data are not being recorded. Do not try this at home. Please Recycle."
  - barrkel 16y ago
    You do not have nearly enough information to make this determination. If tablets like this reduce the demand for bigger laptops and desktops, making them more popular through various forms of marketing may in fact reduce overall environmental impact.
    - alphaoverlord 16y ago
      I dont know. Every time I stream grooveshark, I wonder how much less energy I would be using if I just had the same 10 songs locally.
    - phlux 16y ago
      I don't? Here we see a device go straight from production to destruction intentionally and to a state where recycle/rebuild/re-use is impractical. Sorry but all these arguments for advertising supporting the complete destruction of useful resources are misguided retarded and stupid. Downvote all you want - but I'd prefer it were you that drank the water into which these toxic particles shall leach. Fuck advertising.
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      "Various forms of marketing" - of the nearly infinite range of marketing approaches, "wasteful destruction" is only one, and oddly enough, most successful marketing campaigns never stooped to that level. And even when damaging the product is the approach taken, it's not usually a pointless stunt. When Timex abused their watches in commercials, the point was to show that the watches would keep working. The blending thing is just stupid web-meme fan service, that is unlikely to make a notable contribution to selling Cr48s. Or blenders, for that matter.
  - benatkin 16y ago
    When I saw a BlendTec commercial for the first time, I thought: "that's wasteful!". Then I thought about it some more and realized that it was a tiny fraction of the waste that's being produced by viewers. I realized if viewers would keep their electronics 10% longer it would make many times as big a difference as putting a kibosh on this commercial series. So it actually raised awareness for me.
    - DanielStraight 16y ago
      It's not a tiny fraction, it's an undetectable fraction. Keeping electronics 10% longer wouldn't many many times as big a difference, it would make many orders of magnitude more difference. Commenting that this is waste is like commenting that all the astronauts coming to the launch site in personal vehicles is a waste of fuel. You're about to burn in 10 minutes more fuel than anyone will likely ever use in their entire life. It doesn't matter at that point. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that since you can't change the big picture, you shouldn't do anything at all. I'm just saying you shouldn't blow things out of proportion.
- thingie 16y ago
  It might still be cheaper than some kind of elaborate ad with a lot of actors, scenes and stuff, and even have lesser environmental impact (one laptop is much less waste than, say, flight to some distant place to take the shots for an ad). So, yes, it can actually make sense. But still, I just don't like the culture which shows that it's perfectly ok to smash and destroy stuff just for pleasure and marketing. Imagine that they would blend people in the show. Can't we have some respect for our machines as well?
  - hugh3 16y ago
    It's just a bunch of atoms. It was a bunch of atoms before the manufacturers got to it -- mostly goo, some rocks, a bit of sand. They rearranged the atoms into a different order. Then Blend-Tec guy put it into a blender and rearranged the atoms again, now it's dust instead of goo. What has been lost, apart from a bit of irreplacable time out of the lives of everyone involved (including me writing this comment and you reading it)?
    - JonnieCache 16y ago
      >What has been lost, apart from a bit of irreplacable time out of the lives of everyone involved (including me writing this comment and you reading it)? Short answer, we've gained entropy. Over time, entropy will be the end of us, and therefore it is our responsibility as lifeforms to hold it back wherever we can. Otherwise what's the point? May as well just give up on the whole spontaneously emergent complexity deal altogether if you're just going to go wrecking up the place.
      - hugh3 16y ago
        If we live long enough to be eventually killed by entropy, then I'd say we have officially Won. It's like when you get to the final level of Pac Man and it crashes.
        moultano 16y ago
        Entropy is what kills every one of us. Entropy is what makes us "run out" of rare metals. There are a lot of ways for entropy to kill us that don't involve the heat death of the universe.
- ryanhuff 16y ago
  <i>It's advertising</i>. How meta. As I ponder the implications of Google engaged in this publicity stunt, I wonder. Was this device, sent off to sacrifice, my CR-48, lost in shipping? As my desk maintains an empty spot, so carefully cleared, in anticipation of the arrival of the CR-48, perhaps now, my eagerness and expectation will turn regret, as I consider the future that may never be... Google, I beg you, send me my CR-48. <sob, tear>.
DavidSJ 16y ago
By what criteria do you distinguish wasteful environmental impact from justified environmental impact?
- Andys 16y ago
  Heh - indeed. Is blending any less wasteful than someone using this notebook to download a bunch of porn, post a few hundred vacuous tweets, and then toss it on the trash heap after 11 months when a newer slimmer version comes out.
robryan 16y ago
While we sit here thinking about this though much worse waste is going on it the world unseen. My uni gets big dumpsters and throws out 100's of computers each year. Granted they are usually getting old though.
- phlux 16y ago
  So here we have: New-laptop->blender For your comment we have: New-machine-->user------------------------->trash/other-user/some-other-market WTF don't people understand about how wasteful this is? Also, this machines toxic+precious components are being munger to the point where any hope of recycle is lost. If you aren't already paying attention, countries like China are securing the next 50-100 years worth of natural resources, required for the information age lifestyle, in Africa in such a way that the US will be relatively 3rd world in the next 25 years (with respect to our ability to produce that which we need). So even though we are focused on the micro - the problem and question are macro. Please tell me I am misguided, and prove it.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Helianthus16 16y ago
    Can't prove it, that's the sort of thing that's dependant on how guided/misguided you are. ;) Look at it this way. Our society can operate at at a high scale of efficiency, where everything is used to maximum utility and absolutely nothing is wasted, or it can operate extremely inefficiently. It _only_ makes sense to consider the societal-wide efficiency--as you say, the problem and question are macro. So we can posit some ranking, some percentage of total efficiency. However, 'Will it blend' is hardly large enough to make a huge dent overall in the larger percent. The resources lost from one netbook per time segment are not comparable to the resources lost in even a tenth of a percent decrease in efficiency, if you pardon the approximation. Furthermore, 'maximum utility' is rather difficult to determine because 'utility' is variable. It turns out that apparently there's enough 'utility' in making "Will It Blend?" videos that we could even argue that this is positive efficiency! Do you also get upset when cars and pianos are destroyed for movies and tv shows? Would you have us exert _more_ energy to generate the illusion in order to save good tools?
benatkin 16y ago
The environmental cost per viewer is infinitesimally small, so I don't buy that argument. An argument about it leading viewers to carelessness would be a sad statement about humor.
axod 16y ago
The average mail shot wastes more in envelopes stamps, CO2 from delivery van etc etc. Chill out.

guiseppecalzone 16y ago

Google did another advertisement where they destroy at least 5 laptops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&feature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo&feature I used to think that "Will it blend" was funny. Maybe the novelty of it has warn off. Instead of laughing, watching this video made me wince.

riobard 16y ago
I had the same weird feeling watching that video. There is something fundamentally wrong there. I'm especially worried about the last part when the little girl destroying the last CR-48: she was so calm to do that without a blink. I was shocked. This is not the way we teach our children. [edit]: there's a tagline said by the demo guy in the video: “good thing I get a new one every time”. This kinda thinking bothers me.
- gloob 16y ago
  What about it bothers you, exactly?
  - riobard 16y ago
    My take is that the lower powered devices tend to be retired much faster. I would expect on average a CR-48 would last (in the sense of people actually using it) much shorter than a, say, MacBook Pro. Also a used MacBook Pro (or a comparable high end machine) tends to sell better as a second hand. You probably won't want a second hand CR-48 after two years usage I guess? On the other hand, the raw materials used to build a CR-48 or a MacBook Pro are almost equivalent. They also contain comparable amount of toxic heavy metals. At the end of the life eventually they'll be shipped to some villages in China to be disassembled to get the expensive metal like gold and silver, but the rest will be burned and buried, causing long term pollution and damage. I know this is too much environmentalist talk and not making business sense, but I just cannot ignore the sad facts after watching a video about the life of people who live those villages…
    - 16y ago

kurtsiegfried 16y ago

I find it somewhat ironic that this video will not play on my CR-48.

antimatter15 16y ago
It's meant to be played from http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ http://www.google.com/chromeos/demolab/ which is in flash and should (from what I've read) be excruciatingly slow anyway.
- mey 16y ago
  Thermite is sadly not an option.
- alinajaf 16y ago
  If you swear at that chat bot enough times with enough profanity it forwards you to a google search for 'cleaning supplies'.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I wouldn't say that's irony- sounds to me like your CR-48 just doesn't want to watch the execution of it's brother.
- melvinram 16y ago
  lol reminded me of this: http://www.jokeawhenever.com/archive/media/pictures/horror_movie.jpg http://www.jokeawhenever.com/archive/media/pictures/horror_m...
mivok 16y ago
Go to about:flags and enable media player, then it will play pretty well (although it's a little laggy when played full screen)
sshconnection 16y ago
I just watched it on mine. You need to go to settings and enable the media player. It pops up a little player like the download and im windows.

signal 16y ago

What was that Google mantra again? Evil has many shades of grey but wasting a computer that could literally educate an entire schoolhouse in Africa and keeping this old, stupid joke going must be somewhere south of good.

sliverstorm 16y ago
Who's to say this old, stupid joke of a publicity stunt won't sell them enough cr-48's to give TWO cr-48's to schoolhouses in Africa instead of the one they started with? That's what business is, the classic best answer to "you have one egg. How do you make two?"
- signal 16y ago
  My point is that there are more positive ways to make two than by destroying one. If Google is just interested in getting publicity for the cr-48 they might as well join Cheerios on Days of Our Lives.

bdb 16y ago

This is particularly awesome because my Cr-48 came with a piece of paper that said something like: "Do not crush, incinerate, blend (guess we'll never find out if it'll blend...), ...(several other things)..."

cypherpunks01 16y ago
The full first paragraph of the Safety Notice: This product contains sensitive components. Do not drop, disassemble, open, crush, bend, bake, deform, puncture, blend (guess we'll never know if it'll bend), shred, incinerate, paint, bring to the moon, or insert foreign objects into the device. Do not spill liquids, rocks of any size, or food on the device. Do not expose the device to water, moisture or rap music. It keeps going... :)
- alex_c 16y ago
  The entire thing (from Reddit): http://i.imgur.com/hA2Fd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hA2Fd.jpg

jrockway 16y ago

I actually wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, but I didn't get one. Oh well. I keep forgetting that it's Microsoft that says "developers, developers, developers, developers".

apetresc 16y ago
You're joking, right? The fact that you weren't one of the thousands to receive a free laptop makes Google developer-unfriendly?
- jrockway 16y ago
  Yes, my post was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. The article is about putting the laptop in a blender; comments should be read with that in mind.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    Well, at least you're not alone in having no luck.
cypherpunks01 16y ago
Uh, well I wanted to test my application on a Cr-48, and they did send me one... Microsoft has never given me anything except excruciating IE 6/7/8/9 bugs.

quux 16y ago

Now blend the cloud!!!!

simonsarris 16y ago
Wouldn't that just be blending things from a datacenter? Lest we let it slip our mind, the cloud is a still a group of real places, its just data/processing not near your location.
moondowner 16y ago
"I wonder where the cloud is?" When he finds the servers he'll blend them too :)

guyzero 16y ago

Does this video series actually sell any blenders?

natrius 16y ago
No one would've ever heard of Blendtec without them. I'm sure they've sold more than enough to recover the couple thousand dollars they've spent on the videos.
bpd1069 16y ago
Its all about mindshare, I am sure this series places BlendTec in your top 10 list of blenders. If you have never seen the series, it would never get on your top 100 (if there are that many).
unsignedint 16y ago
I've spotted few of those blenders at Starbucks. Not sure if these videos are ones convinced vendor relations people though...
sanswork 16y ago
The guy in the videos(the company founder) has said its had a noticeable effect on sales.
Griever 16y ago
With that question in mind, BlendTec is the only blender company that I know of. Granted, I don't exactly pay much attention to the blender market, but I think that's the point.
ugh 16y ago
I’m pretty certain that this marketing campaign stars prominently in the wet dreams of many marketing guys and girls. The iPhone and the iPad “Will It Blend?” video have ten million views each on YouTube, other videos usually clock in at between a few hundred thousand and a few million views. The videos themselves have shoddy production values, I would be surprised if producing one costs more than a few thousand dollars. All this makes for a ridiculously low CPM. Oh, and those ten million views are high quality contacts, they all actually wanted to watch the video, unlike, say, a pre-roll ad on YouTube that’s forced on them. A pre-roll ad on YouTube has a CPM between $10 and $15. Blendtec could have spent $100,000 on the production of their iPhone video (I doubt they spent even a tenth of that) and still pay less than a company which tries to get an ad on YouTube the normal way. (Those companies pay for the production of the spot, just like Blendtec, but they also pay Google for running the spot.)

code_duck 16y ago

Well, that was a stupid waste. At least I can take solace in the knowledge that this man is inhaling a significant quantity of toxins.

gvsyn 16y ago

Only question with the blending, have they ever tried blending another blender (same model etc)?

riledhel 16y ago
OOOhhh blender recursion!!
- acangiano 16y ago
  It's blenders all the way down.
retroafroman 16y ago
http://www.virtualshackles.com/102 http://www.virtualshackles.com/102

icco 16y ago

I'm still waiting for the iFixit teardown. Maybe Google will send them one?

bigwally 16y ago

a youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IHNeyHjtM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5IHNeyHjtM

albemuth 16y ago

I couldn't apply for one of these (though I really wanted one) because I'm not on the US, good to see them put to good use.

metatronscube 16y ago

What a waste! especially since I have little to no chance of getting picked to try one out :( Oh well.

wildmXranat 16y ago

Do NOT breathe that in.

Apocryphon 16y ago

That's no Chromebook! That's a black MacBook running Chrome!