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A struggling Rust Belt city pinned its revival on a self-chilling beverage can
- yodon 6y ago> “Whenever you mention self-cooling cans, people’s eyes raise to the ceiling and they say, ‘Oh Lord, not again,’” John Nutting, editorial director of Sayers Publishing Group Ltd. My sentiments exactly
- duxup 6y agoI'm running through ideas in my head and they all involve safety risks or .. just a bulky awkward / costly can relative to the status quo.
- dathinab 6y agoA self-cooling can is a luxury product but canned drinks are not. It either needs to be super cheap or you need to somehow sell it in the high end luxury segment or else it's unlikely to make money. (I think).
- dathinab 6y agoI just found out that there is a way to produce them not to expensive, but it's also not very effective wrt. cooling. Given that as far as I know people in the US tend to drink their soda quite cold it still not likely to work. (IMHO)
- postalrat 6y agoWell it wouldn't need refrigeration on the store shelves. It at least has that going for it.
- seph-reed 6y agoLooked it up a bit: https://chillcan.com/ https://chillcan.com/ From 10 seconds of research, it seems to use depressurization. Actually a sort of cool idea... not sure why it didn't work out.
- hinkley 6y agoDoes Guinness still do the nitro in a can device? My recollection is that it only reduced the temperature a few degrees below room temperature, which is more or less the 'correct temperature' for Guinness anyway. Soda, not so much.
- res0nat0r 6y agoYep, but I'm pretty sure that is just to get the nitro mouthfeel more than anything temperature wise. The entire website looks absolutely terrible and straight out of the 1990s. Whatever politicians allowed this were either in on the take or should be booted for sheer incompetence. Also isn't Youngstown the same city that had the big hubbub with Trump and GM, and is still shutting down and being outsourced overseas?
- adammunich 6y agoA lot of folks in the rust belt are really desperate for work. Personally I think it's a good place for electronics manufacturing, the people are hard working and have high attention to detail, procedure and process.
- bsder 6y agoThe problem is rarely the workers. There are two problems here. Infrastructure and local business owners. Infrastructure can probably be overcome. Most local business owners, on the other hand, can basically die in a fire and nobody will mourn them. The problem is that local business owners don't really believe in deadlines. So, those business cards you needed before flying to the conference? Yeah, not done yet. That vehicle repair that needed to be completed before the end of the week, yeah, not really. I can go on and on. And then shitty winter weather just adds extra uncertainty to the mix. So, you wind up outsourcing to non-local companies that actually hold their deadlines. At that point, why are you located where you are?
- hinkley 6y ago
- adammunich 6y agoYo, they have AI https://chillcan.com/ai/ https://chillcan.com/ai/
- klmadfejno 6y agoAmazing > The Joseph Company has plans in the very near future to implement many facets of Artificial Intelligence into a variety of business applicatins typo and then later > Using the AI subset of Deep Learning, the Joseph Company will enable robotic arms capable of performing partially supervised learning to the pint of needing only minimal human interaction Another typo... and sort of the exact opposite of what they promised the town (jobs). And then a font with horrific capital letters
- yters 6y agoOr is it a typo?
- ngngngng 6y agoI get it. Beverages. Pint.
- mason55 6y agoAlso... > By Matteo J. Joseph Director of Technical Operations and alumni of Stanford University School of Engineering Class of 2020 So their "Director of Technical Operations" hasn't even graduated college yet? Hopefully it's just a puffed up title and he's not actually in charge of anything. Not that you need a college degree to be a good technical leader or that young people can't be good leaders but I don't understand how he could really be in charge of tech ops if he's been busy at Stanford.
- HanayamaTriplet 6y agoStanford is on quarters, so they could have graduated at the end of the winter quarter in early April.
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- danso 6y agoProPublica's president tweeted that this happens to be the 2nd self-chilling-can story/scandal he's lawyered – the first being a 1986 WSJ investigation into a "bogus company" promising a self-freezing can [0]. I've never even heard of such a thing, and as a techie, I immediately think "Scam Kickstarter/As sold on TV junk". But even reading today's story I don't understand how Youngstown (pop. ~65,000) could do better due diligence with today's Internet. To be fair, a google search for "self chilling can" doesn't bring up stories about the decades old scam. And there's no obvious fraud in the story – I mean, the company apparently have an Irvine headquarters, which the city lawyer visited when he was out there, as well as production prototypes. But the novelty of the idea, and lack of actual market research (since they haven't really mass produced it yet) makes this as crazy as $1M to slick but ephemeral Indiegogo campaign. And I guess I really have no idea how hard it is for Youngstown – suffering a massive population and jobs downspiral for the past few decades – to attract any big employer to the area, with any amount of incentive. It's not like they can attract the likes of Foxconn (which incidentally, also has failed to live up to promises in Wisconsin) or Amazon, especially with a budget too stretched to offer more than a few million in tax breaks. [0] https://twitter.com/dicktofel/status/1259788560917581829 https://twitter.com/dicktofel/status/1259788560917581829 https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/01/business/sec-cites-stock-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/01/business/sec-cites-stock-...
- ClutchBand 6y agoSmall towns and cities need to look at other means to survive than to try and bring in some large employer or factory. Those can be boons, but banking on industrialists or some keystone sort of solution is a sure way to fail. I grew up a few minutes from Youngstown. These areas should focus more on small businesses, agriculture and other things that make a lot of sense with what is left there. Met with a ton of corruption at the local level, I don't see much of anything happening without a real and renewed interest in participation and accountability in our politics.
- Animats 6y agoThere's also a self-heating can startup.[1] Self-heating cans have tried many times. Either the reaction isn't energetic enough, and most of the can volume powers the heating, or it's too energetic, and there's a safety problem. Or, after dealing with those problems, the can costs too much. Starbucks has accustomed people to paying $5 for a coffee. So there's a self-heating can of coffee in market test.[2] With enough hipster adjectives and color choices, they think they can charge $5 per can.[2] [1] https://www.poweredbyheatgen.com/ https://www.poweredbyheatgen.com/ [2] https://www.fox29.com/news/la-colombe-develops-innovative-self-heating-coffee-cans https://www.fox29.com/news/la-colombe-develops-innovative-se...
- indymike 6y agoI bought a coffee beverage in a self-heating can at Walmart... La Colombe I think. It was pretty good and nice and hot. It was a couple of bucks I think.
- kube-system 6y agoThat sounds awesome for camping/tailgating/travelling/picnics etc.
- Karunamon 6y agoI remember buying a hot chocolate of that brand from Walmart. There was a plastic/foil thing on the bottom of the can, you pressed it inwards, and the can would heat up inside a minute or so. I remember taking one of those with me when I had to work outdoors, it was quite nice. Only saw them for a month or two. I wonder what happened?
- Animats 6y agoMaybe Walmart isn't the right distribution chain for $5 cans of coffee.
- linuxftw 6y agoAs long as it's 'carbon neutral' they'll sell a trillion of them.
- yardie 6y ago> Stretched for resources, officials took part of the money from Youngstown’s water and wastewater funds, which had been earmarked for sewer and water projects. They also approved massive tax breaks for the property. And they spent an additional $360,000 to purchase and demolish the homes of roughly a dozen residents who lived within the footprint of the future Chill-Can plant. That's not going to come back to haunt them. > More than three years later, Youngstown is still waiting. I wonder what's the hold up? > Infrastructure problems, such as aging utility lines, have delayed the project... Ah, there it is! If there is a better definition of stupid I'm not sure what it is. It's been a consistent story of towns shorting the budget to cover tax breaks, usually at the expense of the school budget, to entice companies to migrate there. Then when they do they find out the workforce isn't educated enough for the tasks, or the infrastructure is in terrible shape, or it's simply a scam.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIt’s because they’re trying to paper over a problem that has no solution - sufficient number of people who can generate sufficient economic activity don’t want to live in Youngstown, OH. They have to pay people to get them to live there, but they can’t simply write them a check for obvious reasons, so this is the way it happens. This is true of many, many cities with flat terrain, hot and humid summers, and cold and salty winters.
- yardie 6y agoI wonder at what point do they turn to the Sicilian town model: Towns with a shrinking demographic sell city-owned homes for $1 as an incentive for new residents.
- interestica 6y agoThe name 'Youngstown' has some built-in branding too!
- hhs 6y agoAccording to the website, in 2015, a case study was published: https://chillcan.com/harvard/ https://chillcan.com/harvard/ It seems inaccessible now. Is there a way to read it?
- thephyber 6y agoInternet Archive link[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190927072318/https://chillcan.com/harvard/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190927072318/https://chillcan....
- firloop 6y agoI am similarly curious! The only thing I could find is this paywalled link: https://www.coursehero.com/file/p49pacr/Mitchell-was-able-to-get-all-funding-he-thought-was-necessary-without-giving-up/ https://www.coursehero.com/file/p49pacr/Mitchell-was-able-to...
- _bxg1 6y agoWhy are these "promises" not drawn up as contracts, so the city can sue when they aren't met? Edit: > Under these so-called enterprise zone agreements, delinquent companies can face penalties, including repayment of taxes and the termination of incentives. But in Youngstown, they rarely do. Officials have canceled 25 agreements over the past three decades, usually the result of the business closing, relocating or failing to move forward with a project. Records indicate that the city sought back taxes from an errant firm on just one occasion, although it’s unclear if authorities ever collected; city officials did not respond to questions on the matter. As a result, dozens of private businesses have profited from public subsidies in a city that can scarcely afford them. Unclear what the reason is Edit 2: > Now, Youngstown’s approach to economic development is coming under greater scrutiny as the city’s former finance director and a prominent developer prepare to face trial on public corruption charges. At the heart of the case are allegations that officials steered taxpayer funds to favored projects in exchange for bribes. Ah. Yep.
- function_seven 6y agoThey are. But then the city just ignores the "stick" half of the carrot/stick framework. Or they "lose" the contract[0]. Or they lost the sophistication war with the company's lawyers, and get loop-holed out of their penalties. It's all very slimy or amateurish, depending on how charitable you want to be towards the principals involved. What strikes me the most from this article: > A consumer twists a knob at the bottom of a can and activates a cooling apparatus. In about 90 seconds, the beverage temperature drops about 30 degrees. That's it? 30°F? So if my can is at 90°F, and I'd like a cold one, I can wait a minute and a half and get a lukewarm 60° beverage. I mean, that's kinda cool maybe, but I can't imagine it's worth whatever this costs. [0] "In response to public records requests, Youngstown provided cost projections for just 30 of the 94 agreements it granted since 1991, saying it could not locate many of the early contracts."
- kube-system 6y agoA 30 degree drop sounds completely reasonable of a use case. That takes a can from room temp to an acceptable refrigerator temp.
- rambleraptor 6y agoThese are the same kinds of communities are just being ravaged by brain drain. Their brightest students And their college graduates are being driven out of town from lack of opportunity. Those are the people who businesses want to hire. Instead, Youngstown’s best chances of a brighter future are moving to Columbus nearby or the coasts to places that already have plenty of advantages. Remote work could change this. But, these types of communities really need to embrace white-collar workers and not keep praying for a blue-collar comeback.
- bilbo0s 6y ago>But, these types of communities really need to embrace white-collar workers and not keep praying for a blue-collar comeback. Lot easier said than done. Famously, Racine Wi tried to get legions of white collar workers. The result was similar to what we see outlined in this article. Only instead of spending millions to get blue collar jobs, in Wisconsin we spent hundreds of millions to billions to get white collar jobs. End result was the same, basically, a predictable crash and burn. Here's reality. These places are a tough sell. And until these places are willing to accept the fact that they are a tough sell they will continue to be easy pickings for slick corporate attorneys in dark suits.
- germinalphrase 6y agoI’m still angry about that.
- WillEngler 6y agoFWIW Youngstown has also placed some big economic development bets on white collar industries. Last I checked, the Youngstown Business Incubator had a solid success with at least one software company: https://www.google.com/search?q=turning+technologies&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS715US715&oq=turning+tech&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l6.4233j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=turning+technologies&rlz=1C5... There's also been a lot of work to nurture additive manufacturing businesses (https://ysu.edu/center-for-innovation-in-additive-manufacturing https://ysu.edu/center-for-innovation-in-additive-manufactur...). A mixture of federal grants (partly from the Appalachian Regional Commission IIRC) and support from the university going into that. But to your point of embracing white collar workers ... does that solve the problem economic development agencies are actually trying to solve? An interesting case study a few miles down the highway is Pittsburgh. There's been a much-hyped boom in high skilled tech jobs seeded by CMU (robotics, software startups) plus a relatively strong healthcare/biotech sector there. But that doesn't do much to replace the big swath of steel and manufacturing jobs that were around a generation ago. So average wages go up and there's probably _some_ trickle down benefits, but the new tech jobs don't do much for the median Pittsburgher whose parents/grandparents would have worked in the mills.