this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
806 points (92.1% liked)

News

23301 readers
3347 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 206 points 6 months ago (4 children)

When Seiko beat the Swiss at their own mechanical watch accuracy competitions, they decided to cancel the long running prestigious competition entirely instead of make a better watch.

Capitalism breeds innovation!

[–] [email protected] 83 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Same with Japanese Scotch whiskeys absolutely running the table on ones from Scotland in competitions.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (3 children)

That's partly because "Scotch" is a protected label. You can only call a Whisky Scotch if it was distilled with a certain technique, from certain grains, by certain companies, and matured in certain casks for a certain amount of time. All of it is regulated.

Japanese whisky doesn't have these limitations. They can just do whatever makes it taste good.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

If it doesn’t come from loch ness it’s just sparkling whisky

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Scotch whisky must be made in Scotland. Similar story with bourbon, bourbon must be made in the United States. In many places you can follow the same recipes and processes as those products, but you may not label them with those terms.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Yes, but being made in Scotland isn't enough to call your whisky Scotch. There's a whole rulebook.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Yes, and being distilled and aged in Scotland are both rules in that rule book. Again, same for bourbon, not all American whiskies are eligible to be labeled as bourbon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I'm an American, and we just don't really buy into the whole "you must be from this region to be called this item". All sparkling wine is champagne, all peaty whiskey is scotch, and all rice liqur is sake.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

You can make whiskey, though. According to the EU, if you have a product distilled from grain mash and stored, at full undiluted strength, in wood casks for at least three years, you can call it whiskey. You can produce a Single Malt Whiskey, or a Rye Whiskey, anywhere you want and in fact some German Korn would qualify as whiskey as it's aged long enough.

Side note: Whisky wasn't always aged. Originally it pretty much resembled Korn (though German noses have some rather strict standards when it comes to fusel alcohols that Whisky and Vodka producers don't tend to have), then the UK prohibition came along and distillers had no choice but to let the stuff age in its casks while they fought the legislation, then they were allowed to sell the aged stuff, aged much longer than was previously common, and the rest is history.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

The Japanese distilleries are following all the rules. They are just doing it in Japan and better.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago

Oh she's sweet but she's Seiko, a little bit Seiko

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Misread as Sekiro, was confused about sword fighting and watches, but interested.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

To be fair, a crystal clock is just going to be more accurate than a movement based watch. Even the biggest watch fanboys admit that a $30 ~~Seiko~~ Casio outperforms the majority of mechanicals on raw accuracy.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Seiko makes mechanical watches that cost under $100 and are just as precise and long-lasting as a Swiss watch.
You're probably thinking of Casio.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Ahhhhh you’re right I mixed them up :/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

So... The existing market leader chose to flip the table instead of admitting that their position was weaker and lower value.

Yep, that sure sounds like the pursuit of capital instead of... innovation, quality, or any of the other attributes capitalism attempts to associate itself with.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The Neuchâtel Observatory is a publicly funded institution that certifies movements with high accuracy as chronometers. Not a private body, or a marketing tool used by a watchmaker. The same ‘competition’ is done by other observatories, all giving their own rating of a timepiece’s accuracy against a reference chronometer kept at the observatory.

A quick search could have brought you that information_ Quartz movements beat the pants off mechanical movements, and they’re far cheaper to make, allowing the non-rich to have a decent watch with good battery life and serious accuracy. Cheap and normal mechanical watches regularly drift and lose a few seconds time over days and weeks - quartz drifts between 1-110 seconds over a year.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

They aren't talking about quartz watches though. Seiko makes mechanical watches that were being compared to swiss mechanical watches costing way more.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

So funnily enough, the very first movement they submitted to the contest in 1963 was a quartz, and it placed tenth overall. They went with mechanical movements for subsequent competitions, and didn’t actually start placing high again until 1966 when they placed ninth overall. In ‘67 they did even better, placing fourth, but then the contest was canceled for good the next year.