skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof.

I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks.

I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. Within a few minutes of me receiving this claim, my account was suspended. I had no chance to rectify the situation.

No amount of calling or emailing Amazon could get me in front of someone that could help me. All responses were an automated rejection.

This was a rough time for me as it was my only form of income and Amazon held almost $30,000 of my money for 3 months. I ended up having to close my business and move on, though I did eventually get all of my money back.

I've built multiple successful businesses since then and Amazon has recently had many business reps try to get me to sign up with a business account, because we purchase lots of items on Amazon/month. I always try to get them to re-investigate my old seller account and our email correspondence stops shortly after this. It's crazy to me that after 10 years and in a completely different industry, I still can't open a seller account.

It taught me a valuable lesson not to build my entire business on someone else's platform.

It only gives them more control over you and they will most likely use your customers, data, and more resources to out-compete you, if you get too big. Twitter has also done this to their app developers.

My wife runs a small business on Etsy and it's just as bad. They make random code changes, which bumps listings up or down and you suddenly have no orders for weeks at a time.

What's even scarier is if a handful of companies run everything we use online. Will I suddenly not be able to get a home loan for a decade because of an account closure?
Everything you need to know about Ramadan
All my dotfiles are in a git repo.

Whenever I'm doing a fresh install, I simply download all my most-used packages and rsync the dot files.

I'm planning on investing some time and setting up Ansible so I only have to install python and it does the rest for me.

HTH
FOMC Meeting Minutes: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes202...

Fed Audited Financial Statements: https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/audited-annual-fi...

I’m sorry that your Swedish central bank is classified, since, based on your worldview, there are presumably a bunch of Swedish economists working there behind closed doors to screw you over.
Amazon agrees that what is being reported goes against their policies.

'"However, we strictly prohibit our employees from using nonpublic, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch." Amazon said employees using such data to inform private-label decisions in the way the Journal described would violate its policies, and that the company has launched an internal investigation.'
The issue is that Amazon is lying to Congress.
I'm not suggesting any false dichotomy, I'm trying to reason about the likely security consequences given what we saw with WebGL in Firefox: serious security flaws in its implementation, with the features enabled in the browser by default. See my links above, one of which summarises with anyone running Firefox 4 with WebGL support is vulnerable to having malicious web pages capture screenshots of any window on their system.

My thoughts are along these lines:

┌────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ │ Secure implementation │ Insecure implementation │
├────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ Opt-in │ Minimal security impact │ Significant security impact │
│ Enabled by default │ Minimal security impact │ Security disaster │
└────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
Art Between News, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2020
That's what Amazon Basics is and does.
I would like to recommend "The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing" by Steven W. Smith. It is free to read online or download at https://www.dspguide.com/

It is suited for the reader that does not possess a heavy mathematical background; in fact, the author writes:

"This book was written for scientists and engineers in a wide variety of fields: physics, bio-engineering, geology, oceanography, mechanical and electrical engineering, to name just a few. The goal is to present practical techniques while avoiding the barriers of detailed mathematics and abstract theory. To achieve this goal, three strategies were employed in writing this book:

First, the techniques are explained, not simply proven to be true through mathematical derivations. While much of the mathematics is included, it is not used as the primary means of conveying the information. Nothing beats a few well written paragraphs supported by good illustrations.

[...]

Second, complex numbers are treated as an advanced topic, something to be learned after the fundamental principles are understood.

[...]

Third, very simple computer programs are used."
Rust's macros are unpleasant to write and debug but very nice to use. The language is also much more expressive than C so I don't find myself needing to (ab)use macros quite as often.

Of course lisp macros are on a different level but the languages are massively different so it's not necessarily a super fair comparison.
That's not entirely true. Plenty of retail items are sold on consignment.
> Stating the obvious I guess. All retailers do this and create their own white-label brands to squeeze profit from well-performing categories. Target, for instance, is very upfront about it and they have like a gazillion white-label brands that compete in hundreds of categories, which makes it very gray for the customer.

IIRC, many traditional white label brands are actually manufactured by the name brands themselves, and they're part of a strategy to segment the market.

The difference here seems to be that Amazon has been cloning relatively unique products made by smaller companies, while traditional white label brands are fungible commodities made by large players with little differentiation. From the OP:

> Because of the limitations of shelf space, traditional retailers stock far fewer products than Amazon’s hundreds millions of items. Typically, they create private-label products to compete in generic categories such as paper towels, rather than copycat versions of items created by smaller entrepreneurs, private-label executives said.
How was Apple able to get here? What secret sauce does Apple have in it's chip that's beating out Qualcomm, Intel and AMD?
it more or less says that people who get met a lot (...directed graph, remember) somewhat counter-intuitively increase the total percentage of people infected more than you'd expect even if they don't transmit the disease after they contract it more than an 'average' person (again, directed graph).
What they would probably do is form special relationships to give certain brands special placement and/or endorsement, but charge those brands a larger fee for the special treatment. The end result is basically the same.
Both those things you mention as wanting exist already.

For data storage independent billing, go to Settings -> Dashboard. On Professional tier and above the data storage is a dropdown where you can increase the amount required.

For email filtering go to Settings -> Filters and create as many conditions as you want on a filter.
Why not even Docker, then?
i'm both impressed and worried over the level of compliance from the American people. It's good that everyone is working together to "flatten the curve" however it's also worrisome how willing citizens are to do throw their rights out the window. I'm sure many politicians are rubbing their chins right now wondering if the rights of the people even matter anymore.
> there’s nothing stopping them from creating house brands/labels even at arms length to give the impression that it’s not Amazon

They already did this years ago. Amazon has 80+ private-label brands.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-owns-these-brands-lis...
GitHub Repositories for Mobile Developers
Assuming this comes to pass, what would the optimal move be to protect savings from inflation? Is this where Gold comes in handy?
It is when the worst of one set has the means to do much more good than the best of the other set, and yet squanders it in their greed.
Useful iOS Books and Courses to Help You Get Better
The obligatory, "I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!" but unlike say the "Kirkland" brand at CostCo, this is more like UPS using the data it has on what is being delivered to peoples houses to start stocking their trucks with things people order often[1].

[1] Maybe the next step after food trucks is "mini-mart" trucks.
They can't even label a chart so it isn't misleading. How about they label that axis with T (trillion) instead of M (million). I know, I know, somewhere it probably says "(in millions)" somewhere in the fine print.
I couldn't disagree more strongly when the things being compared are the wellbeing of humans.
This "article" is a brilliant little ad for new the Stranger Things-themed re-release of New Coke.
I know. So again here's the heart of my point: Even with the OBD-2 port, the data available to these apps is nothing compared to the data available to Tesla. Tesla can figure out how often you get close to bumping into something, exactly how far, how fast you were going, and what the lighting/weather conditions were like at the time. That data is orders of magnitude better than the stuff coming out of the app.
Vertical monopolisation is a mixed bag actually. Vertically integrated companies profit more with lower prices in the downstream market than a purely downstream product company because they make profit at both stages. Antitrust law is far kinder to vertical mergers than horizontal mergers.
no shit

we're in the era of 'all out competition', rules be damned

look at China
> So the Fed economists keep saying "wow inflation is so low even after we pump gazillions of dollars in during QE", while ignoring the fact that easy money has lead to massive multinationals consolidating control of real estate and jacking prices up.

This is not remotely grounded in fact. The majority of real estate is controlled by homeowners and small-time landlords, not massive multinationals. Landlords don't have monopoly pricing power, rents have gone up (in specific cities) because anti-development policies restrict supply.
Wait a minute.

> But the researchers instead found evidence for the opposite: “The key factor for infection was the direction of the airflow,” with downstream individuals being most at risk—a result consistent with the thesis that COVID-19 is transmitted primarily through the ballistic transmission of large respiratory droplets.

If the direction of airflow is the key factor, then the droplets have to be moving with the airflow, and therefore not ballistic.

Am I missing something?
Do you mean The missing semester of CS education? https://missing.csail.mit.edu/
‘It’s Just Like Ticketmaster’: Playing the Delivery Slot Lottery
Companies enter into agreements all the time, not all of it is necessarily collusion.

The Amazon Basics company could buy some market information or behavioural stats from the Amazon Dotcom company at a rather steep price, for example.
I'd wager that the addition of an additional wifi-free spec would actually increase costs. With the need for active cooling to prevent throttling, the pi4 veers much closer to an ultra-small desktop replacement and for that, the integrated wifi is better.
This is common practice in the retail industry. Large retailers want to ensure that they can offer their customers the lowest price on all of the products they sell.
I don’t believe it’s been made public. I only know about it because I see his name popping up on many unrelated efforts

I don’t say any of this to praise Sam (he doesn’t need it) but rather to explain why I thought his interview was interesting.
Thank you. I wonder how long this will hold though? I would not like to see it get to a point where the language is fine but people aren't really sure what else to do and just make changes for the hell of it.

In other words I think there needs to be a long term standardisation plan to keep the language stable, but for now this is a good step.
> if they know how to navigate the system, sometimes get these bills written off through "financial aid."

Yes. I have a friend in tech (contractor, bay area) who doesn't have insurance. his plan is to just show at the ER without an ID if he needs anything and give a fake name.

^ why we can't have nice things..
One thing I use it for all the time is data-driven tests, e.g. https://github.com/jcdickinson/racemus/blob/master/racemus-b...
Ah, the hyper-specific dementi? Doesn't tap data from _individual_ third-party merchants.
Issue suggestions welcome. And what questions would you like to see answered?
I remember it not being bad, and being preferred by my dad, who was a Pepsi drinker. However, I've always been a Coke person, and it didn't live up to Classic. That said, it probably could have been successful under a different brand name.
I too used to buy phones based on their hardware specs.

Then I got frustrated that I had to buy a new device every 2 years just to get a software update. My 5 year old iPhone got iOS 13.4 at the same time as everyone else.
That carefully phrased language could be technically accurate but still allow them to use seller-agnostic information about the market for batteries or speaker wire to decide to launch Amazon Basics batteries or speaker wire.

(Which by the way, I’m totally fine with, because there’s no reasonable way to prove you’re not doing it and any brick-and-mortar retailer is almost surely doing it as well.)
“Anything with an explanation point is a macro invocation, by the way.”

Can you explain what this means, exactly?
Not sure about universally, but certainly more commonly. Also, speaking loudly on trains is frowned upon. Speaking on your phone whilst on trains is not allowed.
> Future generations pay this back not through taxes but through inflation.

Inflation expectations have collapsed in recent months. We didn't see steep inflation when the government pumped trillions of dollars into the economy after 2008, why do you think we'll see steep inflation now?
Ask HN: Got stories about why a technology succeeded/failed?
When I'm reading about new technologies, I run into older technologies that succeeded or failed. Then I read about the context at the time.

Anyone have/looked into stories like that? An example would be reading about the history of relational databases, and how they replaced hierarchical databases. Then a resurgence of path-dependent access like in hierarchical databases in XML documents.
How to Care for Your Mental Health
Fair enough, its not quite the same thing. Though Home Depot has a ton of its own products now too - they are doing the same thing inside physical retail stores rather than online only.

For pharmacy items where there is some regulation around the quality of the product, I find generics/store brands to be great. For products that are not regulated in some way quality is all over the place. If you search Amazon for "ul listed usb charger" you will mostly see results for products that are not UL listed - there are probably 5 times more unlisted products for sale there than listed products - Amazon is pushing a bunch of cheap and high-profit crap at me even when I try to avoid it.
As a counterpoint, we regularly have Amazon reimburse us for thousands of dollars of merchandise when they lose our products at their warehouses. And they reimburse us for what we would have netted had we sold the product, instead of what the product cost us. It's been a great arrangement so far.
Amazon enticed sellers by promising them they would not do this. They literally testified before congress they would not do this.

My comment got voted to zero and negative initially - does HN not understand that lying DAMAGES even capitalistic economies and functioning markets?

"why not do this?" - because you promised you would not.

This is stuff we teach 6 year olds - but apparently the most rudimentary form of ethics is too much for amazon.
First time I've seen a decent-looking ASCII table in an HN comment. Well-done!
FOMC minutes are published, but not other meetings which are arguably more important, including the meetings of the Board.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/boardmeetings/mee...

"Effective March 15, 2020, the meeting was closed to public observation by Order of the Board of Governors1 because the matters fall under exemption(s) 9(A)(i) of the Government in the Sunshine Act (5 U.S.C. Section 552b(c)), and it was determined that the public interest did not require opening the meeting."

This seems to be the case for almost all of their meetings.
> This is totally false - the number of retailers who have testified before congress that they don't use seller data to compete against sellers - and then who go ahead and do just that is basically zero.

I can't understand this at all. Retailers create in-house brands all the time. Do they somehow make decisions of which products to create in a black box? How would they even do that?

If you go into the Walmart pharmacy, their store-brand equivalents are full of statements such as "Compare to the active ingredient in Advil".
I’m sure some people will want to buy up units for dedicated short term rentals, but the question is whether they’ll be allowed to. The politics of this has been discussed to death, but I can’t help but wonder if banks will be unwilling to allow their borrowers to get quite so heavily leveraged going forward in the short term rental space.
I mean, let's be objective for a minute here. Do you really believe that Walmart, Target, Costco, Kroger, etc, are more ethical with their suppliers than Amazon?

Let's not forget that many of these large retailers have moved to the practice of taking up to 90 days to pay their suppliers. 90 DAYS! That's three months before you see the money of the product you sold through their channels. And they do this because they simply can.

I believe that there's not a single retailer that doesn't leverage its distribution advantage to squeeze their suppliers. If you're not Coca Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Procter and Gamble or Colgate Palmolive, you have little to no room for negotiation.
The only way to win at dotfiles is not to play.

Fresh out of college all my peers were using fancy 3D mice with programmable buttons for mechanical modeling and one older engineer was just dragging his finger around on the laptop trackpad. It was painful to watch.

Over 15 years later I realize that old guy knew what he was doing. Learning to deal with the defaults lets you drop into any standard install and go, whether that's for 3D modeling or Linux software. Unless you just love constant fiddling with custom config then having it all rot away in the next upgrade or hardware change there are much more productive uses of time.
Despite the excessive shilling for Tailscale here, it is still a child toy compared to Teleport when it comes to serious zero trust SSH, a true FOSS that can be self hosted without giving up your privacy and depending on an external service to make your "FOSS" piece of software work.
I've been using https://docs.rs/assert_cmd/ for this. (Helps spawn the binary and assert output.)
Let's play devil's advocate (for lack of better word) here:

Such bailout would be paid by the taxpayer.

On the other hand, I suppose that if there is no bailout, many, if not most restaurants will go bankrupt. However I'm sure they have already laid off their staff so the impact on employment will be small.

Thus, all in all, is it really worth bailing then out? People will reopen new restaurants after this mess and it will be cheap to do so if equipment and premises are plentiful.

It seems that a bailout would really help the banks, which are set to face a mountain of bad debts if whole industries start to fold...
Surprise Surprise. So did HEB, Safeway, etc.
I'll bet there's a lot happening under the hood with xcode that means any app in the Appstore today is going to 'just work' with an arm chip without the dev having to do a thing.

Anything external will suffer, and apple probably aren't gonna cry about that.
Sorry but it is very hard to understand anything in your comment. Ukraine is blocking EU from doing something about Poland? How? Ukraine is not in EU and can't block anything. Also, it seems you are not willing to expand on "getting there"...
"Subreddits tend to wildly misrepresent reality due to survivorship bias"

I disagree. If Amazon had great customer service, there wouldn't be a large volume of people complaining.

"In any case, I do wonder if Amazon's treatment of folk like you would improve considerably if Amazon had competitio"

I agree with you here. The only two marketplaces that actually get traffic are Ebay and Amazon. I've tried them all over the years and the rest combined don't even come close.
When I visited Coke’s HQ in Atlanta and did the public tour, there was a section where you can sample all the different Coke flavors from all around the world.

I asked about New Coke and the guide gave me a sour look. I guess the question gets asked really frequently.
The rationale is that they may not want to breathe their last breaths through a machine, which is uncomfortable and interferes with communication with their loved ones, when that machine only marginally improves their chances of a positive outcome.

I'm open to the idea that 0-60 year olds should be treated differently from 60+ year olds, but that decision should be based at least in part on a difference in survival rates, not just how much life they have left. I'm 33, and if you told me that a ventilator would only increase my survival chance by 10%, I'd unequivocally choose to take the chances to die more comfortable and capable.
Meh.

I see a lot of people in IT who don't directly do systems-related work (think of QA people for example).

Without Ubuntu they'd be either running mac os or windows.

Ubuntu lowers the bar of linux-on-desktop accessibilty by a lot.

For a lot of people it's okay not to have a good understaning og how all the components fit together.
Partnership
There are many to choose from.
This reminds me of an old math joke. A statistician and a mathematician went duck hunting. From a blind, the mathematician shot and hit a duck. Their retriever went and got the duck. Then the statistician spotted and shot at another duck but shot too high. Quickly the statistician shot again but too low. The statistician then beamed with pride, on average, that's a dead duck.
The position of insiders in Coca Cola is literally “we wish we were smart enough to have planned this as a marketing ploy, but it was dumb luck and mistakes”.
I’d like Javascript to be opt-in. Turning it on by default was a mistake.
I'm looking forward to Xubuntu 20.04
SpaceX has greatly decreased launch costs, which are a substantial portion of satellite fleet total cost of ownership. That, along with modern, cheaper electronics (due to the rise of cellphones) has changed the cost structure, so that SpaceX thinks a large fleet of short-lived satellites providing a high-bandwidth connection is a viable business. They are not the only ones doing it, but they seem to be in the lead.

For comparison, the higher-orbit satellite networks put up in the 90s used satellites that cost 2 orders of magnitude more than SpaceX's, and had launch costs that were similarly much higher. Those networks had much higher latency and lower bandwidth, and they all lost money.
If I place a McMaster order by 10:30am I get it the same day, if not its tomorrow. Easier than going to the store.
Then they ruined it (in the US at least) by replacing the sugar with corn syrup.