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postexitus commented on Big Tech are the new Soviets   unherd.com/2025/12/big-te... · Posted by u/saubeidl
seec · 5 days ago
That's nonsense. People actually choose to use Amazon because their service is impeccable.

The argument about Amazon requiring cheaper prices is true in theory but in practice not strongly enforced. I just bought a kettle on Amazon instead of from another seller who had it 2 euros cheaper because I combined the purchase with other stuff that the seller didn't have. I have readily told people that some items they were buying could be found for cheaper on AliExpress, but they didn't care because they wanted the convenience and fast service. By the way, many of Amazon's suppliers sell the same product cheaper on AliExpress and other marketplaces; that completely kills the argument in the first place.

Amazon is successful because other companies were complacent and ignored the upcoming internet economy. Amazon built a very complex logistic system that took a very long time and a lot of investment to build. Now that they dominate, the lazy competitors cry about monopoly. In my country (France), the traditional supermarkets are just about now coming in with alternatives to compete, and they are very far off the mark for both service/selection and often price as well…

postexitus · 5 days ago
Can be said for all monopolies. I am not arguing that Amazon is not successful. They are so successful that they are now showing monopolistic behaviour.

The MFN principle is enforced - but only for the same reseller. The same product may be sold in another channel under another reseller, Amazon cannot touch that. AliExpress is surely outside of that scope. Also, EU managed to "convince" Amazon to stop MFN in principle in EU countries, practice is different (they don't enforce it, but give credit breaks) - it's still being enforced in USA and subject to legal challenges: https://www.johnstonclem.com/news-insights/amazon-antitrust-...

postexitus commented on Big Tech are the new Soviets   unherd.com/2025/12/big-te... · Posted by u/saubeidl
Imustaskforhelp · 7 days ago
so does this go for companies which sell electronics like phone companies etc. or since I think resellers sell it on amazon, maybe we don't have MFN condition?

But like, my question is, Doesn't this cripple every company which sells electronics on amazon or something?

I think amazon tries doing it to say that you would only get the best price here, thus people might buy from amazon which can then increase the sales making retailers believe they need to be on amazon agreeing to MFN policy and then crippling their custom market too I suppose

Are there any loopholes to this? What if I am a seller and then I can have lets say my book be on amazon for 100 bucks as an example and I can create a website where I sell it for 110$

But when someone signs up they can get a voucher for 20$ and then they can apply it for what I am selling which for them becomes 90$

I think amazon's MFN is monopolistic especially for things like books which is what amazon first was created for.

I kinda wish if there was a service where I can buy one time right to publish a book from the authors directly for like the books price and then be able to download it or print it from local competing printing/tech service shops..

postexitus · 7 days ago
It does cripple them, but only those Amazon can strong arm. There are some companies that refuse to sell on Amazon for this very reason - one example I know is Jellycats. MFN applies at reseller level - not at product level (obviously).

Yes, it is monopolistic - some call it technofeudalism, because Amazon owns the "land" and extract land rent out of it - with questionable service in return.

postexitus commented on Big Tech are the new Soviets   unherd.com/2025/12/big-te... · Posted by u/saubeidl
ttoinou · 7 days ago
If amazon overcharges sellers of a 40% fee, then why can’t I get the same object elsewhere cheaper?

Obviously if you remove from your mind all market mechanisms, then it doesn’t look like a market anymore

postexitus · 7 days ago
Amazon enforces a Most Favored Nation (MFN) condition on sellers, basically implying that they cannot sell the same product elsewhere for cheaper. Funny enough - when Amazon pushes their fees higher, it means the prices go up everywhere, that's Amazon inflation.

https://www.proskauer.com/blog/amazons-most-favored-nations-...

postexitus commented on Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros   cnbc.com/2025/12/08/param... · Posted by u/gniting
ngcazz · 9 days ago
No matter who wins, we lose.
postexitus · 9 days ago
Alien vs. Predator Whoever wins... We lose...
postexitus commented on AI Adoption Rates Starting to Flatten Out   apolloacademy.com/ai-adop... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo
brianshaler · 19 days ago
It maps pretty cleanly to the well understood derivatives of a position vector. Position (user count), velocity (first derivative, change in user count over time), acceleration (second derivative, speeding up or flattening of the velocity), and jerk (third derivative, change in acceleration such as the shift between from acceleration to deceleration)

It really is a beautiful title.

postexitus · 19 days ago
It is not velocity, it is not change. Have you read the graphs? What do you think 12% in Aug and Sep for 250+ Employee companies mean, that another 12% of companies adopted AI or is it a flat "12% of the companies have adopted in Aug, and it did not change in Sep"
postexitus commented on AI Adoption Rates Starting to Flatten Out   apolloacademy.com/ai-adop... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo
ajkjk · 19 days ago
Adoption = number of users

Adoption rate = first derivative

Flattening adoption rate = the second derivative is negative

Starting to flatten = the third derivative is negative

I don't think anyone cares what the third derivative of something is when the first derivative could easily change by a macroscopic amount overnight.

postexitus · 19 days ago
Adoption rate is not derivative of Adoption. Rate of change is. Adoption rate is the percentage of uptake (there, same order with Adoption itself). It being flattening means first derivative is getting close to 0.
postexitus commented on Vsora Jotunn-8 5nm European inference chip   vsora.com/products/jotunn... · Posted by u/rdg42
embedding-shape · 19 days ago
The people who build landing pages for hardware startups are usually (almost always) not the same people who design and build the actual hardware, for better or worse. A lot of the times, it's a outsourced web design agency who receive a brief, often written by business people, and finally the website is reviewed by business people, with some feedback from technical people who complain about the graphs, accuracy and so on. Then the business people say "But we need to point out we're faster than everyone else" and the engineers reply with "Sure, ok, whatever, I have actual work to do, sounds good".
postexitus · 19 days ago
That's not an excuse. This company has more than a few handful of employees. Somebody saw those graphs without units, labels, tags and approved them. Have the CEO never opened their own webpage once and scrolled down?
postexitus commented on Vsora Jotunn-8 5nm European inference chip   vsora.com/products/jotunn... · Posted by u/rdg42
svantana · 19 days ago
The silly verbiage can be excused but not the graphs with completely unlabeled data points, IMO.
postexitus · 19 days ago
Yep that's what I mean - looks like AI slop to me.
postexitus commented on Vsora Jotunn-8 5nm European inference chip   vsora.com/products/jotunn... · Posted by u/rdg42
postexitus · 19 days ago
Even if it's not vapourware, the website makes it look like one. Just look at those two graphs titled "Jotunn 8 Outperforms the Market" and "More Speed For the Bucks" (!) ; WTH?
postexitus commented on Migrating to Positron, a next-generation data science IDE for Python and R   posit.co/blog/positron-mi... · Posted by u/ionychal
SuperNinKenDo · 19 days ago
Oof. That's a damn shame. I think languages and use-cases like this are the perfect place for purpose built IDE development. If even these guys are turning into a VS Code downstream that's just sad.

Coincidentally I was thinking of giving R another go, but honestly now... I'm good...

postexitus · 19 days ago
If (That's a big if) they can give RStudio experience in VSCode environment, benefiting from the plugin ecosystem etc. why not?

RStudio is great when you are doing your own thing, but when it comes to more generic tools like Git, LLM, Autoformatting etc. it's a hard pass.

u/postexitus

KarmaCake day673December 6, 2017View Original