This is really fascinating to me!

I didn’t know about this Vine program. Maybe that’s what his company uses. Or I wonder if it is limited somehow … If all the sellers use it then perhaps instead of it being an advantage it just gets you up to sea level. I know those guys will do just about anything to get an algorithmic advantage.

Indeed you’re right. Amazon watches out for Amazon.

I was just talking to a Chinese friend who works for a company that sells various goods on amazon.

He told me they budget to buy between 50 and 100 fake reviews for every single product they launch.

He said that without the fake reviews, the products will never start to sell on their own.

Whether to blame Amazon or blame the sellers, I’m not sure. But Amazon writes the rules of the game.

Thailand. Private pay.

Take a ride share car to the private hospital.

Greeted by concierge when I walk in. She asks why I’m here and then directs me to another desk on another floor.

Entering the next room feels a bit like a hotel lobby. There are big sofas and comfortable lighting. It feels cozy even though it’s a large space. There’s a Starbucks. Another concierge approaches me. I explain why I’m here and I’m sat down and handed an iPad where I can fill in some medical background. They have my record from a previous visit so it’s quick. I confirm that I will pay with a credit card instead of using any insurance.

In about 10 minutes I’m brought to a room where a nurse catches my weight and blood pressure. Then I’m brought to the patient exam room.

A few minutes later the doctor comes in and performs his examination. He makes his diagnosis types some notes into his computer. He asks me to come back for a follow-up in one week and pick up my prescription on the way out.

Leaving the exam room, another nurse catches me to hand me the diagnosis paperwork and points me to the pharmacy.

I walk to the pharmacy and hand them my paperwork. They collect my payment for the whole visit and ask me to wait until my name is called to pick up the prescription.

About 10 minutes later the prescription is ready and I’m out the door with a small bag of drugs and about $125 out of my wallet.

The service is comprehensive and everything is available in one building. For this country it’s a bit expensive but you feel like you’re very well taken care of and it’s instant.

If the sentiment in this thread is representative of the population, it seems like theaters no longer have a value proposition. Home theaters are good enough, we have streaming, and we have budget limitations.

In response to the title, he better be driving the competitors vehicles often to understand what they are doing well.

I think this is a classic case of a company being unable to disrupt itself.

Ford makes internal combustion engines. Ford makes F-150s. Undoubtedly every executive, marketing guy, R&D engineer, and factory worker is focused on how many F-150s are being produced and sold. Anybody who shows up to a meeting suggesting they don’t sell more F150 is booted out the door (metaphorically).

They probably also thought there’s no way a Chinese mobile phone / tea kettle / Wi-Fi router manufacturer could ever kick their ass with a car. Yet here we are.

Makes sense, it seems like Caddy is like a Swiss army knife and nginx is now the whole Home Depot.

A decade ago or so nginx was the swiss army knife to Apache

I’m an old school nginx pro. So I keep using nginx for reverse proxies because it’s what I know. What does caddy have to offer (or traefik is anyone wants to jump in)? Are they just optimized for this function and more modern?

Ahhhh yes, both the cause and solution to most of life’s problems

I’m on board with this way of thinking too. Your opener is poignant - you mean you tried everything already and absolutely nothing works? Well I guess there’s no point in this conversation then, is there. Unless you’re in need of a complaining session, in which case I can handle that for about 5 minutes until we move to a new topic.

Yeah it matters a lot how the conversation is set up.

Is it “you and I versus the facts”?

Or “you vs me”?

Competent people can disagree and also identify where the facts are missing and the assumptions begin that lead to this. It doesn’t have to be a fight if they look at the data as something to discover together.

Ebay can be really really bad too, Google around and start with the ebay executive team that sent a bloody pigs head to a journalist who said some bad things about ebay

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

Yeah here in Bangkok the only rule is that there are no rules. I jokingly say that whomever believes in reincarnation the most has the right of way.

This system does work, but there are still way more casualties than necessary.

If he’d tried to nurture some goodwill, perhaps the users wouldn’t so harshly reject all attempts at monetization.

Perhaps then he’d be able to afford yachts that don’t look so puny next to those of other social media oligarchs and could go to bed with the satisfaction of having made a profit at least once in his life.

I’m American but live outside the US in a developing country.

Here, the situation on the roads is wildly unstandardized. Every turn, road sign, curb size, lane width, bridge height, traffic signal duration, etc may or may not be consistent with anything else. Not to mention drivers going the wrong way, motorcycles on the sidewalks, people stopping in the road and more.

Because of the weirdness drivers know they have to pay attention or else death and injury awaits.

The fact that the 11’ 8" bridge still takes so many casualties suggests drivers confidently think they can drive all over the USA and the road is engineered to an exacting standard. Except for this one bridge.

I think it’s actually time for the city to just properly fix this bridge and bring it up to standard.

It’s really wild that the guy who co-founded Reddit is so universally hated by the users.

Talk about having completely lost touch.

That’s actually pretty cool. That thing might be forgot about and then found again 10,000 years from now

Is that car in some kind of orbit, or did we just send it?

There are so many typos and grammatical errors in social media these days that I just scan everything until I get the gist.

Duplicate words, incorrect punctuation, and questionable grammar are all normal. Stopping to notice is a barrier to interacting. So unless the context is formal or really matters, I just ignore it.

If your woman is constantly accusing you of thinking about other women… then I highly recommend you think about other women and get the hell out of dodge