The Four

Meanwhile, millennials seem to give zero fucks about their privacy. If anything, they want even more attention than they are currently getting.

edit:
Just fell for a hoax. Carry on.

I want to echo Barnes' comments upthread re: Amazon and time. I live in a relatively rural area and even before Amazon, I didn't have a lot of options. Best Buy is at least a half hour each way for instance. So by buying from Amazon its not like I am harming someone that I used to buy from . And I free up a lot of time . I buy from them selectively , whereas some people like my former boss used to be buy everyday stuff like toilet paper from them using Prime. Buying local, sure if its not much of a hassle. My local hardware store for instance - their prices are often comparable to Home Despot on big ticket stuff like Weber grills ( which are MAP protected ) so they're closer than HD, offer free assembly and will even deliver it to my house.

In general I don't spend a lot of time worrying about shit like this.

Apple: I do have a mac laptop, because of no good reason I can think of any more, but I've never run iTunes on it, and I don't keep music on it anyway. For music I use Music Bee- it's a wash between that and Media Monkey. I think MusicBee had the only working Milkdrop visualizer plugin at the time, and I stuck with it. All my most recent music buys have been on Bandcamp. Anything more mainstream than that tends to be on Youtube or whatever. In the car, I just listen to podcasts, or Andy's 80s/BBC 6 Music via TuneIn Radio on bluetooth.

Google: A few accounts, each for different reasons. Can't avoid Google when using my Android devices for sure but I generally avoid what I can where I can. I use Firefox and Brave browsers at home, and I use plugins such as Disconnect, noscript etc. My youtube login is not tied to my RL data (though I am sure they have that all cross-referenced in their data warehouse). I use a VPN almost always, which led to Youtube assuming I was a Ukrainian hacker due to my Texas IP address, so I started getting Ukrainian commercials in front of videos. I told them I'm in New Zealand. They don't believe me, I'm sure, but they push me ads in English now.

I have two protonmail accounts now also, neither of which I access via a Google product.

I use DuckDuckGo for searching. A couple of people recommended Start Page to me, but that fired off a bunch of warnings via Disconnect, and generally wasn't as pleasant. So far, DuckDuckGo does not seem to suppress search results for propaganda purposes the way Google does, so there's that. The image search is less useful (trying to get some mood images for an 1815 D&D campaign).

Facebook: I have purely to click "like" on family posts. I almost never post anything on it, and I don't run it on a browser that doesn't have Disconnect running. Maybe that makes no difference, I don't know.

Amazon: Hard to avoid it, really.

Generally speaking, I try to buy local. My old Hyundai may have been made in Korea, but I paid an American for it, and paid Americans to keep fixing it for five years. My new one was at least assembled in Alabama. I avoid Walmart as much as possible, which is almost all the time. I get bulk stuff at Costco (who seem to treat their staff pretty well), and smaller stuff at Rouses now (would have been Publix and Kroger in Atlanta, as well as the Farmers Market). I get Community Coffee instead of Starbucks grounds. I haven't figured out where everything is in Baton Rouge yet so there's more work to do in finding local. I can't justify joining another CSA though.

It's basically impossible to avoid these companies. And it's not just a matter of "the best rising to the top". You can go research the Highlands Forum, In-Q-Tel etc and see that there's been a fire-hose of defense/IC funding them all along. You can probably add Tesla, Cisco and probably Uber to the list of "chosen winners" with access to unlimited research dollars to bully their way to monopoly. This is what a corporate oligarchy looks like.

Thanks, all, for the DuckDuckGo suggestion.

Talked a bit with the Whole Foods/Amazon recruiter. Apparently, they need to staff up for a big initiative of bringing all their Amazon Prime data into Whole Foods to 'change the face of retail'. Contract to hire work with supposedly bonuses and maybe even stock options at the end of the year.

I dunno...I can just as easily see them letting people go once this big data merger is done, so many don't actually get to the stock option point. Plus, I'm not excited about the future of retail as Bezos sees it.

I think it's sort of telling that as retail is slumming, the one brick and mortar retail sector that's booming is the Dollar General/Dollar Tree type wing.

No sir, don't like this direction at all...

JEM wrote: You can probably add Tesla, Cisco and probably Uber to the list of "chosen winners" with access to unlimited research dollars to bully their way to monopoly. This is what a corporate oligarchy looks like.

I've probably been hoodwinked by Musk, but my thin hope is pinned on his word of wanting to try and improve our lot. The recent rocket launch with the car and spaceman has probably been more positive PR for space exploration than anything NASA's done in 20 years.

Bezos just wants to sell me a blender.

Though to be fair and honest, I ordered something from Amazon this week. I couldn't find a car part locally, and was too damn lazy to go set up yet another account with some online autosupplier, so just went through Prime.

I am part of the problem.

I think the Spotify thing is one I can fix the quickest though. Like Barnes said, for only $10 a month I'm getting access to millions of albums. However, the artists are getting nothing. My money is going to a gatekeeper. That sucks and puts me in the role of an uncaring glutton in this transaction. Better to take that $10 and buy a bandcamp album a month. For me, it seems a more fair trade is for me to consume 12 albums a year supporting 1-12 artists rather than me getting it all and them nothing.
(of course, there's still lots and lots to listen to for free online, even on bandcamp)

Tesla, Cisco and Uber are teetering on the edge at the moment. Cisco has struggled for years and has become a teaching company, Uber is losing money on every single ride it brokers and is living on venture largesse that will not last. Growth actually expands their losses linearly. Tesla, in spite of having the best huckster since Barnum as its front man, continues to have troubles getting basic production concepts in place. Musk's constant stream of PR stunts isn't aimed at us, it's aimed at investors who continue to sink cash into him as he continues to expand his horizons in all directions looking for traction. (There's two-dozen 8A firms within a mile of me that do the same thing on a smaller scale and I've worked for them in the past.) He may find something that pays, he may not. As it stands he comes out with a six-week schedule of bigger-than-last-time announcements to keep his investors happy, or at least less unhappy.

Both Uber and Tesla could be put out of business in a year by Fiat, or GM, or Toyota once they figure out that they should lean in on the subject matter (and it's starting to appear that they have.) I'll grant you that Musk has pushed the envelope on what can be done with the technology, but that doesn't mean he's going to survive the effort. His car company is named after a guy that went out of business and is seen as more of a cult figure than a captain of industry.

I stumbled into Bandcamp when I couldn't find certain artists on Amazon. Once I understood that the artists were getting paid most of the money I paid there, I embraced the site. For the first time in many years, I feel good about buying music online.

Mr. White wrote: Thanks, all, for the DuckDuckGo suggestion.

Talked a bit with the Whole Foods/Amazon recruiter. Apparently, they need to staff up for a big initiative of bringing all their Amazon Prime data into Whole Foods to 'change the face of retail'. Contract to hire work with supposedly bonuses and maybe even stock options at the end of the year.

I dunno...I can just as easily see them letting people go once this big data merger is done, so many don't actually get to the stock option point. \

That was my initial reaction upon reading it.

A former coworker interviewed with Amazon. They CHURN thru help at a ridiculous pace. She declined the position then three months later they called back; they had hired somone else and then that person quit. Apparently this is not uncommon. Nor is shedding staff before their stock options become vested.

Sagrilarus wrote: Tesla, Cisco and Uber are teetering on the edge at the moment. Cisco has struggled for years and has become a teaching company, Uber is losing money on every single ride it brokers and is living on venture largesse that will not last. Growth actually expands their losses linearly. Tesla, in spite of having the best huckster since Barnum as its front man, continues to have troubles getting basic production concepts in place. Musk's constant stream of PR stunts isn't aimed at us, it's aimed at investors who continue to sink cash into him as he continues to expand his horizons in all directions looking for traction. (There's two-dozen 8A firms within a mile of me that do the same thing on a smaller scale and I've worked for them in the past.) He may find something that pays, he may not. As it stands he comes out with a six-week schedule of bigger-than-last-time announcements to keep his investors happy, or at least less unhappy.

Both Uber and Tesla could be put out of business in a year by Fiat, or GM, or Toyota once they figure out that they should lean in on the subject matter (and it's starting to appear that they have.) I'll grant you that Musk has pushed the envelope on what can be done with the technology, but that doesn't mean he's going to survive the effort. His car company is named after a guy that went out of business and is seen as more of a cult figure than a captain of industry.

Tesla seems destined to crash and burn. Despite promises of robotic factories with Skynet capabilities, the reality is that they made just 2500 Model 3 sedans in the most recent QUARTER. Musk claims that they'll be making 5000 cars per WEEK in another six months . Sorry, I think its bullshit. They've got 500,000 orders out there ( although people can still cancel, I haven't seen how many have opted to do so ) .

jalopnik.com/teslas-making-progress-on-t...tion-issu-1822815990

And the stuff they are building isn't exactly first quality for what customers are paying.

jalopnik.com/tesla-model-3-teardown-by-e...eals-qual-1822678045

As soon as investors tire of his string of unfulfilled promises and the cash infusion stops, that place will shut down instantly.

Msample wrote: As soon as investors tire of his string of unfulfilled promises and the cash infusion stops, that place will shut down instantly.

People said the same thing about Bezos and Amazon for 20 years. Twenty. Years. And they still don't post a significant profit every quarter. But they continue to expand into new markets and formats (and a space program, just like Tesla) on a regular basis. You know how many people watched the launch of a car into space this week? That's marketing, yo. Not a week goes by that I don't read or hear sentiments just like the above, but somehow he keeps going. At the moment, if I were to have skin in the game, I'd be betting on Musk.

If you’ve never seen how a plant can go from “people with soldering irons” to “full automation” in 6 months, you have no idea how quickly a plant can do so.

I’ve done it far faster than that.

A good article on this. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm

SuperflyTNT wrote: If you’ve never seen how a plant can go from “people with soldering irons” to “full automation” in 6 months, you have no idea how quickly a plant can do so.

I’ve done it far faster than that.

You should offer your services to Mr. Musk. He appears in need of them.

Marketing is worth nothing if you can't fulfill orders.

Mr. White wrote: I think it's sort of telling that as retail is slumming, the one brick and mortar retail sector that's booming is the Dollar General/Dollar Tree type wing.

.

the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazon-its-that-the-middle-class-is-disappearing