“To most consumers, Prime looks like a lovely convenience offering free
shipping, and it’s hard to find better prices elsewhere. But the reason you
can’t find better prices isn’t because Amazon sells stuff cheap, but because it
forces everyone else to sell stuff at higher prices.”
“Ironically, the Times reports that Crossover’s own employees so resented the
company’s intrusive monitoring of them (as they created and sold intrusive
monitoring tools) that Crossover hemorrhaged employees and struggled to hire
replacements. Eventually, Crossover had to turn off its most intrusive features
so that it could keep the employees needed to make and sell its bossware
product.”
posted 12/17/2022 3:19pm ∞
“They didn’t give a shit about journalism; they just wanted prime real estate
that they could develop. And news organizations had it in the form of buildings
in the middle of town. So financiers squeezed the news orgs until there was no
money to be squeezed and then they hung them out to dry.”
posted 12/7/2022 8:28pm ∞
“For all the grandiose talk about The Light Of Consciousness and The Future Of
Humanity that has come out of Silicon Valley during its ascent, what it has
delivered has mostly been spectacularly useless, lifeless, and anti-human. In
this sense, it reflects its owners perfectly.”
David Roth ,
Everything Is Silicon Valley Now
(Defector November 14, 2022 ,
via Nick Heer )
posted 11/21/2022 8:00pm ∞
“Here, rare earth extraction cleared 90 percent efficiency, taking
67 hours to get there. By contrast, leaching didn’t max out until
130 hours after extraction started, and its maximum efficiency was only
60 percent. Again, the extraction that used electricity had fewer
contaminating metals.”
posted 11/17/2022 8:00pm ∞