Amazon Ruined Online Shopping - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/amazon-made-online-commerce-bewildering/580660/ <comment><USER2> _Amazon made online shopping feel safe and comfortable, at least mechanically, where once the risk of being scammed by bad actors felt huge_

Maybe this was true once, but now Amazon has brought back that fear and confusion of getting scammed.

You used to be able to count on reviews for some idea of the quality of the product, but now you need to do research at someplace like www.fakespot.com to see if the reviews are fake.

And even if the product is legit and works well and it's fulfilled by Amazon, when you get the product you need to check it carefully to see if it's a counterfeit knockoff that some vendor sold through amazon's commingled inventory.

I've switched to [https://www.bhphotovideo.com/](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/) for most of my computer/electronics purchases now - they seem to price match Amazon automatically (or maybe amazon price matches them, many products have an identical price) and delivery is almost always within 2 - 3 days. I used to go to newegg, but have had a few issues with their third party sellers (product never shipped after ordering) so stopped going there.

<comment><USER3> Amazon's counterfeit problem seems like something they're not taking seriously enough. For a laser printer or a lamp, sure -- I'll buy from Amazon and deal with the return if I ever get screwed. But for climbing gear, of which I've bought quite a bit of, I simply won't touch Amazon. I haven't heard of counterfeit (versus obvious trash, which exists but is different) climbing goods on Amazon, but I simply can't risk it.

<comment><USER4> There is also the issue of genuine items sold as new which are actually very well repackaged returns. Amazon does minimal (if any?) checking of returns and I have frequently received items that had obviously been opened and used then returned and sold to me as new. I very fondly recall opening the package for Wahl electric clippers and having a bunch of hairs fall out of the box, but it's far from the only occurrence. Of course, the item was shipped and sold by Amazon.

Also see the cases where houses burned down because of hover boards sold by Amazon. These items didn't meet the standards to be sold in North America and burnt a family's house down. They went to court and amazon won because "they're only a market place and your beef is with the manufacturer, and we can't tell you who they are or how to contact them because they're some fly by night company in China."

<comment><USER2> I've never had that problem Amazon fulfilled merchandise (but have run into it with some third-party sellers, including one that sent me a product with "Bad - does not work" written on the box, so it was clearly a defective return).

But I have had some bad experiences with "Amazon warehouse deals" where they do resell returned/opened merchandise at a discount, once the product in the box was completely different than what it was supposed to be.

They've been good about replacing/refunding those but now I only order the warehouse deals if I'm ok with waiting for a replacement if the one they sent is bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _On top of that, Amazon is more than willing to fix its errors._

In my experience, this is less true than it used to be. For example, my mom ordered a DVD in early December to be given as a Christmas gift. It was a Prime item, and she is a Prime subscriber. For some reason, it wasn't showing that it would be delivered until just before Christmas. Even though this was odd — and arguably a breach of the Prime agreement — she figured it was no big deal because it would be in time for Christmas. Then, just before it was supposed to be delivered, Amazon updated the delivery to _after_ Christmas. This was actually OK by her, since the recipient (my daughter) would still be at her house for a few days after Christmas. Again, just before it was to be delivered, they updated the shipping again, and now said it would arrive Jan 15 to Jan 30. When she chatted the Amazon reps, they just said sorry for the inconvenience, and offered nothing for this shipping miss. Eventually they agreed to put a credit on her account for the inconvenience, but the credit never actually materialized.

We canceled the order and bought the DVD (plus digital copy!) from Walmart. This is just one of many negative customer service experiences we've had with Amazon in the last few months. The other big problem is that they now want each return put in its own box — even if it was shipped to us with multiple other items that are also being returned. We have been Prime customers for years, but perhaps not for much longer.

<comment><USER6> I can't comment on the other points, but I can reply to this:

>The other big problem is that they now want each return put in its own box — even if it was shipped to us with multiple other items that are also being returned. We have been Prime customers for years, but perhaps not for much longer

The reason for this is because each seller can set their own return address. I receive all returns to ensure that they are destroyed and that no customer accidentally buys something new and receives a customer return.

Beyond minimizing costs for Amazon/sellers, this also reduces waste and environmental impact because each good only has to be shipped once.

<comment><USER5> For what it's worth, in every case where they've insisted on this, the return addresses were identical. We had to come up with multiple boxes to mail everything back but everything went to the same place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Recently, I was searching for a new office chair. Amazon offers the popular Steelcase Leap at full price, $978. You'd likely think you're paying full price to get a new chair. See if you can tell that you're getting ripped off:

[https://www.amazon.com/d/Office-Desk-Chairs/Steelcase- Fabric...](https://www.amazon.com/d/Office-Desk-Chairs/Steelcase-Fabric-Chair- Black-46216179FBL/B006H1QYBA)

Spoiler: buried in the fine print, and listed as a "feature," it says "open box refurb".

Customers are unwittingly paying full price for refurbished chairs, which typically sell for under $400. Many reviews claim that the chairs do not seem up to standard quality. You might think this is from some shady third-party seller, but it's in fact, "Ship from and sold by Amazon.com." And if you list all New/Used/Refurbished sellers, Amazon.com shows up in the New category, despite being described as a refurb in the product description. What a mess.

<comment><USER8> That's either a mistake in the product description or an error in marking it new. Amazon is selling it's standard "new" warranties along with it, which wouldn't be possible if it's a refurb. My guess is the product description is inaccurate.

Disclosure: I work at Amazon.

<comment><USER6> Definitely a product description error.

The product description field should never comment on the new/used/refurbished nature of the product being purchased because different conditions can (usually) be sold on the same listing.

What probably happened is someone copied and pasted the description from somewhere else where the listing was specifically for refurbished chairs, or the very first seller of this item was selling it refurbished and wanted to call it out explicitly.

Amazon detail pages are confusing, but honestly, I don't know how to improve them. I get loads of returns for people claiming they bought something used that was sold as new, even though the condition is clearly marked as used and a lengthy description next to it about the condition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable.

I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downside of course, is that it will take 2-3 weeks to get here, but at least I know what I'm getting.

<comment><USER10> There are certain swaths of items that you literally can't buy anymore because they are completely overrun with counterfeiters. Perfume/cologne and board games are two big ones.

Amazon is, at this point, undoubtedly one of the largest enablers of open counterfeiting in the world. It needs to be met with a massive investigation and crippling fines. That probably won't happen until we have a federal government that is no longer slavish prostituted to business interests, unfortunately.

<comment><USER11> Board games are completely overrun you say? But I buy at least a half dozen big board games per year from Amazon and have never had a problem.

<comment><USER12> I haven't had a problem either, but Asmodee did make a big stink about this last year: [https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/39296/icv2-interview- asm...](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/39296/icv2-interview-asmodee- execs-counterfeiting)

<comment><USER10> What an interview. The whole time, there's this strong subtext that Amazon is the primary vector here, but they never come out and say it -- and dance around the issue of what corrective legislation would actually look like -- because they're evidently afraid of getting on its shit list, despite the massive harm its negligence is enabling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > But there's a reason that we used to have shoe stores, hardware stores, > grocery stores, bookstores, and all the rest: Those specialized retail > spaces allow products, and the people with knowledge about them, to engage > in specialized ways of finding, choosing, and purchasing them.

There's a reason why so much commerce has moved online in general and to Amazon in particular: We often value price and convenience and oodles of consumer reviews and easy access to competition and related info more than we value meat space salespeople with specialized knowledge laying on personalized sales pressure.

Not always. I drove for three hours to shop for an office chair in a brick and mortar store, because I had to actually try it before paying the big bucks. But often enough to remake the economy.

<comment><USER14> It's a matter of trust as well.

My parents generation, now in the 70's, has this implicit trust in salespeople. They know "in principle" that there are "bad apples", but if a salesperson shakes their hand, looks them in the eye, and says "Of course Mr. <Insert name>, we'll take care of you", they buy it wholesale. Which is how my dad bought $600 tires for $1800 at a dealership, a $1200 "DSLR camera" which was actually a superzoom point and shoot, a wired phone headset which was actually wireless headphones with no boom, etc.

I have basically zero trust in the "specialized retail stores with specialized sales people". Any time I geek out a little bit about any retail area, I learn the 101 ways they have and do scam you, and my trust erodes further. A specialized expensive shoe store swore my shoes I bought specifically for air travel don't have metal shims in them; of course they do. The electronic stores are never staffed with people who know more than I do, or frequently anything at all other than to push extended warranty. Small car maintenance store I've dealt with regularly for 15 years have turned out to be skimming and scamming once I learned more about their product and service, all the while greeting me warmly by name and "taking care of me". And yes, my dad and his friends still go to them.

So yes, bring on the faceless online warehouse. I feel safer there - or at least, am better equipped to determine fake/counterfeit/exploitative than I am in person. For all the decades that Amazon and the like had to develop methods to scam us, in-person salespeople had centuries, and I ain't winning that game.

<comment><USER15> In the small business dominated world of 40 years ago trust was a fundamental economic asset. A bad seller would immediately get a bad reputation and it would be known around the community. People trusted each other because that's how society has worked for millennia, to the point of tribalism, we are never allowed to scam "our" people for we might be ostracized and literally be in mortal peril outside the tribe. A handshake and a look in the eye says: "I'm staking my family's livelihood on this".

Then the tech revolution happened and took the corporatist economic model to massive new levels. Large capital owners could more effectively circumvent the lack of social capital (trust) by investing in technology. Communication tools allowed them to better manage sprawling business empires and reach the consumer directly. The mom&pop gave way to the franchise and the retail chain, it's social capital was undercut by media-induced branding and billion dollar advertising campaigns.

For the national chain, it's largely irrelevant if some old guy got suckered into buying crap by an underpaid employee looking to make a commission. He might complain to his neighbors but unless the media takes an interest, it's not an existential threat to the corporation with national level PR and advertising. The chain has other things to worry about, like expanding faster than the competition and hiring even more cheap & sleazy guys capable of producing income.

The end game of this brave new world is precisely the "everything store" against which no mom&pop can compete. Our generation instinctively mistrusts the corporate drone regardless of it's physical or online incarnation. Your father is the product of a different social arrangement.

<comment><USER16> > In the small business dominated world of 40 years ago trust was a > fundamental economic asset. A bad seller would immediately get a bad > reputation and it would be known around the community.

Sorry, this is bogus. Salesmen for electronic goods have been terrible at least since the 70s - my father, who designed ICs used in TVs, used to rant about their incompetence and bald-faced lies...

My assumption is that they've always been awful.

<comment><USER17> bigger point is that communities and tribes have gotten larger at least in the US, breaking down once strong barriers of trust (people becoming more numbers than neighbors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As part of the customer category that spends tens of thousands on Amazon per year, having shifted the majority of my non niche spending for physical goods to the platform, I've found their error rate to be well under 1%. I also return <1% of my orders for other reasons. I've contacted customer service maybe 3 times in total over the span of 10 years and each time the issue was resolved incredibly quickly and effectively. Maybe I'm in the minority here? Or is it just the errors that get all the attention.

However, that confusion within categories has increased is undeniable. Try to buy a bath towel and be flooded with similar items with similar reviews. The ability to search and sort efficiently has definitely declined dramatically. It takes a lot more effort to make sure you're buying what you wanted for certain categories, particularly soft ones. I can no longer trust that the best selection is going to be on the first page of results.

I wonder if Amazon will draw the line somewhere on how wide, how encompassing of a platform it is for third party vendors. It seems to have pushed itself over a limit.

<comment><USER19> The lack of filtering options is really something that penalizes Amazon as a customer experience for me as well.

But I'm starting to think they might be making it bad on purpose to give more visibility to their ranking schemes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Evidently, Amazon is ruining Whole Foods at breakneck speeds, too. The one near me was re-designed to a cold, commercial feel. Many items were removed. No more freshly roasted coffee on-site. etc. Cashier asked me if I was a prime member. No thanks, Amazon.

<comment><USER21> Agreed, Whole Foods' quality is suffering under Amazon. It's a crap-shoot now whether I'll actually find what I'm looking for.

They've also implemented the most frustrating customer rewards program I've ever seen in a grocery store. You have an app with a QR code that you scan at PoS--but the scanners they've got almost never detect the code! Probably 60-80% of the time, the cashier has to scan it herself with the regular barcode scanner. I tried using my phone number once--a common practice at other store that always works--but it couldn't detect that I was a Prime member, despite my phone number being very clearly entered into my Amazon account. Even when I do finally get scanned in as a Prime member, I usually save less than $2. It's so much frustration that I often don't bother. Whoever was in charge of creating and implementing that program should be fired.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, for a while they did 30% off on all deli items, and we saved $100s with that, but otherwise it's like $1-$2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Amazon makes it basically impossible to compare prices by unit of measure (ie $0.94 per gallon or what not). I've wanted to make a browser extension to attempt to fix that.

I've always suspected this is intentional. But if I could compare prices this way and be confident I'm getting the best deal, I'd buy things on Amazon a lot more.

<comment><USER24> I find this especially infuriating -- they even do it within a single product!

[https://i.imgur.com/aeaeuT2.png](https://i.imgur.com/aeaeuT2.png)

That's $0.98 / oz, but if you switch from fruit punch to blue raz it becomes $15.18 / lb, and if you switch from the 60-serving pack to the 30-serving pack it's $24.58 / lb, but if you want to subscribe and save that's $0.93 / oz.

WHY

<comment><USER25> Because US customary units are a pain? :D

Judging from shopping trips with housemates, I imagine most people don't look at those things, so putting more effort into that feature isn't worth it. But then again, Amazon's search is also notoriously bad, so maybe they simply don't have good metadata for products, and they're all derived in an ad-hoc way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've had a pretty terrible experience trying to buy non stick skillets over the years on Amazon with most of even the top rated items coming with huge issues like warping on the first use, not being very non stick, flaking etc. I almost wonder if its counterfeit or if manufacturers just cutting corners on what used to be a good product? Either way reviews become almost useless when you don't know which version you will be getting. I've found Amazon works much better for items without potential latent quality issues like DVDs, books, or products that are just binary work/don't work.

<comment><USER13> I bought this non-stick pan on Amazon and it was one of my best purchases of last year. The trick with non-sticks is to buy cheap enough cookware to affordably replace regularly as they wear out. My previous non-stick pan cost four times as much, wore out, and is now just hanging from a rack, looking fabulous. With the new one, I plan to toss it in another year and buy another.

[https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS- Professional-R...](https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-80114-535DS-Professional- Restaurant/dp/B009HBKQ16)

<comment><USER27> I don't see the point in non stick cookware. A simple stainless steel skillet with some oil in it will perform just as well and last longer for most uses (and you still need to add oil to a non stick skillet to get proper browning anyway, but it pools because of the non stick coating and doesn't work as well).

And a seasoned carbon steel or cast iron pan will be non stick for when you're cooking fragile stuff like eggs or fish, as well as being _far_ superior for searing meat and allowing you to use metal utensils.

Not to mention all of those alternatives will likely allow you to raise the temperature much higher without damaging the pan than you would with a non stick one.

The worst I've seen recently is non stick saucepans! Why on earth would that tradeoff be worth it?

<comment><USER13> > A simple stainless steel skillet with some oil in it will perform just as > well.

I've got a stainless skillet. Every single time I fry eggs like that, without > 1T of fat per egg, it burns to the bottom. So you must have a better technique. I'm willing to switch to a more forgiving option rather than keep scraping off my mistakes. Every time.

<comment><USER27> Make sure the pan is pretty hot before you put the eggs in, if it's too cold they will probably stick even with lots of oil.

Also, don't be afraid to use however much fat you need, it's not like you're actually going to eat it all - there's probably only going to be about 1/2 teaspoon of it left on the egg after cooking regardless of how much you put in the pan and that's (probably?) pretty negligible health-wise.

<comment><USER13> If the pan is hotter than medium heat butter will burn. Does not using non- stick mean you don't cook in butter?

<comment><USER28> Ideally the fat is just a transfer medium for the heat. If you cook correctly, the fat doesn't reach the temperature of the pan, so it doesn't burn even when you use a hot pan, and even if you use butter.

The key is adding fat just moments before adding the food, and adding just the right amount of fat (which is more than people realize).

I cook eggs on high temperature in butter and steaks on high temperature in olive oil, and I never burn my fat. You can only do this for one portion though, if I use the same pan to prepare multiple batches, I switch to lard instead of butter/olive oil. I still like to finish my steaks in butter though, but I just do that as an extra step at the end.

As an unrelated note, I very much prefer lard or duck fat, or if they are unavailable then coconut oil or some other kind of saturated (?) fat, to vegetable oil. Not because of taste (lard is good though), but because the surface tension is different for these solid (at room temperature) fats and these fats coat the pan much better than any kind of vegetable oil. They coat the pan instead of pooling up.

<comment><USER13> So regular pans take more skill and attention to use without scortching. That's a pretty good reason to go with non-stick.

<comment><USER28> Erm, no. If you don't want to use butter or olive oil, don't use butter or olive oil. This has nothing to do with non-stick vs regular pan.

In fact, butter and olive oil are _more_ difficult to use, and _more_ prone to scorching with non-stick pans because of lower thermal mass, which makes it much harder to regulate temperature.

The temperature of the pan needs to be the same, regardless whether it's non- stick or not, in order to produce good results. If you start with a cold non- stick pan, the food won't stick, but it will be of far less quality than if you had started with the proper temperature.

So I guess that non-stick pans allow you to more easily make bad food without making a mess, but that's not a metric that I care about. If you care about the quality of food, non-stick pans are more difficult to use because temperature control is harder, they can't get as hot, and generally you can't put them in the oven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I increasingly find myself using eBay as a storefront. You can easily filter by "Buy it Now" and "New", and then it works basically like Amazon marketplace, except that I trust the feedback system a lot more. There's a lot of small and independent sellers on eBay - plus you can get a lot of stuff shipped directly from China and cut out the middleman, if that's what you prefer.

</comment><comment><USER30> They may have ruined online shopping but they haven't solved it either. The clothing retailers (an area hard for amazon to move in on) will remain competitive.

I think the one area amazon absolutely has done right is customer service. If any other company made their customer service as good, easy, and simple, I think they would be able to catch up quickly as well.

For example: I recently bought a jacket on sale from Columbia sportswear. It didn't get delivered to my unit properly (despite their usps tracking saying that it did), and when I emailed them about it: absolutely no response. My issue went into a black hole. Of course I have now blacklisted Columbia sports: never again. If this was an amazon purchase, I would have been able to resolve it almost immediately.

<comment><USER31> I find it interesting that we think of Amazon as having gotten "customer service" right. I've had two classes of experience with Amazon:

Products they act as a seller for, and products they act as a producer for.

When I'm buying item X and it's not up to par, Amazon's response is invariably "just send it on back and we'll refund you." At one point I complained I'm not taking a half-day off work to get this $5 item in the mail and they said never mind, just keep it, and we'll refund you anyway.

Awesome.

OTOH, they have a $10/mo (or so) a la carte book service, labelled "Prime Books," with a "free" subtitle (or it was - I haven't checked back recently.) Clicking on it was auto-enrolling. I didn't find out for a few months that they'd apparently one-click-enrolled me in a recurring monthly bill. It took me 3 hours on the phone to get them to partially refund it, and it ended with me closing my account then and there. Despite having been a member since they more or less "opened their doors," and a good chunk of my household spending going through their portal, refunding money from their own service was a line in the sand for them.

<comment><USER30> I can see that 3 hour call being real - I've had similar experiences with amazon customer service that I could foresee becoming a long call, such as canceling Prime: they certainly made me wait about 15-20 minutes while trying to "procure permission" and it ended up being some kind of verbal guarantee that another depr would email me the confirmation. After a few hours I did get the confirmation and refund. The entire call did take about 45 minutes: quite a frustratingly long time.

Navigating amazon customer service itself has become a learning experience. Typically the fastest way when getting an annoying customer service agent who "just doesn't get it" is to request a transfer to amazon USA customer service. You can also request speaking to a supervisot and continue escalating. Sometimes calls end up being 30-45 minutes regardless of method, since they do not always make transferring to amazon USA easy (and then once you get to amazon USA you play the same game over again).

It's certainly nowhere as good as my original post made it sound, but it's still better than most online shops.

<comment><USER32> I just cancelled my Prime subscription this month. I did it online, and other than having to click "yes I really want to cancel" on three separate confirmation screens, it was pretty frictionless. My subscription was about to renew so there was no issue of a refund, I just cancelled the renewal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was recently backpacking in Colombia. In Colombia, no one shops online: the mountainous terrain makes shipping extremely expensive. It was an extremely refreshing experience. There are malls of course but also many small stores for things like school supplies and niche clothing brands (I bought a sweater from a store that sold basically nothing but sweaters: they also had a fully stocked bar with a pillow lounge, loft, and a TV in the back.) The public transportation is well utilized and people walk in the streets. Small grocery/convenience stores are only a stone's throw from anywhere in the city. This is what we have lost to online shopping.

</comment><comment><USER29> From the article:

> There's no ambiguity about what you're getting when you buy a particular > book, CD, or DVD.

About a year ago I ordered a soundtrack CD from Amazon. It turned out to be a "fake", it was a CD-R that had a printed label. If you didn't know it was a CD-R, it looked reasonably convincing, the case was quite good quality. And it did contain the correct music - it was just a pirate copy.

</comment><comment><USER34> I seem to return 1 out of 8 Amazon items, even eating the occasional cost of poor quality items, because I needed -something-. They seem more and more to make me print and mail stuff back, first making ups pickup no longer the default, and now removing the option altogether.

I get lots of seemingly purposely mislabled products in the automotive section now. I think i get maybe 50% success rate ordering car parts. Lots of fakes. NGK, DENSO, and HONDA products seem to be prolific with counterfits. Had good luck with GM and Toyota parts so far, but I expect that to change, or be a fluke. Their automotive idea may see profit, bit I think they underestimated the extra complexity and returns inherent. Brick and mortar stores do much better at soaking up cost of returned parts I suspect.

<comment><USER35> If a product is a counterfeit then the cost they are soaking up is not that of the return, but that of failing to police their supply chain. And they absolutely should be looking to minimise the hassle to the customers in that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> >>"The problem with an Everything Store is that there's no way to organize everything effectively. The result is basically a giant digital flea market."

I'd describe it instead as their search and filtering stinks, and it is not just Amazon.

The first issue is that Amazon and almost everyone else seem to think that either we want, or it is in their best interest, to include in search results anything vaguely resembling the search terms. Perhaps sometimes this is nice, but the one thing that would help is: ____PROVIDE A STRICT BUTTON __ __This would allow users to specify that the search items MUST include the specified terms. If it returns an empty set, fine, remove the STRICT criteria, or enter new terms. Simple.

The author also touched on the issue that you can't find anything by a particular attribute (his example was a frame/matte of a particular size). This cannot be emphasized enough -- they really need a system in each class of products to extract and provide search/sort/filter on these particular characteristics. Ideally an AI-ish solution would identify attributes and list them. They could also simply require vendors to put up particular attributes, and accurately.

It'd be REALLY nice if they had a usable API so we could setup our own search & select UI, but...

</comment><comment><USER37> I closed my account on Amazon a while back and barely ever shop there due to how they treat their employees and their general bloated business model. I now actively shop from other online sites when I'm looking for a product and will gladly pay a little extra. The problem with Amazon is that every time I go there, I'm treated with a cluttered mess of ads and products all over the place. Whenever I search for what I want, I'm now treated with ads integrated into the product list that look exactly like a product listing, horizontal bar product listings of related/"recommended" products, and 300 (exaggeration) different spammy options for buying a product as a "subscription" or "bundled with amazon prime" at different price points when I only want to select a quantity. Its mostly horrendous garbage now and I'm so glad I closed my account and never use it. Its helped me save a lot of money (by removing temptation) and shop in other places that don't try and up-sell me on other products. Also, most products I can get immediately by just driving to a local store. I don't have to wait 2-4 days to get it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Amazon's counterfeit problem has ruined it for me. Like eBay before it, it's mostly a place to window shop for me now. Despite the massive amount of work they put into their logistics, they seem to have no trusted supply chain.

<comment><USER39> eBay is actually easier to use for me, now.

With eBay, you can sort by 'used' items, and there is some focus on the seller history- and by combining them you can form a reasonable expectation of whats going on.

With Amazon, you're buying a lottery ticket, every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I did notice that the rate at which I have to return unsatisfactory products from Amazon seems to have shot upwards in the last year or so. Obviously a hassle.

I've now gone back to getting what I can locally in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER41> My assertion is: Amazon ruined shopping.

It ruined workplace ethics. It ruined Seattle. It also ruined a lot of things.

I felt happy today going to a mom and pop franchise to purchase stuff. Happier knowing that I've just started on my quest of moving away from Amazon. I make money and some regular non-tech people make money and I'm happy they do.

AmazonBasics? Find a brand outlet - or go to AliExpress. Amazon is merely an expensive broker here. I'd rather Jack Ma make that money than Jeff does. Groceries? Go to your local offline vendor, preferable Mom and Pop. Computers? Set up a deal with the local distributor. Tell them that you respect reasonable prices and good support and they will give you a great experience. Books / Movies / Videos? Rent from a library.

I've been a long time Amazon shopper and for the last two years I'm consciously moving offline. I'm doing my bit and I've never felt happier.

</comment><comment><USER42> I noticed that the discussion about Amazon's decreasing quality comes up quite regularly on HN. It seems to be a huge issue and a lot of people have negative stories to tell. The best solution would be to move away from the big bad A and buy from alternative stores. I know that this is not always possible but let's try...

Shameless plug: A few days ago I created the site amalternative.com [1] which lists alternative online stores. There is still a lot of work to do but I decided to launch as soon as I could.

And I guess it meets a lot of HN requirements:

\- It's an MVP \- It's a side project \- There is no useless crap on the site \- It's simple \- It's fast (Static, on Netlify ;)) \- It has an high information density (Okay, not yet. But I'm working on it)

Let me hear what you think :)

[1] [https://www.amalternative.com/](https://www.amalternative.com/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I was never a Prime member, but I have bought stuff from Amazon in the past. As of about 2 years ago, I've basically quit Amazon for all the reasons listed in the article: confusing selection of products that I might want to buy (are those widgets the same as those other widgets or not?), the decreasing reliability of reviews, and the co-mingling of stock from different sellers.

Admittedly, I'm buying "weird" stuff online: principally woodworking tools and hardware for furniture. Tools are a high-value item that lends itself counterfeiting. Somebody I knew bought a 3' (90 cm) Starrett blade for their combination square (MSRP ~$340) from Amazon, and got one that wasn't straight. Was it counterfeit? Was it a second that slipped out the back door of the factory? Was it a genuine one that slipped past quality control at Starrett? Who knows.

He returned it and got a straight one, but there are other tools that are less obviously "wrong". Chisels with lower-grade steel, knock-off planes with poor quality castings or machining, counterfeit clamps (at $20-$30 a pair for basic handscrews you could probably make a tidy profit making sub-par ones and passing them off as the real thing).

For my money, I'll buy from somebody who only sells tools, and stakes their reputation on delivering the tool I ordered, and a genuine one to boot.

It turns out that dedicated retailers still exist for this stuff; beyond the US chains of Rockler and Woodcraft, there are a whole slew of independent vendors (Among others: Little Machine Shop, Infinity Cutting Tools, Lee Valley, Highland Woodworking).

And they take far better care of their customers. On the hardware front, I ordered a lock and an escutcheon from (I think) Whitechapel, and when they picked the order, they determined that the key wouldn't fit through the hole in the escutcheon. /They called me/ to make sure I ended up with an escutcheon that would fit the key.

To be sure, you pay for this level of service. Horton Brasses, Whitechapel, Brusso, etc all charge a handsome price. But at the end of the day, you know what you're getting, you can reach an actual human being if you need help picking something for your application, and they stand behind their products.

I'm going to extrapolate from my area of interest here. Amazon only makes sense for stuff that's essentially fungible (e.g. USB cables), or you're just muggling around and don't mind exchanging a bit of your time to make something that isn't quite right work for you once.

If you're doing anything in volume, predictability and repeatability matter a lot. Knowing that the X you order this year is going to work the same as the X you ordered 2 years ago counts for a lot.

<comment><USER44> On the other side, a $15 chisel set is essentially fungible as well.

<comment><USER43> Counterintuitively, the $15 price point is probably the point at which they are _least_ fungible. Consider a 1/2" chisel:

$5 chisels are universally crap (terrible steel, terrible finish) $35 or thereabouts chisels (Stanley 750, Two Cherries) are almost universally fine (modulo weird personal preferences that some people have?). Companies manufacturing chisels at this price point tend to do a lot of QC or have their processes down to the point where they put out consistent product for year after year. $50 and up (potentially way up) chisels (Lie-Nielsen, Blue Spruce, Veritas) are probably all outstanding. I wouldn't know, I don't own any.

At the $15 price point, some are decent, some aren't. The Buck Brother's chisels that are made in the USA are generally regarded as having decent steel. Some are rumored to have less flat backs than others. I have a 2" one that I like just fine (except that the handle is damnably uncomfortable where the striking cap meets the plastic; the blade, however, is well made).

Somebody I knew had a Narex chisel at the $15 price point that wouldn't hold an edge well. I understand that Narex is generally considered reputable, so maybe that's an aberration, or maybe they've gone downhill.

Point being, the midrange is kind of terra incognita for quality.

<comment><USER44> I didn't say _chisel_ , I said _chisel set_ , ie. 3 or 4 chisel for $15, which once you factor Amazon's commission, import, is probably a $2 or $3 set from the Chinese factory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I haven't gone through the 152 past comments so apologies if this is dupe. but recently I was on amazon to buy something and the original price was like $17 but it tried to snag me by presenting a deal like $12 so I added it to my cart.

I think I might have misread the countdown clock which appeared to be like 5hours (maybe it was 5 min??). but later when I returned to the cart (less than 5 hours later but more than 5 min later), I had a note saying I had less than 2 min to make the purchase) which I thought I completed in time but was charged full price regardless.

maybe this is a new feature(?) and buggy but I thought it was quite misleading and confusing. I still bought the product b/c it was useful to me but the pricing mechanism could have been more transparent.

</comment><comment><USER46> Everyone (well, in some sense of "everyone") complains about the danger of getting counterfeit goods from Amazon. I've personally never noticed goods I've bought from Amazon being counterfeit, but I none the less feel like they've wrecked what used to be an excellent online shopping experience in a different way.

If you search for anything that isn't (1) a book or DVD or (2) a specific item from a specific brand, you are likely to find that the top, oh, several hundred search results are near-indistinguishable things presumably drop- shipped from China, each of which is supposedly made by a company with a weird six-letter all-caps nonsense name. Perhaps some of these are actually excellent products, but the only way to tell whether they're any good is from the Amazon reviews, and we all know how reliable _those_ are.

I want a checkbox that says "only show me products from manufacturers with names I might recognize" or "don't show me anything that is shipped directly from China" or something.

(Not because there is anything wrong with things being made in, or shipped from, China. And these _might_ , for all I know, be excellent products. But I have no way I actually trust of knowing whether _these particular goods_ are actually bads.)

Random example: I was recently looking for an external USB-connected DVD drive. If I put <<<external usb dvd drive>>> into Amazon UK's search box, the "manufacturers" I get on my first page of results are: Rioddas, Rioddas, Patuoxun, Patuoxun, Oudekay, Asus, Oudekay, HOCOMO, LG, Rodzon, LG, PIAEK, Patuoxun, Amicool, Blingco, Inpher. This is actually an unusually _good_ case: LG and Asus are "real" hardware vendors. So far as I can tell, the others are all Amazon-only pseudo-vendors.

</comment><comment><USER47> This week I ordered from Amazon a 4tb Flash Drive. What arrived in 4tb packaging was a 250Gb flash drive with the manufacturer's label removed. Amazon did replace the fraud drive with a proper one.

</comment><comment><USER48> what they didn't say is that amazon also created online shopping as we know it today. perhaps created is too strong but certainly they have set the bar. (focused specialty stores like mcmaster aside)

the online shopping experience was theirs to ruin. which they have. i think it's almost intentional that buying from the marketplace is a crapshoot, usually to be avoided. it's a win win for amazon.

it's not surprising that the experience is poor these days. when you are a virtual monopoly that's what happens. it is surprising that there's no real competitor taking advantage.

</comment><comment><USER49> Google ruined it.

Once upon a time if I wanted to buy something, I would stick its name in Google and click the Shopping tab to find the cheapest. Often a random online retailer. Products and prices were scraped from the internet like any other organic SERP.

Then they started charging for access. The number of suppliers decimated. It was no longer competitive.

That allowed Amazon and eBay to become the bazaars they now are, including what TFA is talking about.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Birkenstock quits Amazon in US after counterfeit surge" (2016)[https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon- in-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/birkenstock-quits-amazon-in-us-after- counterfeit-surge.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> "the whole shopping experience is saturated with caprice and uncertainty". So very true. UNLESS I already know what I want. then, it's by far the easiest from checkout to delivery to possible returns. But if you're looking for a "robot toy for 5 year old", good luck.

</comment><comment><USER52> Amazon simply delivered the online shopping experience everyone wanted. In the beginning, you would scour the net looking for decent retailers and then get barraged by shipping charges and delivery times that drained all the value.

Amazon's focus was on fast and free shipping, removing the friction from the experience. Having scratched that itch, they got the scale benefit of reviews. Gold for the consumer. Retail is based on a specialist buying products customers want and ensuring and backing up quality. Amazon made that into a digital platform. The other retailers lost site of thier value and took customers for granted. That was why they didn't recognize the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER53> More and more I'm finding myself trying to find other ways to shop for things. A recent example is ice skates, I need a new pair, but no matter what I search for I can't seem to find anything on amazon with good reviews or a brand that I trust. At this point I'm probably gonna end up going to dickes and buying something in store even though it's a little over my budget, I just don't wanna play the return game. Plus, it seems at least in this case, most of the options aren't available on prime, so shipping in both directions is gonna cost.

<comment><USER54> I've definitely reached the point where I'll only make Amazon purchases for specifically branded goods. I tend to use social media networks to find product recommendations, like Reddit. There's no question that some brands pay people to subtlety advertise there as well, but it usually feels easy to get through to the truth on hobbyist subreddits

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Regarding the counterfeit problem: Amazon has a program called Transparency, which has been in development for some time:

[https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency](https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency)

The basic idea: Vendor places unique 2D barcode on each unit of a branded product, only products with those barcodes get placed into Amazon warehouse inventory, consumers can scan the barcode themselves to verify it's legit.

It's restricted to trademarked items, though.

</comment><comment><USER56> Well, I never shop from Amazon, I'd rather use a specialized online shops or online storefronts of the company directly(ie TM Lewin for shirts)...

Main reason is that I'm not used to Amazons' shopping experience and it's huge selection of items, once I tried buying a travel trolley and felt overwhelmed by the huge choice, so I went to the shop and bought one in person after inspecting it visually.

</comment><comment><USER57> There's generally an anti Amazon post here often, especially so when Amazons stock starts trending upwards.

I don't have problems when I shop on Amazon, and their instant video collection let us cut cable. We do have a boomerang subscription for another $5 a month for the kids. Last Christmas, we did purchase All Clad cookware, and one of the items was damaged, like literally a hairline crack. I called amazon and they sent the replacement with next day delivery. Pain in the ass but the only defective product I've had from them since 2015.

Imo there's generally an anti Amazon article by one of these media sites each week. I'm not sure how true it is the writing are, but to say Amazon ruined internet shopping sounds pretty inaccurate and laughable. I grew up in Bellevue, WA but many years ago left for the Midwest. I'm not sure if there are some better services that blow Amazon out of the water used by these media, east/west coast elitists or if it's just the anti corporate hate train of smearing companies that get too large and founders get too rich.

I suspect Amazon has millions of shoppers each day and these threads just turn into the angriest crowd of the 100 or folks who didn't like their experience. Out of millions of shoppers per day, a hundred or even a few thousand angry customers are a rounding error and probably well within their customer satisfaction metrics. Hence, Amazon doesn't change how they sell things or their delivery promises.

<comment><USER58> There's an anti apple or Facebook post just about every week too. Not all of these companies are equal, but there's just a general pattern of crap over all big tech.

There are clear examples of carelessness or downright nefariousness (see FB), but there's also a complete lack of government regulation.

They've had crazy growth or valuations in the past several years. There's a lot of hateful sentiment driven by that, imo. People get jealous.

Amazon may have 1000s of misses among millions of customers, but those people are the loudest when it comes to writing their opinions.

I do think outlets like the Atlantic are inherently against Amazon and see Bezos being too powerful. These articles are less objective and more politically driven.

Just my 2 cents

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I order from specialty merchants or manufacturers when I can.

Books I trust from Amazon. The rest, not so much.

<comment><USER60> In my experience, many of the books I've purchased from Amazon are actually illegally exported reprints from India. Those books tend to not make that fact obvious or even known.

<comment><USER61> There's nothing illegal about importing books. "The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner."

Labels like "not for sale in the US" are aimed at distributers and stores, but are not legally enforceable.

<comment><USER62> Grey market textbooks saved me pretty good money in college. But they're only good if you know that's what you're getting- the print quality is lower, usually not in color, worse paper. Still a good deal if you just want the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Amazon doesn't sell Everlane, Gustin or Allbirds. Three clothing line's I've bought from over the past 5 years (more recently Allbirds).

IMHO /gets on soapbax/L

I think Amazon has burned EVERYONE who has used it, and would argue it has taught us to become more savvy shoppers.

The three companies I list go out of their way to be transparent about their products. This builds trust and loyalty. The faults of Amazon (and Yahoo! Shopping in the early 2000's) led to the emphasis on these new digital- shopping virtues.

It sucks. Every time I buy something on Amazon, I'm always suspicious if I'm going to get what I ordered. 95% of the time I'm satisfied, but ironically only because I buy fewer things. But I'm glad that more and more companies are going out of their way to validate themselves in the same way brick-and-mortar stores are authentic.

</comment><comment><USER64> The biggest reason I'm not shopping at Amazon as much anymore are the scams and fake products. It's really annoying.

</comment><comment><USER65> There are others, but they are much worse: [https://youtu.be/61sN42E2WbE](https://youtu.be/61sN42E2WbE)

</comment><comment><USER66> I had a string of issues buying from amazon and decided to just stop. Several things just never showed up and 4-5 weeks after I ordered I'd quietly receive a refund. One item I really needed, they never shipped to me. I signed up for Amazon prime to get the expedited shipping for the item, then when I didn't get it they gave me a free month of prime in compensation. Gee, thanks.

My confidence that I'll actually receive something I buy from them is low enough that I don't think it's worth it to buy from them, plus the store is full of counterfeits.

I don't understand why people like buying from them so much, in my experience it's markedly worse than almost any other e-commerce store. The whole selling point of e-commerce is convenience, but transacting with them is not convenient and their customer service sucks. What's the point? This whole idea that they're fanatically customer-obsessed, I just don't see it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Hyperbolic statements with question marks make terrible headlines?

<comment><USER68> Ending a statement with a question mark is also bad grammar.

<comment><USER67> Yes, it is a very obnoxious trend, this is the point I was making.</comment></comment></comment>


Two possible cases of leprosy reported at Riverside elementary school - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-leprosy-kids-20160906-snap-story.html <comment><USER2> I do not grok a good reason for Leprosy to be renamed to Hansen's disease. Leprosy is an ancient name for this disease.</comment>


Mobile Phone Database - <AUTHOR>

Hello all, does anyone know where I can download a database with a list of phones with their picture and description?
very similar to: http://www.zedge.net/phone-index/
thanks! <comment><USER2> I dont know a complete list but <http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/> is mostly pretty helpfull in finding usable logos

<comment><AUTHOR> i was actually looking for a site that has a database of all the phone information.

so for example i can just download a zip file which has 1200 thumbnails and an .sql file that has 1200 phone models linking to those pictures with their descritpion etc.</comment></comment>


Research-Driven Startups - <AUTHOR> http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/7/2/research-driven-startups.html <comment><USER2> Our company is research-driven in the sense that is based on me reading a lot of papers on distributed systems and algorithms (eg. Google papers, Lamport papers), and extracting a design concept from those for our first product (Keyspace). To give back, I write a paper for each product we release or algorithm we invent, and we're an open-source company.

It's working so far, we have bootstrapped ourselves to a nice profitable level, we just rented our first office, and are working on our next-gen database product, which will be scalable not just replicated.

(Btw. we're in Budapest and we're looking for a C/C++ programmer.)

<comment><USER3> Maro, thanks for sharing your example.

I presume this is you? <http://scalien.com/keyspace/>

Awesome stuff.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post is spot on. At my company, the amount of amazing stuff we can build basically had the top blow off once we were finally able to access our dataset using map reduce. In an afternoon, we can build something that previously was inconceivable due to the large data transformations necessary to build it.

<comment><USER3> I love to hear this. What are you working on and can you share an example or two of some of the new stuff you are able to do?

<comment><USER4> I'm at Etsy, we have a new experimental search tool up at:

<http://www.etsy.com/explorer>

It's server is in clojure but is powered by a massive tag analysis job using cascading. I'll be writing a blog post about this in due time once it matures.

Our "suggested shops" feature is now powered by elastic map reduce and _matlab_ to perform matrix factorization, believe it or not. And, we're working on improved search algorithms. Being able to re-index the whole site in 15 minutes makes iterating and improving the algorithm quickly more possible.

More on our setup here:

[http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2010/02/24/analyzing-etsys- data-...](http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2010/02/24/analyzing-etsys-data-with- hadoop-and-cascading/)

We're going to be writing a lot more about this, and hopefully opening up some of our tooling beyond the JRuby DSL for Cascading we already have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds a bit backwards to me in some respects.

Some companies ask, "What product can we build with this technology?"

Good companies ask, "What technology does this product need?"

Great companies ask, "What product will this customer buy?"

<comment><USER3> Is Apple is a "great company"? They are a research-driven company that builds great products. Products drive research.

From the post: "Solving problems with products, build on research, driven by processing data

problem <\- product <\- intelligence <\- research <\- information <\- processing <\- data"

Product is the top of the food chain.

<comment><USER6> How is Apple a research-driven company like what the author was describing? I suppose you could argue they are researching new designs for technologies, but really that's it. They don't tackle new conceptual challenges like Google did with automated page ranking, for instance.

<comment><USER7> I think Apple is very strongly research-driven with respect to materials science and industrial design: the basic design of the iPhone / multitouch interface, the unibody design of recent MacBook Pros, the stainless steel antenna in the iPhone 4, and so forth.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget NeXT. I never considered owning Mac until OS X (that is, until I got a functional UNIX OS). Prior to OS X they were for graphic designers and people wanting a better typewriter, I stuck to Sun workstations (before the Ultra-5, past that point, the switch to PCI bus and IDE drives, they essentially became slow commodity machines) and Linux PCs.

NeXT was probably even more technology driven than the startups Bradford describes: formed around an operating system, hardware, OOP and a programming language. Sun was much the same way, but unfortunately they devolved to the extreme of making science projects rather than products.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-life-expectancy-declines-for-the-first-time-since-1993/2016/12/07/7dcdc7b4-bc93-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html <comment><USER2> The undeveloping world.

Widespread obesity, poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, the uniquely inefficient health care system, wealth inequality, etc, will likely cause overall expectancy to drop further.

Related and interesting:

> "As of 2010, the average, upper-income 50-year-old man was expected to live > to 89. But the same man, if he's lower income, would live to just 76, > according to the report."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/18/the-g...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/18/the- government-is-spending-more-to-help-rich-seniors-than-poor- ones/?utm_term=.2ff0f4046c66)

<comment><USER3> While life expectancy is strongly correlated with income, it's actually uncorrelated with inequality and access to health care.

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article- abstract/25135...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article- abstract/2513561)

<comment><USER4> It's difficult to interpret this because the paper defines income throughout the text in terms of income _quantile_ (not absolute, COL-adjusted levels).

And oddly, in the FT, they show a significant negative correlation b/t Gini index and life expectancy in the _upper_ quartile, and not the lower quartile (you'd expect the opposite). In the lower quartile, it is p=0.11, r=0.2; i.e., a nonsignificant _positive_ association between income inequality and income quartile. This suggests the effects of income inequality might actually affect LE in different directions for high and low earners. This would explain why they say in the abstract they don't see a LE-Gini correlation for the distribution as a whole.

The story I would spin is that, within one geographic region, a high Gini actually means that rich and poor are living in proximity and sharing social structures. If you have low Gini in a compact region it likely means everyone there is (uniformly) poor.

IOW, they very likely have a correlation b/t Gini and income levels they aren't controlling for. This is why we use multivariate regression with interactions, not just run a Pearson between every pair of variables. The statistics in this article are really bad. JAMA strikes again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was kind of wondering how this didnt happen earlier. I have been to US 3 times. NYC, Vegas, San Fran, Los angeles etc. and one thing I noticed was how unhealthy alot of americans lived compared to europe.

Obsese parents together with children as small as 6 years old were all dining at fast-food restaurants eating massive amount of food. The kids were very obese too.

The entire culture seemed for _me_ as its rather normal to eat your dinner at kfc or mcdonalds than making food at home. When we took the flight fra NYC to Vegas we noticed there were more obese people than "regular sized". But when we took fra SF to London it was opposite.

And whats up with the size of the meals served in restaurants? its huuge. alot food for little money. Sometimes we split one dish in between us because it was too much for a single person. The same when we went to movies, we got to choose size of coke and popcorn. So we picked medium coke. Medium is like extra-large in europe.

I think its sad because americans are missing out on really great food. It is the food you cook yourself thats not only healthy but tastes so much better and authentic.

I hope nobody is offended my post but I just felt its an area to improve on.

<comment><USER6> > tastes so much better and authentic.

I agree with most of your post as I am fortunate to have been exposed to food cultures outside the US, but I disagree with this point. Many people either can't or won't cook food that is "authentic" to any reasonable standard especially if it is, to them, a foreign cuisine. This applies in basically every country around the world. That being said, I don't think the goal of good food is to be "authentic" if restaurant critiques are any indication.

<comment><USER7> I think you have different understandings of the word 'authentic' in the context of food.

<comment><USER6> Could you clarify what your definition is in this context?

<comment><USER5> I think I left it open to misunderstanding, but what I meant by authentic in this context was "shortest and less-tampered path from nature to ingestion".

Foe example, in restaurants they may have frozen meat for long time or in bad condition. Vegetables and sauces maybe be re-used. Unknown ingredients may be mixed to enhance taste, color or smell.

By authentic you kinda go to your local fishmarket, buy the fish (in here we got fresh non-frozen), buy groceries and make that food the same day. By making the food yourself you know what you are putting inside your mouth :)

sorry for any misunderstanding, English is not my first language.

<comment><USER6> That makes more sense. I assumed that by "authentic" you meant "genuine, traditional, etc."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's quickly interpret this to further our pre-existing agenda (healthcare, guns, environment, vaccination, inequality, obama, immigration...)

<comment><USER9> Well, without mentioning an agenda, stress causes heart disease. Obviously if we could do something so that people could stress less, exercise more, and eat fresh food more often rather than processed food, heart disease would drop and people would die less.

<comment><USER3> There are quite a few things we could do in this direction.

For example, we could provide mandatory calisthenics classes for people on medicaid - think some sort of watered down military PT class. If you need medicaid, you need to show up daily and do jumping jacks.

Similarly, we could replace food stamps/welfare/etc with a government-issued basket of healthy vegetables, complete with printed instructions on how to cook them.

Utah has been having great success helping the poor with (secularized) Mormon style paternalism. Perhaps the rest of us can learn from them.

[http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced- chronic...](http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic- homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how)

<comment><USER9> >Similarly, we could replace food stamps/welfare/etc with a government-issued basket of healthy vegetables, complete with printed instructions on how to cook them.

While many people don't have good cooking instruments where they live, I do think making at least part of food aid into a direct provision of healthy fruits and veggies, including those which can be eaten raw-at-worst, would be a large improvement. Honestly, at this stage, government-run cafeterias serving healthy food for free to anyone in need would be a massive improvement.

It's a pity that people have such negative feelings about "paternalism" that they'd rather give out food stamps for buying rice and beans at inflated convenience-store prices than actually let the government provide healthy food directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The quality of available food in the US is a big part of the problem. A recent TED speaker postulates 74% of food in the average US grocery store is spiked with added sugar [1]. We also eat too few vegetables and too much meat in our diets. And those foods are often raised with harmful pesticides and hormones respectively.

I am a discerning shopper, avoid fast food and still get surprised by food that is not good for me. For instance, I put a tiny amount of unflavored, low- fat half & half in my coffee in the morning. I checked the label today and see that it contains corn syrup. In my head, it was just skim milk and cream. Silly me.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/502171330/how-worried- should-w...](http://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/502171330/how-worried-should-we-be- about-sugar)

<comment><USER11> Could you post a link to/picture of said half & half? I have a very hard time believing it's legal to call something with corn syrup in it "half & half" (as opposed to "creamer" or something similar).

<comment><USER12> It's commonly found in "fat-free" or "skim" half & half, along with thickening agents. You're right, it's pretty awful that this crap is labeled as "half & half".

Here's an example: [https://www.landolakes.com/products/half-half-and- whipping-c...](https://www.landolakes.com/products/half-half-and-whipping- cream/half-half/land-o-lakes-sup-reg;-sup-fat-free-half-half/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> one interesting note is that life expectancy at 65 years of age did not change, Indicating that the diseases behind the lower life expectancy occur in middle age or younger. The reasons behind the decrease. [deaths per 100K population] The heart disease went up from 167 to 168.5 Also'Unintentional Injuries' went up from 40.5 to 43.2.

On the positive side, the contribution of cancer has come down.

<comment><USER14> People die of cancer if they don't die of something more treatable before that so lower cancer contribution may be not for a good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Life span lessens, but food industry and health care industry profits have never been higher. Could there be a connection?

</comment><comment><USER16> Probably just random variance. In particular, that most categories of cause of death increased seems to point at random chance, since they should not correlated strongly. (But this is probably something to watch next year.)

<comment><USER17> Shouldn't this be exactly the contrary? If you have 10 independent coin flips, the chance of getting 10 heads is < 0.1%, while if they are perfectly correlated, then it simply becomes 50%.

Having 10 independent causes of death going up simultaneously is very unlikely to be caused by random chance. Rather it's an indication of an external phenomenon influencing all causes simultaneously.

<comment><USER16> The argument is the other way round, they should not be correlated, or if they are correlated they should be correlated in an obvious way, therefore it is likely random chance compared to the situation were suddenly there is a spike in violent death because of nuclear war or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are we to make of this? Should this data be considered at all?

<comment><USER19> Eat healthy, exercise, don't smoke, stay a good weight.. you will do better than average, on average. I think this is all just a trend of our not healthy culture. If over 10 years everyone gains 10 pounds, your life expectancy is not going to do awesome things.

<comment><USER20> Is there evidence that our culture is becoming less healthy? It seemed to me that we, meaning the US as a whole, have been building better habits.

I feel that this is an economic issue more than anything else.

<comment><USER21> _Is there evidence that our culture is becoming less healthy?_

A trip to any U. S. major theme park ought to do the trick, preferably one of the ones around Orlando.

 _It seemed to me that we, meaning the US as a whole, have been building better habits._

I hesitate to pull the "you live in a bubble" card, but I think it applies here. If I looked around me here in Seattle, I might agree with you. Buncha fit hiker/snowboarder types driving Subarus on their way to the xTREME Mudfest This Is Sparta Run Sponsored by Rockstar Energy Drink. You have nothing in your profile for me to go on, so I'll go with assuming you're a 20/30-something bro living around SV who's into running/biking/whatever like all of your friends. You look around and go, "obesity problem? What obesity problem?"

Then I hop on a plane to visit my parents in Florida, and the bubble pops. O...M...G, when did children turn into such butterballs? Oh, that explains it: look at their parents. Pictures of friends in the Midwest? Same thing: when did my classmates get so fat? Again, I don't know your background, but if you're basing your opinion on what you've seen on the west coast, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER22> If you think Florida is bad, try Appalachia. I moved from Orlando to Seattle and earlier this year took a trip to Gatlinburg. The obesity there was just insane.

<comment><USER21> Good point; sadly it's been a good ten years since I've been near the NC mountains and I've forgotten. I have no reason to think it has improved. Though the fact that the wife and I lost weight when we moved from NC to Seattle ought to tell you something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe this is the actual report: [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db267.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db267.pdf)

I noticed that the "top ten cause" chart doesn't have an "other" column, but it looks like that can be computed from the total rates for top ten causes and the total for all causes. If my math is correct, we went from 191.3 (2014) to 191.1 (2015). So I guess the good news is the death rate from unpopular or unexplained causes went down a little. :|

</comment><comment><USER24> Why does this metric matter so much to so many people? Why not quality of life?

<comment><USER25> It's an imperfect proxy for how well a population is doing. But, yes, yours is a question we should peer into to know whether the presumption of longer life = unqualified good.

That said, in this case, it's believed self-kill and opioid overdosing are contributing to this trend and those are not good contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why wouldn't it decline if the middle class is shrinking?

</comment><comment><USER27> It's another in a long line of examples underscoring massive inequality, but it's about to be made moot by the 100's to 1000's of gigatons of methane (5 GT in the air right now) from just the ESAS going to push global warming into the +4C to +6C range within a decade. Global famines, wars, mass migrations and so on. If a person today doesn't have a completely self-sufficient, off-the-grid refuge in the far north or south, that person is suicidal or a Christian fundamentalist praying for rain.</comment>


Google Could Face $10 Million Fine For Tracking Safari Users - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/05/05/google-tracking-safari-users/

<comment><USER2> For some reason I don't think this punishment isn't enough or will significantly impact them. Wouldn't the tracking information be much more valuable than 10 million dollars?

<comment> k-mcgrady There are very few monetary penalties that will affect a company making as much money as Google. I think the goal is that it will act as a deterrent in future (if they breach privacy like this again they may get a far greater penalty) and will prevent other companies from acting in a similar way.

<comment><USER2> Thats not what I was arguing. It doesn't matter that Google can absorb the cost. I was saying that can Google make more than 10 million dollars off of the data.

<comment><USER3> Maybe, but the data involved in this case is a pretty small smidge in Google's overall data collection and monetization systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They have messed with their own "don't be evil" policy. First their official privacy policy shift (<http://www.google.com/policies/>) and then these evil techniques.

</comment><comment><USER5> The company is making 10 billion in revenues PER QUARTER. I don't think they give a shit about $10M.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the purpose of fines like this meant to punish and deter this type of behavior? Well then why don't they fine an entity by a percentage of it's value to make it actually "sting" Google a bit?

Sure $10Mill may be more than they would have charged DuckDuckGo if they were doing this, but I don't think that they would fine DuckDuckGo $100 (would likely be much higher) on a relative scale though, this is about how much they are fining Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> And i hope it's going to the users and apple is next in line as a facilitator.

If that happens i will go back to give justice the benefit of the doubt.</comment>


Why is the speed of light so slow? - <AUTHOR> https://www.space.com/37244-why-is-the-speed-of-light-so-slow.html <comment><USER2> "So now that we've ascertained that light is not fast but rather is excruciatingly slow, we can now turn to a more pressing and difficult matter: Why?"

For me it is not that light is slow, but rather the universe is large.. large space time.. most of it taken up by space.</comment>