Palm - <AUTHOR> https://www.palm.com <comment><USER2> I feel like the only one who thinks this is kind of awesome. I want a small phone. As small as possible, that can still text and act as an LTE hotspot, with very basic browsing, and Spotify. I want that. The iPhone SE was perfect for me.

<comment><USER3> Phones are my go-to real example of different people expecting mutually exclusive things from the same type of product. You want a phone as small as possible. I want it as _large_ as possible.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand the need for a large phone. If I need a large screen, I just use my laptop or desktop. Moreover, without a proper keyboard I mostly just read a tad bit of text. You don't need a massive screen for that.

<comment><USER3> Photos look better on a larger screen. Especially when you want to show them to other people. Say, you meet some friends in a café, and want to show them your vacation photos.

You can fit more text on a larger screen, which makes it better for reading. You can fit more icons, widgets, etc. It's easier to do precise taps.

Basically, I want a phone as large as it's possible without losing ability to operate it with one hand (that's when you get a tablet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about a smartphone brand that promises to never change the UI again after version 1.0? Users can move their buttons around or change their appearance, but their investment in muscle memory is sacred. Before javascript hit the internet everyone used (and frequently declined to update) native apps, and largely controlled their UI, but as a society we just gave that control to web designers. Many Vim and Emacs users never let go, but it used to be GUI users as well; I remember tech savvy mac using university professors with 1000 icons on their desktop that are all there for a reason. They didn't search; they just reached.

<comment><USER3> One thing I miss from the pre-touchscreen era: never-changing UI with _soft- realtime guarantees_. When e.g. using my old K800i, I had memorized sequences of actions and delays (eg: "down, 3, ok, wait ~1 second, down, down, ok"). The _delays_ were consistent. This meant I could operate my phone without looking at it, without even pulling it out of my pocket. This is impossible in the smartphone era, not just because UIs change, but because delays are completely unpredictable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love seeing new product ideas, but I'm baffled at how this one made it all the way to production.

Basic premise is.. "Hey, we're going to make our smartphone so undesirable that you won't want to use it except when you absolutely need it. However, we'll make sure it looks well-built so people know that you've made a deliberate lifestyle choice and that this isn't your primary phone."

<comment><USER7> Seriously. Plus you can buy these things on AliExpress for 1/5th the cost. And if you don't want to give up your smart phone completely, you can buy slick looking "bluetooth dialers" on AliExpress for even cheaper.

<comment><USER8> The general cheap small smartphone on aliexpress are MTK chipset phones running android gingerbread (or some other ancient version). You get what you pay for, unless I'm wrong and you actually have some decent products to link.

<comment><USER7> Yeah good call on the MTK chipset, looks like that's the case. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yay a small phone. Oh it's tied to only Verizon, and costs 350 dollars...

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from- the-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-the-dead-as- a-zombie-brand-launches-tiny-smartphone/)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I misread it originally as $34.99, which may make some sense as a kitschy novelty thing, even if only marginally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What an irritating webpage. Just a bunch of pretentious photos with text that loads way too late.

<comment><USER11> It's actually a zero-content WWW site if one has not turned on Javascript. Aside from the script and <meta>, it comprises just a <title> and some empty <div>s and appears as entirely blank.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225645)

<comment><USER3> It's a zero-content WWW even with JavaScript enabled. Just load of lifestyle marketing crap, and you have to dig in a bit to get an actual product description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This thing has to have a massively crappy battery life (in the real, real world)...

Seriously, 800mah?

The only reason that smartphones "work" is because they have big screens, while big screens obviously consume a lot of power and therefore require big batteries, there's more space for the battery inside as the PCB doesn't need to be big like the screen.

</comment><comment><USER13> OMG, you can almost hear the giant props of the B-52 required to drop this bomb. As other commenters have pointed out, it can't decide if it wants to be an iPhone SE or an Apple Watch. It _could_ succeed, but it is going to have to be cheeaaaap. Which it won't be, 'cuz you know, lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a device with a unique approach to mobile user experience, but there are literally no photos of the UI on the site.

Maybe the idea is that it feels like a phone, so you pull it from your pocket thanks to extreme smartphone muscle memory. You find your hands have selected a black glass slab that says "PA LM" in the middle, which is quite uninteresting, So you put it away. Distraction crisis averted.

(Kidding obviously, but nothing on the site says otherwise! Honestly I wrote my first mobile app for the Palm V and I would love for this to be a killer rebirth of the Palm brand. Guess we'll have to wait and see though!)

<comment><USER15> Not sure if this is what you're referring to but there's pictures of the UI on the product page: [https://www.palm.com/product](https://www.palm.com/product)

<comment><USER3> And it turns out it's _just a small Android phone_. There's no unique approach to any kind of experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.), maker of the Palm Pilot. :(

<comment><USER17> FYI: [https://www.palm.com/about](https://www.palm.com/about)

They reference/sort of say they are the original Palm.

Also, you don't need another phone line/connection. It will use your same phone number. I'm sure Verizon will figure out a way to charge for it but it looks like it won't be a whole new line.

We'll see I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was deeply disappointed to see this is not a return of the original Palm, in kind of perhaps a return to a 'non-internet' 'traditional' PDA or something.

Or...I don't know. _Anything_ remotely interesting. And yeah, someone else mentioned the payload of the header of the site, it's no wonder it behaves so poorly on my iPhone SE.

If this does have anything to do with the makers of the original Palm, that's a damn shame.

P.S. WebOS was freaking awesome. Even if it never had good hardware to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems this device works even when it's nowhere near your "full" phone. Too bad it'll basically require a second data plan.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, so do the untethered watches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes buy a second phone. What better way to be more present in your daily life?

</comment><comment><USER22> That website is something else. This is _only_ the JavaScript payload fetched when you visit. (A favorite is the 2 versions of the "lodash" library):

      cdn.trackjs.com/releases/current/tracker.js
      connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js
      ding.wix.com/asdk/dispatcher.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/js-sdk/1.96.0/js/wix-private.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/promote-analytics-adapter/2.62.0/analytics-event-adapter.bundle.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/app/main-r.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/components/components.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/core/core.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/coreUtils/coreUtils.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/dataFixer/dataFixer.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/first-load/first-load.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/layout/layout.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/linkBar/linkBar.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/mediaContainer/mediaContainer.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/platformInit/platformInit.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/santaProps/santaProps.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/skins/skins.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/stripColumnsContainer/stripColumnsContainer.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/tpa/tpa.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/utils/utils.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/viewerCompsService/viewerCompsService.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/warmup/warmup.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/warmupUtils/warmupUtils.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/wixCode/wixCode.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/third-party/requirejs/2.1.15/require.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/@firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/local.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/statics/frame-listener.bundle.min.js
      email@example.com/dist/statics/fedops-logger-module.bundle.min.js
      email@example.com/dist/focus-visible.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/src/minified/plugins/ScrollToPlugin.min.js
      email@example.com/src/minified/TweenMax.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/hls.light.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/imageClientApi.js
      email@example.com/lodash.min.js
      email@example.com/lodash.min.js
      email@example.com/index.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/mousetrap.min.js
      email@example.com/build/pm-rpc.min.js
      email@example.com/index.js
      email@example.com/umd/react-dom.production.min.js
      email@example.com/umd/react.production.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/bundle.min.js
      email@example.com/dist/santa-components.prod.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/coreUtils.js
      email@example.com/dist/warmupUtils.js
      email@example.com/dist/santa-data-fixer.js
      email@example.com/color-convert/0.2.0/color.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/host-platform-api.js
      email@example.com/dist/host-worker-init.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/mobileLayoutUtils.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/languages.js
      email@example.com/dist/platformUtils-bundle.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/santa-renderer.js
      email@example.com/dist/skin-utils.js
      email@example.com/dist/statics/compsToPackages.bundle.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/statics/dataRefs.bundle.js
      email@example.com/dist/statics/viewerComponentService.bundle.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/xss.min.js
      firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/zepto.min.js
      www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js
      www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js

This doesn't include the CSS, images, fonts, video, etc.

Remarkable.

<comment><USER23> Part of that seem's to be Wix's React components ([https://github.com/wix/wix- ui#readme](https://github.com/wix/wix-ui#readme)) which means they didn't even build it themselves

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How many of these zombie branded products are there? Remember the vaporware Commodore PET phone?

[https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore- smartphone/](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/)

[https://pocketnow.com/commodore-smartphone- vaporware](https://pocketnow.com/commodore-smartphone-vaporware)

And how many bonafide spiritual successor products exist? The Gemini PDA springs to mind.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how much they paid to acquire that Instagram @palm account (unless someone who works for them registered it early... Let alone the palm.com domain)

<comment><USER26> Does anyone here know the legality of selling an Instagram handle that is also the name of a company? I have a 4 letter (with the same repeating vowel) Instagram account from 2010. There are multiple companies that have that name in different fields. Can I approach those companies to see if they want to buy my account or will they sue me to oblivion ?

It's alwyas been a personal account and is my nickname since I was a child.

On a side note, someone has tried to reset my account dozens of times throughout the years.

<comment><USER8> >Does anyone here know the legality of selling an Instagram handle that is also the name of a company?

My guess would be it would depend on what the original use was. If you had a brand in a different sector and offered it I'm sure they could complain but they likely wouldn't win. (see nissan.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The idea was chased by the original palm with a phone called Veer. After the HP acquisition of Palm it was released as HP Veer and I really really liked the Pre and Veer. Too bad that stupid Leo Apotheker killed of the Phones before they even had a chance.

</comment><comment><USER28> We've been here before with Palm; is there a reason we should try again or are they going to pull these devices from the market after a few weeks of selling them?

P.S. If it's cheap it's going to break a lot... you know palm the cheaper it is the worse it is

</comment><comment><USER29> 3.3" display. Hmmm a bit smaller than iPhone 4?

Being used to big phones like those Galaxy Note series (yes I use them a lot for taking notes and reading ebooks), I guess this won't be my main phone.

And too bad it's locked to Verizon, yes? I live in Southeast Asia...

</comment><comment><USER30> This is likely going to go the way of the Essential phones

</comment><comment><USER31> Palm Pre was easily thr best phone i ever used

This.. Not so much

</comment><comment><USER32> Why not just buy a second smartphone?

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't this just an iPhone SE?

<comment><USER34> I think you meant to say "Apple Watch".

<comment><USER35> It's trying to be a phone companion, like a smart watch but in your pocket. Phones are getting bigger and bigger so this is a way to get a second screen experience without constraining that experience to a 1" screen on your wrist.

I think that's what they are trying to do. It instantly reminds me of the memory cards of the Dreamcast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am bullish!

</comment><comment><USER37> A phone with... a piece of string!

In all seriousness though, a reasonably-sized smartphone is a good idea, hopefully they don't ruin it somehow.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with an offshore team that is vastly underqualified? - <AUTHOR> I work for an average sized company (120+ people; 50M funding) and we have created an offshore development team in India because we are having great difficulties hiring engineers.
It seems that the 12+ folks there are a bit underqualified for our React / NodeJS / Typescript stack.
For example, I had to explain how to access a single item in an array and how to replace a string within a string.
Folks in that team that know about arrays simply produce code that subjectively seems to be lame. For example, when I see a `margin-left: -37.5em`, I know something is really off.
That's the first part of my question - how do you deal with that?
The second part is, I'm trying to not answer their questions on Slack directly, and I'm answering with a question instead. "Okay, there's a function called `replace`. What arguments does it take?"
I'm worried that they will get hooked on just typing a question to me instead of typing it into Google. I had similar experience in my previous company, when the offshore team in Shanghai refused to think and just asked us for anything, even 2 years after they've started.
However, some close friends commented that it might come off very arrogant and offensive if I don't answer questions directly and show my dissatisfaction.
I also refuse to take "just a short call"s which tend to last half an hour and I can hardly understand anything. I prefer text messages.
How do I deal with all that? I'm only working for 6 months so I want to stay another 6 months minimum at this company.
Am I also being arrogant? <comment><USER3> Sounds like you need to have a call to establish some team norms in terms of communications styles, coding standards, and expectations in general.

The business culture in India includes an acceptance of taking direction from people who have authority over the work. But you need to be explicit. Give them clear directions. Tell them what you want. Tell them why you want it. Do not try the indirect methods you described - that isn't the style they are used to. Be direct, and if they miss the mark, you can be candid in your feedback, politely, and they will respond.

At the same time, get to know them. Ask them their backgrounds, why they do the things they do. Learn their perspective. Let them learn that you value them as people, not just offshore coders. And the more you get to know them, and build trust across the team, the easier this will get. You will learn who they are, they will learn who you are, and things can get better.

</comment><comment><USER4> If they're not qualified, drop them. When you pay peanuts you're going to get monkeys (no racial slur intended)

You're having difficulty hiring engineers because you're either not willing to pay enough or you're imposing stupid artificial constraints on your requirements.

</comment><comment><USER5> > had to explain how to access a single item in an array and how to replace a > string within a string

I think you're being too generous calling them "a bit underqualified". They should be _disqualified_ for not knowing such basic operations. Otherwise, you're paying them to educate them.

If it's not under your control to choose which team members are actually qualified for the job, perhaps you could prepare required reading that covers the basics of HTML, CSS, JS - for example: Learn Web Development. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Learn](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn)

<comment><USER6> Obviously the team cannot "hire engineers" because of $$$. You either got to pay them or train them. There is no way around it. Hence option B is the only real option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of answering things piecemeal - organize a training session - <USER2> a week or two of intense training. That way you pay the cost one time and get to benefit from the increased productivity.

<comment><USER8> They may find that if they train their current assigned staff well, the outsourcer will just rotate those improved staff members out to other projects and give you a fresh batch of trainees.

<comment><USER7> This has not been my experience. In my case the staff is eager to stay on because they think they will gather skills. Yes you do lose them a year or two later to attrition because they land better jobs with their improved skills - but you get a year or two of fairly decent work out of them. I consider that a fair trade in terms of time - one week of my time to get one / two year of good work from a team of 8-10 people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is your responsibility here? I'd focus on what you're responsible for. You have yearly performance reviews with your manager, right? Well that's what's important.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've seen this a few times. The offshore team will either get better (because you've taught them CS101) or they will produce low quality source that'll be poor unless you personally read each and every single line. Either way your time is what the company is going to spend in addition to the amount they are paying the offshore team. Do you want to constantly check line after line of horrible source code and teach the offshore team? If you are okay with that then I suggest getting a raise for such an arrangement. Heck, I say get an assistant too because two sets of eyes covering the work of many under qualified hands is gonna make things easier for you.

Bottom line, the company is padding the low cost of the offshore team with your time, patience and expertise. Get some more cash for this and any extra help they'll hire on for you locally.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's a tough one. I had a similar situation, though not that bad. I made the mistake of creating an adversarial dynamic, for which I learned two great lessons, one in communication and one in leadership. My bossome awesome is fantastic.

If you're interested, I'm happy to get on a call to talk this through with you. I'd also be keen to chat about an alternative to off shore development. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER12> You hired the wrong people. Difficulty of finding good engineers is global.

</comment><comment><USER13> Honest feedback. Say when it isn't good enough. Point it out.

I've never tried this, but as an idea: can you redirect their questions to a full team chat and get their own team members to solve them? Saying "ABC asked XYZ" might put the onus on them to up-skill their team and it might also show you who's able to answer their questions on their side. After a while they might just ask their questions directly in that.

</comment><comment><USER14> The most interesting part is the comment saying the company is having trouble hiring engineers so they went offshore. There is not a shortage of talent, there is a shortage of talent at the discount price point the company wants to pay. Not saying that to bad mouth the company, but understanding that helps you to understand why you are getting what you are getting in India too, it is the same there.

I have managed people in India off and on since 1999, and for the past 3+ years have been working at a startup where we have an entire division in India, including engineering. So I have to deal with recruiting, hiring and managing in India for engineers, I travel there reasonably often. One of the key things to know, really good India engineers are being paid $35-50 USD per hour, not $10-$18. Yes, you can find people for less money that are awesome, but as a foreign company that isn't on the ground in India that won't happen. You will get consulting companies that provide you people they are hiring for 8-12 lakhs INR (~$12k-$17k USD/year) and charging you what seems like a good deal at $15/hr but this isn't a deal because you will be answering questions like you are for the next eternity. Good consulting companies that employ more experienced engineers are typically charging more on the lines of $50 USD/hour, you still aren't getting the top 20% but you at least aren't getting the bottom 20 either.

To be very clear, there are extremely talented engineers in India, it isn't a capability issue, but it is a numbers and recruitment issue. When I say it is a numbers issue, India educates more engineers than the U.S. by far, and so it is far more likely you are dipping into the 80% side of the pool not the top 20%. Engineers that are talented in India make very good money, in fact very comparable to many European countries anymore. I know friends there right now that are charging ~$50 USD/hr and they are a steal, here in the U.S. they would easily be worth double in a consulting engagement.

So I only mention all that because essentially you likely have very junior engineers that are just not familiar with either the framework in total or just don't have the experience. And this can be hard to tell from their CV and an interview because it may look great (if you even saw one). Also, when I recruit in India it isn't uncommon for people with 3 years of experience thinking they are senior and deserve more money but they are incapable of doing basic tasks unaided, and so you wind up filtering through a lot of these to find the good ones. Again, a bit of a numbers game.

As for what you can do. One of the things I love about the Indian culture is they aren't offended by direct (but respectful) comments, and in fact they prefer it as they feel you respect them more when you are direct (just understand they will do the same generally). Of course it should go without saying, but you should never be disrespectful of course. Being direct in your feedback on what they need to do is also what makes them feel better in their job as well, so their performance gets better. The key thing is don't make this an adversarial situation, that will not benefit you or the team. Instead, ask them to send you questions on Slack or whatever but give them guidelines, and direct them to some resources where they can learn around some of the common coding issues your team is dealing with or you see them having. This will be warmly received, and appreciated. It will also start to cut down on the number of questions because after 2-3 times you should refer them back to the reference material, and document that you have done so.

My contact is in my email, happy to help you (give you ideas/tips) offline if you'd like. And don't feel bad about the communication, I literally have over 20 years off and on of working with India based people and I still sometimes struggle. I just tell them, hey I don't understand, can you slack me what you just said or a lot of times one of the other Indian peeps will clarify for me. No different than I have had that talking to people with a Boston accent, or a deep south drawl and I am like WTF did you just say? I think of it the exact same, no different IMO.</comment>


Amazon's Latest Supplier Purge Is an Indicator of Price Predation - <AUTHOR> https://promarket.org/amazons-latest-supplier-purge-is-a-classic-indicator-of-price-predation/ <comment><USER2> > In a recent article (and subsequent blog post), I argued that Amazon's > negative cash flow might ...

I stopped reading and started researching there. Amazon has positive cash flow, both overall and from operations specifically, which is what would would matter to this argument.

In the linked-to post, the author states

> In fact, if a careful observer overlooks the GAAP loopholes that allow > Amazon to dress up its numbers, during 2017 the firm experienced a negative > cash flow of $1.461 billion

This is very wrong. That calculation stems from the section of their 10-K titled _Free Cash Flow Less Finance Lease Principal Repayments and Assets Acquired Under Capital Leases_. As the section says "Free cash flow less finance lease principal repayments and assets acquired under capital leases is free cash flow reduced by "Principal repayments of finance lease obligations," which is included in cash flow from financing activities, and property and equipment acquired under capital leases. In this measure, property and equipment acquired under capital leases is reflected as if these assets had been purchased with cash, which is not the case as these assets have been leased.", which is to say, it's including both a remix of items that already exist on the cash flow statement, and things that weren't paid in cash but are being treated as if they were.

If Amazon were truly selling below average cost, their operating cash flow would be negative. It's not; it's positive. As is their cash flow from across operating, investing, and financing activities.

<comment><USER3> I think they got the whole article wrong. Amazon is ditching neither FBA nor FBM. They are moving sellers off Vendor Central and Vendor (Two kinds of vendor platforms on which amazon buys wholesale. These products are listed as "Sold and Fulfilled by Amazon" on the amazon site )

Vendor people are being kicked off into FBA and FBM. The article missed this whole important distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The argument in this article doesn't really make any sense. It hinges on the idea that somehow Amazon is shifting fulfillment costs onto suppliers by discouraging them from using Amazon's fulfillment services (FBA) in favor of doing fulfillment in-house (FBM). But what is conspicuously omitted is that Amazon charges for fulfillment. And they cost about the same as other fulfillment providers. They offer some competitive advantages that you would expect given their tremendous scale, but they are basically on-par with other providers. Which totally undermines the thesis of this article, since Amazon isn't losing money on their fulfillment business. Sure, fulfillment isn't a high margin business or anything, but Amazon has shown lots of willingness to get into low-margin business that require operational excellence (like package delivery). And having such an excellent fulfillment offering is a major competitive advantage, because it makes it a lot easier for sellers to get started on Amazon's platform.

Source: my company brought new products to market recently, initially selling exclusively on Amazon.

<comment><USER5> It makes perfect sense, distilled down to "shift variable costs to suppliers while slowly extricating from the costly business of acquiring, storing, and shipping merchandise".

<comment><USER4> Whether a cost is variable or fixed doesn't really matter if it's either A) something you can do cheaper than competitors and, thus, an area of cost savings, or B) part of a profitable service offering (for items you're fulfilling for merchants). For the author's thesis to make sense, Amazon would have to be either worse at warehousing and logistics than other providers or they would have to be losing money on fulfilling for 3rd party sellers. Both of those seem exceedingly unlikely to me.

The other reason none of this makes sense is that Amazon is moving aggressively into same and next day delivery. For that to work, they need scale. Having more products in their fulfillment network helps them achieve scale. It's not really possible for them to offer same day delivery on items that are fulfilled by merchants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a medium sized FBA seller, 1.75M revenue last year, this is a ridiculous article. It conflicts with Amazon's and Bezo's core value of putting the customer first. If it's as suggested, Amazon would become no better than Ebay, and would cost them tons of customers.

FBA does shift a lot of costs onto Amazon but it also lets them completely manage the customer experience. You don't have to deal with some dumb shit seller who could give a crap about customer service. It conflicts with Amazon's plans of broadening their fulfillment network and logistics too. Why build all that capacity if your sellers are now responsible? And while Amazon does charge a single per unit fee, they also have monthly storage charges, long term storage charges, fees for handling refunds, etc, and combined, the fees have steadily increased each year to the tune of 5-10%. Oh, and you also get charged fees for Amazon to do any prep work on your products, etc.

FBA has been an unequivocal boon for Amazon, and I doubt will go away any time soon.

The shift to seller fulfillment is probably driven by sellers, not Amazon. FBA requires you to carefully manage inventory--you're penalized if you don't. It is infeasible for drop-shippers. You have to understand their reports, and reconcile them. You're giving up a large amount of control and introducing some risks, but for some incredible benefits.

<comment><USER7> How do sponsored products now topping organic search results, comingled fulfillment centers mixing real with counterfeit items, and dropping keywords to add inaccurate results to spearfishing queries serve to put the customer first, especially those who paid for prime membership? Shopping on Amazon used to be nearly effortless, now I have to make sure I'm really getting what I searched for, and my return rate in 2018 went from close to 0% to about 10%.

<comment><USER8> It's hard to ship a million SKU's, in 1-2 days, accross the US, affordably, without commingling.

So they compensate using customer service.

And they are actively trying to solve this and reduce the number of SKU's.

"Amazon's choice" tag is one example of that.

<comment><USER7> In my experience so far, "Amazon's Choice" is rarely what I'd choose. So I'd guess by now that its value (probably calculated using some sort of ML model trained on sales data) has been gamed to death by motivated substandard sellers (so it probably needs a refresh like Google refreshes its scoring function for web pages in response to SEO).

I've also noticed that sponsored products (which I don't want ever) are better targeted towards my queries by EBay. The difference seems to be that Amazon deletes keywords until it has something both sponsored and irrelevant to show and hopes for the best. That must have survived A/B testing, yuck.

What I think it comes down to is I'm an oddball that wants organic search results. I understand why Google messes with that to deliver ads, but for the life of me, I'm trying to help Amazon take my money and they're getting in my way and my larger purchases (>$100) are migrating away now because it's becoming impossible to find what I want, occasionally worked around by searching the Amazon catalog, ironically, from Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently discovered some really bad effects from Amazon third party sellers. For a lot of item, 3rd party sellers are listing inventory they don't actually have. I think what is happening is that if they are out of an item the listed, they just order from another store, like Bed Bath and Beyond and ship it directly to the customer. It even arrives as ordered by a random person you have never heard of from BB&B. It might even be a slightly different product brand name but probably the same manufacturer. I believe there is another variant of this where you simply list inventory at a higher price and hope to pick up orders. For example, maybe BB&B lists an item at $30. The seller lists the item at $40 on Amazon and if someone orders, they just direct ship from BB&B and pocket the difference. This gets really bad for gift registries. You list an item when it was in stock at $30 on Amazon. That item goes out of stock but one of these 3rd parties lists it for $40 and someone buying you a gift decides to purchase that instead. Next think you know, a random BB&B order shows up at your door from some random person you don't know. Amazon has your package marked as shipped, but can't produce a shipping number, and everyone is very confused what this BB&B item is. It's such a mess and I can't believe Amazon is tolerating this crap. I just told Amazon the item didn't arrive because they can't produce a shipping number and the item is slightly different. I just cancelled the order and got my money back. I'm not going to do extra work because some person in North Dakota wants to play Amazon games.

<comment><USER10> I strangely had the exact opposite happen recently: ordered an item directly from an OEM (Creative) via their site, but had an Amazon Prime package show up to deliver it. Even weirder, as far as I can tell, the item has never even been listed as available for sale on Amazon.

<comment><USER4> The manufacturer is probably using Amazon to fulfill their non-Amazon orders. I do just that. The difference being, though, that my products are also listed for sale on Amazon. But listing them on Amazon is not a requirement.

<comment><USER10> Didn't realize Amazon was also doing pure dropship type distribution for items not listed on Amazon as well. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IMO, this is only applicable to smaller players. Amazon still wants to play in the private label space and they're not going to delist Tide or Bounty or Crest. They're in true supplier relationships with those brands and will continue to fulfill those orders while negotiating co-op and pricing with the supplier.

The smaller players will get squeezed for a little while but I don't think it will take long for them to leave the platform. If they can't get subsidized fulfillment, they will simply move to a D2C model where they don't have to pay Amazon 15% plus $1200/year and can control pricing.

The most obvious way they will lose out, to me at least, is in advertising. They still have to pay for CPC on Amazon, but it is much more effective at generating sales than AdWords or Facebook on a brand-owned site.

<comment><USER8> So in the past, why did Amazon purchase from the smaller guys, and didn't go straight to the manufacturer ?

<comment><USER12> For prospecting purposes - it's only worth it to engage with manufacturers if you do X million of dollars on their product, so why not have a smaller vendor do all the legwork to grow the listing, prove the product, then cut them out.

Source: mid-sized Amazon 1P/3P vendor, mid-millions rev.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hah, should have read the comments here first :-) I agree that the author is missing both context and understanding in this article.

A lot of speculation around this move by Amazon (removing FBA type businesses) has rattled around, and rattled some suppliers. But my sense of it is that Amazon has realized that a noticeable portion of their FBA business involves counterfeits and frauds. What is worse, the 'A' part of FBA makes Amazon a liable party to the fraud. I'm going to further guess that Amazon has been looking at ways to try to police people who submit counterfeit goods as 'legit' and get Amazon to sell them, and finding that this is a game of whack- a-mole that costs more than the margins they are getting on this business. The "easy" solution is to dump FBA (or at least strictly curtail it with new language/contract work that allows Amazon to recover costs from the bad actors).

It gives me hope that they recognize how crappy their offerings have become, especially in normally 'high margin' products like Apple accessories.

<comment><USER14> And let's not forget the harder-to-quantify but very important negative impact that has had on trust in the Amazon brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "In light of this comparison, it becomes obvious that Amazon's goal should be to constantly increase the ratio of FBMs."

Amazon's edge is that they've managed the logistics of this at a scale that no one else could -- before Amazon shipping was expensive, and often terribly slow.

So if these big vendors are just shipping direct, and Amazon is nothing more than an order submission agent, I would argue that is exactly contrary to what Amazon wants. Those vendors could do the same thing for any front end (Walmart, Target, whatever) equally.

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt This article fundamentally misunderstands what Amazon recently did (describing it as a "supplier purge"), misunderstands what the fulfillment business is, and incorrectly defines Amazon as a monopoly because it is a trendy thing to say more than it is an accurate thing to say.

>If an item sold on Amazon is FBA, that means that the wholesaler's inventory is completely fulfilled by Amazon. The wholesaler sends a large portion of their inventory in bulk to Amazon's fulfillment centers, where it is stored until a customer decides to buy it. Amazon then packs and ships the items to customers. It also incurs all the costs associated with these activities, many of which are variable costs. In exchange, wholesalers pay a per-unit fixed fee. The introduction of same and next-day delivery into the FBA scheme seems to further increase the cost of this service. Amazon's shipping costs, which include sortation and delivery centers and transportation costs, amounted to $27.7 billion as of 2018.

This is generally wrong, and mixes up what vendors enrolled in Vendor Central do. Amazon sends vendors POs and then sells the products. The end. Some vendors also have some additional fees but it is not the same as a "Seller" who is not a wholesaler at all, but a business that owns the products being sold FBA and FBM the entire time. Amazon collects fees on each of those sales and never owns the inventory in question.

>On the other hand, when an item is FBM, fulfillment is done by the wholesalers.

No, they are not wholesalers. This may seem like a dorky nitpick but it isn't. A wholesaler sells the products to Amazon. The 'purge' complaint was from wholesalers, called Vendors or Vendor Central users in Amazon parlance.

>Thus, it appears that Amazon's market share is closely tied to its ability to accomplish its "fulfillment network optimization" goals by bullying wholesalers to move from FBA to FBM.

No, they are just not issuing purchase orders. No purchase order, no wholesale relationship. They explicitly communicated to Vendors who are not receiving anymore POs to tell them to consider selling their products on Amazon as Sellers, which again means not being a wholesaler anymore but becoming a retailer. They can sell FBM or FBA but Amazon collects fees either way. That is entirely up to the seller.

The pressure is just Amazon saying "we won't buy your stuff anymore, but you can still sell on Amazon running your presence yourself or selling it to another Amazon seller."

I could just keep going but it is really obvious that this author only knows about how the Amazon marketplace works from financial reports and has ___zero_ __experience in how the Amazon marketplace actually works.

<comment><USER16> > No, they are just not issuing purchase orders. No purchase order, no > wholesale relationship. They explicitly communicated to Vendors who are not > receiving anymore POs to tell them to consider selling their products on > Amazon as Sellers, which again means not being a wholesaler anymore but > becoming a retailer. They can sell FBM or FBA but Amazon collects fees > either way. That is entirely up to the seller.

I'm not sure I understand. Does this not describe the bullying the OP mentions? Amazon went from issuing POs to no longer doing it, effectively forcing wholesalers to move to FBM. I have no horse in this race, I'm just trying to understand the argument. Thanks for shedding some light!

<comment> j-c-hewitt It's misleading because you do not need to be a wholesaler to use FBA, and in fact the majority of FBA users have never been wholesalers and never will be. This is one of the reasons why this article is so misleading, because it gives off a fundamentally incorrect reading of what happened and what is happening at the company.

It is not "bullying" for a company to just stop buying your brand's products. Vendors almost universally receive less per unit when they sell to Amazon as wholesalers than when they sell as retailers. The article makes it seem like all FBA users are wholesalers when the reality is nearly opposite: most FBA users are retailers, called "Sellers" in Amazon parlance. Some fraction are wholesalers who sell directly to Amazon, but it is not nearly even 20-30% of the marketplace volume.

The whole thing about FBA vs. FBM as it relates to vendors is another misleading red herring int the article which confuses more than it illuminates. There was nothing in the recent mass halt of POs to many vendors about encouraging vendors to go FBM. FBM just means you yourself ship the orders to customers versus you ship the products to Amazon warehouses for Amazon to ship orders to customers as they come in.

Sellers can do either FBM or FBA as it suits them and their business model. In Amazon's communication to vendors impacted by the cancellation it just said "go give being a seller a try." There was zero in that about "you should try merchant fulfillment" and it's not even relevant.

The worst part about this article is that there were non-specialist articles that correctly interpreted the event and correctly described what was going on, like this one from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: [https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/mar/08/amazon- abrup...](https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/mar/08/amazon-abruptly- cuts-off-vendors-201903/)

>Pushing suppliers onto the marketplace -- rather than selling products itself -- lets Amazon offload the risk and cost of purchasing, storing and shipping the merchandise. Instead, the company can charge suppliers for these services and take a commission on each transaction, which is much more profitable. The strategy is part of a larger effort to reduce overhead by getting more suppliers to use an automated self-service system that requires no input from Amazon managers.

^-- That quote right there is 100% accurate. It is a full and correct description of Who/What/Where/When/Why of the event along with some useful context. The article in the OP gets most of those Ws incorrect.

You can certainly point out that this kind of erratic behavior on Amazon's part is not that pleasant for vendors, but you would have a hard time finding a vendor of any scale to Amazon who would not say that they are erratic, unfair, and unprofessional as it relates to business dealings with vendors which is probably one of the reasons why they are paring back the program. There are some vendors who love their rep at Amazon and have had great experiences, but that wouldn't be the majority. This sudden pivot was a rude surprise for many vendors, but dealing with Amazon directly as a wholesaler is generally a series of rude surprises anyway.

<comment><USER16> OK understood, thanks a lot. In short, is it fair to say that the OP overlooked the difference between Wholesalers and Sellers, made it look like Amazon was mainly doing business with Wholesalers, whereas the nuance is actually important and most of Amazon's business is done with Sellers who are just as welcome as they used to be to use FBA. Correct?

<comment> j-c-hewitt Yes, that is really the issue and because it is a common misunderstanding about the marketplace articles like this can be misleading.

There was no change to sellers and certainly Amazon wants more people to sell FBA rather than FBM because you obviously have to pay more to Amazon for each unit you sell if you use their warehouses plus storage fees besides than if you use your own warehouses and handle the shipping yourself. Amazon still wants these brands to sell their products on Amazon, but they don't want to be responsible for buying the goods from them if that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading other comments it seems OP may have a bad analysis.

Even if the analysis is correct, the consumer benefits by this arrangement. Why should we worry?</comment>


If You Run a Small Business, Park in the Back of the Parking Lot - <AUTHOR> https://skyclerk.com/blog/if-you-run-a-small-business-park-in-the-back-of-the-parking-lot <comment><USER2> Lots of comments seem to miss the point of this article. The point being made is to put the concerns of the customer first before yours. I see the opposite happen all the time in software development. You have two systems that somehow don't talk to each other. Instead of implementing some kind of connector between them, you make the customer log in twice and transfer information between the two systems. In this case, the maker has prioritized their convenience over that of the user. This is the wrong approach. Before someone gets pedantic, obviously, if you have analyzed the costs and decided it makes sense, then go ahead and do you but don't just make default decisions to benefit yourself at the cost to your customer

<comment><USER3> Exactly this. Further, I'd expand on what they are saying to say that the difference between a bad customer experience, good customer experience, and great customer experience typically lies in the little details and goes beyond the core offering. Great customer service orgs take the time to check up on you and make sure you are happy (and have it not be an automated effort), they bend the rules to fit an edge case, they always own mistakes and try to make it right, and they are fundamentally customer focused. Bad orgs treat customers like numbers and hide behind policy and contracts at every opportunity so that they don't actually have to deal with people.

For example, I took my girlfriend to a nice hotel for our anniversary last year. When the hotel heard I was having an anniversary, they sent up a very nice hand written congratulatory card, a bottle of prosecco, and a selection of deserts on the house. That couldn't have taken them more than 15 minutes and cost them like 20 dollars, but it is something I will always remember; I will definitely return there in the future; and I recommend that hotel to any friends seeking a nice place to stay. That is great customer service.

At a more basic level, I was at a mid tier hotel a few weeks ago and somehow I didn't get the room upgrade I paid for. The management immediately refunded me the difference without complaint and gave me a few drink tickets to use at their bar as an apology. That is good customer service.

Contrast those to my experience at my former favorite steak house this year where for the last ten years I had been telling everyone to go. I went there for Valentine's day (had a reservation) and was told I had to wait 30 minutes for a table to open. While I was waiting, I saw multiple couples of the same size come in behind me and get seated. After the 30 minute wait, they tried to seat us at the loud and noisy bar. When I complained, they basically told me tough shit you get what you get. A reservation just guarantees you a table not a good one. I concluded that they were discriminating against us because we are younger than the average clientele there. Not only did I walk out and cost them my business, but I gave them a scathing Yelp review, and now shit talk them at every opportunity. I will never go back even though they were great every other time I was there, and instead always point friends to one of their main competitors when asked my opinion about local steak houses. I do this even though I know the competitor's food isn't as good. They could have given me the table I deserved; they could have comped some drinks or something; but no, they were right and I was wrong and so they lost a loyal customer instead.

<comment><USER4> Your story highlights why customer service is not as easy as we think because of the requirement for sustained performance being quite high.

By your own admission, you went to this steak house for 10 years and had liked it so much you encouraged others. I'd imagine you would've visited multiple times per year? So, let's say 20~30 visits total? All that time you were happy and raved about it, but one bad visit and not only did it sour your opinion to the point you won't return, but you also mentioned that you will disparage them whenever you can. At around 30 visits, 97% of your experience there was positive to the point of rave reviews.

I'm not having a go at you, I'm just using your story to highlight the difficulty in customer service and how fickle we all are as customers (myself included). I suppose that really just speaks more to our recency bias as humans as well.

<comment><USER5> It also speaks to the need to know your customer. The restaurant should have had discreet cameras with facial recognition software to alert management immediately that a high value customer was walking in the door, and to make sure he got treated right.

<comment><USER6> I hope this is sarcasm

<comment><USER5> Isn't it more fun to wonder?

<comment><USER7> On HN there's always brilliant commentary and there's always posters defending the undefendable. I'll be wondering forever.

<comment><USER8> This certainly isn't unique to HN.

<comment><USER7> My favorite forum is Slashdot so I get that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A month ago my wife and I passed a business while on vacation to a location we frequent. She remarked "oh it looks like they closed down, that's too bad" Upon closer inspection there were in fact open, the two employees present had parked in the back, leaving a completely empty front parking lot.

The parking location is not all to blame, but at the time I remarked "the employees should really park out front to help it appears as though there are customers".

Obviously if your lot is frequently full this isn't an issue. This was in a rural location where most likely that never happens as it was a large lot, and not a business that would see surges of customers.

<comment><USER10> It might even be an effective strategy to add a few extra cars to your parking lot, so it always has at least a moderate number.

When I worked at a mall food court, I noticed something interesting: during slower periods, sometimes one restaurant would have a line while other restaurants would have no customers at all. And not always the same restaurant. I attributed it to customers seeing that one place had customers, then inferring that it must be open and it must be one of the better places to eat.

Popularity isn't a very reliable indicator of quality, but it's not totally invalid either. If a place is always deserted, it's probably not very good. If it's always busy, it's likely that people are willing to wait for a reason.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of a time I was searching for parking in downtown Washington, DC. Block after block was full. I eventually came to a street that had _no_ cars parked at all. Jackpot, right? Must be some obscure rule prohibiting parking there. I kept looking. Still no luck, so I finally went back to the empty street. I carefully studied the signs and concluded that it was legal to park there. I got out of my car and paid. By the time I was done paying, the entire block was full of parked cars!

<comment><USER12> This is like the old adage. "If you truly believe in market efficiency, you would never bother to bend over to pick up a $100 bill because if it were real, someone else would have picked it up already!"

<comment><USER13> Except the market is very inefficient, blind, and poorly guided. It's just always better than a central government.

<comment><USER14> Except sometimes you're wrong and the market is right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The last example is the best - that making your service hard to cancel means your customer's enduring memory is of pain. And it validates the customer's decision to leave, because there must be other better options if you are so desperate to stop them going.

When a customer phones up to cancel, we do it immediately and make sure they know there are no hard feelings on our side. We ask if there was anything we could have done better, and tell them we'll still be here if they ever need us again. We get a significant number of customers return.

<comment><USER16> Not exactly the same, but it's one of the prime reasons that I don't have a Costco membership: I hate when I go with members and after they pay you are treated like a criminal as they scan your receipt and check all the items in the cart. I also avoid Fry's Electronics for the same reason.

<comment><USER17> I take the more charitable perspective that the receipt checkers are validating the cashiers' work, and that it is part of the "membership" bargain.

<comment><USER18> I worked at costco during college. The receipt checking stops a significant amount of shrinkage. At these warehouse stores it's surprisingly easy to walk out the door with large items you wouldn't be able to take at places like Best Buy. We caught people stealing washing machines, tvs, 4-packs of tires, etc. It helps keep costs down to have a quick verification check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this can be a two way street. I don't own a retail business, but I feel like, as a general rule, clients who complain about things like parking tend to not be the best clients.

I think it's totally valid in the sandwich shop example, where people will literally choose something else based on what they have to walk past to get to your door.

But for a professional service where you have an ongoing relationship worth potentially thousands of dollars per year, if someone is put off by a lack of front row parking, what other utterly trivial things are they going to find fault with? Those tend to be the clients that ask for the world and get it at a bargain and then still complain about the bill.

It's not that I'm not happy to go the extra mile for good clients, but there are definitely good clients and not good clients and creating a rule that you should always delight everyone all the time means you're going to waste a lot of time trying to delight people who complain about having to walk across the parking lot...

<comment><USER20> But keep in mind that not everyone who cares about parking complains. I can think of several Chicago places I really like, but tend to actively avoid because it's hard to get parking. There doesn't have to be a complaint or even an active finding of fault for silly-seeming stuff like this to drag your business.

<comment><USER21> > that not everyone who cares about parking complains.

To that point people who complain are often the canary in the coal mine for larger issues. I am a big complainer. Typically in the end I get thanked for bringing things to a businesses attention. And I am a good customer. My largest 'reward' to date was a $5000 amount from a large german car manufacturer. They said 'we have never done this before'. What I said started out as a complaint. At first they were not really responsive. I finally brought home (successfully) that I was doing them a favor and that their dealer (a luxury car dealer) did not handle things the way they should have with a recent transaction.

I complain all the time at Whole Foods (where I spend a ton of money). Things just jump out at me. That said not everyone is me. Will say that I have owned a small business in the past. For every person that voiced a complaint there could be a hundred who don't open their mouth honestly. That's what I have found.

People think they shouldn't complain in a restaurant as another example. No the restaurant would rather have the complaint than you not returning or telling others. It's their chance to make things right and buy loyalty. Same story 'thank you for bringing this to our attention here is a $100 gift certificate'.

<comment> D-Coder Similar to my personal relationships! I'd rather hear about a possible problem, so it can be addressed, than not hear about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a bit amusing that if you look at the picture of the parking lot showing where the author's dad worked and where he parked, his parking spot is not way off away from everything else, it's actually in what would be prime parking location for some other businesses' customers. I feel like there's a lesson about externalities there.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a small business owner, I saved hundreds per month by not driving to work at all. I biked or walked. To enable this, I intentionally purchased a home within walking or biking distance from the office and located the business is a town with a low enough cost of business to allow that.

<comment><USER24> Man I dream about being able to bike to work.

Maybe one day...

<comment><USER25> What is preventing you now?

<comment><USER26> Commute distance, legality (biking from city to city on the interstate is a big no-no), inability to shower after a ride, weather (I'm looking at YOU, Scotland!), medical conditions, take your pick.

<comment><USER27> "interstate ... Scotland"

Where are you based?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Old quote, can't rememeber where I first heard it:

"At universities, the employees get better parking than the customers".

Although it wasn't true at my alma mater, where the only difference was that for staff and faculty the university would deduct the parking fees from your paycheck. For your convenience.

<comment><USER27> Are students customers or product?

<comment><USER29> The students pay so they are the customers. The product is the degree.

<comment><USER27> I feel you could make an equal case for the government/lenders being the customer.

I think you're probably right about students not being the product, they're more of a raw material?

I'm being slightly cheeky, but I don't think the relationship is best viewed as the student being the customer, certainly not if the degree is the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The credit card/tab point is a really good one, IMO. There's something really offensive, as a customer, about walking into a business and being immediately subject to the assumption that I'm there to rip them off. Why would I want to patronize your business if you want to treat me like a criminal?

A particularly infuriating example of this is bookstores that demand you turn in your bag at the desk. I just walk out.

<comment><USER31> It's extra rude if you consider the history. Bookstores of old had a counter where you entered, you placed your order and if the book was in stock someone would go and get it (or in case you ordered ahead they'd get your pre-packaged order for you). Then we figured that self-service is the way to go: rely on the customer to do their own orderpicking, en-passent exposing them to a lot of marketing and hopefully selling some more books.

So now, on top of being required to do the work of the bookstore employees you _also_ lose the benefit of the doubt and are being treated as though you are a common thief.

Industry secret: lots of theft from bookstores is by employees.

<comment><USER32> That's also lots of theft from convenience stores. 20 years ago I had a friend who, as _manager_ , knew that the cameras didn't catch what happened when the lights were turned off at the end of the day. And he had the key... I made sure never to go to that store, either before or after closing time.

<comment><USER27> "I made sure never to go to that store, either before or after closing time"

I don't understand.

Why would your friend potentially (?) stealing put you off visiting?

<comment><USER32> Since he lived closer to the mountains than I did, I was over at his house a lot. Stolen items were all over the house, and it seemed possible that he would be caught eventually. We had both recently moved to the area from several states away (not intentionally, we were both surprised) and it would have been easy for a cop to imagine that we were in cahoots. If I get arrested I want it to be for a good reason...

<comment><USER33> Your should have turned him in - for your protection. My uncle had a roommate pulling something like that. (the roommate was actually a cop who would find open doors and then rob the place while checking out why the alarm was going off). My uncle figures that given how quick his roommate was arrested after he turned his roommate in that they already know his roommate was doing something and were just looking for evidence because there is no way he wasn't involved in the crimes.

<comment><USER32> I don't think the two situations are that similar. I'd turn in a dirty cop in pretty much any context, but probably not a friend since junior high _for theft_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In reference to making it hard to quit a service... "In reality, it is a great way to ensure a customer never comes back and likely does not recommend the company to others. This approach is trading short term greed for long term growth. A leader obsessed with customer experience would make sure canceling their service is painless as it will likely lead to revenue in other ways -- counterintuitive right?"

I want to believe. But seeing how painful it is to leave Facebook + iCloud, I find this hard to believe. It feels idealistic, but I wonder if the data says otherwise. People are lazy. It's unethical. But people are lazy.

<comment><USER35> I will say that my experience with gyms and their cancellation processes is awful. "We recommend sending a certified letter to cancel your membership," for example. It only makes me not want to go back to the same one when my circumstances change. And I'm unlikely to give referrals because you basically kick me in the nuts on the way out, just to try to scam an extra month or two of unused gym time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Morning dropoff is stressful, to say the least, _we are always late_ , my kids never cooperate,..."

I know this is just a throwaway comment in the article but my god does it bug me when parents use their children as an excuse for being late. Yes, kids are sometimes tough to get out the door but it's _your_ fault that this somehow catches you by surprise every morning.

<comment><USER37> +1. And don't use the car to deliver your kids. Use the bike. It is possible: There are children seats and trailers. And there are ebikes. There is little excuse for driving cars. Despite you live in countryside US, where you apparently need a truck to get anywhere.

<comment><USER38> > There is little excuse for driving cars.

In the case you mention, airbags are a pretty good reason. Also distance. And disabilities.

<comment><USER39> And convenience. And warmth. And AC. And comfort. Unless your goal is to exercise, a car is almost always better in every dimension.

<comment><USER40> For your own comfort and convenience perhaps. For the environment and your health a car is almost always worse in every dimension

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The overall point is excellent and typically misunderstood by companies large and small (think about what your customer wants, not what you want), but there's another reason to park in front when you're starting out: to make the business not look empty!

That is, early adopters may like to try out a new business, but a business with no customers, no cars etc can lead people to think it's unsuccessful/undesirable.

This is why early stage customers like to put the logos of customers on their home page.

<comment><USER42> Potential self-driving car feature: move itself to the back of the lot when the front gets too full; return to the front if it gets too empty.

<comment><USER43> Just closed my eyes and imagined this hell of hundreds of cars trying to relocate themselves closer to the front at irregular intervals. Few billion microseconds later some of them become self-aware and experience an existential crisis. Front Lot Stock Exchange emerges in attempt to optimize driving efficiency. 4 FLSE collapses and 23 self-poweroffs registered up to datetime.

<comment><USER27> Don't worry, nature has this sorted, penguins huddle and rotate, taking turns in the middle, and at the edge.

Of course my startup will require a few billion to iron out the rough edges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm surprised this doesn't go without saying. As a divemaster intern I never dared even park in the lot during school days. I found a spot on the street. In college I was a paintball ref. There were separate lots for employees that was farther away from customer lots.

</comment><comment><USER45> There's always an exception. While running a brick and mortar business for 3 years, I found that when parked around the corners (out of a courtesy to my customers) I looked either out of business, closed, or dead.

Our business ran on weekends. Everyone else in our complex was closed on the weekends.

We started parking our cars up front because people were FAR more likely to come inside if it looked like other people were there.

Otherwise, we noticed that they would sometimes drive by slowly, try to peer in our windows, then drive off.

So, parking up-front for us was just marketing.

But I get it. Give the best spots to your customers if possible. The customer experience must be optimal. They aren't always right, but it can still feel good.

<comment><USER46> Did you have any flags or flyers making it clear you were open? I've walked past more than one cafe with enough tinting on the window that I'd have no idea they are open, but they put an A-frame, flag, or something else outside to make it clear they are.

It's pretty cheap compared to the alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > Customer Experience is All About the Little Things

Big things are expected and are exactly what you pay for. Neglect them and you'll lose all your business, because you're offering nothing.

But when costumers are comparing two companies (or small business, whatever), it's the small details that will make difference.

<comment><USER48> Well-said.

This makes me circle back again to the concept of "Minimum Viable Product." It's been said that as a startup, if you're not embarrassed when you ship v1, you waited too late. But what's often not looked at is "just how embarrassed is embarrassed enough?"

Going against the concept of launching an MVP is the idea of "you only get one chance to make a first impression." Which is why a number of founders started talking less about launching Minimum Viable Products, and more about launching _Exceptional_ Viable Products.

Those few extra details can be crucial levers to determining your product's success with customers. Of course, the key is determining which of those key details are the ones you need to pay attention to, and which ones you can pass over for now.

Here's Rand Fishkin on MVP vs. EVP: [https://qz.com/work/1277369/the-lean- startup-methodology-wil...](https://qz.com/work/1277369/the-lean-startup- methodology-will-kill-your-reputation-if-youre-not-careful/)

<comment><USER46> > "you only get one chance to make a first impression."

Yeah this always weighs upon my mind, to the point where sometimes I don't move ("perfect is the enemy of good", you can find a quote from all sides of a situation).

I think the ideal use case for a MVP is exposing it to a limited subset of users. These can be internal staff first, friends and family, or the noisy but helpful people who file a load of issues with you for another version/product. I think releasing a MVP to the whole world can be a big mistake, there are so many games out there I can't play them all. Some are fully realised in early access but others get a quick look then I never go back, even years later.

<comment><USER48> > I think the ideal use case for a MVP is exposing it to a limited subset of > users.

This. So much this.

MVP has a key role in product development - but its place is not necessarily at the phase of "launch it to the public with a marketing campaign." It comes before that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This reminds me of Jiro Ono and Jiro Dreams of Sushi [1]. He would notice, for instance, that his customers are left handed and adjust the way they then would get served.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Dreams_of_Sushi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Dreams_of_Sushi)

</comment><comment><USER50> Here in the United States, there are two major, competing home building supply stores: Home Depot and Lowes. At Home Depot, all the doors will open up when I walk up, whether they mean for them to be entrances or exits. At Lowes, only the one labelled "Entrance". I think that sums up the two companies' priorities.

</comment><comment><USER51> >In reality, it is a great way to ensure a customer never comes back and likely does not recommend the company to others.

I've make significant lifestyle changes just because companies pissed me off enough to create a personal grudge. For example, I was an Xbox fanboy starting around 2005. Several years later I got a girlfriend and bought her an Xbox Live Gold subscription so she could play with me. It turned out not to be her thing, so I tried to cancel the service, except Microsoft made it an absolute nightmare. Reps bounced me from person to person, and several times I received a monthly bill despite the rep assuring me the account had been canceled. It filled me with such rage I canceled my own Live subscription, sold my Xbox 360, and swore off console gaming entirely. I'll be in the cold, cold ground before I give Microsoft another damn cent.

</comment><comment><USER52> I have recently become a customer of Bulb for my energy. They won me because when I tried to sign up and this failed, they followed up with an email explaining that my existing supplier had a weird set up for my smart meter which made it impossible to take over automatically and how to get them to fix it, which appeared to have been written by a real human.

In most companies, that'd just be an error in a log file somewhere. They then followed up later to ask if things had been handled well. They also have one single, good value tariff with no option not to have green energy.

Principled, with A++ customer service and a competent mobile app, complete with a time line for switching and starting my account with them. I'm totally sold. They could be quite a lot more expensive than my existing supplier and I frankly wouldn't care given the whole experience so far.

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, you should leave the good parking slots for your consumers. Better yet: park in front of your competitor! :-)

</comment><comment><USER54> If you advocate for the club-line effect to draw in customers so it seems popular. You're probably the kind of person who falls for that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's a great metaphor but reality seems to be that there are a lot of good practices followed by so many people that it is impossible to keep track of. A _via negativa_ approach to this might be easier. Does someone know of a compendium of bad business practices ? Life would be a lot better if we can first avoid the bad practices , no? :-)

</comment><comment><USER56> The overarching concept is to be conscious of when you inconvenience other people (like customers), and avoid it at much cost (but not any, of course).

This seems to be the cornerstone of Western etiquette. It can be different in Asia, where it may be more important to "save face" and let others also save face.

</comment><comment><USER57> Are there bars that don't hold a credit card when you're running a tab? I don't know of any..

<comment><USER58> There was a local bar in my home town that didn't, but I think just for the regulars. I remember coming in once and one of the owners said, "You have $11.50 tab from <two months ago>" ... and you didn't tell me the like ... 30 times I've been in here since then and paid my tab in full?

Occasionally there was a list on the chalk board, first and last name, of everyone who owed a tab. This was at late as 2008. This was also in a city of like 150; so not even a small town.

<comment><USER59> _I remember coming in once and one of the owners said, "You have $11.50 tab from <two months ago>"_

Heh, my bar is like this. Been going there long enough that I get to run a tab for a few weeks before the owner finally (jokingly) gives me a hard time about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > It would be one thing if the bar was making the customer's life easier so > when they were done they could simply walk out effortlessly paying the bill > but that is not the typical case.

It is the case in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER61> Steve Jobs frequently parked his Mercedes in the handicap spot next to the building

<comment><USER62> Yes he was an asshole but he also wasn't exactly a "small business owner."

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> When starting to read the article, I thought it would be either about meeting potential customers in the parkinh lot or spending that time to walk with your kid..

</comment><comment><USER64> Sure, this would be nice - and yet, he's still sending his kid to the school. And the school is still running. It seems to make no difference in this case.

So, what are the reasons to actually focus on customer experience? When does it pay off? (Not as often as you'd like. Amazon is a prime - pardon the pun - example that once you have enough of the market, you can let customer experience go downhill, because people value convenience over experience)

</comment><comment><USER65> Same philosophy shared by Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos, etc. Customer first.

It's easy to say, not so easy to execute.

</comment><comment><USER66> Park in the back... Unless you're a restaurant, then park in the front. Always.

</comment><comment><USER67> Or take public transport. Just sayin'.

</comment><comment><USER68> welcome to common sense....</comment>


Now this is a job posting - <AUTHOR> http://whitepayments.com/employee-1

<comment><USER2> Very nice. Sounds like a bunch of guys I'd like to work with, if I had any clue about security.

Only thing I missed was an "about" page, introducing the founders, pictures are a plus. Also, who is investing and how much runway do they have are questions any sane employee would have to ask anyway.</comment>


Denali: Open-Source Themeable Design System - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/denali-design/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, their demo website doesn't seem to work in Safari in iOS

<comment><USER3> Agreed, the website loaded but the hamburger doesn't do anything.

<comment><USER4> Hi Amgreg,

Thank you for pointing this out. With further investigation, the hamburger wasn't even supposed to show up on the landing page. We are currently resolving the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure why, but the word "enterprise" seems to trigger a knee-jerk tab- closing reaction for me.</comment>


Hell Is Other Internet People - <AUTHOR> https://thebaffler.com/latest/hell-is-other-internet-people-thaddeus-johns <comment><USER2> > By using informal writing to convey the regular dramas of human life, they > also started reshaping informal writing into something that could deeply > convey the full range of human emotions," writes McCulloch. When we need a > method of expression, language—or perhaps Lockwood's abyssal portal—figures > it out.

Exactly. Text doesn't _quite_ have enough bandwidth for the emotional subcarrier, unless you're a superlative writer. So people need to hang some neon signposts on it.

Not to mention the role of in-jokes as group bonding. In my circle of friends one of the choice GIFs for frustration, especially with anything musical, is [https://tenor.com/view/eric-morecambe-frustrated- gif-4687881](https://tenor.com/view/eric-morecambe-frustrated-gif-4687881) ; not just referencing Eric Morcambe's expressive comic acting, but the entire "Grieg's piano concherto by Grieg with him and him" sketch. We've gradually accumulated more of these from TV shows watched together and kibitzed over the Internet, so the reference is not just to the show but the time we watched it and reacted to it together.

Shaka, when the walls fell indeed.

(Referencing Patricia Lockwood is a positive to this essay, you might enjoy reading her work too, in the role of interlocutor between the literary world and the Extremely Online world.)

<comment><USER3> > so the reference is not just to the show but the time we watched it and > reacted to it together.

But you're talking about actual friends and actually shared experiences, and I think internet memes are something else.

Often enough there is no "together" there at all: when someone reproduces an internet meme, they may mean something they can't or are too lazy to put into words, but it _may_ get interpreted completely differently, or not at all (yet may still get "agreed to" for the sole reason of others also knowing the reference, or at least having it seen used a lot... as in " _I don 't understand this or know the origins, but I know it's 'official' and roughly know how to use it_"). The point is, nobody cares enough to even follow up to check if the message was received, and generally many people just suddenly start saying things because everybody says them now, like a rash.

Sometimes, the message isn't even fully formed in the mind of the sender though, and " _oh, you know what I mean_ " actually means " _don 't make me reflect on what I'm trying to say here, and if it makes any sense_". That's not particular to interwebs memes, but there it's considered almost uncouth to call nonsense out, being a spoil-sport, or proving lack of humor by not finding funny what has been decreed objectively funny by the invisible hand of the hive mind.

> _The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has > taken place._

\-- George Bernard Shaw

Picture me in front of a diagram: "People are _so_ lonely, they mindlessly repeat things _this_ stupid just to belong." Harsh and obviously not 100% true, but _sometimes_ it's really just that. Even just YouTube is a giant abomination of a testimony to people talking and listening on auto-pilot, if you just care to cast a cold enough glance.

I don't think language is solely a social phenomenon: the ability to reflect on it, and to use it precisely when thinking, when using it "between oneself and oneself", is just as important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it was Ken White who I saw observe that the plot of the TNG episode "Darmok" seemed somewhat ridiculous until he observed modern twitter. When 50% of the replies to a tweet are those reaction gifs...it suddenly doesn't seem so crazy that a whole language would be built around cultural metaphors.

<comment><USER5> I've also gained a much deeper appreciation of hieroglyphs thanks to this.

I used to wonder how much meaning could really be encoded in them. It's a huge body of shared cultural knowledge that makes them work.

<comment><USER6> Also makes it so there are harder cultural edges to distinguish groups and people can't move between them as easily either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a basic weapon that many people seem to forget: ignore what doesn't matter. That useless trendy language/tool/methodology that sometimes fills half of HN front page? Don't even click the link, of course don't go to the comments page, much less write a comment because _someone 's wrong in the Internet_.

A community with strong ideas about how you should write? Don't even go there.

Respect people, other than that, write with your own voice and _ignore everybody_.

<comment><USER8> The point is these things reach a saturation and acceptable point such that you can't ignore it.

Because ubiquity.

<comment><USER2> Well, you can ignore it, and people can ignore you. Non participation works both ways.

<comment><USER8> What I'm saying is at a certain saturation it's impossible to ignore.

It's nice in theory but if something becomes ingrained in language you'll either use it or communication will suffer.

<comment><USER9> The fact that it's impossible to ignore it without consequences doesn't mean that it's impossible to ignore. Yes, communication with some people is likely to suffer. So be it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > As I was reading this chapter of Because Internet, Joe Biden announced his > candidacy on Twitter. The tweet read: "The core values of this nation . . . > our standing in the world . . . our very democracy . . . everything that has > made America—America—is at stake. That's why today I'm announcing my > candidacy for President of the United States. #Joe2020." Those pauses! So > pregnant, so stressful, so Semi Internet, I thought. More likely, it > signaled the perilous record-skips in Biden's own thought. As if we didn't > already know, this message was targeted at a certain demographic of Pre or > Semi Internet people.

I disagree that this is part of the evolution of internet speak. This is not lol vs LOL. I have done a fair bit of low level editing. The ellipse for pause is a generational thing that older (gray hair) types use who are otherwise bad at grammar. Commas work here, but I think it would be more internet-like to use whitespace like a newline or a gif to create tension and cadence.

<comment><USER11> I don't know when ellipses started signalling an old person, I used to use ellipses in my teenage years all the time (25-38 demo here).

<comment><USER12> I'm in the same demo, and I wasn't aware of ellipses being seen as an habit of old people.

Biden's (or likely, his team's) usage is atypical; ellipses are usually only used when you're citing somebody, to indicate unintelligible segments or sentences that are not crucial to the thought being relayed, and when you're voicing some degree of surprise, doubt or reticence about the forthcoming sentence (e.g. "She thought I was ready... maybe I wasn't.")

(If they ever come for my semicolon, I'll take up arms.)

<comment><USER13> The example is correct usage... not perceived as old at all... but when grandpa replaces all punctuation... peppered in between disjointed fragments of thought... LOL! Very difficult to read!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm.

I remember the thing we used to do before this always-on-internet-in-your- pocket epoch.

Vocal communication.

Both more spontaneous and edited by fewer humans (zero in fact), it was also unrecorded and subject to interpretation by both parties.

Perhaps hell is the surveillance system we live in where a small misstep can be broadcast endlessly, or even changed or quoted out of context.

What we need here is to take a step back.

We are all human.

We are all fallible.

We are all changing and learning.

Allow those around you to make mistakes, and for the sake of all of us, allow people to move on.

I edited this message about a dozen times and it's still not right. I don't care.

<comment><USER15> You're spot on. To me this seems like an inevitable future caste system. Did you grow up anywhere less than pleasant (ie lower income)? You're probably going to have more "bad" things to say online when you're younger (or maybe even overall.) Because when you don't grow up with two high earning parents in a nice community odds are you're gong to be exposed to that stuff more and likely even have to adapt some of it to fit in. So then we'll see what we see now - elites raining down on the rest of society saying certain language is unacceptable - and strong arming a moral perspective to make opponents the bad guys.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not talking outright racism or threatening speech, im talking general fowl language, bitter truths that the privileged would rather not consider, etc. If you doubt this consider how much backlash trump gets for saying something like - Baltimore is a shit hole - and how the left spins it to say that makes him racist. Imagine that fire power directed at some humble small time politician in the future who could maybe actually solve local poverty issues because they know the reality of it, only to be pulled off the stage for using "bad language".

Maybe we'll collectively get over it on the individual basis but when major economies are hedging the behavior, I just see this as yet another tool for the haves to control the have nots and limit their ability to usurp power.

<comment><USER16> >Because when you don't grow up with two high earning parents in a nice community odds are you're gong to be exposed to that stuff more and likely even have to adapt some of it to fit in.

Even if you did, racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, anarcho- capitalism, etc. are very natural or intuitive things to fall into and then advocate.

That's why stupid people often advocate them; they're obvious, knee-jerk, simple explanations of reality. Why is every white country wealthy and every black country poor? Oh, simple: the races are inherently unequal. It takes some wisdom or observed context and thought to climb your way out of them. Oh, environment is actually a major determinant of IQ (insofar as that's an impartial standard). Oh, tropical environments are hell to live in (yet they look so pretty). Oh, there's a rich history of colonial exploitation that I never knew about.

Education helps, but, initially, you come into reality as a machine that tries to solve complicated problems impatiently and heuristically, not as a nuanced encyclopedia of knowledge. Therefore, you will inevitably enter (and perhaps never leave) a phase of boneheaded and harmful beliefs.

Embrace and encourage anonymity/pesudonymity. It's nice to have adults accountable for what they say, but it's misguided to hold kids to the same standard.

<comment><USER17> I like how complex relationships between many people with a rich history and daily awareness of their surroundings are nailed down to simple stupidity in your comment. A guy just tries to tell that a harsh language doesn't define a person.

"nice to have adults accountable for what they say"

As an eastern bloc citizen, I don't even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Define "internet people":

1\. sock puppet 1 sends meme X to sock puppet 2

2\. bot 1...10000 send meme X to various other bots, sock puppets, and possibly human recipients

3\. human 1 reads meme X from bot 1337

4\. human 2 reads repost of meme X from human 1

Do the researchers have a methodology to keep these separate in their analyses?

Here's a simple example-- what would keep the researchers from counting "Samy is our hero" as an example of lightning speed message syncronization of social media users? If the answer is that a third party told them it wasn't that, their methodology seems quite brittle and subject to error.

Especially considering that today's manipulation is vastly more sophisticated, insidious, and weaponized.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll only chime in to say that the idea of when someone "joined social media" being an indicator for their language is a bit over simplistic, and won't hold up as a model over the test of time. Social circles and the development of culture is not a fixed thing. Nature vs nurture, and the rest.

</comment><comment><USER20> I figure, if I avoid leaning new linguistic trends, after enough years pass, my writing will suddenly seem sophisticated. What's the payoff for mimicking internet slang and turns of phrase? A decade from now, you either sound like a has-been, or a person who can't let go of their youth.

<comment><USER21> Being able to code switch is important for many people. For example, the way I speak to my parents, my friends, the queer community, coworkers, and online are very different.

Language is a ingroup signifier. If you know the lingo, you will be more respected in that community.

You do have to keep up a bit, but maintaining in group status can make a lot of social interactions easier.

<comment><USER22> I, for one, would greatly respect a person who always speaks in the same way to everyone.

<comment><USER23> You would need to see that person communicate in at least two of their communities to begin to respect that person.

<comment><USER22> Hearing him talking to his boss and to a waiter would be no less informative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The book in question was also discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496643)

I hope everybody knows that the title is a Sartre reference. [http://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2010/07/most-famous- thing-...](http://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2010/07/most-famous-thing-jean- paul-sartre.html)

<comment><USER25> The author was also interviewed on the latest episode of Slate's "Lexicon Valley:"

[https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/07/john-mcwhorter- and-...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/07/john-mcwhorter-and-gretchen- mcculloch-on-because-internet.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > She imagines, for example, her future grandchild asking her why people > called each other "binch." "How could you explain it?" she asks > rhetorically.

It's not that hard to explain "binch." Urban Dictionary managed to do it sufficiently in one sentence:

> What you call someone when you don't want to say the B-word.

</comment><comment><USER27> Where are the examples? I skimmed the entire article and only found the veins example. What language in particular is the author even referring to? My own set of examples are the hand clapping emoji in between every word, "Im here for it" when you like something, the ubiquitous hold my beer meme in so many YT comments, "stanning", and of course how could you forget using "toxic" or "cancer" for anything you vehemently disagree with.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you rush over to Amazon to download the book on Kindle, you may find that it is broken on all Apple Kindle apps. (See the reviews there.) I found that I was able to get past the fatal error by going to the Table of Contents and clicking on the first page of text.

Surely, Amazon is going to fix this soon. I'm surprised that they seem to do no testing at all of their product on even the most common devices.

<comment><USER29> If the eBook is broken on Kindle, then it'll be up to the publisher (Riverhead Books) to fix it, not Amazon.

Though as the bookseller Amazon should (in theory) offer refunds to people who bought the defective eBook?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've heard life on the internet called an acid trip..

[https://www.google.com/search?q=brown+acid](https://www.google.com/search?q=brown+acid)

..and if you run into a Himalayan guy with a funny focus on first letters, and vaguely a discreetly stored "Pinkadellic" something or another, who eyes a specific divot, hand-to-hand, say whatsup.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=ymmv](https://www.google.com/search?q=ymmv)

,NAMASTE;

</comment><comment><USER31> My github name is "Hellisotherpeople" which ideally would be lengthened as "Hell is other peoples code". Yet, I like the alternative variation in the title of the article

</comment><comment><USER17> How come that our circa 35 group of guys text without these emoji, ellipsis, stop/nostop things, and yet we still understand each other perfectly?

<comment><USER32> TFA suggests "how [you] talk online is determined by [your] linguistic community, which in turn is largely determined by where [you] were when [you] first encountered social media".

So, I'd guess you and your group were online relatively early, and the places where you did that probably had a relatively straightforward, text-only communications culture.

It's likely that people in that group code-switch and use newer tools and embellishments in other places where they communicate.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Quick video cutting software - <AUTHOR> Looking for quick and easy way to cut up and splice up videos, be it highlights from videogames or just vacation. I own Adobe Premiere, and used to use Ulead way back when, but the one kind of geek I'm not is AV geek - Premiere is much too fancy for my use case.
Open source is great, absolutely willing and indeed eager to pay for something easy to use, simple, non-invasive of either privacy or system.
Windows preferably, Linux possible, OSX is right out:)
Thanks all! <comment><USER2> I use Shotcut ([https://shotcut.org](https://shotcut.org)) and it's been a good experience for very simple cutting/editing.

If you strictly only need to trim/cut, Lossless-Cut ([https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut](https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut)) may also be an option (and faster).

<comment><USER3> Shotcut: Free, open source, cross-platform video editor [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16280788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16280788) (2018)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have very little experience with video editors but found this to work quite well and relatively easy to pick up:

[https://www.openshot.org/](https://www.openshot.org/)

Open source too:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenShot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenShot)

<comment><USER2> I'll have to check this one out, hadn't heard of it. I'm surprised at how good these free editors are getting. They have come a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://hitfilm.com/express](https://hitfilm.com/express) may offer enough polish.

I often use ffmpeg to do this, but I don't think it meets any of the requirements.

Alternatives: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15235466#15236794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15235466#15236794) (2017)

</comment><comment><USER5> i use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidemux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avidemux) for my video splicing needs.... it goes easy on my machine's resources.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-windows- movie-m...](https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-windows-movie-maker- alternative)

</comment><comment><USER7> Davinci resolve is free and runs on all three platforms but is also fancy.</comment>