Our Positions - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboutamazon.com/our-company/our-positions <comment><USER2> A cynical reading:

\- The federal minimum wage in the U.S. is too low and should be raised

(We'd like it if Walmart had higher labor costs)

\- Human-induced climate change is real, serious, and action is needed from the public and private sectors

\- The energy industry should have access to the same technologies as other industries

(Yes, through lobbying and lies the oil companies are fucking over our planet. But we're going to keep them as customers. Somebody should do something, but not us.)

\- Diversity and inclusion are good for business—and more fundamentally—simply right

\- We strongly support the rights of immigrants and immigration reform

(It'd be cool if there were more programmers for us to hire, more cheaply)

The rights of LGBTQ+ people must be protected

(We want to continue to employ LGBTQ+ people)

\- Governments at all levels—federal, state, and local—should have access to the best technology

(Yeah, we're also going to keep providing services to ICE and China or whoever)

\- Governments should work quickly to put in place a regulatory framework for facial recognition technology

(We recognize that someone should do something about this, but it's not going to be us)

\- Counterfeiters should receive stronger penalties under federal law

(Nobody counterfeits Kindles or other Amazon brands on Amazon, but somehow the problem is impossible for us to solve for anyone else. Or we'd make less money, which is kind of the same thing when you think about it)

\- Consumer data privacy should be protected under federal law

(Fuck facebook)

<comment><USER3> > A cynical reading

...

> The rights of LGBTQ+ people must be protected > > (We want to continue to > employ LGBTQ+ people)

Huh? The lack of some rights for LGB+ people under current law does not prevent Amazon from employing them. In fact, that lack of rights probably actually makes it _easier_ for Amazon to employ them by easily extending benefits beyond what are required. Once those rights are legally granted, all employers will have to extend them, reducing Amazon's advantage.

> Governments should work quickly to put in place a regulatory framework for > facial recognition technology > > (We recognize that someone should do > something about this, but it's not going to be us)

They _are_ doing something about it. It takes government to establish regulatory frameworks, so they are lobbying for that.

> Counterfeiters should receive stronger penalties under federal law > > > (Nobody counterfeits Kindles or other Amazon brands on Amazon, but somehow > the problem is impossible for us to solve for anyone else. Or we'd make less > money, which is kind of the same thing when you think about it)

No one counterfeits Kindles on Amazon because no one but Amazon is allowed to sell Kindles on Amazon. The lack of Kindle counterfeits there gives no useful information about the difficulty of keeping counterfeits out of markets that allow multiple sellers for a given product.

<comment><USER2> > No one counterfeits Kindles on Amazon because no one but Amazon is allowed > to sell Kindles on Amazon. The lack of Kindle counterfeits there gives no > useful information about the difficulty of keeping counterfeits out of > markets that allow multiple sellers for a given product.

That is the whole point. Amazon doesn't allow multiple sellers of Kindles or Amazon Basics power cords, but it did/does allow multiple sellers of, say, Birkenstocks or Popsockets or Magformers or Ripple Rug. That they don't allow multiple sellers of Kindles proves that this is not an unsolvable problem.

For example:

\- If there is a single manufacturer of a brand-name product, Amazon could make it so that only that manufacturer can sell on Amazon, just like it does with its own products.

\- They could also make it more clear for commodity items which seller provided the item linked with a given review. Often different sellers sell entirely different goods under the same SKU, leading to wildly varying reviews.

\- They could probably do some other things too. I bet if you ask someone who's products are getting counterfeited on Amazon, they have a lot of ideas for what could be changed.

> The lack of some rights for LGB+ people under current law does not prevent > Amazon from employing them. In fact, that lack of rights probably actually > makes it easier for Amazon to employ them by easily extending benefits > beyond what are required. Once those rights are legally granted, all > employers will have to extend them, reducing Amazon's advantage.

Yeah, that's a good point. I was assuming that LBGTQ+ people were powerful enough now that they didn't have to stay at a company that didn't believe in their rights, and would leave Amazon for greener pastures if Amazon came out against their rights.

> It takes government to establish regulatory frameworks

Or, a massive cloud provider could establish a policy against certain uses of facial recognition technology on their own platform, tomorrow.

A lot of the letter is of the form "We want someone else to put restrictions on everyone against doing bad stuff - in the meantime, we will continue to do that bad stuff, and/or continue to allow it on our platform"

<comment><USER4> > If there is a single manufacturer of a brand-name product, Amazon could make > it so that only that manufacturer can sell on Amazon, just like it does with > its own products.

\-- Or they could at least have a moderated platform where those merchandisers could 'greenlight' distributors of their own products so if they do have 3rd party sellers/distributors they could show who is valid and who is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No mention of unions.

No concept that Amazon should be held responsible as the seller when they resell a counterfeit item.

No mention of antitrust or monopoly issues.

Amazon doesn't have much of a GPDR/CCPA privacy problem because most of the data they collect is from their own customers, who have agreed to Amazon's terms. Amazon doesn't want to sell customer info because that would help their competitors compete with them. They have their own internal closed ecosystem.

<comment><USER6> google, facebook, salesforce, and linkedin dont really want to "sell data they collect" either. They want to sell _access_ to data, or access to _targeted attention_. They dont want data leaking from their ecosystems, they want to keep you coming back to their tools to utilize data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I go to the local butcher's shop and buy a couple of steaks, I don't care about his political views.

Why should I in this case?

<comment><USER8> You probably would care about how your butcher exerted his political will if he was worth almost a trillion dollars and had entered literally every facet of your life, including selling police surveillance equipment that's installed on your own home.

<comment><USER9> Hey Alexa, how do you clean up a murder scene?

<comment><USER4> Damn you... on one hand I'm very curious what her response is, on the other... I do not want to end up in jail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As I read this, everything seems to boil down to:

"We have inoffensive morals, but we don't let them interfere with making money."

<comment><USER11> If you're a large group of people tied together by something other than political ideology, it's to be expected that the only things they would reach consensus on would be topics where society has reached widespread consensus.

If every influential person in a large company agrees on a contentious issue like universal healthcare, that would suggest hiring is based on a litmus test around that issue. As much as I think we should have universal healthcare, I don't think support for that should be a requirement in the hiring process where I work.

So you end up with agreement only non-contentious issues. (Or sometimes stances that are beneficial to the specific corporation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The domain makes me ask this question-- I mean, why not host off the main Amazon.com domain? So, is this really an official Amazon page?

<comment><USER13> The SSL certificate was issued by Amazon, so it is legit.

<comment><USER14> Does that matter? i mean they are running their own CA for use with their offerings on AWS. I am not sure if it is the same CA though.

EDIT: Just checked it and it is the same CA they use for AWS services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting, almost all of these issues are social issues (LGBT rights, immigration policy, etc), but third from the bottom they slipped this in: "Counterfeiters should receive stronger penalties under federal law." and go on to talk about how bad counterfeiting is for americans.

<comment><USER16> I dunno, I think corporations talking about social issues stands out more because it's contentious. If I was to try and broadly categorise the topics:

\- min wage: economic

\- climate: environmental

\- energy: environmental

\- diversity: social/business

\- lgbt: social

\- immigration: social/political

\- govt tech: political

\- facial rec: legal/social

\- counterfeiting: legal

\- data: legal/political

\- tax: legal/business

</comment></comment><comment> arch-angel [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon- minimum-w...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage- raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse)

</comment><comment><USER17> It is all talk till I see action. Action that could already be taken on these issues.

> Human-induced climate change is real, serious, and action is needed from the > public and private sectors.

How about doing a better job at bundling items? Or encourage people to not use 2 day shipping? I'd argue Amazon actually incentivizes single package and fast shipping, which are counter to this message.

> The rights of LGBTQ+ people must be protected.

> We strongly support the rights of immigrants and immigration reform.

> Governments should work quickly to put in place a regulatory framework for > facial recognition technology.

I think these three are tied together. I'll also say that with all the stuff coming out of the woodworks this week (in respect to Hong Kong) all this needs explicit action for people to believe that Amazon cares. We're seeing a lot of companies that say they care but act differently. So it is all talk until I see action as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER18> It looks like they're buying 100,000 electric delivery vehicles; seems like they're taking action.

<comment><USER17> Awesome! Thank you for letting me know. That is action that I am happy about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On Climate Change.

All of amazons shit is made in China, which does not the same environmental standards we have. This just seems like lip service.

<comment><USER20> I think it is lobbying for more taxes than anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's fascinating how many of these boil down to "We know we do terrible things. Somebody really ought to stop us!"

</comment><comment><USER22> > We are using our position as one of the nation's largest employers to > encourage other companies to raise their wages and to lobby members of > Congress and state legislatures to raise the minimum wage.

I heard this first-hand from an Amazon HR who fought for the rights of the warehouse workers (factories as they call them) that during one of the bi- annual OLR (reviews) they were given feedback that they simply don't _get_ the business and aren't a _fit_ for the role. They said it was because they prevented warehouse contract workers or employees from being terminated without-cause, which would have saved Amazon money that they otherwise would have have paid as severance and absolved them from affording the workers a notice period. The _factory workers_ (in their home-country) are no better than slaves as they do not understand their rights well enough and the managers take them for a ride to please their superiors in furthering narrative that serves as datapoints for their _leadership qualities_ bi- annually. Amazon as a corporate might take an official stance, sure, but Amazon's vulture-culture is hiding in the plain sight for all to see.

> Amazon prioritizes equal pay, and since we've been measuring and publishing > the ratio over the past several years, women have earned between 99.5 and > 101.5 cents for every dollar that men have earned in the same jobs.

Why is that an ex-teammate of another Amazonian I spoke to who had issues with their eyesight struggled immeasurably to get promoted before quitting or being made to quit? Why do they stack-rank someone undergoing personal trauma or chronic illness to the bottom and treat them like a perishable resource? Again, official stance is one thing, ground realities are another. Lying with statistics is one thing, actually confronting the elephant in the room... Well, that's not their _forte_.

> Governments should work quickly to put in place a regulatory framework for > facial recognition technology.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/search?q=Ring](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/search?q=Ring)

> Our customer-centric approach has led us to follow privacy-by-design > principles since our founding.

It is well-known that Amazon would copy your product and manufacture it themselves if there's enough money in it. How do they know? Well, they mine the hell out of the buying behaviour they track. They conveniently can target market segments to optimise returns. Not to mention prominent placement for _Amazon Brands_ in search results.

Also, I believe, they do share buyer's personal information with the seller, per purchase.

And show ads.

None of this screams privacy-by-design, to me.

> Corporate tax codes should incentivize investment in the economy and job > creation.

Why isn't there a bullet point abt social responsibility? Continuing to corner massive amt of wealth for your board, your shareholders, your VPs and employees is plain greed after a point.

I guess, I'm just grumpy and need to lighten up.

</comment><comment><USER23> > We strongly support the rights of immigrants and immigration reform

But also

> Governments at all levels—federal, state, and local—should have access to > the best technology

So, we support the rights of immigrants to not be abused, but we'd like to continue making a buck selling tech to agencies directly responsible for that abuse.

Similarly,

> Human-induced climate change is real, serious, and action is needed from the > public and private sectors

But but but!

> The energy industry should have access to the same technologies as other > industries

Amazon even openly brags about how awesome their tech is for extracting that sweet, sweet oil: [https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and- gas/](https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/)

Its hilarious (and sad) how this position piece outlines what Amazon claims to believe, and simultaneously explains why they're going to keep doing things that directly contradict those stated beliefs. It's an insult to your intelligence as a reader.

What a bunch of baloney

<comment><USER24> I don't understand this utopianist view. Yes, I would like to see oil companies go away but we can't switch off our oil dependency like a light. Whether we like it or not, literally the entire world runs on oil in some capacity and we don't have the ability to wean ourselves off it in the immediate term.

So we should ensure that oil companies have the best technology available to maximize efficiency and minimize the chances of catastrophic environmental disasters (which are almost always the direct result of a technological deficiency) while simultaneously working on the technology and policy that will allow us to minimize our oil dependence in the long term.

<comment><USER25> The AWS Oil & Gas offering is explicitly about helping "energy companies" find and extract _more_ oil, _faster_.

From their page: "Accelerate and optimize exploration, drilling, and production".

That's not just keeping the lights on, that's actually accelerating the rate of oil extraction at exactly the time when we need to be ramping down.

<comment><USER26> I think an argument could be made that they're going to dig for that oil anyway and they might as well do it efficiently.

<comment><USER27> Not strongly. The less efficient they are at extracting it, the more attractive renewable sources of energy become, and the more effort will go into producing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> search " Hong Kong" \- results, none found

[update] : ok , i get this is not an US issue, and get your feelings behind downvotes, but i didnt know this was just for US..

<comment><USER29> These are positions on US issues.

<comment><USER28> gotcha..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Good. Now add something about international relations (such as consistently supporting individual freedo vs authoritarian regimes) and in support of trade unions, and I won't put you in the naughty column with NBA/Blizzard/Disney/Apple.

</comment><comment><USER31> "We strongly support the rights of immigrants and immigration reform."

and yet they haven't been responsive to employees and activists urging them to stop enabling ICE.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/12/no- tech-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/12/no-tech-ice- protesters-demand-amazon-cut-ties-with-federal-immigration-enforcement/)

<comment><USER32> I believe that's meant to be part of the meaning of one of the statements in this page: >Governments at all levels—federal, state, and local—should have access to the best technology

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Unions are a legitimate business activity by people who sell their labor. They are forming business associations to negotiate better terms company or industry wide in order to improve the efficacy of their market position.

Union suppression is anti-free market.

<comment><USER34> So why is a union different from people forming a separate company and contracting out their labor? Why ask for special provisions (obligating all employees to join and pay dues) if it is just a 'business association' like any other. And if that association is industry-wide as you said, doesn't that make it anti-free market?

<comment><USER33> They are making a legit decision that reflects their position in the market and their relative economic strength as individuals vs as a group. If they don't do this their relative economic position is unacceptably weak, and they should not be expected to shoulder it passively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "It's critical that Amazon employees are also diverse and that we foster a culture where inclusion is the norm." is self-contradictory, since diversity does not imply inclusion, rather continued segregation. Climate science is not settled, so calling it "real, serious, human-induced" is misleading.

A lot of political mumbo-jumbo here, my best guess is this is Bezos launching his political career... "Bezos for President" in 2024. :-)</comment>


Engineers back in contact with Galaxy 15 - <AUTHOR> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1012/31galaxy15/ <comment><USER2> Without knowing to much about the specifics sounds like a situation where some kind of redundant system on the satellite could detect the main system not functioning correctly and reset it.

<comment><USER3> yeah, a heartbeat where if it loses contact with ground control for months it resets itself.</comment></comment>


Sen. Al Franken's net neutrality petition - <AUTHOR> http://www.alfranken.com/landing/e140504/?subsource=ngpattre140504a

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to note that Franken is/was both a strong proponent of net neutrality and a strong proponent of SOPA.

We tend to conflate these issues in the tech community, but politicians tend to look at things differently (see: Lamar Smith on patent trolling as well).</comment>


Microsoft's new Edge shares "persistent" device identifiers to back end servers - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/microsoft-edge-privacy-busting-telemetry/153733 <comment><USER2> A pity Firefox Focus is not covered</comment>


Android app can recognize a person, pull up their status updates - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/03/01/android-app-can-recognize-a-person-pull-up-their-status-updates/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat)

<comment><USER2> Woah, hold it right there. So some guy on the road can pull a picture of me and get to know a LOT about me? That's kinda cool, but it creeps me out. If this can't make a person paranoid about privacy, then nothing can.

<comment><USER3> They can connect your face to a lot of information _that you've already made public_.

I'm not sure that privacy enters into it.

<comment><USER2> Well till now, they would have to know _atleast_ my name to get said publicly available information.

<comment><USER3> Till now, they would need the information that connects your face to your name. This app _also_ needs that information to be publicly available.

If this app can connect your face to a body of data, then a person could have done the same without it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't find the source but if you constrain the search space to, say, geographic area or social network (e.g. if one person in your group is recognized - are you linked) - it's scary how much smaller the search space is (hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds).

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't see how useful this is, unless you are just really bad with faces.

<comment><USER6> That's a legitimate use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coming soon: masks made of frosted Plexiglas.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ready to be bought by Google, integrated into Google Goggles?

</comment><comment><USER9> Not available yet I guess?</comment>


Forex Automated Trading Robot: claims to return 80% per month on investment? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bluemonkeyea.com

<comment><USER2> Website fail: Main menu links don't work unless user is on home page</comment>


[Show HN] Pixelcheetah – Analytics Using HTTP Requests - <AUTHOR> Hey hackers, look what I've built!
Few months ago I needed an address I can send requests to and have the requests saved in a database I can run SQL queries on.
When I haven't found something like that online I decided to build Pixelcheetah.
Pixelcheetah allows you to track anything by making HTTP requests to your pixel address. The query parameters are mapped to database columns and you get full SQL access to your data.
It's already being used by a few performance marketing companies (as tracking with a pixel is what they need).
It's completely serverless so it doesn't experience downtime and it can scale endlessly (100B/day is the highest so far).
Hope you find it as useful as I do, I'd love to get your feedback.
https://pixelcheetah.com/ <comment><USER2> Next time use "Show HN:" instead of "[Show HN]" to enable a little of magic in the site, like appearing in the "show" tab.

(Wait a few days and repost. A few repost are ok here, but don't abuse the repost option.)

Make the "First million calls per month are free" more visible. It looks like a unmeaningful comment above de $29 plan, until you read it. (Don't expect users to read your text.) Perhaps use two columns, one for the "free" plan and one for the "$29" plan.</comment>


AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6237715.html

<comment><USER2> "...so let us make a tiered network!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Where has all the dark fiber gone?

<comment><USER4> It's still there. AT&T probably just wants to justify a tiny dip in revenues when they have to start turning it on. Of course, they'll probably end up making money -- more bandwidth required, more money to AT&T. So wait... I'm actually not sure why they would complain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We just need to buy more tubes.

<comment><USER6> Can't. They're full.

<http://www.thetubesarefull.com/></comment></comment>


Why Your Netflix Traffic Is Slow and Why the FCC Won't Necessarily Make It Fast - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your-netflix-traffic-is-slow-and-why-the-open-internet-order-wont-necessarily-make-it-faster/ <comment><USER2> Cogent publicly offered to pay for _both sides_ of the peering upgrades in order to fix their congestion problem.

[http://www.cogentco.com/en/news/press-releases/631-cogent- of...](http://www.cogentco.com/en/news/press-releases/631-cogent-offers-to- pay-capital-costs-incurred-by-major-telephone-and-cable-companies-necessary- to-ensure-adequate-capacity)

Pretty sure Comcast didn't take them up on the offer. Doing so would have fixed the issue and Netflix wouldn't be writing checks to Comcast now.

<comment><USER3> You mean _this check_ handed right here?

[http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this- hilarious...](http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious- graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/)

<comment><USER4> That's Netflix paying Comcast directly, not Cogent giving Comcast the few grand to upgrade the link that they were purposefully not upgrading to force Netflix into paying.

EDIT: Also worth noting that Netflix has to pay every month (which is what Comcast wants) rather than Cogent just giving them $10k once for new hardware (not as delicious as lots more money!)

<comment><USER5> It's not just the hardware upgrade, the peering agreement is only free when each side sends the same amount of data. Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP needs to pay for peering.

Edit: I'm just explaining why a hardware upgrade was besides the points that were being made. These are the facts regardless of who you think is in the right. The argument was over bandwidth usage, not hardware upgrades. Is anyone disagreeing with that?

<comment><USER6> > Netflix is sending a lot more than it's receiving, in which case their ISP > needs to pay for peering.

 _All_ Internet traffic has more download than upload (for the end-consumer). This is literally why ISPs offer faster download speeds in end-consumer packages than upload speeds - they know that consumers will need to download more than they upload.

In vector calculus, this is known as _divergence_. Traffic on the highway has divergence of 0, meaning that if you draw a closed loop of any shape, over the course of a day/week, the number of cars crossing that loop in both directions (in/out) will be the same.[0][1] Internet traffic does not have zero divergence, because bits are interchangeable and easy to create, destroy, and copy (whereas cars and humans are not).

Comcast isn't dumb. They know this is the way the Internet works. They just also know that it's more profitable to pretend they don't and extort money based on a false definition of "equality".

[0] [https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/just-what-does-it- mean...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/just-what-does-it-mean-when-a- vector-field-has-0-divergence.497174/)

[1] It's not _exactly_ the same, due to births, deaths, and migration, but you get the idea.

<comment><USER5> >All Internet traffic has more download than upload (for the end-consumer). This is literally why ISPs offer faster download speeds in end-consumer packages than upload speeds - they know that consumers will need to download more than they upload.

Yes, but they also have commercial customers that send out lots of data. Netflix is an outlier all by itself, outweighing the connection.

<comment><USER4> > Yes, but they also have commercial customers that send out lots of data.

Who?

From what I can tell even their commercial offerings are heavily asymmetric to downloading: [http://business.comcast.com/internet/business- internet/plans...](http://business.comcast.com/internet/business- internet/plans-pricing)

Download / Upload (in Mbps)

16 / 3

50 / 10

75 / 15

100 / 20

150 / 20

So who are these companies that use Comcast to send a lot?

<comment><USER5> That's not for businesses running websites, that's for using the internet in a business. [http://business.comcast.com/internet/business- internet/web-h...](http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/web- hosting) is relevant, although it doesn't give speeds. But presumably anyone who buys that is sending more data out of comcast than they are receiving.

And as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'd like to see a chart of data in and out excluding Netflix and large companies. If the problem only affects them or other large companies (like Youtube, Apple, Microsoft, etc, which all pay for direct connections), but not small websites, then I think that would support my argument.

<comment><USER4> The plans listed on that page are:

Storage / Transfer / Price

10MB / 100MB / Free

300GB / Unlimited / $20

400GB / Unlimited / $40

500GB / Unlimited / $80

You must realize that these are absolutely NOT true commercial offerings. They don't even list what your commit bandwidth is!

Also you can't run your own applications there! Do you really think Netflix runs off of a shared server like this? They're a HUGE AWS customer running many thousands of VMs. How do you access control things, how do you deploy your code, how do you do basically ANYTHING with this offering from Comcast? I suspect that you don't.

Here are some legitimate commercial offerings: [http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated](http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated)

If you notice, they have a page dedicated to their network. What familiar names do we find on this page? Cogent and Level3! [http://www.hostgator.com/network](http://www.hostgator.com/network)

Notice that there is no mention ANYWHERE of ANY COMPANY that might even a LITTLE BIT be considered a consumer ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, etc, none of them are mentioned.

<comment><USER5> >Notice that there is no mention ANYWHERE of ANY COMPANY that might even a LITTLE BIT be considered a consumer ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, etc, none of them are mentioned.

From the page:

>We utilize a wide array of network carriers including Level 3, nLayer, Comcast, Cogent Communications, and Hurricane Electric.

Take that back?

<comment><USER4> You've got me dead to rights on that one, of course, so I have no problems taking it back. I'm not going to change the above comment where I misspoke because I did write that, and I did think it was correct at the time.

I think it is telling, however, that Comcast's logo isn't anywhere on the bottom of the page with all their partner logos. And I think it is also telling that it's only Comcast and not all the consumer ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > And, while it is also worth considering whether the impending merger between > Comcast and Time Warner cable might exacerbate the current situation, I > predict that this is unlikely. In general, as one access ISP gains more > market share, a content provider such as Netflix depends on connectivity to > that ISP even more, potentially extracting increasingly higher prices for > interconnection. In the specific case of Comcast and Time Warner, it is > difficult to predict exactly how much additional leverage this will create, > but as it turns out, these two ISPs are already in markets where they are > not competing with one another, so this specific merger is unlikely to > dramatically change the current situation.

I'm having trouble with this logic. Increased leverage over content providers seems like it would exactly exacerbate this situation.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is why the Net Neutrality ruling was not a big step forward.

The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services. If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP that gives a good one.

<comment><USER9> >> The right way to solve the internet problem is "unbundling"; that is, the people who own the last mile lease it out to companies that sell you internet, video and other services.

That's terrible. The ISP should give me "internet access" which includes everything out there. They should not get to pick and chose what I can get.

>> If Comcast customers were getting a bad netflix experience they could switch to an ISP that gives a good one.

This is called competition. It's what you get with net neutrality. Since every ISP has to give you everything equally, the only way they can compete is by building better infrastructure and compete on ping time and bandwidth. This is how it should be. Allowing them to prioritize certain services for a fee (regardless of who pays) means allowing them to stagnate - in fact paying them to stagnate - which is bad for everyone.

<comment><USER10> > This is called competition. It's what you get with net neutrality.

You are stating that "Net Neutrality" will magically create competing ISPs in places where only a duopoly of <Cable Company> and <DSL Company> currently exist. Please explain to me how net neutrality will somehow affect things like local municipalities granting ISPs local monopolies. Or how "net neutrality" will allow new-comers to overcome the initial regulatory and capital investment hurdles to setting up a new ISP.

What you're missing is the "unbundling" is talking about forcing (e.g.) Comcast to lease it's "last-mile" lines out to competing ISPs. This means that competing ISPs don't need to invest in "last-mile" infrastructure. (If you don't understand what "last-mile" means, it would behoove you to look it up).

Net neutrality _does_ play a part here in that if Comcast partners with Netflix, they could provide a better Netflix experience than a smaller ISP without bargaining power, but the lack of ISP competition is arguably a bigger problem and calling out "Net Neutrality" as the solution to all Internet connectivity woes doesn't help.

<comment><USER9> >> Please explain to me how net neutrality will somehow affect things like local municipalities granting ISPs local monopolies. Or how "net neutrality" will allow new-comers to overcome the initial regulatory and capital investment hurdles to setting up a new ISP.

It doesn't. Local monopoly support from the government is a big problem, but it's also not the only problem. I actually have 3 options at my home and it doesn't seem to be causing an increase in service or a reduction in prices.

That said, as video moves to the internet and as the ISPs lose differentiation, we can hope for actual competition on access to what FCC regulation will make a commodity service. But I'm not entirely convinced that will happen either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Thus, we will certainly see ISPs continue to use prioritization to manage > congestion—prioritization is, in fact, a necessary tool for managing limited > resources such as bandwidth._

Bandwidth may very well be a limited resource in some cases but the dispute between Comcast and Netflix is not one of them. The Comcast network has the bandwidth available to serve the customers (since not all sites are congested) and Netflix is willing to peer for free wherever they want them to, so the slowdown is completely artificial and Comcast generated.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have always felt that this issue has been overcomplicated. It seems what this really stems from is the classic ISP business model. From a pure network design standpoint, nearly every network has an uplink that is not large enough to sustain simultaneous high usage from most, or all, of its devices. Your classic endpoint data closet example would be a 48-port switch with 1Gbps access ports, and a 10-20Gbps uplink.

This problem seems much worse in the ISP world. Many years ago, ISPs could easily oversell their connection. Realistically only worrying about the small percentage of extreme users downloading high volumes of data via Usenet, BitTorrent, or other file sharing services. Life for an ISP was probably pretty great.

Now, with the sheer number of households streaming video, it seems to be apparent that ISPs are drastically overselling their connections. It does not even make logical sense to blame a single service if an ISPs upstream connection is saturated. If the ISP did not oversubscribe their connections at such ridiculous rates, this would not be an issue. Why does it matter that a single service is causing the largest portion of the traffic congestion?

Netflix recommends a 5Mbps connection to stream HD video. Most all devices today would stream at HD quality, if possible. How is it that an ISP such as Comcast doesn't have the uplink capacity to sustain many users at a mere 5Mbps? I find it absurd that multiple ISPs are overselling their connection to the point where a speed of 1/7 of the average connection in the USA is too much of a strain. It really seems that the level of oversubscription is equivalent to having a data closet with a 48-port 100Mbps switch uplinked at 2Gbps . The whole situation just stinks of pure greed.

<comment><USER13> Just as few as 5 years ago 50-100x over-subscription rates were common for ISPs. For example 100 homes with 10mb connections would be fed by 10-20mbps. The reality was much closer to 48 port 100mbps switches having 100mb uplinks. Netflix (and other streaming services) have been a huge shock to their business models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _In the specific case of Comcast and Time Warner, it is difficult to predict > exactly how much additional leverage this will create, but as it turns out, > these two ISPs are already in markets where they are not competing with one > another, so this specific merger is unlikely to dramatically change the > current situation._

This does not follow. A larger ISP with more market share, regardless of the state of the competition, can extract larger peering agreements. So this merge would absolutely make the current situation for Netflix worse and other peering agreements more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's refreshing to see more writing popping up from people that 'get' it. It's a shame that most of it is after people spent a decade campaigning for the wrong thing.

<comment><USER16> Wrong, preserving Net Neutrality was very important but it's just not the whole solution and no one ever said it was... It's called taking the first step.

The next step is stopping the TWC/Comcast merger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such
      high volumes as to intentionally congest the links
      between different transit ISPs and Comcast, essentially
      taking a page from Norton's "peering playbook" and
      forcing Comcast and its peers (i.e., the transit
      providers, Cogent, Level 3, Tata, and others) to upgrade
      capacity one-by-one, before sending traffic down a
      different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade.

>Resolving the dispute: Paid peering (March 2014). Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible—this is a classic "peering dispute"

Both sides of this argument are reasonable and plausible?

Are you kidding me? If Netflix was intentionally shaping their traffic to disrupt Comcast, how is that not a denial of service attack? That sounds like a criminal accusation more than a bargaining position.

If Netflix actually was doing that, shouldn't comcast be sueing rather than asking for money for a peering arrangement?

also, and this is more to my own ignorance than it is to a counterpoint. I thought peering arrangements were things that happened between ISPs. Netflix is a customer of an ISP.

</comment><comment><USER18> Last I checked it was the consumer ISPs that were stalling with peering upgrades according to multiple transit providers

[http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental- mea...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264381)

<comment><USER5> Verizon responded to that post.

[http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/level-3s-selectiv...](http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/level-3s-selective- amnesia-on-peering)

<comment><USER11> It's a pretty poor response. They're using the fact that Level3 had a dispute with Cogent over unbalanced traffic to say the traffic between Level3 and Verizon should also be balanced. Verizon is not in that condition, it's not a transit provider.

Basically there are 4 different situations:

1) _ContentProvider_ <->Level3<->Cogent<->ISP<-> _User_

2) _ContentProvider_ <->Cogent<->Level3<->ISP<-> _User_

3) _ContentProvider_ <->Level3->ISP<-> _User_

4) _ContentProvider_ <->Cogent->ISP<-> _User_

In all cases the first network gets a payment by the content provider and the last network a payment by the user. In cases 1 and 2 the middle network is not getting a payment because neither side is their direct client. So the Cogent/Level3 dispute is about there being the same number of 1 and 2 cases so that it all evens out and no compensating payment is necessary. Cases 3 and 4 require no additional payments no matter the upload/download ratio because both network links have been paid for, one by the user the other by the content provider.

This whole thing is about the ISPs noticing that the content providers are making money offering content over the internet (shocking I know) and trying to reach across the network and grab some of that revenue, even though everyone has already been compensated for the actual transfer of bits.

<comment><USER13> Verizon acquired the Tier 1 transit network of UUNet/Worldcom. It has a _huge_ transit/datacenter business. ATT(SBC+BellSouth) has Tier 1 transit network of the old ATT long distance. Centurylink has the old Qwest Tier 1 network. One of the things overlooked in the peering disputes is that many of the ISPs ended up merging/buying Tier 1 transit networks.

Netflix is one of the first ContentProviders to be pumping so much traffic that they will imbalance the peering traffic ratios of any almost any Tier 1 they buy transit/CDN from, except for probably Google, which ended up doing what Netflix is doing now: paid peering.

<comment><USER11> > Netflix is one of the first ContentProviders to be pumping so much traffic > that they will imbalance the peering traffic ratios of any almost any Tier 1 > they buy transit/CDN from

That's only relevant if the transit/CDN is actually peering with another Tier 1 provider to deliver the Netflix traffic (cases 1/2). What's been in the news has been cases 3/4 where there's a single transit provider in the picture and there's no reason for the ISP not to accept the content with no compensation for the asymmetry as it has a client paying him for that service.

> except for probably Google, which ended up doing what Netflix is doing now: > paid peering.

Do you mean Google is also paying ISPs for access to users like Netflix has had to? Because if you mean Google is having to do paid peering with transit providers because their traffic is asymmetric that would just be normal payment for transit, as if Level3/Cogent/etc where providing transit to them.

<comment><USER13> Verizon (and ATT, and CenturyLink) are Tier 1 transit networks for peering operations. If Level3s peering traffic ratio are off balanced by netflix's traffic, I see no reason why Verizon shouldn't do the exact thing Level3 did to Cogent back in the day. Also, keep in mind Netflix is using Level3's CDN service, so you have a scenario on the flipside where Level3 has become a transit network and ContentProvider also.

The issue is really that the idea of transit providers in general are becoming obsolete. So much fiber was laid, with DWDM and further subdivision abilities, it costs comparatively nothing to get a nationwide network these days. That was Cogent's entire business model, buy cheap fiber, sell transit for almost nothing to content providers, practically (in some cases, actually) give away transit to ISPs/businesses to keep their traffic ratios as balanced as possible.

Now, we're in a situation where it's not technically or financially hard to have a presence in every regional peering point. The major content providers don't need transit providers (or in the case of Level3's CDN, are already provider) except out of convenience and their access to settlement free peering. The major ISPs have no need for transit providers(or are already providers), as all the content providers wants to peer with them, and most of them have nationwide networks to do so. (see comcast: [http://business.comcast.com/images/default-source/about- us/t...](http://business.comcast.com/images/default-source/about- us/the_comcast_network.jpg?sfvrsn=0) )

Unregulated peering has lead to the cost of transit plummeting to almost nothing. ( [http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit- Pricing-H...](http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit-Pricing- Historical-And-Projected.php) ) We've just hit an interesting point where 2 contentproviders (Netflix and Youtube) are half of all internet traffic, and the eyeball networks are all basically tier 1 transit providers. There's basically unlimited choice for transit providers for ContentProviders, but each eyeball only has 1-3 ISPs to choose from.

My thoughts are rather than attempting to regulate transit/peering, regulate that last mile network and let people choose their own transit provider. Back in the DSL days, I used a local ISP that provided cheaper/better service than our telco. If I could pay a flat $x/mo for 1gb connection to a transit provider of my choice, I'm sure Google or Level3 would offer cheap uncongested access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The transit providers have pretty much all agreed with Netflix's side of the story to the best of my knowledge. For example:

[http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations- internet-m...](http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet- middleman)

<comment><USER5> That post doesn't mention Netflix at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> With Comcast, it's almost obvious that the net neutrality won't change this because Comcast was _already_ operating under net neutrality requirements. To win approval of its NBC merger, Comcast agreed to be bound by net neutrality requirements until 2018. When Verizon won its lawsuit to strike down the FCC's 2010 rules that did not change this. Comcast remained bound by its agreement.

</comment><comment><USER21> If your ISP wanted to give you good service they could also add a few Netflix OCAs to their rack[1]. Opening up the last mile could allow the competition to use this technique to improve service while using Comcast's (or Verizon's...) network for all of the data.

[1][http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire- netflix-15925...](http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire- netflix-1592590450)

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried explaining this to people before the FCC stuff passed, but they just insisted that evil comcast was slowing down netflix streams.

<comment><USER22> They want someone to blame for not being able to watch Game of Thrones in HD or for fear of having to pay extra to continue doing so. Providers who fell in between the eyeballs and the content got in the crosshairs.

This is really "Game of Thrones" vs. "The Internet" and GoT won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yet again, someone fails to understand that this is Comcast abusing their (effective) monopoly to extract additional money via double-paying.

First I pay for internet access. 50Mbps "theoretical max" but it's fairly reasonable to expect to get say 10% of that most of the time.

Then Netflix has to pay again, in order for me to get the internet traffic that I requested. If Netflix doesn't pay, then Comcast schedules upgrades more slowly than they normally would such that my Netflix experience is degraded. They're not reducing capacity, they're just growing capacity in some areas much, much more slowly than in the rest. To get extra cash.

<comment><USER23> I've never understood the "double pay" argument.

You pay for internet. Netflix has to pay for internet too. To deliver packets to Comcast's network, Netflix can chose to pay any number of transit companies, or they can cut out the middle man and pay Comcast. Why is it ok for Netflix to pay a transit company, but not Comcast?

<comment><USER4> So Comcast has historically been a consumer ISP, not a transit provider. Consumer ISPs have traditionally had to buy service from transit providers in order to give their customers access to the internet. So in this case your monthly service fee went partially for the last mile and partially for the actual internet connection from the transit provider. Bandwidth is expensive.

As some ISPs got bigger, they were able to negotiate peering agreements instead of paid service since it was in both party's best interest. A could bill B $10k/mo for service and B could bill A $10k/mo for service and in the end it was a wash. This makes sense too. Once this happened your bill largely reflected the cost of the last mile, since the transit was now free. Bandwidth has gotten cheaper.

What we're seeing now is that some ISPs have gotten so big that instead of paying transit providers for access to the greater internet, or simply getting free peering, they're charging others for peering to them. How are they able to do this? They have an effective monopoly on their customers and they're "leveraging" this to get even more money. Now my monthly fee goes to pay for the last mile, and someone else also has to pay for the last mile. Am I getting a discount? No. Bandwidth isn't getting cheaper, but the last mile is getting paid for twice. Is the last mile getting faster? Also no.

So this feels very much like a monopoly abusing their position of power to get extra money.

<comment><USER5> Isn't the last mile getting used much more than previously, without prices going up? Is it valid to look at this as paying for that, and if CDNs can't pay, then end user prices will have to go up?

<comment><USER4> Where on earth are the prices not going up? I used to get cable internet for $40/mo and now it's more like $60/mo.

I had to buy the DOCSIS 3 modem for my house, so they're not paying for that. I suspect that they had to buy new modems on their end, but my modem was only about $100 so I can't imagine that theirs was more than $100 especially if they're buying millions of them.

They haven't upgraded the coax that runs to my house, or the pulls that run along the telephone poles. Those are all the same. So it's an equipment upgrade? $100 once so that they can charge $20/mo more forever? They made their money back on the last mile well inside of a year.

And they haven't had to put more fiber into the ground either. Fiber transceiver keep getting faster and cheaper every year. As slower ones break you can replace them with faster ones for less money. Even if you upgrade early, it's not as though it's hugely expensive.

Here's a 10gig, 10km transceiver for $400: [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816523...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816523032)

And here's a 10gig, 40km transceiver for $4k: [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401562)

I pay for 50/5 but I suspect that Comcast only allocates 5/0.5 or so for me, since it can't manage to keep up with Netflix all that well. So that means that Comcast can do the last mile for $100 or less of new investment and the last 25 miles for $4 (2000 people per pair, $8k per pair) of incremental investment. This is not a lot of money relative to the $60/mo that I pay.

> Is it valid to look at this as paying for that, and if CDNs can't pay, then > end user prices will have to go up?

So first I disagree that the CDN should have to pay anything, again since I'm paying Comcast to connect me to the CDN!!

But even if I admit your point (which again, I emphatically DO NOT!) the amount of money to make an upgrade happen is TRIVIAL relative to yearly revenues. $104 in one-time hardware versus $720 in yearly, recurring revenue.

<comment><USER5> My family's bill has gone down to around $35/mo.

Speedtest gives me around 50/10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Meanwhile the community is trying to create a beneficial framework for all:

[http://www.open-ix.org/](http://www.open-ix.org/)

<comment><USER25> And then evil ISPs will just not join.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm having significant difficulties with this paragraph:

" _Comcast claims that Netflix was sending traffic at such high volumes as to intentionally congest the links between different transit ISPs and Comcast, essentially taking a page from Norton's "peering playbook" and forcing Comcast and its peers (i.e., the transit providers, Cogent, Level 3, Tata, and others) to upgrade capacity one-by-one, before sending traffic down a different path, congesting that, and forcing an upgrade. Their position was that Netflix was sending more traffic through these transit providers than the transit providers could handle, and thus that Netflix or their transit providers should pay to connect to Comcast directly. Comcast also implies that certain transit providers such as Cogent are likely the source of congested paths, a claim that has been explored but not yet conclusively proved one way or the other, owing to the difficulty of locating these points of congestion (more on that in a future post)._ "

Now, peering negotiations are an ugly, unpleasant activity that I'm quite happy never to have been a part of. But I don't find this particular claim to be "reasonable and plausible", in the author's words. Where is the congestion?

* Inside Netflix? Nope.

* Between Netflix and their transit providers? Seems unlikely; Netflix is paying them, after all. Such congestion would effect many of Netflix's customers and be against Netflix's interests.

* In the transit providers? Possibly, but again, Netflix is paying them. Further, Netflix connecting directly to Comcast is the first thing Netflix would do, if the transit providers were trying to squeeze more money out of them.

* Between the transit providers and Comcast? That seems to me to be the most likely interpretation of that paragraph. But if Netflix is doing this intentionally; say, by directing 90% of their traffic to Comcast customers through Tata, those customers are most likely to be unhappy with Netflix, not Comcast---any traffic from a customer out that doesn't go through Tata is fine, so they wouldn't likely perceive any problems with anything but Netflix. Further, that seems to contradict the statement that "[customers] routinely experienced high latency to _many Internet destinations_ every evening during 'prime time'". And if the congestion is not hitting one specific transit provider, then the idea that it is intentional on Netflix's part is silly and Comcast's peering relationships are simply inadequate for the traffic its customers are using.

* Inside Comcast? Well, I could see almost anyone wanting to have an unrelated third-party pay for their infrastructure upgrades, but....

Then, there's this: " _The best technical solution (and what ultimately happened) is that Netflix and Comcast should interconnect directly._ " The _best_ technical solution? The best _technical_ solution? (Here's a hint: a fully-connected network is _not_ a good technical solution.)

But the ultimate problem here is: " _This is where market leverage comes into play: Because most consumers do not have choice in broadband Internet providers, Comcast arguably (and, empirically speaking, as well) has more market leverage: They can afford to ask Netflix to pay for that direct link—a common Internet business relationship called paid peering—because they have more market power._ "

Comcast has more market power because it is a monopoly and the problem with monopolies is _precisely_ that they use their market power to squeeze money out of counter-parties.

As an aside, I find Feamster's comment reply, " _What is false in Oliver's presentation (and many of the claims in the popular press) is his claim about what_ causes* that slowdown. The cause of the slowdown is congestion, not intentional throttling,*" to be simply disingenuous. What exactly is the difference between intentional throttling and intentionally introducing congestion by not upgrading inadequate peering relationships?

<comment><USER5> >As an aside, I find Feamster's comment reply, "What is false in Oliver's presentation (and many of the claims in the popular press) is his claim about what causes* that slowdown. The cause of the slowdown is congestion, not intentional throttling,*" to be simply disingenuous. What exactly is the difference between intentional throttling and intentionally introducing congestion by not upgrading inadequate peering relationships?

He discusses that in a later comment. The point I think he's making is that it wouldn't qualify as "paid prioritization", and shouldn't be characterised as such.

<comment><USER26> I thought that was from his comment. Did I miss a later one?

It _was_ paid; it succeeded in getting Netflix to write them a check. And it may not be strictly "prioritization", but to me the intent means more than the letter.

<comment><USER5> [https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your- netflix...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/feamster/why-your-netflix- traffic-is-slow-and-why-the-open-internet-order-wont-necessarily-make-it- faster/#comment-22149)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The *Santa* Brand Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.quietroom.co.uk/santa_brandbook/one

<comment><AUTHOR> "Our brand essence is the very essence of our brand"</comment>


A Virus and Two Types of Bacteria as Major Causes of Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR> http://neurosciencenews.com/microbes-alzheimers-neurology-3826/ <comment><USER2> Ok, I'l be candid, I never feel very confident in my ability to separate news from hype when it comes to medical innovations. Can someone with some experience in the field give me some idea about how authoritative and well founded this report is. So many times researchers with put out this big press release of an initial finding that is going to completely rewrite a branch of medical science, then it gets peer reviewed into oblivion and is never mentioned again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, it seems to say that the participants are confident that certain microbes (measles, HSV-1, chlamydia) not previously associated with AD can be causative of AD. It doesn't propose any new treatment or cure methods.

Given the chlamydia finding, I wonder if syphilis (especially secondary or tertiary) would have a similar effect.</comment>