







Responding to Noah Smith
Good Store
Founded by John and Hank Green with the belief that humanity can be good news. At Good Store, we’re searching the world for the best versions of the products that you use daily, like socks, coffee, or soap, and then we’re giving 100% of profits to charity.
Amazon and Google Must Keep Their Promises on Project Nimbus
When a company makes a promise, the public should be able to rely on it. Today, nearly every person in the U.S. is a customer of either Amazon or Google—and many of us are customers of both

Should Artists Shop or Stop Shopping? | Affidavit | Sheila Heti
Am I still capable of looking slowly, as if coming in from the side? Or have I ruined myself? Can I now only buy?
I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit
Anthropic are strongly rumored to be about to have their first profitable quarter. Stories are circulating of companies surprised at how expensive their LLM bills are becoming from usage by …
I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit
Anthropic are strongly rumored to be about to have their first profitable quarter. Stories are circulating of companies surprised at how expensive their LLM bills are becoming from usage by …
Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk | TechCrunch
These may be the last days of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.


Are Tech Bros Ruining Fashion?
Dream Cats NFT: don't buy them
Here is another NFT story (and not a sequel to the last one was in March after someone uploaded my "Yin and Yang of world hunger" on OpenSea...) Today, it is about the official release of the "Dream Cats" catalog on OpenSea by ROPLAK, a derivative of my 2016 Creative Commons Attribution Catavatar generator. It was announced yesterday in this post on Twitter [edit: they deleted their post, and made a new one], and the OpenSea catalog page linked counts already over 10K items and already sold 4.2 ETH, so, around 10 000 Euros in two days...

Emails show Amazon colluding with other firms to raise prices, California authorities allege
The previously redacted messages were unveiled as part of an antitrust battle with California attorney general Rob Bonta

Noah Smith's Review of Power and Progress is Very, Very Bad
It should have been disowned, not republished

The Interplay among Category Characteristics, Customer Characteristics, and Customer Activities on in-Store Decision Making
The authors explore product category and customer characteristics that affect consumers’ likelihood of engaging in unplanned purchases. In addition, they examine consumer activities that can exacerbate or limit these effects. The authors employ a hierarchical modeling approach to test their hypotheses using a data set of in-store intercept interviews conducted with 2300 consumers across 28 stores. The results show that category characteristics, such as purchase frequency and displays, and customer characteristics, such as household size and gender, affect in-store decision making. Moreover, although the analysis reveals that the baseline probability of an unplanned purchase is 46%, the contextual factors can drive this probability as high as 93%. The results support the predictions that list use, more frequent trips, limiting the aisles visited, limiting time spent in the store, and paying by cash are effective strategies for decreasing the likelihood of making unplanned purchases.

AI-Generated Books of Nonsense Are All Over Amazon's Bestseller Lists
Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited bestseller list was full of books with titles like “Apricot bar code architecture” and “Jessica’s Attention” earlier this week.

#modelrailroading Next up for a back story is Sir Arther's Camel lot, where you can find a nice selection of new and used camels, as well as the occasional giraffe or elephant. Sir Arther takes anything in trade, including cars and trucks. Sir Arther's Camel lot, all sales final.

FTC alleges Amazon illegally made $20 billion by rigging billions of ad auctions

Amazon reveals plans to spend $200bn in one year the day after Bezos guts Washington Post

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

Warehouses: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Software Update Automatically Turns off Amazon Delivery Drivers’ AC During Dangerous Summer Heat

Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business