Low prices, yes. But real estate and labor costs are lower in New Mexico than California. Perhaps taxes too. So they have different prices by region. (Otherwise they couldn't be profitable everywhere, and then they lose economies of scale) Not that different on pricing differences between countries.
Right, but then why buy from walmart if the competitive price is gone (as shown in the original example of online vs retail price)? If it’s just a single region agnostic price plus some location sensitive fee, they’re just another branded ecommerce store beholden to their sellers and distribution for pricing determination. Amazon wins with price, quality, inventory, and selection.
> Amazon wins with price, quality, inventory, and selection.
Not always... I bought something on Amazon last week and the 3rd party seller drop shipped it from Sam's Club (wal-mart). I saw the packing slip, looked it up on samsclub.com and realized I had paid 20%/$4 more at Amazon than they paid at Sam's Club.
Amazon has a great price on a lot of things, which has taught us to think they have a great price on everything. Amazon also takes at least one day to get something to your house. If you need something immediately, that's where retail wins every time... it doesn't even matter what the price difference is.
Right, but we’re discussing walmart.com vs amazon.com because walmart.com doesn’t have the crazy low prices that the retail store does. You’re absolutely right you can easily undercut amazon at sam’s club, so (eg) why can’t walmart.com match that undercut?
Im not sure I've ever been to a Walmart, but isn't the appeal that it's a one stop shop (+ low prices)? That seems pretty damn useful and has approximately nothing to do with cross-region price differences.
Right, but that makes the online component even more confusing. Why would you ever order from walmart.com if they don’t offer those competitive prices? Amazon has plenty of stock, more than walmart can compete with. I can’t buy notebooks from japan from walmart—at least, not of the same quality, variety, and price amazon offers.
I had the impression that they're just saying that Wal-Mart's prices online are occasionally higher than their prices in-store, not that their online prices are higher than Amazon's.
I'm becoming increasingly wary of buying things on Amazon. I've received bootlegs from listings that looked genuine, fallen prey to misleading reviews for things that turned out to be of substandard quality, and so on. And it's been getting worse over the last couple of years. And this is even with "fulfilled by Amazon" items. They're not good at policing their reviews or listings for accuracy, and it often turns out that the same listing might get you different products between different orders.
> Why would you ever order from walmart.com if they don’t offer those competitive prices?
I've bought from Walmart online only once or twice ever: in one case they had the camera I wanted for $250 cheaper than Amazon and in another Amazon didn't have the product at all.
There are no Walmarts in San Francisco AFAIK, but there were plenty in LA, where I grew up. We just never went to them, you'd have to ask my mom (and all of my friends' parents) why.
> Many are probably trying to fight for the public's security and have for years, with cryptographers earnestly trying to develop secure and efficient algorithms. They are probably at odds with the other forces in the organization that seek to play the espionage game, even if it puts the country at risk.
Directly at odds. I don’t believe you should encourage anyone to trust known espionage. If it’s good advice, someone else will say it too you can trust independently.
What the hell are they doing spying on american citizens? The people you’ll attract are the people attracted to abusing said power. Good luck weeding out the creeps; let’s hope only a few die as the result of beuracratic negligence.
> So you work for Lockheed or whatever and get most of the attributes of government employment.
Right, and the profits flow to a couple people who essentially own the contract. It’s essentially modern day aristocracy, except the contracts are more valuable to farm out to peasants than land is.
Let me know when an affordable arm board with ecc support comes along, wholesale or “call for price” not allowed. Because as it stands it might as well be sparc or mips in how accessible the hardware is.
Also, calling is easy. https://www.phoenicselectronics.com will sell you a Gigabyte MT30-GS2 (Cavium ThunderX 32-core) 1U system for around $2k. If you want to provide your own ATX case - much less.
Hardware is accessible, but there are a lot of big players buying things en masse, and the market isn’t oversaturated. This means long lead times and some price fluctuations. But things have been getting much better with every year (out of Arm servers’s whole 3 years of public availability). Definitely more accessible than anything OpenPower (which sadly will set you back the price of a small used Kia). The recent launch of third-gen Arm servers like the Qualcomm Centriq will lower the price for older kit.
Incidentally, still the only Cortex-A72 design out there. And for what you get, the A8040 and A7040-based solutions have a ridiculous low max power consumption of like 30-20 Watts.
Man i should get you to talk to my spam with that magic +5 robot charisma.
Unfortunately, it still won’t prevent my number from being spammed. There is no human to talk to. Any indication you are alive is a confirmation your phone number is worth calling. The only thing you can do to convince them is not answer or somehow communicate a likely disconnection from a human.
So have you tried the approach I am advocating for a meaningful amount of time, say a week or two, or are you just sure that it won't work and thus avoid it because you are worried that you will do things like confirm you are worth calling?
