amazon

Ars Technica
Everett's post says that "the site will continue to operate as it was before, with all editorial coverage and site features remaining the same, and all historical content accessible." The availability of that historical content was a major concern for many readers—high-end cameras have a long shelf life, and DPReview was an important content repository for people trying to navigate the used camera market. Everett did note that DPReview user accounts had been transferred to Gear Patrol and would be subject to Gear Patrol's terms of service going forward.
Oh good, we can have nice things again. I read their gear reviews all the time, glad it's going to survive after all.
Ars Technica
In a press release, the FTC said that "Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees' and contractors' access to its customers' videos, using customer videos to train algorithms, among other purposes, without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards." In one case, an employee "viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms," the FTC said.
This is awful and why I try not to buy surveillance devices. It’s difficult not to send data out of your house but I hope not being connected to the Internet becomes a selling point for electronics eventually.
DPReview
"After nearly 25 years of operation, DPReview will be closing in the near future. This difficult decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier this year."
This is a bummer. And it's a good reminder to support your favorite indie websites so they can stay independent. Has anyone checked on Goodreads?
Ben Adam
"The most surprising thing I encountered when joining was how manual most processes are. It blew my mind how many business critical processes were managed with excel spreadsheets being shared via email chains. It is incredible how flexible and effective Excel is for such a wide variety of use-cases."
Interesting look inside Amazon’s organization and development processes.
VICE
“For small and medium companies, I generally recommend cloud services, because they don't have the people or the skills to run their own systems as securely,” Bellovin said. “But there are real but imponderable risks to one company controlling so much of the net.”
Nope, worth pondering!
New York Times
"They also began raising concerns about safety in Amazon’s warehouses at the start of the pandemic. Amazon fired Ms. Costa and Ms. Cunningham last April, not long after their group had announced an internal event for warehouse workers to speak to tech employees about their workplace conditions."
This is powerful. When employees speak to each other it can lead to realizing that they have common interests--even when they work in different parts of the organization that don't normally interact. Firing people advocating for safety during a pandemic is a bad look.
Washington Post
"But the staggering rise in their gains contrasts with the economic devastation of millions of Americans, amid soaring unemployment and evictions, drawing attention to issues of inequality and distribution of wealth. In fact, the $360 billion increase in top billionaire wealth approaches the $410 billion the U.S. government is spending on the latest round of $1,400 stimulus checks, passed with the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package this week."
huh, it's almost like they should pay more taxes to help out the struggling country their businesses operate in.
Underunderstood
Great podcast episode about those mystery Chinese seeds that people were getting in the mail a while back. It's a good story that touches on our collective paranoid psychology, Amazon scams, government agencies, international shipping, and the weight of seeds.
cnbc
"The staff found, after a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, that the four businesses enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in by Congress and enforcers."
Findings! This all sounds promising but I’m skeptical that we’ll see meaningful change. That monopoly power has been very useful to the government.
tbray.org
"Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."
Tech pioneer Tim Bray leaves Amazon over warehouse worker firings.
mkorostoff.github.io
Interesting visualization of the disparity between the ultra-rich and others. This might indicate a problem with the system?
ampr.org ampr.org
This is a great story about some amateur radio folks who acquired a block of IP addresses in the early internet days and recently sold them to Amazon for millions of dollars. Their plan:
"It is our intention to grant funds across all reaches of the educational, research, and development spectrum, with awards being made to support qualified organizations whose programs could well serve to advance the art of digital communication, with special emphasis on that which would benefit Amateur Radio."
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