jonknee

There are tons of components in Apple's devices and only a few Apple logos. If you get an order for 70 million higher end tiny lenses you can narrow down the list of potential customers pretty quickly, no logos needed.

When you're ordering in Apple like volumes it has to be very difficult to hide.

Birthrates are also declining outside of cities at similar rates [1]. It may be a little more apparent in expensive cities because childless people tend to not like suburbs and choose density if they can afford it, but I don't think cities are the root cause.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertilit...

CNBC had a similar piece last week with more detail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYh1KTfydvU

I wonder if they sold more 1.5TB MBAs or gold watches?

They'll be in for a rude awakening when they find out other fulfillment center jobs are just as hard and pay equal or less.

Yea so that way they'll have no jobs at all!

Interesting, I have never seen that and even tried in an Incognito tab and with Safari which I don't use regularly.

It could also just not be true? No one but Netflix knows what shows their subscribers like and they're currently spending money like a drunken sailor so I'm hard pressed to believe any argument about paying less for their work. The author is not in the industry and has no access to what Netflix viewers are watching, how much Netflix pays or how much competitors of Netflix pay. What we do know is more shows are being made which means more jobs.

I bet it's more like Netflix realized what viewers have: the first few seasons are almost always the best. Perhaps it's not "straightforward market power exploitation" and it's just that later seasons from legacy players were renewed out of habit, time slots and pre sold ad sales and not because of quality?

Those little tricks to make things easier is why it's popular and why they're currently valued at $25,000,000,000 (though that should go down quite a bit tomorrow, still just an insane number for a company with $8m in annual profits).

Fascinating that people like paying less for things.

Well they actually do this in Seattle and it seems to work out. A fixed route is also not a bad thing (see bus rapid transit) and can encourage private development.

But in the real world he is definitely not the wealthiest person in the world.

Steve let some awful designs out. Remember the hockey puck mouse? He even released his own awful expensive failure of a speaker.

But in the real world if a flight is $1 cheaper people will choose it regardless of the equipment. Airlines have vastly different safety records and it doesn't seem to change bookings (Allegiant is thriving despite ignoring maintenance).

> But there are also many examples of aircraft with terrible early safety records that never recovered from their bad start.

From Boeing? They have a history of sorting their shit out. Maybe this time is different, but I doubt it.

Well they also have lots of other mirrorless digital cameras, the newsworthy part here is that this one is a medium format camera (of which there aren't too many with or without mirrors, it's a very niche segment).

The kind that is maintained for 800 years? It's not like they built it exactly as it remained.

"all plants of the same stock of bamboo" makes it sound like this would indeed be from the same original plant.

> Even if a utility wants to retire an unprofitable coal unit, they might not be allowed to do so (by the state) if they're still paying it off. Let's also say they want to retire their entire fleet and go to renewables as you suggest. Will they be allowed to raise rates to pay for the millions of dollars necessary to do so?

...

Read what the OP said:

> if we actually had the help of the federal government (via grants, etc)

Conglomerates aren't new and aren't by themselves something to consider antitrust action over. Samsung does everything from highway construction to chip fabrication to making appliances.

They already have this, you can sign up today to deliver packages for Amazon.

https://flex.amazon.com

> I doubt Amazon would want to deal with all of those employees.

Amazon is the second largest private employer in the US, they seem to be fine with paychecks. I was just pointing out that buying Uber so you can deliver stuff is a phenomenally dumb idea, it would be cheaper to buy a company like FedEx that is valued by real assets and has proven capable at delivering stuff.

> With Uber they have a 24/7 flexible contractor workforce and physical interaction with millions of potential customers.

Amazon already does this and since Uber relies on contractors, they could sign up every driver in the country without paying a penny for Uber.

> Amazon could help them save a ton of money by moving their infrastructure onto AWS and reduce their marketing spend by promoting it on their properties.

Uber also already uses AWS. Getting paid for it seems better than spending billions to not get paid?

tl;dr I don't think Amazon buys either company, but there is no way in hell they buy Uber.

FedEx is still cheaper in terms of market cap than Uber, if Amazon was going to make any major acquisition to deliver parcels it surely would not be Uber.

Yes, if a dominant player disappears it will result in chaos. This is not unique to agriculture, imagine Boeing disappearing. Or Amazon (see ya later AWS!). The thing is big companies don't really disappear. They might go bankrupt, but even then the valuable bits will continue to be valuable and run by new management.

They could also stop spending so much?

It's nothing like the .com boom, CNBC was everywhere. Uber just happens to be really well known by everyone and is thus getting a lot of attention. Your hair dresser isn't likely talking about the Zoom IPO like they would have in 1999.

And some people don't so I provided the key parts. Surely someone else will appreciate it, but if not it doesn't in any way prevent you from reading each and every sentence.

I would also very much appreciate a summary if someone posted a 1000+ page piece to HN.

Well that was a huge waste of words.

> Mike looked back. He saw the pack getting closer to catching us. He panicked. He offered a deal.

> A rider who is weaker or at a tactical disadvantage will sometimes offer a promise not to sprint for the win if the stronger rider will promise to stop trying to get away.

> Near a sign that said there was one kilometer to go, we rounded a left hand turn. I looked back at Mike. I said to him, “You remember our deal?”

> But Mike can’t remember if he acknowledged the other racer. He can’t remember if he nodded yes, the way I remember it, or if he didn’t do anything at all. He remembers only that when he saw the finish line, a banner across the road at the top of a short abrupt hill, he suddenly was sprinting.

> And as Mike drove, he made a call he’d long wanted to make. Long needed to make. He said into the phone that he had that jersey with him. He said, I cheated. I’m sorry.

Why not? These are really expensive cars (especially Model S and X). An $80,000 car that has a life of 500,000 miles is $.16 a mile. This hypothetical NY to Miami trip is 1,300 miles one way. If you do no driving in Miami that's 2600 miles or $416 in depreciation if all miles counted the same (they don't, the first miles depreciate things a lot more). You can easily get a plane ticket for that, two if you look around.