#amazon aws

[tamapalace]

Tamagotchi Uni Uses AWS, Amazon Web Services

The Tamagotchi Uni is the first Tamagotchi to ever connect to Wi-Fi, which enables it to receive over the area updates, programing changes, and more. How exactly is this all being done by Bandai Japan? Well Bandai has built the Tamagotchi Uni on the Amazon Web Services platform (AWS).

The details of this are actually outlined on a recent article on the Amazon Web Services blog. The blog post provided a detailed view on how Tamagotchi Uni use AWS to achieve secure and reliable connectivity and quickly deliver new content updates without leaving customers waiting.It details that Bandai Co., Ltd., the company responsible for product development and sales, adopted AWS IoT to realize the concept of globally interconnected Tamagotchi, enabling users to interact with each other.

Bandai partnered with their cloud development partner, Phoenisys, Inc., to connect and manage million of Tamagotchi devices. One of the critical features was the over the air software updates which uses the jobs feature of AWS IoT Device Management to distribute the latest firmware across all Tamagotchi devices without causing any delays to customers.

To make Tamagotchi Uni IoT-enabled, Bandai establish the three key goals, which was implementing secure connections, scaling the load-balancing resources to accommodate over 1 million connections worldwide, and optimizing operational costs. The article even features the AWS architecture for the Tamagotchi Uni, which is interesting.

AWS IoT Core is used to manage the state of each Tamagotchi Uni device, which helps retrieve distributed items and content. AWS IoT Device Management is used to index the extensive Tamagotchi Uni fleet and create dynamic groups on the state of each device, facilitating efficient over-the-air (OTA) updates. FreeRTOS is used to minimize the amount of resources and code required to implement device-to-cloud communication for efficient system development. AWS Lambda is used to process tasks, delivering new announcements, and registering assets. Amazon DynamoDB is used as a fully managed, sever less, key-value noSQL database that runs high-performance applications at any scale. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is used for object storage service, each of these data stores are used to manage the various resources within Tamagotchi Uni. Lastly, Amazon Timestream is used to accumulate historical data of user’s actions like downloading items and additional content.

The article also details how Bandai is handling large scale firmware updates to Tamagotchi Uni devices which are executed at a rate of 1,000 units per hour which would have resulted in a delay for some devices. The team actually designed job delivery as a continuous job which automatically updates the devices under certain conditions. This is using fleet indexing that runs a query to see which devices meet the criteria for the update to be pushed out to it.

Lastly the article details how Bandai conducted system performance testing at a large-scale to emulate what it would be like after the device was released. They verified the smooth operation and performance of updates through their testing.

Be sure to check out the full article here on the Amazon AWS blog.

[techniktagebuch]

April 2023

Sechs Jahre Nichtstun, eine schöne Lösung für so viele Probleme

Vor fast genau sechs Jahren habe ich beschlossen, auch mal dieses Machine Learning auszuprobieren:

Gleich kann es losgehen, ich muss nur erst ��Getting Started before your first lesson” lesen. Von dort schickt man mich weiter zum AWS deep learning setup video. Das Video ist 13 Minuten lang.

(Es folgen Probleme und Verwicklungen beim Setup, die Details kann man hier nachlesen.)

In Minute 12:45 sagt der Erzähler im Video: “Ok! It looks like everything is set up correctly and you’re ready to start using it.” Aber statt 12 Minuten und 45 Sekunden sind zwei Wochen vergangen, mein anfänglicher Enthusiasmus ist aufgebraucht und mein Interesse an Deep Learning erlahmt. Ich bin nicht einmal bis “Lesson 1” gekommen.

Im April 2023 sagt Aleks, dass er gerade einen sehr guten Onlinekurs über Machine Learning macht. Ich frage nach der Adresse, und sie kommt mir bekannt vor. Es ist derselbe Kurs!

“Das Setup war kein Problem?”, frage ich. Nein, sagt Aleks, Sache von ein paar Minuten.

Ich sehe mir "Practical Deep Learning for Coders 2022” an. Man braucht für den Kurs bestimmte Hardware. Generell benötigt Machine Learning Grafikprozessoren wegen der höheren Rechenleistung, und aus der Einleitung zum Kurs weiß ich jetzt, dass die aktuell verfügbaren Tools Nvidia-Grafikprozessoren voraussetzen*. Den Zugang zu dieser Hardware soll man mieten. Das war vor sechs Jahren auch schon so, nur dass das Mieten der Rechenleistung bei Amazon Web Services eine komplizierte und teure Sache war.

* Ich hatte an dieser Stelle schon “Grafikkarten” geschrieben, dann kam es mir aber wieder so vor, als müsste ich meinen Sprachgebrauch renovieren. In meiner Vorstellung handelt es sich um eine Steckkarte, ungefähr 10 x 20 cm groß, die in ein PC-Gehäuse eingebaut wird. So war das, als ich meine Computer noch in Einzelteilen kaufte, aber das ist zwanzig Jahre her. Deshalb habe ich mich für das unverbindliche Wort “Grafikprozessoren” entschieden. Aber wenn ich nach nvidia gpu machine learning suche, sehe ich sperrige Dinge, die nicht weit von meiner Erinnerung an Grafikkarten entfernt sind. Die große Rechenleistung braucht auch große Kühlleistung, deshalb sind zwei Lüfter auf der ... naja, Karte. Die Ergebnisse der Bildersuche sind etwas uneindeutig, aber es kommt mir so vor, als enthielte das Rechenzentrum, dessen Leistung ich gleich nutzen werde, wahrscheinlich große Gehäuse, in denen große Grafikkarten drin sind, vom Format her immer noch ungefähr wie vor zwanzig Jahren. Nur viel schneller.

2018 brauchte man AWS schon nicht mehr für den fast.ai-Onlinekurs. Stattdessen konnte man sich die Arbeitsumgebung bei Paperspace einrichten, einem anderen Cloud-Anbieter. Die Anleitung von 2018 klingt so, als hätte meine Geduld wahrscheinlich auch dafür nicht gereicht.

In der Version von 2019 hat der Kurs auf Google Colab gesetzt. Das heißt, dass man Jupyter Notebooks auf Google-Servern laufen lassen kann und keine eigene Python-Installation braucht, nur einen Browser. Colab gab es 2017 noch nicht, es wurde erst ein paar Monate nach meinem Scheitern, im Herbst 2017, für die Öffentlichkeit freigegeben. Allerdings klingt die Anleitung von 2019 immer noch kompliziert.

2020 wirkt es schon schaffbarer.

Auch die aktuelle Version des Kurses basiert auf Colab. Man muss sich dafür einen Account bei Kaggle einrichten. Soweit ich es bisher verstehe, dient dieser Kaggle-Zugang dazu, die Sache kostenlos zu machen. Colab würde ansonsten Geld kosten, weniger als ich 2017 bezahlt habe, aber eben Geld. Oder vielleicht liegen auch die Jupyter Notebooks mit den Kurs-Übungen bei Kaggle, keine Ahnung, man braucht es eben. (Update: In Kapitel 2 des Kurses merke ich, dass es noch mal anders ist, man hätte sich zwischen Colab und Kaggle entscheiden können. Zusammengefasst: Ich verstehe es nicht.)

Ich lege mir einen Kaggle-Account an und betrachte das erste Python-Notebook des Kurses. Es beginnt mit einem Test, der nur überprüft, ob man überhaupt Rechenleistung bei Kaggle in Anspruch nehmen darf. Das geht nämlich erst, wenn man eine Telefonnummer eingetragen und einen Verifikationscode eingetragen hat, der an diese Telefonnummer verschickt wird. Aber das Problem ist Teil des Kursablaufs und deshalb genau an der Stelle erklärt, an der es auftritt. Es kostet mich fünf Minuten, die vor allem im Warten auf die Zustellung der SMS mit dem Code bestehen.

Danach geht es immer noch nicht. Beim Versuch, die ersten Zeilen Code laufen zu lassen, bekomme ich eine Fehlermeldung, die mir sagt, dass ich das Internet einschalten soll:

“STOP: No internet. Click ‘>|’ in top right and set ‘Internet’ switch to on.”

Ich betrachte lange alles, was mit “top right” gemeint sein könnte, aber da ist kein solcher Schalter. Schließlich google ich die Fehlermeldung. Andere haben das Problem auch schon gehabt und gelöst. Der Schalter sieht weder so aus wie in der Fehlermeldung angedeutet, noch befindet er sich oben rechts. Man muss ein paar Menüs ein- und ein anderes ausklappen, dann wird er unten rechts sichtbar.

Ich bin also im Internet und muss erst das Internet einschalten, damit ich Dinge im Internet machen kann.

Aleks meint, wenn ich ihm gestern dabei zugehört hätte, wie er eine Viertelstunde lang laut fluchte, hätte ich schon gewusst, wie es geht. Hatte ich aber nicht.

Nach dem Einschalten des Internets kann ich das erste Jupyter-Notebook des Kurses betrachten und selbst ausprobieren, ob es wohl schwer ist, Frösche von Katzen zu unterscheiden. Für die Lösung aller Startprobleme von 2017 habe ich zwei Wochen gebraucht. 2023 noch eine Viertelstunde, und ich bin zuversichtlich, dass man um 2025 direkt in den Kurs einsteigen können wird.

(Kathrin Passig)

[emacs-unofficial]

It is another day when I want to punch a UI developer who thought it would be a good idea to limit the width of popup boxes.

you can not even scroll more than a few pixels, because the text itself is cut off...

why put the text there in the first place...

There are Policy Names, that barely fit the popup in the first place:

This is the first time in years that I want to do something in AWS. And only because some Infrastructure-As-Code coursebook uses AWS for practice examples. I now remember why I avoid big public clouds. You can barely do anything without spending a few days of just learning the basics.

I will now simply give my API User Full Access, security be damned.

[exeton]

Amazon takes minority share in ChatGPT rival Anthropic AI

Amazon Invests in Anthropic AI

Amazon fulfills its $4-billion investment commitment to Anthropic AI, securing a minority ownership stake in the startup and providing AWS cloud services.

Initial Investment and Recent Announcement

Amazon initially committed $4 billion to Anthropic, with an initial investment of $1.25 billion last September. The recent announcement confirms an additional investment of $2.75 billion, cementing Amazon’s position as a minority owner in Anthropic.

About Anthropic AI

Anthropic AI, founded in 2021 by former members of OpenAI, has emerged as a significant player in the AI landscape. The company has developed its own AI chatbot named Claude, which competes with ChatGPT, among others. In a notable advancement, Anthropic released Claude 3 in early March, enhancing its capabilities to include image analysis.

Collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon disclosed that Anthropic has chosen AWS as its primary cloud provider for critical operations, including safety research and the development of foundational models. Anthropic will leverage AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips for building, training, and deploying future AI models.

Impact on Customers

Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS’s vice president of data and AI, expressed confidence in the collaboration, highlighting its potential to enhance customer experiences. He emphasized the significance of generative AI as a transformative technology in today’s landscape.

Amazon Q: AI Assistant for Businesses

In addition to its investments in Anthropic AI, Amazon introduced Amazon Q, an AI-powered assistant tailored for business use. Amazon Q’s capabilities include problem-solving, content creation, and more, positioning it as a versatile tool for businesses.

Competition and Legal Challenges

Amazon faces competition in the AI space, with Google also investing in Anthropic AI. Legal battles, including copyright and data infringement disputes, have arisen, reflecting the complexities of AI development. Anthropic addressed concerns by updating its commercial terms of service, emphasizing data protection and copyright compliance.

In conclusion, Amazon’s investment in Anthropic AI signifies its commitment to advancing AI technologies and enhancing customer experiences. The collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic, coupled with the introduction of Amazon Q, underscores the dynamic evolution of AI in business contexts.

Muhammad Hussnain Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Linkedin | Youtube

[jadeannbyrne]

Of Midnight Oil and Modern Marvels: Jade's Fuel-Filled Odyssey

In the quiet hours of the night, beneath the fluorescent glow of the gas station canopy, my story intertwines with the hum of the American heartland. As a nocturnal guardian of the pumps during my college years, I shared whispers and laughter with the ghosts of Route 66, all while my heart pledged allegiance to the noble colors of Royal Dutch Shell. “Wij zijn meer dan vrienden, we zijn familie,”…

[virtualizationhowto]

ECS Anywhere: Run AWS Containers on your Home Server On-premises!

ECS Anywhere: Run AWS Containers on your Home Server On-premises! @vexpert #vmwarecommunities #ecsanywhere #cloudcontainers #homeserver #homelab #kubernetes #docker #cloudcontrolplane #virtualization #virtualizationhowto #vhtforums #selfhosted #amazonecs

So many services are either “cloud only” or “only on-premises” technologies. However, what if you wanted a blend of both running in your home lab or in production when it comes to running your containers? If you haven’t heard about it before, AWS ECS Anywhere is just such a service that allows you to house the management plane for your containers in the AWS cloud while you have the actual…

[mariasuzie23]

DevOps services were integrated by DataEdgeUSA to expedite business processes and ensure timely delivery of high-quality software. Our extensive knowledge and industry experience enable us to assist businesses in developing and deploying dependable software applications on the Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud platforms. 

[digitalbestacc]

[bestcloudshop]

Buy Amazon AWS Accounts

If you’re looking for buy Amazon AWS accounts, we have a wide selection of Amazon AWS accounts for sale at the best prices. Spice up your cloud computing experience and explore a world of possibilities with our selection of verified AWS accounts for sale! Whether you’re new to the Amazon Web Services platform or already an experienced user, we’ve got options that can meet your needs. Get ready to hit the clouds running

[adhdandcomics]

whoever needs to hear this: if you got a disability, if you don’t know if you have something, if you ever think “it’s not that bad” if you have a thing about guilt, if you’re ill, Anything: listen. it is okay to throw things away.

you can throw it away. if it sucks and it stresses you the fuck out, if you just “need the right time to fix it” for the past 3 months. or years. if you loved it once upon a time but it makes you feel kinda weird and guilty now. if it’s a jacket youve reaaaally been meaning to mend and then donate. a jar of sauce that “all you have to do” is clean out to recycle but it’s been a week and now there’s a small colony growing in it. slowly shredding to bits fabric scraps you plan to use to fix something. busted picture frame. cracked mug. old shoes. extra box. an entire pack of granola bars that you hate so much but don’t want to waste.

life is already so goddamn difficult for us. i know you still care about recycling and the environment and sustainability. but it’s okay, i promise. sometimes you have to take care of your space. sometimes you have to cut your losses so you can actually have energy to recycle the next thing. get rid of the old shirt before it turns into a tornado pile of guilt under the bed. you’re not a bad person. you can throw this one away.

[cloud-in-depth]

Amazon AWS Tutorial | Learn AWS IAM Security | Securing Identity & Access Management in AWS - Rule#2

Hello everyone, hope you all are doing great! In this video, we are going to learn about Securing Identity & Access Management in AWS - Rule#2. Do you know? In AWS security, what is the most important user account? the answer is the root user. Because the root user is the user who owns the AWS account.

Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel - https://www.youtube.com/@cloudindepth. so that you don't miss any latest informative videos.

Visit our website - https://www.cloudindepth.com/

Follow me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aseefahmed

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon’s financial shell game let it create an “impossible” monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.

Pro-monopoly economists embody Ely Devons's famous aphorism that "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Rather than using the way the world actually works as their starting point for how to think about it, they build elaborate models out of abstract principles like "rational actors." The resulting mathematical models are so abstractly elegant that it's easy to forget that they're just imaginative exercises, disconnected from reality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

These models predicted that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power. Even if they became a monopoly – in the sense of dominating sales of various kinds of goods – the company still wouldn't get monopoly power.

For example, if Amazon tried to take over a category by selling goods below cost ("predatory pricing"), then rivals could just wait until the company got tired of losing money and put prices back up, and then those rivals could go back to competing. And if Amazon tried to keep the loss-leader going indefinitely by "cross-subsidizing" the losses with high-margin profits from some other part of its business, rivals could sell those high margin goods at a lower margin, which would lure away Amazon customers and cut the supply lines for the price war it was fighting with its discounted products.

That's what the model predicted, but it's not what happened in the real world. In the real world, Amazon was able use its access to the capital markets to embark on scorched-earth predatory pricing campaigns. When diapers.com refused to sell out to Amazon, the company casually committed $100m to selling diapers below cost. Diapers.com went bust, Amazon bought it for pennies on the dollar and shut it down:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18563379/amazon-predatory-pricing-antitrust-law

Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent.

Now, not everyone shared the antitrust establishment's confidence that Amazon couldn't create a durable monopoly with market power. In 2017, Lina Khan – then a third year law student – published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a landmark paper arguing that Amazon had all the tools it needed to amass monopoly power:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Today, Khan is chair of the FTC, and has brought a case against Amazon that builds on some of the theories from that paper. One outcome of that suit is an unprecedented look at Amazon's internal operations. But, as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Stacy Mitchell describes in a piece for The Atlantic, key pieces of information have been totally redacted in the court exhibits:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/amazon-profits-antitrust-ftc/677580/

The most important missing datum: how much money Amazon makes from each of its lines of business. Amazon's own story is that it basically breaks even on its retail operation, and keeps the whole business afloat with profits from its AWS cloud computing division. This is an important narrative, because if it's true, then Amazon can't be forcing up retail prices, which is the crux of the FTC's case against the company.

Here's what we know for sure about Amazon's retail business. First: merchants can't live without Amazon. The majority of US households have Prime, and 90% of Prime households start their ecommerce searches on Amazon; if they find what they're looking for, they buy it and stop. Thus, merchants who don't sell on Amazon just don't sell. This is called "monopsony power" and it's a lot easier to maintain than monopoly power. For most manufacturers, a 10% overnight drop in sales is a catastrophe, so a retailer that commands even a 10% market-share can extract huge concessions from its suppliers. Amazon's share of most categories of goods is a lot higher than 10%!

What kind of monopsony power does Amazon wield? Well, for one thing, it is able to levy a huge tax on its sellers. Add up all the junk-fees Amazon charges its platform sellers and it comes out to 45-51%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Competitive businesses just don't have 45% margins! No one can afford to kick that much back to Amazon. What is a merchant to do? Sell on Amazon and you lose money on every sale. Don't sell on Amazon and you don't get any business.

The only answer: raise prices on Amazon. After all, Prime customers – the majority of Amazon's retail business – don't shop for competitive prices. If Amazon wants a 45% vig, you can raise your Amazon prices by a third and just about break even.

But Amazon is wise to that: they have a "most favored nation" rule that punishes suppliers who sell goods more cheaply in rival stores, or even on their own site. The punishments vary, from banishing your products to page ten million of search-results to simply kicking you off the platform. With publishers, Amazon reserves the right to lower the prices they set when listing their books, to match the lowest price on the web, and paying publishers less for each sale.

That means that suppliers who sell on Amazon (which is anyone who wants to stay in business) have to dramatically hike their prices on Amazon, and when they do, they also have to hike their prices everywhere else (no wonder Prime customers don't bother to search elsewhere for a better deal!).

Now, Amazon says this is all wrong. That 45-51% vig they claim from business customers is barely enough to break even. The company's profits – they insist – come from selling AWS cloud service. The retail operation is just a public service they provide to us with cross-subsidy from those fat AWS margins.

This is a hell of a claim. Last year, Amazon raked in $130 billion in seller fees. In other words: they booked more revenue from junk fees than Bank of America made through its whole operation. Amazon's junk fees add up to more than all of Meta's revenues:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/AMZN-Q4-2023-Earnings-Release.pdf

Amazon claims that none of this is profit – it's just covering their operating expenses. According to Amazon, its non-AWS units combined have a one percent profit margin.

Now, this is an eye-popping claim indeed. Amazon is a public company, which means that it has to make thorough quarterly and annual financial disclosures breaking down its profit and loss. You'd think that somewhere in those disclosures, we'd find some details.

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Amazon's disclosures do not break out profits and losses by segment. SEC rules actually require the company to make these per-segment disclosures:

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3524&context=lawreview#:~:text=If%20a%20company%20has%20more,income%20taxes%20and%20extraordinary%20items.

That rule was enacted in 1966, out of concern that companies could use cross-subsidies to fund predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices. But over the years, the SEC just…stopped enforcing the rule. Companies have "near total managerial discretion" to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2021/dec/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragons

As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant interest in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway.

Recall that there is one category of data from the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon that has been completely redacted. One guess which category that is! Yup, the profit-and-loss for its retail operation and other lines of business.

These redactions are the judge's fault, but the real fault lies with the SEC. Amazon is a public company. In exchange for access to the capital markets, it owes the public certain disclosures, which are set out in the SEC's rulebook. The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public. As Mitchell says, SEC chairman Gary Gensler should adopt "new rules that more concretely define what qualifies as a segment and remove the discretion given to executives."

Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profits are the defining characteristic of a capitalist economy; rents are the defining characteristic of feudalism. Amazon looks like a bazaar where thousands of merchants offer goods for sale to the public, but look harder and you discover that all those stallholders are totally controlled by Amazon. Amazon decides what goods they can sell, how much they cost, and whether a customer ever sees them. And then Amazon takes $0.45-51 out of every dollar. Amazon's "marketplace" isn't like a flea market, it's more like the interconnected shops on Disneyland's Main Street, USA: the sign over the door might say "20th Century Music Company" or "Emporium," but they're all just one store, run by one company.

And because Amazon has so much control over its sellers, it is able to exercise power over its buyers. Amazon's search results push down the best deals on the platform and promote results from more expensive, lower-quality items whose sellers have paid a fortune for an "ad" (not really an ad, but rather the top spot in search listings):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

This is "Amazon's pricing paradox." Amazon can claim that it offers low-priced, high-quality goods on the platform, but it makes $38b/year pushing those good deals way, way down in its search results. The top result for your Amazon search averages 29% more expensive than the best deal Amazon offers. Buy something from those first four spots and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average, you need to pick the seventeenth item on the search results page to get the best deal:

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/

For 40 years, pro-monopoly economists claimed that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power over buyers and sellers. Today, Amazon exercises that power so thoroughly that its junk-fee revenues alone exceed the total revenues of Bank of America. Amazon's story – that these fees barely stretch to covering its costs – assumes a nearly inconceivable level of credulity in its audience. Regrettably – for the human race – there is a cohort of senior, highly respected economists who possess this degree of credulity and more.

Of course, there's an easy way to settle the argument: Amazon could just comply with SEC regs and break out its P&L for its e-commerce operation. I assure you, they're not hiding this data because they think you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do and they don't want to spoil the moment.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Image: Doc Searls (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4863121221/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[homelanderpilled]

can’t even focus on homelander this season because firecracker is so hot

[optogeneticist-nsfw]

It sucks that your pixiv was taken down hope that you can use another site/app for all of your beautiful art!!! maybe discord or dropbox?

No worries! I've mirrored everything to AO3 so things can be properly age-restricted/tagged/etc (I really liked that Pixiv had mature content settings, so I was looking for that in a replacement.) I'm using an AWS S3 bucket for hosting (it's linked in all the works, and there's a simple navigation system in place if you want to poke around.)

[sarafangirlart]

Haepheastus having proto robot servants is undertapped aspect of his characters, especially if you want to treat his creations like his daughters. And in my opinion, this actually could work in Wonder Woman who uses a lot of greek mythology characters. One of them could become an Amazon and fight with wonder woman.

I haven’t watched this show but I really dig Hephaestus’s personality, he’s actually smart and capable like in mythology (unlike his GOW version). Like I can genuinely imagine this version humiliating and divorcing Aphrodite and then marrying Aglaia.

I don’t really care for Wonder Woman’s interpretation of mythology, the goddesses are too girlbossyfied and there is that one comic that portrays the Amazons as rapists even tho it’s ironically not how it is in mythology despite how ppl expect it to be, also with Ares being cartoonishly evil despite being the father of the Amazons (yeah believe it or not just bc I don’t like ppl woobifying him doesn’t mean I like villainizing him) tho robot amazons would be cool af.

[the-labyrinth-of-me]

Woke up this morning and went to the kitchen to choose what to have for breakfast. As I opened the kitchen cabinet, I was greeted by five little yellow rubber ducks sitting next to each other. I raised a brow. I closed the cabinet. "What about those ducks?", I asked my husband. "We gotta look up the number of the FBC."

"What ducks?", my husband asked.

"Those ducks?" I opened the cabinet.

"I don't see any ducks", he said and left the kitchen.

Very funny. And I thought I was the one still tired.

Went to the bathroom then where another rubber duck sat on the toilet's lid. Okay, no morning leak for me then.

Another set of ducks on the dining table and - of course - around my little Alan Wake cardboard cutout. I suspected he had something to do with this. But I didn't hear any typewriter keys clacking. I don't even have a typewriter. I got nervous. More and more ducks appeared. I tried to ignore them as best I could and went on with my business to get ready for work, but that uneasy feeling wouldn't go away. My husband left the house to go to work, still unsuspecting. I, however, knew. And I still have goosebumps as I write this. I knew what this was. The Federal Bureau of Control called this an AWE, an Altered World Event. I stood there, deciding what to do. The Alan Wake cutout stared back at me, and he seemed to be uneasy as well.

I wouldn't let my house be taken over by those stupid ducks.

I put gloves on and avoided direct eye contact with them, and put them in a box. One, however, escaped with the speed of light. I jumped. It was gone. I'm too afraid to look for it. I still wait for the FBC to call me. I hope they're not under another lockdown.