7 ms·

Mr. Amazon Steps Out

93 points by SREinSF 9y ago

olfactory 9y ago
It's nice to see some image reparation work going on for Jeff. I've been finding all of the pictures of him that are meant to evoke Voldemort quite irritating. Aside from his decision to buy the WaPo, I think he's shown himself to be one of the few people who really understands long term bets. So while Google keeps trying to make Android devices sell for iPhone prices, Amazon just sold me a Kindle Fire for $25 that outperforms my Nexus 7. The impact of Bezos' infrastructure vision is likely to put Google and Apple out of business in the next few decades. He's playing a much more long-term strategy and he's not afraid to take big risks.
- electrograv 9y ago
  > I've been finding all of the pictures of him that are meant to evoke Voldemort quite irritating. This just made me wonder if there's any media or perceptive bias against bald people in leadership positions. It seems Steve Ballmer and Jeff Bezos for example are/were criticized disproportionately more than Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, for example, even though all of these people have plenty of reasons to be disliked.
  - olfactory 9y ago
    > media or perceptive bias against bald people in leadership positions Great question. I think there must be. Musk has had substantial hair regrowth/replacement work done: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-grow-his-hair-back https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-grow-his-hair-back
  - Buldak 9y ago
    Was Steve Jobs not bald? A sorites paradox for tech magnates.
    - leggomylibro 9y ago
      Steve Jobs had the turtleneck, though. And spectacles.
    - electrograv 9y ago
      Even in the later stages of Steve Jobs' life, he was not fully "bald" (as is Bezos or Ballmer) even though he appeared to be losing his hair. For example: http://community.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-resigns-apple.jpeg http://community.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/... And the Steve Jobs of early and mid Apple was definitely not even close to bald: http://www.designbolts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/steve-jobs-in-suit1.jpg http://www.designbolts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/steve-...
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - archagon 9y ago
    Lex Luthor did pretty well for himself!
  - MarkMc 9y ago
    Well Steve Ballmer deserved to be more heavily criticized - any random MBA graduate would have produced as much value as Ballmer in the same position. That's not true of the others.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  How is the processor in the Kindle Fire these days? I bought one a couple years ago and found it to be very slow (the then-current Galaxy was 20x as fast for the JS that I was testing).
  - PuffinBlue 9y ago
    Still terrible. Just bought two. Both are slow and absolutely riddled with software bugs. If I didn't get them on a deal day for £29 they'd be going back. Ive never seen so many bugs. Both pads suffer from things like kids profiles having to redownload (or do something) to every app everytime you open it. App crashes and slow launches every time it gets used (around 30 second launch times on both pads) Downloads simply do not get save to SD card despite clear settings saying otherwise. Accelerometer freezes. There's some kind of race condition in the app store so even though I've disabled it with parental controls sometimes you can get it to download an app without password. One nice bug is that if you set up a kid profile it wont show ads on the lock screen. A fun bug is that if you delete the kids profile, it'll not actually remove the profile data, it just stays on disc taking up space. You have to reset the device to factory settings, but if you dont and you just leave the kids profile deleted it still thinks ones on there and doesn't show ads. That's not all the stuff I've run into (initial setup had all sorts of other issues) but those are just of the top of my head.
    - olfactory 9y ago
      The one I got does not have a slot for an external SD card, so I'm not sure if we are using the same version. The one I bought (pre holiday sale for $25) is adequately fast. Launch times are a bit slow, but it was $25 and once an app, book, or web page is launched/loaded the scrolling and interactions work fine. The dropbox app, web browser, and chess apps I use all work nicely. I also use it for reading PDFs (articles, books) and books from the kindle store. I've noticed the kid profiles to be a bit buggy, but iOS and Android don't have comparable functionality, so I applaud Amazon for shipping what they have and continuing to iterate on it. Even with the bugs the experience of handing it to a kid is far better than Android or iOS. Mine installed several software updates in the first week after purchase, so it appears that there is active development going on. It's incredibly liberating when the device can be sold for such an aggressive price. I don't mind if a kid drops it on the floor, I carry it around in my pocket and don't worry about sitting on it, and when there is a faster hardware version I'll likely spring for a new one.
- geofft 9y ago
  > So while Google keeps trying to make Android devices sell for iPhone prices, Amazon just sold me a Kindle Fire for $25 that outperforms my Nexus 7. Isn't this being subsidized heavily by Amazon? Which might be your point about "long term bets," but I don't think it's unreasonable for Google's long-term bet to be that they want their hardware to be self-sustaining and not reliant on their other revenue (namely advertising). (Also, it looks like it's $50 on their website - did you get a refurbished one?)
  - dmix 9y ago
    It's a common misperception for the general public to value lower prices for higher end products and disregard how margins works in practice for 99% of the products they buy. Meanwhile they think nothing of paying large margins on sub $20 products such as T-shirts. But the differences go well beyond that. Luxury pricing is partially psychological but there is also real value in having a high margin product, allowing the company the luxury of hiring the best talent in the world and get the best supply line in the world, etc. Most mid-tier competitors are just mimicking the talent of top tier brands (otherwise pure low-end markets tend to stagnate as we've seen in many Japanese markets absent 'innovation'), and lowest tier is doing the best with what they can with the lowest quality talent + parts/supplies. Even if Apple doesn't remain the #1 brand I still hope there remains a luxury brand that is pushing the envelope of the tech and software progress the way they (and Google Pixel recently) has been. It doesn't benefit anyone when the only services or products left are on a death spiral towards low prices. That's a symptom of either a dead product/market or economy. Not to mention the plenty of other factors (sometimes irrational) involved in non-low-end pricing strategies. I haven't even touched on the more primary influences of high prices on preventing shortages and meeting consumer demand (which in absence is often the death knell of price capping critical markets such as food in socialist countries like Venezula). I tell everyone to read this book before pricing their products and buying into the myth of 'success' by trying to low-ball your prices, it's both bad for your business and also bad for the industry if you're one of the few offering the product (because you'll likely die before it becomes sustainable): https://www.amazon.com/Pricing-Profit-Command-Products-Services/dp/0814433006/ https://www.amazon.com/Pricing-Profit-Command-Products-Servi... TLDR: ignore the average persons comments on pricing, the lowest possible prices are not always the best prices, certainly for the entrepreneur/industry but also notably for the consumer/general economy as well - often for non-obvious reasons
ilamont 9y ago
I can only imagine the PR backstory for this puff piece.
- natalyarostova 9y ago
  Bezos is gearing up to be a major player in DC, and the times wrote that infamous piece on how bad Amazon is. Although that's sort of a conspiratorial theory, which may or may not be true.
  - rising-sky 9y ago
    It's also possible that he's now the richest person ever (not accounting for inflation), so it's a good time to write an article about such an individual. There are probably a bunch of similar articles on Bill Gates from his tenure.
    - adventured 9y ago
      Bezos has been quite elusive when it comes to publicity and interviews since the dotcom bubble era ended (until recently). He went from being quite public early on, to being very tamped down after, heavily limiting press access. Perhaps his experience during that era, what Amazon went through with the press after everything soured, caused that. From the mid 1980s forward, Gates was always in the public light, always prominent in the tech world in terms of press and interviews, always at CES and doing industry conferences, speeches, et al. He was Microsoft's chief promoter and an extremely public persona. Nearly the exact opposite of how Bezos was from ~2003-2015.
erikj 9y ago
The title made me think that Bezos leaves Amazon.
- voryzen 9y ago
  I read it as 'coming out'. Would not have been surprising, if it were true
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- crymearivernow 9y ago
  I also thought he was coming out a gay. Which wouldn't be too surprising given how much HN loves him.
astebbin 9y ago
I would love to see Jeff Bezos run for President in 2020. The trust he has built in the Amazon brand, the value he has placed upon investigative journalism and the survival of the free press, his deep knowledge of and interest in technology, his (presumed) familiarity with U.S. tax law, and the enormous success he’s achieved as a businessman would all work in his favor. I think Donald Trump senses this, and that’s why he singles Jeff out for criticism.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  Frankly I don’t want any inexperienced people running for President anymore. Would you hire someone who knows nothing about technology (aside from being a consumer of it) to be your CTO? Probably not... similarly, we should expect people to gain experience in government before they are considered suitable.
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    Bloomberg did pretty well for himself.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Mayor is probably easier to learn than President. If Bezos ran for mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington I would have more faith in himbeing President. Right now he leads an authoritarian organization (as most corporations are). the qualities to lead that may not translate into leading a democracy.
      - crazygringo 9y ago
        +1. As mayor, you're still fundamentally an executive, making practical decisions about city services, police, etc. It feels quite analagous to CEO. Whereas as US president, you're effectively leader of your political party, and your greatest achievements are essentially legislative even though you have no legislative power. It's a position of leadership through coalition-building, not execution through delegation and accountability. There's certainly overlap, but overall they feel like night and day.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sunstone 9y ago
Jeff who?
rectang 9y ago
Because we systematically impoverish students, we can only count on the largesse of the fabulously wealthy to rescue a lucky few.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  What would happen if everyone just... didn’t pay? What would a default of $1.5 trillion USD held by a government against millions of its citizens look like? Presumably the administrative costs of hunting down that much money from so many sources would be prohibitive. I’d guess that an attempt to garnish the wages of half the country would end in rioting, so that wouldn’t work well.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    "too big to fail" comes to mind. I'm not sure what it would look like in this case though. Probably a bunch of hand-waving, (forceably) forgiven debts.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > What would a default of $1.5 trillion USD held by a government against millions of its citizens look like? It wouldn't be half the country first of all. It's a small minority of adults having problems paying their student loans (mostly those that were wildly reckless in their easy borrowing). The median student loan is a mere ~$13,000, against a median full-time wage of nearly $50,000. If you took out $250,000 in student loans for a career path that pays $65,000 max per year, that's on you for being so financially foolish. It's not difficult to look around at cost effective alternatives to such a crazy student debt load. You can easily go to extremely high quality in-state public universities at a modest cost. A four year degree in the US will get you a $60,000 salary on average right out of school. The typical person holding the median full-time job making $50,000, does not even have a four year degree. After five to seven years in the job market, your income is going to be $75,000 or more. You can do better than that in engineering fields. The unemployment rate with a four year degree, is typically about half the national U3 level, you practically can't not be employed. Here's the fact of the matter: US wages are so extraordinarily high, a four year degree is a steal, just so long as you don't do something crazy like take on $200k in debt for a path that can never pay a good wage. Go to an in-state public university, pay $10,000 to $15,000 per year net (a part-time job, as was very common in decades past, is still a good idea, along with seeking grants), get a job making $60,000 and work your income up to closer to $75,000 to $90,000 over time. That student debt becomes meaningless. It is not complex.
staunch 9y ago
You can learn far more about Jeff Bezos from watching a few long interviews. He recently did a very interesting interview with his brother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq89wYzOjfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq89wYzOjfs He's very much the kind of person you want in the supremely high position that he's found himself in. He's basically another Bill Gates but more upbeat and creative.
- stnmtn 9y ago
  This is great and all, but I don't want any person making the amount of money Bezos is making. He makes more in 5 days than most people make in 5 lifetimes. He wields immense power that will only get stronger as corporate consolidation increases. For example, in the race for states to try to get Amazon's HQ2 in their city, the future of corporate power is so apparent and scary. One city offered that all employees of Amazon would just pay their taxes directly to Amazon instead of to the state to try to entice Amazon. That's something that happens in cyberpunk like Snow Crash, and it's already beginning to happen in real life. We just don't pay that much attention to it because the companies don't have scary names like the Tyrell Corporation, they're instead fun things like Amazon, Disney, Google; and being okay with the massive power Bezos wields because he's a nice guy seems kind of short-sighted to me
littlepinkpill 9y ago
"[...]Mr. Bezos has become a bête noire for President Trump, who repeatedly singles out him and Amazon for scorn on Twitter." Smarter, more creative, and richer. I'm sure that rankles. And anyone with a project like Blue Origin gets an entire colony-of-orangutans-thumbs up.

93 points by SREinSF 9y ago

It's nice to see some image reparation work going on for Jeff. I've been finding all of the pictures of him that are meant to evoke Voldemort quite irritating. Aside from his decision to buy the WaPo, I think he's shown himself to be one of the few people who really understands long term bets. So while Google keeps trying to make Android devices sell for iPhone prices, Amazon just sold me a Kindle Fire for $25 that outperforms my Nexus 7. The impact of Bezos' infrastructure vision is likely to put Google and Apple out of business in the next few decades. He's playing a much more long-term strategy and he's not afraid to take big risks.

electrograv 9y ago
> I've been finding all of the pictures of him that are meant to evoke Voldemort quite irritating. This just made me wonder if there's any media or perceptive bias against bald people in leadership positions. It seems Steve Ballmer and Jeff Bezos for example are/were criticized disproportionately more than Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, for example, even though all of these people have plenty of reasons to be disliked.
- olfactory 9y ago
  > media or perceptive bias against bald people in leadership positions Great question. I think there must be. Musk has had substantial hair regrowth/replacement work done: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-grow-his-hair-back https://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-grow-his-hair-back
- Buldak 9y ago
  Was Steve Jobs not bald? A sorites paradox for tech magnates.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    Steve Jobs had the turtleneck, though. And spectacles.
  - electrograv 9y ago
    Even in the later stages of Steve Jobs' life, he was not fully "bald" (as is Bezos or Ballmer) even though he appeared to be losing his hair. For example: http://community.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-resigns-apple.jpeg http://community.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/... And the Steve Jobs of early and mid Apple was definitely not even close to bald: http://www.designbolts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/steve-jobs-in-suit1.jpg http://www.designbolts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/steve-...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- archagon 9y ago
  Lex Luthor did pretty well for himself!
- MarkMc 9y ago
  Well Steve Ballmer deserved to be more heavily criticized - any random MBA graduate would have produced as much value as Ballmer in the same position. That's not true of the others.
gnicholas 9y ago
How is the processor in the Kindle Fire these days? I bought one a couple years ago and found it to be very slow (the then-current Galaxy was 20x as fast for the JS that I was testing).
- PuffinBlue 9y ago
  Still terrible. Just bought two. Both are slow and absolutely riddled with software bugs. If I didn't get them on a deal day for £29 they'd be going back. Ive never seen so many bugs. Both pads suffer from things like kids profiles having to redownload (or do something) to every app everytime you open it. App crashes and slow launches every time it gets used (around 30 second launch times on both pads) Downloads simply do not get save to SD card despite clear settings saying otherwise. Accelerometer freezes. There's some kind of race condition in the app store so even though I've disabled it with parental controls sometimes you can get it to download an app without password. One nice bug is that if you set up a kid profile it wont show ads on the lock screen. A fun bug is that if you delete the kids profile, it'll not actually remove the profile data, it just stays on disc taking up space. You have to reset the device to factory settings, but if you dont and you just leave the kids profile deleted it still thinks ones on there and doesn't show ads. That's not all the stuff I've run into (initial setup had all sorts of other issues) but those are just of the top of my head.
  - olfactory 9y ago
    The one I got does not have a slot for an external SD card, so I'm not sure if we are using the same version. The one I bought (pre holiday sale for $25) is adequately fast. Launch times are a bit slow, but it was $25 and once an app, book, or web page is launched/loaded the scrolling and interactions work fine. The dropbox app, web browser, and chess apps I use all work nicely. I also use it for reading PDFs (articles, books) and books from the kindle store. I've noticed the kid profiles to be a bit buggy, but iOS and Android don't have comparable functionality, so I applaud Amazon for shipping what they have and continuing to iterate on it. Even with the bugs the experience of handing it to a kid is far better than Android or iOS. Mine installed several software updates in the first week after purchase, so it appears that there is active development going on. It's incredibly liberating when the device can be sold for such an aggressive price. I don't mind if a kid drops it on the floor, I carry it around in my pocket and don't worry about sitting on it, and when there is a faster hardware version I'll likely spring for a new one.
geofft 9y ago
> So while Google keeps trying to make Android devices sell for iPhone prices, Amazon just sold me a Kindle Fire for $25 that outperforms my Nexus 7. Isn't this being subsidized heavily by Amazon? Which might be your point about "long term bets," but I don't think it's unreasonable for Google's long-term bet to be that they want their hardware to be self-sustaining and not reliant on their other revenue (namely advertising). (Also, it looks like it's $50 on their website - did you get a refurbished one?)
- dmix 9y ago
  It's a common misperception for the general public to value lower prices for higher end products and disregard how margins works in practice for 99% of the products they buy. Meanwhile they think nothing of paying large margins on sub $20 products such as T-shirts. But the differences go well beyond that. Luxury pricing is partially psychological but there is also real value in having a high margin product, allowing the company the luxury of hiring the best talent in the world and get the best supply line in the world, etc. Most mid-tier competitors are just mimicking the talent of top tier brands (otherwise pure low-end markets tend to stagnate as we've seen in many Japanese markets absent 'innovation'), and lowest tier is doing the best with what they can with the lowest quality talent + parts/supplies. Even if Apple doesn't remain the #1 brand I still hope there remains a luxury brand that is pushing the envelope of the tech and software progress the way they (and Google Pixel recently) has been. It doesn't benefit anyone when the only services or products left are on a death spiral towards low prices. That's a symptom of either a dead product/market or economy. Not to mention the plenty of other factors (sometimes irrational) involved in non-low-end pricing strategies. I haven't even touched on the more primary influences of high prices on preventing shortages and meeting consumer demand (which in absence is often the death knell of price capping critical markets such as food in socialist countries like Venezula). I tell everyone to read this book before pricing their products and buying into the myth of 'success' by trying to low-ball your prices, it's both bad for your business and also bad for the industry if you're one of the few offering the product (because you'll likely die before it becomes sustainable): https://www.amazon.com/Pricing-Profit-Command-Products-Services/dp/0814433006/ https://www.amazon.com/Pricing-Profit-Command-Products-Servi... TLDR: ignore the average persons comments on pricing, the lowest possible prices are not always the best prices, certainly for the entrepreneur/industry but also notably for the consumer/general economy as well - often for non-obvious reasons

ilamont 9y ago

I can only imagine the PR backstory for this puff piece.

natalyarostova 9y ago
Bezos is gearing up to be a major player in DC, and the times wrote that infamous piece on how bad Amazon is. Although that's sort of a conspiratorial theory, which may or may not be true.
- rising-sky 9y ago
  It's also possible that he's now the richest person ever (not accounting for inflation), so it's a good time to write an article about such an individual. There are probably a bunch of similar articles on Bill Gates from his tenure.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Bezos has been quite elusive when it comes to publicity and interviews since the dotcom bubble era ended (until recently). He went from being quite public early on, to being very tamped down after, heavily limiting press access. Perhaps his experience during that era, what Amazon went through with the press after everything soured, caused that. From the mid 1980s forward, Gates was always in the public light, always prominent in the tech world in terms of press and interviews, always at CES and doing industry conferences, speeches, et al. He was Microsoft's chief promoter and an extremely public persona. Nearly the exact opposite of how Bezos was from ~2003-2015.

erikj 9y ago

The title made me think that Bezos leaves Amazon.

voryzen 9y ago
I read it as 'coming out'. Would not have been surprising, if it were true
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
crymearivernow 9y ago
I also thought he was coming out a gay. Which wouldn't be too surprising given how much HN loves him.

astebbin 9y ago

I would love to see Jeff Bezos run for President in 2020. The trust he has built in the Amazon brand, the value he has placed upon investigative journalism and the survival of the free press, his deep knowledge of and interest in technology, his (presumed) familiarity with U.S. tax law, and the enormous success he’s achieved as a businessman would all work in his favor. I think Donald Trump senses this, and that’s why he singles Jeff out for criticism.

enraged_camel 9y ago
Frankly I don’t want any inexperienced people running for President anymore. Would you hire someone who knows nothing about technology (aside from being a consumer of it) to be your CTO? Probably not... similarly, we should expect people to gain experience in government before they are considered suitable.
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  Bloomberg did pretty well for himself.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Mayor is probably easier to learn than President. If Bezos ran for mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington I would have more faith in himbeing President. Right now he leads an authoritarian organization (as most corporations are). the qualities to lead that may not translate into leading a democracy.
    - crazygringo 9y ago
      +1. As mayor, you're still fundamentally an executive, making practical decisions about city services, police, etc. It feels quite analagous to CEO. Whereas as US president, you're effectively leader of your political party, and your greatest achievements are essentially legislative even though you have no legislative power. It's a position of leadership through coalition-building, not execution through delegation and accountability. There's certainly overlap, but overall they feel like night and day.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sunstone 9y ago

Jeff who?

rectang 9y ago

Because we systematically impoverish students, we can only count on the largesse of the fabulously wealthy to rescue a lucky few.

QAPereo 9y ago
What would happen if everyone just... didn’t pay? What would a default of $1.5 trillion USD held by a government against millions of its citizens look like? Presumably the administrative costs of hunting down that much money from so many sources would be prohibitive. I’d guess that an attempt to garnish the wages of half the country would end in rioting, so that wouldn’t work well.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  "too big to fail" comes to mind. I'm not sure what it would look like in this case though. Probably a bunch of hand-waving, (forceably) forgiven debts.
- adventured 9y ago
  > What would a default of $1.5 trillion USD held by a government against millions of its citizens look like? It wouldn't be half the country first of all. It's a small minority of adults having problems paying their student loans (mostly those that were wildly reckless in their easy borrowing). The median student loan is a mere ~$13,000, against a median full-time wage of nearly $50,000. If you took out $250,000 in student loans for a career path that pays $65,000 max per year, that's on you for being so financially foolish. It's not difficult to look around at cost effective alternatives to such a crazy student debt load. You can easily go to extremely high quality in-state public universities at a modest cost. A four year degree in the US will get you a $60,000 salary on average right out of school. The typical person holding the median full-time job making $50,000, does not even have a four year degree. After five to seven years in the job market, your income is going to be $75,000 or more. You can do better than that in engineering fields. The unemployment rate with a four year degree, is typically about half the national U3 level, you practically can't not be employed. Here's the fact of the matter: US wages are so extraordinarily high, a four year degree is a steal, just so long as you don't do something crazy like take on $200k in debt for a path that can never pay a good wage. Go to an in-state public university, pay $10,000 to $15,000 per year net (a part-time job, as was very common in decades past, is still a good idea, along with seeking grants), get a job making $60,000 and work your income up to closer to $75,000 to $90,000 over time. That student debt becomes meaningless. It is not complex.

staunch 9y ago

You can learn far more about Jeff Bezos from watching a few long interviews. He recently did a very interesting interview with his brother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq89wYzOjfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq89wYzOjfs He's very much the kind of person you want in the supremely high position that he's found himself in. He's basically another Bill Gates but more upbeat and creative.

stnmtn 9y ago
This is great and all, but I don't want any person making the amount of money Bezos is making. He makes more in 5 days than most people make in 5 lifetimes. He wields immense power that will only get stronger as corporate consolidation increases. For example, in the race for states to try to get Amazon's HQ2 in their city, the future of corporate power is so apparent and scary. One city offered that all employees of Amazon would just pay their taxes directly to Amazon instead of to the state to try to entice Amazon. That's something that happens in cyberpunk like Snow Crash, and it's already beginning to happen in real life. We just don't pay that much attention to it because the companies don't have scary names like the Tyrell Corporation, they're instead fun things like Amazon, Disney, Google; and being okay with the massive power Bezos wields because he's a nice guy seems kind of short-sighted to me

littlepinkpill 9y ago

"[...]Mr. Bezos has become a bête noire for President Trump, who repeatedly singles out him and Amazon for scorn on Twitter." Smarter, more creative, and richer. I'm sure that rankles. And anyone with a project like Blue Origin gets an entire colony-of-orangutans-thumbs up.