8 ms·

I hate Amazon and stories like this make me hate it even more. I stopped ordering anything from them and, if anything, this has actually improved my consumer ex

I hate Amazon and stories like this make me hate it even more. I stopped ordering anything from them and, if anything, this has actually improved my consumer experience. Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days. Not shopping at either has definitely raised the average life span and quality of goods in my household. Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS...

jtdev 6y ago
I've made the same changes in recent months and agree that it's improved my consumer experience significantly. I didn't realize just how much time and energy I was spending sorting through cheap Chinese made junk and counterfeit garbage on Amazon trying to find quality products. In terms of cloud providers: the major three (Azure, GCloud, AWS) seem to be cut from the same cloth... maybe IBM or Oracle cloud are better options (I don't have any experience with either, but both companies obviously have skeleton filled closets)?
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  IBM’s cloud platform is laughably bad. Avoid at all costs!
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  Well at least one of the latter definitely has skeletons... [0] But in all seriousness, Oracle at least has very good free tier to get started. You basically get two free okay-provisioned VMs (lite on the CPU to say the least, but mem and desk okay). Very good for self-hosted your own stuff for free! [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Oracle's administration interface is horrible. It's an obtuse nonsensical hierarchy, probably specified by someone non-technical writing a requirements document in a vacuum. It'll take you an afternoon to figure out how to get your instances set up, upload your initial image etc. Also your instances will always be behind NAT (having internal IPs), which is odd. Its redeeming feature is having a free tier that isn't Google. The problem with using Google's cloud is that if someone hacks your account and runs up infinite charges as a personal user, you can't file a credit card dispute without disrupting your entire relationship with Google. The cloud market still has healthy competition - eg Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and innumerable smaller companies. Patronize them, rather heading than to a different behemoth.
    - _huayra_ 6y ago
      Oh yes, I wasn't saying Oracle was good. It was the usual mess of conflicting systems (e.g. two different ways to do network ACLs...that conflict?). I personally wouldn't consider them for anything serious. If folks need a free box for something lightweight, those free tier VMs on Oracle are pretty much the only good thing about it. (I have a VPN and a few small services running on it for my own consumption)
      - mindslight 6y ago
        Same here! I pay for servers that I care about, but having another vpn bouncer / exit node is nice. Once you've got some sort of devops setup, it's easy to add more machines. The main bummer was finding out the "two instances" have to be in the same datacenter. One thing I have noticed is their network seems to have high jitter.
        _huayra_ 6y ago
        Haha yes they certainly do. One great thing they have is unlimited bandwidth (though I'm sure they throttle after some point), whereas the free tier on Google starts charging you after you reach the 5GB egress mark iirc.
- musingsole 6y ago
  Turning to IBM or Oracle for moral reasons is about the funniest thing I've read in a long time. One enabled the holocaust and the other made 90s-era Microsoft seem downright communist.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    Amazon is doing some rather creepy stuff with the CIA [0]. Can you elaborate on what Oracle did that was so bad? Is charging for software and enforcing license terms somehow worse than what Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. are doing? [0]https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/22/aclu_amazon_aws_rekognition/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/22/aclu_amazon_aws_rekog...
    - tidepod12 6y ago
      I don't really see how selling facial recognition tech is "rather creepy". Facial recognition has legitimate uses, and the CIA/FBI using it to track criminals seems to be a legitimate use case to me. The article you linked seems to be making a hypothetical leap to "well what if they choose to use it nefariously in the future??" And to their credit, Amazon at least seems to be interested in trying to limit its use to good causes: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/10/amazon-bans-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-for-one-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/10/amazon-bans-police-use-of-fa... And of course, Microsoft, Google, and others have their own facial recognition software and they all have large contracts with government entities, too. This article mentions the CIA using AWS, but the CIA also has multi-billion dollar contracts with GCP, Azure, and even IBM and Oracle: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cia-awards-multibillion-c2e-cloud-contract-aws-microsoft-google-oracle-and-ibm/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cia-awards-multib...
      - jtdev 6y ago
        Yeah, that's all incredibly troubling to me. I'm shocked that so many people fail to see the parallels to historic misuse of technology by states, e.g., IBM and the holocaust as outlined above: "Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction." [0] Is it unreasonable to desire that your dollars don't go to organizations involved in war, oppression, corruption, etc.? [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
- noahatwi 6y ago
  Where do you guys shop now? Genuinely curious.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    Buying direct from producers, Costco, Costco.com, and I'm consciously buying less stuff that I don't actually need (stuff that I would have previously purchased from Amazon).
pc86 6y ago
> Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS If only there were competing cloud/PaaS services.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  If only they were competitive.
  - mintcoffee 6y ago
    They're not? I've always seen AWS as the most expensive of the cloud providers. e.g., GPU instances on AWS EC2 vs GCP.
    - NationalPark 6y ago
      In my experience a lot of senior ops people are still hesitant about Google's cloud services having been burned by them in the past. Google seems to have some reputation problems, however true or untrue they may be.
    - Sanzig 6y ago
      I think a big objection to moving off AWS is a result of enterprises locking in to AWS-specific technologies. AWS has a lot of neat, domain-specific products and managed services, but it's important to recognize those come with vendor lock-in and that's by design. If possible, build out your stack to avoid dependence on AWS-only stuff. It's worth it to ask "if I wanted to transition away from AWS in six months, is this addition going to help or hinder that goal?" It's a lot easier to migrate something that uses generic technologies like VM instances, vendor-neutral containerization, and managed databases versus something super specific. And AWS has a lot of super specific stuff, just look at their ever-expanding product list [1]. Once you get away from the specialized domain-specific products, you start to realize that AWS pricing is really nothing special, particularly for VM instances as you've noted. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/products/ https://aws.amazon.com/products/
  - pc86 6y ago
nafizh 6y ago
Can you elaborate where do you buy things online from? I want to move away from Amazon, but it's also exhausting to sort through multiple websites for a product, their shipping fees, and make decisions.
- ImprovedSilence 6y ago
  For some things, I try to buy direct. Levis for example. After getting a pair from amazon that was very clearly a factory second or straight up counterfeit, I get them from levis.com. Price is a little higher, but knowing I'm getting good product, and the variety/choice is usually pretty good on their site too. I do this for most "branded" items. Everything else is like best buy or target or home depot etc. That said, I still use amazon quite a bit. But still probably <50% of my online purchases at least. Someone with a more hardline stance or more knowledge of other replacement sites could conceivably cut them out completely. Heck Best Buy and target are so close to my house, I just shop online, and go to curbside pickup an hour later.
- ldng 6y ago
  Isn't a bit of "exhaustion" worth to fight back terrible practices ?
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    I'm not sure what the term for this is; maybe "quorum problem"? If too few people sustain a boycott, then they suffer without accomplishing their goal, so a net negative. If enough people sustain a boycott, they'll suffer but will also accomplish their goal, so a net positive.
    - feral 6y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
  - criddell 6y ago
    For most people, no. I might work through it today and tomorrow but in a few days I'm going to give up and go back to Amazon.
franklampard 6y ago
> Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days In my experience, I get most stuff for the same price from other retailers on Amazon, but with fast shipping and the peace of mind that I can return them easily.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  If you're buying from Amazon, you're almost definitely getting comingled inventory - which means even the official retailer themselves can't guarantee it's a genuine product. Your point still stands about easy returns, although personally I've noticed Amazon adding a lot more friction when I have a problem in the past year or so. https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/ https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...
  - tidepod12 6y ago
    I see the commingling thing brought up in every thread like this, but I've never personally, nor has anyone I know IRL, received anything from Amazon that are even suspect of being counterfeit. If they are counterfeit, then they are such high quality counterfeits that I'm not sure I even care. It's obviously a problem to some extent, but I can't help but think news articles like that blow it way out of proportion. As for returns, I've notice the opposite: it takes me considerably less time and effort to return an Amazon purchase than, for example, a Target purchase. I actually did both this weekend: for Amazon, I walked into a UPS store, handed them the unpackaged product, they scanned a barcode from my Amazon app, and I walked out. The whole thing took no more than 30 seconds. At Target, I had to wait in a line for 20 minutes at the Returns counter, had to show them the receipt, also had to show them the card I used to purchase, and then the system wasn't refunding the correct amount so a manager had to be called over and re-do the entire process with some sort of override. The entire process took, at minimum, 30 minutes. I hate Amazon's bullshit union tactics like in the OP, but they are still the undisputed king when it comes to overall shopping experience, IMO. And it's not necessarily because Amazon is actually great, it's more because the other companies are still really far behind.
lisper 6y ago
> Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS... I've moved to Linode and never looked back. [UPDATE] Wow. Downvotes for a shout-out to Linode. Didn't know there was so much Linode hate out there. What's up with that? What's wrong with Linode?
- capableweb 6y ago
  I'll give you some ideas, but you might already know why as you been around for some time. - Lack of support for your statement. You simply say that you moved there, not why and what made you move, what's better and so on - You're complaining about down-votes, leading you into the spiral of downvotes as you'll get more down voted by it - You're talking bad about AWS and Amazon. HN famously have a ton of AWS/Amazon employees here who are quick to downvote any negative sentiment about AWS/Amazon. No, I don't have any proof, but anything mentioning either in a negative way WILL be downvoted, happened time and time again
- jasode 6y ago
  >Wow. Downvotes for a shout-out to Linode. Didn't know there was so much Linode hate out there. What's up with that? What's wrong with Linode? I didn't downvote your comment but it reminded me of an old comment about Linode which is still a mystery to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999397 To this day, I have no idea what that was about. Does Linode not do backups?!? Is one of the founders a pedophile?!? Whatever it is, is it unmentionable because of fear of lawsuit?!?
christkv 6y ago
I'm seeing food delivery places like uber eats, globo etc able to become pickers for local stores (at least here in Europe). Now I only need some way to order online from local stores and have it automatically sent to me via bike courier.
brundolf 6y ago
I honestly can't understand how anybody sleeps at night writing software for Amazon, at this point. Maybe it's easier to justify to yourself if you work at AWS and not directly on the retail side of things, who knows. I'm not going to try and cast judgement on individuals' circumstances, I just experience genuine confusion that Amazon can (apparently) still attract top-ish talent.
- pnutjam 6y ago
  Walmart has been doing this around here (car not bike). Too bad they will substitute a "similar" item when their stock is not correct, which is always. The "similar" item is not similar enough in my experience.
bsder 6y ago
Um, like, duuuuh. If you're gonna buy cheap Chinese junk, skip the Amazon middleman and go straight to Alibaba. With so many "Amazon" sellers just rebranding cheap Chinese stuff, it really is better to just go backward in the chain. I suspect that you probably get fewer "counterfeits" since you are looking for "Thing that does <X>" instead of "Brand <Y> thingit."

jtdev 6y ago

I've made the same changes in recent months and agree that it's improved my consumer experience significantly. I didn't realize just how much time and energy I was spending sorting through cheap Chinese made junk and counterfeit garbage on Amazon trying to find quality products. In terms of cloud providers: the major three (Azure, GCloud, AWS) seem to be cut from the same cloth... maybe IBM or Oracle cloud are better options (I don't have any experience with either, but both companies obviously have skeleton filled closets)?

Zelphyr 6y ago
IBM’s cloud platform is laughably bad. Avoid at all costs!
_huayra_ 6y ago
Well at least one of the latter definitely has skeletons... [0] But in all seriousness, Oracle at least has very good free tier to get started. You basically get two free okay-provisioned VMs (lite on the CPU to say the least, but mem and desk okay). Very good for self-hosted your own stuff for free! [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
- mindslight 6y ago
  Oracle's administration interface is horrible. It's an obtuse nonsensical hierarchy, probably specified by someone non-technical writing a requirements document in a vacuum. It'll take you an afternoon to figure out how to get your instances set up, upload your initial image etc. Also your instances will always be behind NAT (having internal IPs), which is odd. Its redeeming feature is having a free tier that isn't Google. The problem with using Google's cloud is that if someone hacks your account and runs up infinite charges as a personal user, you can't file a credit card dispute without disrupting your entire relationship with Google. The cloud market still has healthy competition - eg Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and innumerable smaller companies. Patronize them, rather heading than to a different behemoth.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    Oh yes, I wasn't saying Oracle was good. It was the usual mess of conflicting systems (e.g. two different ways to do network ACLs...that conflict?). I personally wouldn't consider them for anything serious. If folks need a free box for something lightweight, those free tier VMs on Oracle are pretty much the only good thing about it. (I have a VPN and a few small services running on it for my own consumption)
    - mindslight 6y ago
      Same here! I pay for servers that I care about, but having another vpn bouncer / exit node is nice. Once you've got some sort of devops setup, it's easy to add more machines. The main bummer was finding out the "two instances" have to be in the same datacenter. One thing I have noticed is their network seems to have high jitter.
      - _huayra_ 6y ago
        Haha yes they certainly do. One great thing they have is unlimited bandwidth (though I'm sure they throttle after some point), whereas the free tier on Google starts charging you after you reach the 5GB egress mark iirc.
musingsole 6y ago
Turning to IBM or Oracle for moral reasons is about the funniest thing I've read in a long time. One enabled the holocaust and the other made 90s-era Microsoft seem downright communist.
- jtdev 6y ago
  Amazon is doing some rather creepy stuff with the CIA [0]. Can you elaborate on what Oracle did that was so bad? Is charging for software and enforcing license terms somehow worse than what Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. are doing? [0]https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/22/aclu_amazon_aws_rekognition/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/22/aclu_amazon_aws_rekog...
  - tidepod12 6y ago
    I don't really see how selling facial recognition tech is "rather creepy". Facial recognition has legitimate uses, and the CIA/FBI using it to track criminals seems to be a legitimate use case to me. The article you linked seems to be making a hypothetical leap to "well what if they choose to use it nefariously in the future??" And to their credit, Amazon at least seems to be interested in trying to limit its use to good causes: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/10/amazon-bans-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-for-one-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/10/amazon-bans-police-use-of-fa... And of course, Microsoft, Google, and others have their own facial recognition software and they all have large contracts with government entities, too. This article mentions the CIA using AWS, but the CIA also has multi-billion dollar contracts with GCP, Azure, and even IBM and Oracle: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cia-awards-multibillion-c2e-cloud-contract-aws-microsoft-google-oracle-and-ibm/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cia-awards-multib...
    - jtdev 6y ago
      Yeah, that's all incredibly troubling to me. I'm shocked that so many people fail to see the parallels to historic misuse of technology by states, e.g., IBM and the holocaust as outlined above: "Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction." [0] Is it unreasonable to desire that your dollars don't go to organizations involved in war, oppression, corruption, etc.? [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
noahatwi 6y ago
Where do you guys shop now? Genuinely curious.
- jtdev 6y ago
  Buying direct from producers, Costco, Costco.com, and I'm consciously buying less stuff that I don't actually need (stuff that I would have previously purchased from Amazon).

pc86 6y ago

> Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS If only there were competing cloud/PaaS services.

Judgmentality 6y ago
If only they were competitive.
- mintcoffee 6y ago
  They're not? I've always seen AWS as the most expensive of the cloud providers. e.g., GPU instances on AWS EC2 vs GCP.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    In my experience a lot of senior ops people are still hesitant about Google's cloud services having been burned by them in the past. Google seems to have some reputation problems, however true or untrue they may be.
  - Sanzig 6y ago
    I think a big objection to moving off AWS is a result of enterprises locking in to AWS-specific technologies. AWS has a lot of neat, domain-specific products and managed services, but it's important to recognize those come with vendor lock-in and that's by design. If possible, build out your stack to avoid dependence on AWS-only stuff. It's worth it to ask "if I wanted to transition away from AWS in six months, is this addition going to help or hinder that goal?" It's a lot easier to migrate something that uses generic technologies like VM instances, vendor-neutral containerization, and managed databases versus something super specific. And AWS has a lot of super specific stuff, just look at their ever-expanding product list [1]. Once you get away from the specialized domain-specific products, you start to realize that AWS pricing is really nothing special, particularly for VM instances as you've noted. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/products/ https://aws.amazon.com/products/
- pc86 6y ago

nafizh 6y ago

Can you elaborate where do you buy things online from? I want to move away from Amazon, but it's also exhausting to sort through multiple websites for a product, their shipping fees, and make decisions.

ImprovedSilence 6y ago
For some things, I try to buy direct. Levis for example. After getting a pair from amazon that was very clearly a factory second or straight up counterfeit, I get them from levis.com. Price is a little higher, but knowing I'm getting good product, and the variety/choice is usually pretty good on their site too. I do this for most "branded" items. Everything else is like best buy or target or home depot etc. That said, I still use amazon quite a bit. But still probably <50% of my online purchases at least. Someone with a more hardline stance or more knowledge of other replacement sites could conceivably cut them out completely. Heck Best Buy and target are so close to my house, I just shop online, and go to curbside pickup an hour later.
ldng 6y ago
Isn't a bit of "exhaustion" worth to fight back terrible practices ?
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  I'm not sure what the term for this is; maybe "quorum problem"? If too few people sustain a boycott, then they suffer without accomplishing their goal, so a net negative. If enough people sustain a boycott, they'll suffer but will also accomplish their goal, so a net positive.
  - feral 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
- criddell 6y ago
  For most people, no. I might work through it today and tomorrow but in a few days I'm going to give up and go back to Amazon.

franklampard 6y ago

> Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days In my experience, I get most stuff for the same price from other retailers on Amazon, but with fast shipping and the peace of mind that I can return them easily.

Judgmentality 6y ago
If you're buying from Amazon, you're almost definitely getting comingled inventory - which means even the official retailer themselves can't guarantee it's a genuine product. Your point still stands about easy returns, although personally I've noticed Amazon adding a lot more friction when I have a problem in the past year or so. https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-management/ https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...
- tidepod12 6y ago
  I see the commingling thing brought up in every thread like this, but I've never personally, nor has anyone I know IRL, received anything from Amazon that are even suspect of being counterfeit. If they are counterfeit, then they are such high quality counterfeits that I'm not sure I even care. It's obviously a problem to some extent, but I can't help but think news articles like that blow it way out of proportion. As for returns, I've notice the opposite: it takes me considerably less time and effort to return an Amazon purchase than, for example, a Target purchase. I actually did both this weekend: for Amazon, I walked into a UPS store, handed them the unpackaged product, they scanned a barcode from my Amazon app, and I walked out. The whole thing took no more than 30 seconds. At Target, I had to wait in a line for 20 minutes at the Returns counter, had to show them the receipt, also had to show them the card I used to purchase, and then the system wasn't refunding the correct amount so a manager had to be called over and re-do the entire process with some sort of override. The entire process took, at minimum, 30 minutes. I hate Amazon's bullshit union tactics like in the OP, but they are still the undisputed king when it comes to overall shopping experience, IMO. And it's not necessarily because Amazon is actually great, it's more because the other companies are still really far behind.

lisper 6y ago

> Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS... I've moved to Linode and never looked back. [UPDATE] Wow. Downvotes for a shout-out to Linode. Didn't know there was so much Linode hate out there. What's up with that? What's wrong with Linode?

capableweb 6y ago
I'll give you some ideas, but you might already know why as you been around for some time. - Lack of support for your statement. You simply say that you moved there, not why and what made you move, what's better and so on - You're complaining about down-votes, leading you into the spiral of downvotes as you'll get more down voted by it - You're talking bad about AWS and Amazon. HN famously have a ton of AWS/Amazon employees here who are quick to downvote any negative sentiment about AWS/Amazon. No, I don't have any proof, but anything mentioning either in a negative way WILL be downvoted, happened time and time again
jasode 6y ago
>Wow. Downvotes for a shout-out to Linode. Didn't know there was so much Linode hate out there. What's up with that? What's wrong with Linode? I didn't downvote your comment but it reminded me of an old comment about Linode which is still a mystery to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999397 To this day, I have no idea what that was about. Does Linode not do backups?!? Is one of the founders a pedophile?!? Whatever it is, is it unmentionable because of fear of lawsuit?!?

christkv 6y ago

I'm seeing food delivery places like uber eats, globo etc able to become pickers for local stores (at least here in Europe). Now I only need some way to order online from local stores and have it automatically sent to me via bike courier.

brundolf 6y ago

I honestly can't understand how anybody sleeps at night writing software for Amazon, at this point. Maybe it's easier to justify to yourself if you work at AWS and not directly on the retail side of things, who knows. I'm not going to try and cast judgement on individuals' circumstances, I just experience genuine confusion that Amazon can (apparently) still attract top-ish talent.

pnutjam 6y ago
Walmart has been doing this around here (car not bike). Too bad they will substitute a "similar" item when their stock is not correct, which is always. The "similar" item is not similar enough in my experience.

bsder 6y ago

Um, like, duuuuh. If you're gonna buy cheap Chinese junk, skip the Amazon middleman and go straight to Alibaba. With so many "Amazon" sellers just rebranding cheap Chinese stuff, it really is better to just go backward in the chain. I suspect that you probably get fewer "counterfeits" since you are looking for "Thing that does <X>" instead of "Brand <Y> thingit."