Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, announced that he would be taking the storied newspaper in a new direction.
I agree, but also they don’t make their money from sales. They make money from AWS servers/ services. I would bet that they lose money or maybe slightly break even on every sale of a physical item.
This has actually always been the case. Iirc, AWS was the only profitable piece of Amazon for years. The retail and consumer services arms will never catch up.
Would love to see a really comprehensive list of sites that aren’t garbage AI slop scam alleyways that would help cover the goods and services that Amazon acts as a one-stop convenience for. I don’t want to support Amazon, but I also don’t want to get scammed by handing out my credit card info to any old shopping site.
Feel free to add more suggestions in your own replies.
I’ll start :
Electronics : B&H Photo - owned by religious folks so hours of operation are a little odd sometimes, but overall good customer service, fair prices, reliable shipping
Grocieries : Central Market - HEB’s high-tier store chain for high-quality groceries, instead of Whole Foods
Kitchen supplies : Webstaurant - Wholesale store for things like home kitchen goods and supplies, as well as things like flatware and dishes
And their website won’t let you order anything on the Sabbath, which drives me insane. I’m not expecting anyone to be working on the weekend, but computers don’t need to take breaks!!
Afaik they aren’t tied to supporting Zionism. They had some problems a decade ago with safety standards and union busting.
Didn’t know that… :( - Open to hear other alternatives, but when NewEgg became much worse notably a few years back, and NCIX went under, B&H has been an online staple for my computer parts, camera, and general electronics needs… save for cables from Infinite Cables.
I do go to Micro Center in person due to being lucky enough to have one within a sensible distance, but that’s still quite a drive for me, and I know not everyone else has one nearby.
I want a non profit/open source store aggregator where we can search for what we want like Amazon but direct is to the site with the item we are looking for.
Y’all, stop buying shit from Amazon, completely. That’s where you start.
Bezos has money because we continue to give it to him. So, the first order of business is to simply stop spending money with him.
As in, forever.
Find an alternative vendor, or even schlep on down to a physical store if you need to.
“V0te with ur d0ll4rzzz!!!”
Do you actually think the next best option is actually good? There is no escape from capitalism.
I agree, but also they don’t make their money from sales. They make money from AWS servers/ services. I would bet that they lose money or maybe slightly break even on every sale of a physical item.
Yeah, the warehouses are quite badly run.
Edit; I’ve had a beer. In my experience of the one I’ve worked in.
Are any lemmy instances hosted on AWS?
Ugh, that really sucks. I didn’t realize AWS was their bread and butter now.
Even so.
This has actually always been the case. Iirc, AWS was the only profitable piece of Amazon for years. The retail and consumer services arms will never catch up.
Last time I looked at Amazon’s books, their retail arm was barely profitable. Most of their actual profits came from AWS.
Azure (MS) or GCP (Google) are the alternatives.
Or if you want to avoid Big Tech altogether, there’s DigitalOcean, Akamai, Linode, IBM, Cloudflare, and a handful of other point providers.
You have to be careful as some providers and PaaS use AWS under the hood.
For example Heroku is essentially a nice skin over AWS.
If I had been drinking anything when I read that it would have ended up all over my screen.
IBM used to be big. They still are, but they used to be too.
OIC, too.
Would love to see a really comprehensive list of sites that aren’t garbage AI slop scam alleyways that would help cover the goods and services that Amazon acts as a one-stop convenience for. I don’t want to support Amazon, but I also don’t want to get scammed by handing out my credit card info to any old shopping site.
Feel free to add more suggestions in your own replies.
I’ll start :
Electronics : B&H Photo - owned by religious folks so hours of operation are a little odd sometimes, but overall good customer service, fair prices, reliable shipping
Grocieries : Central Market - HEB’s high-tier store chain for high-quality groceries, instead of Whole Foods
Kitchen supplies : Webstaurant - Wholesale store for things like home kitchen goods and supplies, as well as things like flatware and dishes
This is only for software, and focused around tracking cookies (or lack thereof), but maybe it can expand to consumer goods: CookieSlayers
B&H photo isn’t just “owned by religious folks”. They staff everything above the warehouse exclusively with Hasidic Orthodox Jewish men.
Afaik they aren’t tied to supporting Zionism. They had some problems a decade ago with safety standards and union busting.
And their website won’t let you order anything on the Sabbath, which drives me insane. I’m not expecting anyone to be working on the weekend, but computers don’t need to take breaks!!
Didn’t know that… :( - Open to hear other alternatives, but when NewEgg became much worse notably a few years back, and NCIX went under, B&H has been an online staple for my computer parts, camera, and general electronics needs… save for cables from Infinite Cables.
I do go to Micro Center in person due to being lucky enough to have one within a sensible distance, but that’s still quite a drive for me, and I know not everyone else has one nearby.
I want a non profit/open source store aggregator where we can search for what we want like Amazon but direct is to the site with the item we are looking for.
For software, I started his directory: CookieSlayers
Most of the software there is open source, but not all of it. Nevertheless, it’s about companies/services/products that operate a bit more ethically.
Ooh neat.
Isn’t proton mail run by shitheads though?
Like pcpartpicker, but for everything!
Thanks
Amazon is a server hosting company that happens to sell cheap junk.
All of lemmy shopping Prime is a drop in the oceans of the millions per month my company pays aws