WTF Bites
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
Supermarkets are well known for having a huge turnover and wafer-thin profit margins. Most other types of retail are similar, with just not that much in the way of profit; for a long time, the way to make real money out of retail was to own the land on which the retailer operated... but that's also become much less so in the last few years.
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
Supermarkets are well known for having a huge turnover and wafer-thin profit margins.
Also for being INSANELY HUMONGOUS in terms of number of locations and total turnover numbers. Why do people keep pretending Lidl is just a tiny startup with barely any capital that works in such a cutthroat industry they cannot allow themselves a single mistake or they go out of business?
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Why do people keep pretending
It woldn't be good world-building if the narrative couldn't be shouted against.
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now, "make shittons of money", i.e. net revenue (Walmwart is undisputed #1) or "average valuation per business" i.e. market cap—Walmart doesn't even make the top 10?
You'd still have to explain why either of these would make a difference. If I made $1000/a of turnover per customer at 2% profit and half a billion customers, why would I be able to afford giving each customer say $10 for nothing in return while someone who made $1000/a of turnover per customer at 25% profit and 1000 customers wouldn't?
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).Obviously not all of them would. Germany's former largest retailer Karstadt went under while running a "bonus program" in 2010 and was sold to Signa which itself just went bankrupt last week. If you find it plausible that nobody would look at all the expenses and go, wait a minute, why are we paying for this when we're learning absolutely nothing valuable, even when the company is on the brink of bankruptcy, then I have a fantastic German retail chain to sell you.
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The thing people don’t realise immediately about supermarket chains is not that they don’t have assets, but how much of their world is massively illiquid, and that a scary amount of their stock is quite short-lived while they’re at it.
They’re all sitting on mountains of paper money, but it’s only a couple of matches away from being a pile of ash.
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@Arantor But their beer stocks are liquid...
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
Supermarkets are well known for having a huge turnover and wafer-thin profit margins.
Also for being INSANELY HUMONGOUS in terms of number of locations and total turnover numbers. Why do people keep pretending Lidl is just a tiny startup with barely any capital that works in such a cutthroat industry they cannot allow themselves a single mistake or they go out of business?
No one is pretending this. We're all just pointing out the dumbness of your "monopoly" nonsense.
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@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
I wouldn't expect them to do that; it would open up a route for competitors to
stealpay for your customer profile data, even if in aggregate.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
I wouldn't expect them to do that; it would open up a route for competitors to
stealpay for your customer profile data, even if in aggregate.Who would do what with it? The value is that I'm part of their discount
loyalty program. I suspect that if competitors had enough money to go buying that stuff a company would be happy to take it from them.Competition is fairly limited based on geography. There are some people who are very aggressive in shopping all the sales at local stores but they're also probably already members at those other stores.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
I wouldn't expect them to do that; it would open up a route for competitors to
stealpay for your customer profile data, even if in aggregate.I'm not sure who gets access to what customer data (and they make damn sure not to tell customers) but basically that's what happens with bonus cards like "Payback" where the same card is used by thousands of businesses and so, organizing company "Loyalty Partners'" name notwithstanding, simply doesn't work for bringing customers back to your shop. Selling customer profiles is that company's central business.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
I'll accept this as a walkback to what you actually said and won't disagree. I'm sure they'd love to figure out how to further monetize their data.
I looked at my account at my store and they have this in their privacy section:
We may share personal information with certain third parties (such as online advertising services) or allow them to collect personal information via automated technologies on our websites and apps for targeted advertising purposes. This activity may be considered a sale of personal information under certain laws. We may also sell pseudonymized transaction information to third party partners that specialize in customer insights and provide other customer-focused services. Our Privacy Statement further describes the circumstances under which we process personal information for targeted advertising or sell personal information.
More stuff here:
https://giantfood.com/privacy-center
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
I'll accept this as a walkback
Fuck you. Here is the very first post I posted in this discussion.
@topspin you can keep wasting energy being mad about the /r/boringdystopia we've built for ourselves over the last decade. Or you can do the smart thing and sell them all the data they already have on you one way or another for 50 cents per cucumber.
Note "data they already have". This was my only point all along. Fuck you. I didn't walk back anything.
Then @LaoC countered with
If you were right, you'd think someone who didn't pay people for data would make twice the profit and have a huge competitive advantage.
Grossly overestimating how much it costs to do useless data collection. As in, it's impossible for supermarkets to piss away money on useless data collection because they'd go under. My counter was that no, they have more than enough money for useless data collection and they're not at any risk of going under because of useless data collection, so uselessly collecting data is well within the realm of possibility.
This was my entire point all along. You must be either lying or illiterate to claim otherwise. Let's spice things up and accuse you of lying this time around.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
I'll accept this as a walkback
Fuck you. Here is the very first post I posted in this discussion.
Why so crabby? I said I accepted the walkback to that.
@topspin you can keep wasting energy being mad about the /r/boringdystopia we've built for ourselves over the last decade. Or you can do the smart thing and sell them all the data they already have on you one way or another for 50 cents per cucumber.
Note "data they already have". This was my only point all along. Fuck you. I didn't walk back anything.
Then @LaoC countered with
If you were right, you'd think someone who didn't pay people for data would make twice the profit and have a huge competitive advantage.
Grossly overestimating how much it costs to do useless data collection. As in, it's impossible for supermarkets to piss away money on useless data collection because they'd go under. My counter was that no, they have more than enough money for useless data collection and they're not at any risk of going under because of useless data collection, so uselessly collecting data is well within the realm of possibility.
This was my entire point all along. You must be either lying or illiterate to claim otherwise. Let's spice things up and accuse you of lying this time around.
Oh, yeah, soooo different.
I already said I was ignoring stuff like:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Sheesh. My previous point was that you said
more than what you're saying is your real point, and I accept your real point.TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWER FOR ONCE IN YOU LIFE.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
I'll accept this as a walkback
Note "data they already have". This was my only point all along. Fuck you. I didn't walk back anything.Then @LaoC countered with
If you were right, you'd think someone who didn't pay people for data would make twice the profit and have a huge competitive advantage.
Grossly overestimating how much it costs to do useless data collection. As in, it's impossible for supermarkets to piss away money on useless data collection because they'd go under.
You even quoted it above:@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
You brought up "half their profits" and I went with it.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Competition is fairly limited based on geography.
That depends on where you live. Sure , if you live in a small town or inner-city food desert, you may not have much choice, but if you live in the suburbs of a big city, there tends to be a choice between two, three, or even more big chains. Where I live now, I have a choice between several, almost equally convenient, instances of H-E-B, a statewide chain throughout Texas, a smaller Texas chain that is now owned by Albertsons, and at least two Walmarts. There's also an upscale organic "farmers' market" chain that I occasionally go to when I need some special gluten free item that other stores don't have. And there are Whole Paycheck and Trader Joe's that are less convenient but still easily accessible, if I had more money than sense. Finally, there are local, non-chain or specialty stores that I don't know about, because I've never had a reason to seek them out. When I lived in Silly Valley, I had a similar range of choices; just replace H-E-B with Safeway and the chain owned by Albertsons with Albertsons itself.
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Competition is fairly limited based on geography.
That depends on where you live. Sure , if you live in a small town or inner-city food desert, you may not have much choice, but if you live in the suburbs of a big city, there tends to be a choice between two, three, or even more big chains. Where I live now, I have a choice between several, almost equally convenient, instances of H-E-B, a statewide chain throughout Texas, a smaller Texas chain that is now owned by Albertsons, and at least two Walmarts. There's also an upscale organic "farmers' market" chain that I occasionally go to when I need some special gluten free item that other stores don't have. And there are Whole Paycheck and Trader Joe's that are less convenient but still easily accessible, if I had more money than sense. Finally, there are local, non-chain or specialty stores that I don't know about, because I've never had a reason to seek them out. When I lived in Silly Valley, I had a similar range of choices; just replace H-E-B with Safeway and the chain owned by Albertsons with Albertsons itself.
Technically I mostly skip the two closest stores, but they're "international" and "Korean" stores, so I really only go there for specialty stuff. Otherwise, I mostly go to the closest store to me. Well, aside from going to Walmart, which I typically go to for certain things or because I'm already there going to Sam's.
But the only time I go to the next nearest big brand store (Safeway) is when I haven't been able to find something at my normal store. Convenience (which includes knowing where everything is in the store because I'm there all the time) and habit mostly take care of the rest. Plus the loyalty discounts are nice (though I belong to Safeway's program, too).
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The dynamics of this collection are a bit different in Europe. I don’t know about the left-pondians, but I live in a modest (around 300k people) city and I have a choice of multiple legit supermarkets within a 15 minute drive, including an Aldi, a Lidl, a Sainsbury’s, a Co-Op, a Morrisons, and if I were willing to stretch that to 20 minutes drive, I could include the fuck-off big Asda and a Tesco’s.
All of which have the loyalty scheme shit going for tracking data.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
I've seen offers from one of the chains around here that you get a loyalty card with them and get insurance with one of their partners. If you shop "healthy", your insurance premiums go down (or, rather, the opposite - you pay more if you shop unhealthy). There's apparently a labeling system for what counts as good/bad ... I didn't look too much into it.
It's not too much of a stretch that somebody else might be interested in the data.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
I'll accept this as a walkback
Fuck you. Here is the very first post I posted in this discussion.
Why so crabby?
Because fuck you, that's why.
I said I accepted the walkback to that.
Fuck you and fuck your lies. Walkback my ass.
I already said I was ignoring stuff like
You don't have to ignore anything. If they weren't able to burn half their profits (and yes I do realize how tiny their margins are. Do you realize the difference between revenue and profits? The tiny margins are exactly why I'm using profits here) on useless shit, then the idea that they're wasting money on re-harvesting data they already possess would indeed be quite dumb.
TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWER FOR ONCE IN YOU LIFE.
HOW ABOUT YOU ACTUALLY SAY "YES" I CAN TAKE FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE INSTEAD OF SAYING SOME BULLSHIT ABOUT WALKING BACK.
You brought up "half their profits" and I went with it.
I brought it up because it's crucial to the point I'm making. If they can live with burning down half their profits (so, like 1.5% of their revenue) - which they absolutely can do (because it's only like 1.5% of their revenue) - then they can afford to not notice how absolutely useless their data harvesting methods are.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
@LaoC monopolization. They have so much money they can burn half of their profits on absolute insanity and still come ahead.
Can you find a sector where profit margins are lower than in supermarkets?
Can you find a sector where the average valuation of the entire business is as huge as in supermarkets? They don't make much money per product, but they make shittons of money overall. They can totally afford to piss out a billion or ten down the drain.
What's your measure now
Same as it has been the whole time for (I assume) everyone talking to
here: would they go under if they wasted money on re-harvesting people's data they already possess, or will they keep doing fine. This whole subthread is about whether it can be proven that they benefit from data harvesting from the sole fact they still do it, or whether it's possible they do it despite not having any benefits (I'm saying the latter).I maintain that the "collecting muh data" is a bit of a red herring here. The value in these programs is getting you to continue to shop at their store instead of at a competitor.
That's not to say there's no value in collecting your data, but it's in offering you stuff that they believe you'll value in service of getting you to come back to their store.
If they're making tons of money selling your data to someone, I'd be happy to update my priors on this but so far it's all just assertions without any evidence.
All I'm saying is that they will continue to harvest data long past the point where it makes sense to do so. And they're very likely past that point already.
I'll accept this as a walkback
Fuck you. Here is the very first post I posted in this discussion.
Why so crabby?
Because fuck you, that's why.
True TDWTF spirit
You brought up "half their profits" and I went with it.
I brought it up because it's crucial to the point I'm making. If they can live with burning down half their profits (so, like 1.5% of their revenue) - which they absolutely can do (because it's only like 1.5% of their revenue) - then they can afford to not notice how absolutely useless their data harvesting methods are.
I would say going bankrupt is a fairly strong indicator that they can't afford jack shit, but what do I know.
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Walkback my ass.
OK, I accept your forward walk and reject your previous walkback.
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If you shop "healthy", your insurance premiums go down (or, rather, the opposite - you pay more if you shop unhealthy).
And here goes the "why do you care if they know what you buy" argument. Of course that's "voluntary" now, but how long until that "voluntary" becomes a penalty for not having it, just like the 50c penalty on cucumbers, once enough people go along with the next level of the boring dystopia.
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@topspin I’m not convinced this isn’t already the case for some items. Certain items in certain stores seen to have a permanent “member’s discount” and I wonder if the member’s discounted price is the regular price plus regular markup and the non-member price is just extra markup?
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@topspin I’m not convinced this isn’t already the case for some items. Certain items in certain stores seen to have a permanent “member’s discount” and I wonder if the member’s discounted price is the regular price plus regular markup and the non-member price is just extra markup?
Yes, that is exactly what I've been saying:
No idea, but it being significantly more expensive than the “organic” alternative certainly makes it feel like this is a punishment and not a limited time offer. I doubt that normally the organic one is cheaper too.
In the end, the discount price will be just the normal price, and everyone who isn't using their fucking apps, or collecting 6 billion royalty special offer stamps like y'all used to do, is just getting fucked. That's why originally the "discounter" supermarkets were so successful here, because they just got rid of all that bullshit and you knew you'd get a good price without the hassle. But sure, everyone embrace bringing the hassle back, now with added data collection.
Large scale prisoner's dilemma sure is a bitch.
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In the end, the discount price will be just the normal price, and everyone who isn't using their fucking apps, or collecting 6 billion royalty special offer stamps like y'all used to do, is just getting fucked. That's why originally the "discounter" supermarkets were so successful here, because they just got rid of all that bullshit and you knew you'd get a good price without the hassle. But sure, everyone embrace bringing the hassle back, now with added data collection.
Large scale prisoner's dilemma sure is a bitch.In the end, things will get bad enough that there's a market opportunity and someone new will start to steal the incumbents' lunch.
And then we go round the loop again.
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Today I finally gave in and ordered a company cell.
In the first step, I had to select the plan from a list of 1.
In the second step, I had to pick the phone from a list of 3.
In the third step, I had to pick the size of sim from a list of 3.Why the hell do they not know what size of pin goes in the phone I just selected?
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Why the hell do they not know what size of pin goes in the phone I just selected?
It shouldn't even matter - multi-size SIM cards have been a thing for ages. There's no way they're ordering a SIM of a specific size from the carrier.
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@loopback0 They will order a multi-size card, take the size you say you need, and give only that to you, of course.
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@loopback0 said in WTF Bites:
Why the hell do they not know what size of pin goes in the phone I just selected?
It shouldn't even matter - multi-size SIM cards have been a thing for ages. There's no way they're ordering a SIM of a specific size from the carrier.
Actually a punch-out from the carrier (vodafone) which then redirects back to the internal procurement site to go through the approval chain. And I strongly suspect it's getting shipped direct from vodafone to me.
My manager also indicated it'll probably just be a multisim. Still makes me wonder why they're separate on the punchout.
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You brought up "half their profits" and I went with it.
I brought it up because it's crucial to the point I'm making. If they can live with burning down half their profits (so, like 1.5% of their revenue) - which they absolutely can do (because it's only like 1.5% of their revenue) - then they can afford to not notice how absolutely useless their data harvesting methods are.
I would say going bankrupt is a fairly strong indicator that they can't afford jack shit, but what do I know.
Who went bankrupt?
@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Walkback my ass.
OK, I accept your forward walk and reject your previous walkback.
How about you accept the mundane reality is that everything I said so far was one and the same?
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You brought up "half their profits" and I went with it.
I brought it up because it's crucial to the point I'm making. If they can live with burning down half their profits (so, like 1.5% of their revenue) - which they absolutely can do (because it's only like 1.5% of their revenue) - then they can afford to not notice how absolutely useless their data harvesting methods are.
I would say going bankrupt is a fairly strong indicator that they can't afford jack shit, but what do I know.
Who went bankrupt?
^FKarstadt
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@LaoC and how does a company that went bankrupt before smarphone was a thing prove anything about anything happening this decade?
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
Walkback my ass.
OK, I accept your forward walk and reject your previous walkback.
How about you accept the mundane reality is that everything I said so far was one and the same?
I think you know the answer, but you don't like it.
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@boomzilla of course I don't like your answer, why would anyone like being lied to their face?
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@Gustav non sequitur proc is
's thing.
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@boomzilla context window size is a bitch, right?
You must be either lying or illiterate to claim otherwise. Let's spice things up and accuse you of lying this time around.
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@Gustav I'm old enough to remember when words meant things. And I definitely don't remember disagreement meaning lie.
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@boomzilla then I have no other choice but go with the only other alternative - you're illiterate.
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If you shop "healthy", your insurance premiums go down (or, rather, the opposite - you pay more if you shop unhealthy).
And here goes the "why do you care if they know what you buy" argument. Of course that's "voluntary" now, but how long until that "voluntary" becomes a penalty for not having it, just like the 50c penalty on cucumbers, once enough people go along with the next level of the boring dystopia.
It's already very much a penalty and I'm rather surprised you don't know that.
Filed under: preexisting condition
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@boomzilla then I have no other choice but go with the only other alternative - you're illiterate.
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WTF Byte: someone on the Internet is ignoring and I can totally let that stand!
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@LaoC and how does a company that went bankrupt before smarphone was a thing prove anything about anything happening this decade?
Considering they also had nuclear power plants and a lady chancellor at the time—yeah, totally different times. From last week. When the company was bankrupt again.
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A bride to be discovers a reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography
A U.K. woman was photographed standing in a mirror where her reflections didn't match, but not because of a glitch in the Matrix. Instead, it's a simple iPhone computational photography mistake.
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
A bride to be discovers a reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography
A U.K. woman was photographed standing in a mirror where her reflections didn't match, but not because of a glitch in the Matrix. Instead, it's a simple iPhone computational photography mistake.
It would be mildly shocking of it were a regular photo, but if your know how panorama photos work, meh. Here's a photo of my son caught in the Matrix:
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@boomzilla said in WTF Bites:
A bride to be discovers a reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography
A U.K. woman was photographed standing in a mirror where her reflections didn't match, but not because of a glitch in the Matrix. Instead, it's a simple iPhone computational photography mistake.
It would be mildly shocking of it were a regular photo, but if your know how panorama photos work, meh.
If you're fast/slow enough you don't even need the computational shenanigans:
