Idle Chatter -- July 12, 2022

Reading: I've just finished chapter two of Ken Kocienda's c. 2018 book. Chapter two, alone, was worth the price of the book. Clever, clever, clever. I will recommend it to my nephew who is a software engineer. 

Amazon: not ready for prime-time but something I sent a reader earlier today --

Yesterday there was a note over at twitter how much money Amazon was spending / losing on $6-diesel -- it was costing Amazon $4.81 / every unit shipped/delivered.

Those were Amazon's own numbers, not those of an analyst.

In other words, averaging transportation costs to each item shipped, it was costing Amazon $4.81 to deliver a $10 book.

Those were Amazon's numbers, not those of an analyst.

That does not interest me at all.

What interests me is what Amazon is not telling us. I believe Amazon's "web services" (AWS) is the biggest cloud "server" in the universe. No one else comes close, not even Google.

Amazon has the technology to identify me, Bruce Oksol, not by the IP of my computer. No matter what computer I'm on (personal, public, library, business, etc) when I surf the net (not logging into Amazon), Amazon has the technology to identify me.

It's called fingerprinting and one can google "amiunique" or "am I unique?"

On top of this, Amazon mining of its own cloud data, Amazon knows:

• my age, sex, educational background, where I've worked all my life; 
• my annual income; my pension; my social security benefits;
  
• everything I've ever bought on line (not just from Amazon) 
• what I like; what I don't like; 
• what I read: books, periodicals, websites
  

Facebook is getting killed by Apple's privacy tools and tricks. but those tools and tricks do not affect Amazon at all (perhaps on the margin, but not in the big scheme of things).

They have my entire life and that of everyone else that uses the internet (not just Amazon customers).

Every company and marketer would "kill" for this information. I don't know whether Amazon sells marketing information to others, but I am confident that Amazon uses all that data for their own purposes.

So, I don't think they care that it costs $4.81 to ship anything to me. Every time I do that, they learn $5.00 worth of information about me. Or more. If nothing else, they can sell my history of buying books to publishing companies.

Yesterday, out of the blue, I received a free copy of an incredibly impressive glossy magazine, a monthly. A free issue. It's right up my alley. I had never seen it before. British in origin, now with an American issue (since 2019, or thereabouts).

This magazine was tailored for me -- not literally -- but it's exactly what I'm looking for. Yes, I will subscribe, it's expensive. It's of "Playboy" quality without the sex or women. Unlike buying "Playboy" for the articles (wink, wink) this magazine really is bought by someone like me to read the articles.

I have no idea how the publisher came across my name to send me a free issue but my hunch it the publisher found it through Amazon web services.

The preceding was not proofread; there will be typographical and content errors.

Buffett: yesterday I posted a big graphic of Warren Buffett and a note. 

At that post, I asked a question to which no one respnded.

Here's the punchline:

We'll talk about this later. Back to reading.