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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • It’s true you will never get rid of all of it but, just like crime, basic enforcement is a deterrence. They know who’s buying, they know where they’re shipped, they have a fair idea if they’re returned. Just requiring reviews to be from purchasers after they’ve received the product, removing positive reviews for returns without replacement (or flagging them as returned), and a few other steps would make fake reviews either very expensive or very expensive for the results.

    The fact is, Amazon makes most of their money on AWS, and I don’t think they care to put in the real effort to make their marketplace trustworthy again. Without that, it will continue its downward spiral.















  • I had a little discussion with a guy complaining about sodium batteries and how you keep hearing these wild claims and then nothing. I did a quick search and saw an article about a $2 billion partnership agreement to work on a pilot plant for sodium batteries. He claimed it was yet another sensational headline and doubted anything would happen from it. Less than a week later I saw an article about a plant in America being announced.

    This stuff is hard. It’s not like Master of Orion where you throw money at a specific research and get access upon completion. Different groups around the world are researching a multitude of different ideas, some related, and after a while a bunch of these ideas are combined and associated and researched, and all of a sudden you have a new product that’s significantly different from what was available before. And then you see incremental improvements for decades, not unlike the internal combustion engine or rechargeable lithium batteries.


  • Yeah, there’s friction, just like there is friction from walking on marble steps, such as those in the Tower of Pisa. But since they are mostly moving with the object on top of them, wear is reduced. In the end, the little wheels will be working in concert to move whatever object is on them in a given direction, but they are round and so will have a bit of drift in short order, which is managed by putting the wheels at angles so only a portion of one side is touching the object. They are likely made of a moderate friction substance with high durability and are probably replaceable, just like the tires on your car.