Nebraska Furniture Mart • Hacker News Board

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#51

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

braindeath wrote: post #47

auto wrote: post #41

Fun fact, Nebraska Furniture Mart holds 0x0004 on the list of Linux Manufacturer USB Ids [1]. At my last job we built a product with a custom OpenWRT fork, and I needed to identify an Atmel D21 behind a usb hub on a custom board we built, and I figured I'd never have a collision with any NFM hardware, so I just used that since no one outside our company would never see the device either. [1] http://www.linux-usb.org/…

Those aren't Linux IDs, those are USB-IF issued vendor IDs. That list is merely maintained by a Linux dev. That number is so low I wonder why NFM registered it. They have retailed electronics and accessories. Possibly some USB peripheral in the 90s?

Well, sort of. They're Linux's interpretation of a superset of VID/PID combinations recognized by the USB-IF. The USB-IF doesn't allow product IDs to be resold, as was (and still is) done by MCS in the $16D0 VID range, or to party on abandoned/unused IDs like C&T's at $420, as something called the "Celly SIM Card Reader" seems to be doing.

Linux is under no obligation to follow the (absurd) policies of USB-IF, so they basically have to maintain their own parallel list.

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#52

Post by zaroth » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 4:57 AM UTC

609venezia wrote: post #31

hogFeast wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was also notoriously abusive towards staff and her family. That was the reason why her family forced her to retire initially (iirc, and I may be misremembering this, she only has one biological son...the other two married her daughters and they were, perhaps understandably, not keen to carry on after the sale because of the abuse).

Do you have a source for her abuse? A quick search didn’t turn up anything—your comment is the top google result :)

Seriously, the ranking of HN comments in organic Google results is a little bit off-putting in some cases.

Someone dialed up the weights on HN comments way past where IMO a potentially throwaway remark should be scored.

And I say this as someone who tries to make substantive and significant HN posts on the regular.

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#53

Post by dymk » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 5:10 AM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #46

dev_dull wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use old fashioned machines with buttons (which will become muscle memory in a few months) when you can have a buggy, unresponsive and ever changing touchscreen with poor UX?

Because the new system has a sales guy who slyly bribed the right executive, and the other executives don't know why they should defend old tech.

The same old HN Luddite circlejerk eventually gets boring to participate in, doesn't it?

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#54

Post by dymk » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

dev_dull wrote: post #44

jrockway wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why change a perfectly working system your customer does have no direct interaction with? Because you can't buy replacement parts when something breaks?

Repairability is one of the defining qualities of “old stuff”

only the "old stuff" that survived. all the other "old stuff" (which is most of it) is in a landfill because it was irreparable.

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#55

Post by dymk » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

kick wrote: post #40

CharlesW wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind sharing what you learned, technology-wise, from reading this Wikipedia entry?

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If t…

> Most stories about politics ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

clearly HN does not follow nor enforce these rules, so why pretend when pick-and-choose anyways? And why lecture people on what is "on topic" when objectively "off topic" stuff makes it to the front page all the time?

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#56

Post by copperx » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #24

c0achmcguirk wrote: post #12

I have no idea why this is on the front page of Hacker News but I'm not hating it. I moved from Omaha to the Denver/Boulder area two years ago and besides the Henry Doorly Zoo, I miss Nebraska Furniture Mart the most. NFM is a great place to buy pretty much anything you want to put in your house. Mrs. B really knew how to make a business work. The only weird thing is how antiquated their computer systems are, it's am…

The only weird thing is how antiquated their computer systems are, it's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business. That's what I always think whenever I'm in a Starbucks and see the drive-through orders appearing on an IBM PC-era 80x25 text display. But hey, if it works, and if it's reliable, and if it doesn't have to talk to too many other systems, why not?

If I were to build a POS system from scratch in 2019, ncurses for the interface would be my top choice, and I can't think of many reasons to pick a GUI toolkit, except if there was a need to show pictures.

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#57

Post by mike00632 » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 6:27 AM UTC

It's why there is no IKEA in Nebraska!

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#58

Post by tim333 » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 7:46 AM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #20

lqet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's amazing they are so profitable with 70's era technology running the business. Without knowing any details, I would say that there are people who would argue that this attitude may be one of the reasons they are profitable. Why change a perfectly working system your customer does have no direct interaction with?

Not to mention they've had 50yr to refine their process.

I guess tech can be overrated. Mrs B couldn't read of write but knew all the carpet prices and could give you a quote on a say 10x7 piece off the top of her head. Buffett who bought the store never used a computer at work to trade stocks or otherwise but would be the worlds richest man, more than Bezos if he hadn't given about half to charity. He can also quote most financials from memory.

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#59

Post by tim333 » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

victor106 wrote: post #28

Does anyone here know what exactly is NFM’s moat? Price, Selection, Customer Service? All the above?

Buffett 89 letter:

> NFM and Borsheim's follow precisely the same formula for success: (1) unparalleled depth and breadth of merchandise at one location; (2) the lowest operating costs in the business; (3) the shrewdest of buying, made possible in part by the huge volumes purchased; (4) gross margins, and therefore prices, far below competitors'; and (5) friendly personalized service with family members on hand at all times.

the rest of that is a good read. (http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1989.html)

Re: Nebraska Furniture Mart

#60

Post by MarkMc » Mon, Sep 23, 2019, 8:18 AM UTC

Rose Blumkin is the classic American-immigrant-rags-to-riches-by-hard-work story. I love this story from Warren Buffett in his 1983 letter to shareholders:

"Omaha retailers began to recognize that Mrs. B would offer customers far better deals than they had been giving, and they pressured furniture and carpet manufacturers not to sell to her. But by various strategies she obtained merchandise and cut prices sharply. Mrs. B was then hauled into court for violation of Fair Trade laws. She not only won all the cases, but received invaluable publicity. At the end of one case, after demonstrating to the court that she could profitably sell carpet at a huge discount from the prevailing price, she sold the judge $1400 worth of carpet."