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It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

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131–140 of 156 posts

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons he gives for buying it don't tell us anything. His net worth is in the 12 figures. Everything he says publicly is crafted by a well paid and highly competent PR team. If he bought it to gain political influence, which seems to me the only reason that makes any sense whatsoever, or for any other reason that would put him in a bad light, he would not in a million years come out and say that openly.

No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend, or his employees more than he absolutely has to. He didn't buy a newspaper because he loves giving money away on good causes.

I am quite surprised by the downvotes here. They almost make me think that people are being paid to create an appearance of a pro-Amazon/pro-Bezos consensus on this site.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#132
post #101
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will buy SQL Server specifically, but if you are using MySQL or Postgres then AWS is still the clear winner in my book. RDS is great and Aurora is even better, and serverless...wow. Both Azure's and GCP's managed database offerings don't match up if using MySQL or Postgres.

How does RDS Postgres beat GCP hosted Postgres? Genuinely curious as we're running on GCP and I'm wondering what we're missing out on.

Turnaround time for supporting the latest version on RDS is faster, and RDS supports more extensions. Then if you need to scale you have Aurora.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#133
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what our current President and his "deep state" wants you to believe. However, after three + years it's pretty obvious that our President has a firm grip on power. He still plays the victim every once in a while. But all the departments are quite clearly bowing and pleasing him as best they can.

I don't know about that, he wasn't able to get the press to play nice on COVID the way it did during swine flu.

This swine flu comparison is an ignorant canard. I will be glad when I can downvote chaff comments like this.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that, he wasn't able to get the press to play nice on COVID the way it did during swine flu.

In the US the press is not part of the state. Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.

Eh, fair point that the epidemics were different scales, when I first saw that comparison they were still fairly close in terms of impact to the States.

Still, it seems to me that the Trump administration originally clearly wanted to go for a 'herd immunity' strategy and changed it due to political rather than practical considerations. I'm quite sure that if it had the relationship with the fifth estate that, say, the Biden campaign enjoys, there would have been very little political fallout as a result. The press has managed the truth far more aggressively for other administrations.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I do. You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.

I would offer that the Project Veritas expose of CNN belies your assertion handily. There is a mindset that dominates academia and carries on into the media. It is reflected in the political donations of journalists. And the distribution of the story bias. It perhaps one should say "stunning lack of anything resembling a distribution".

Of course academia is a "radical left" arena, as it's the domain of our youth and that is a natural expression of their view of the world.

All news has bias, but some are more biased than others, and that bias varies from personal and ingrained to organizational and intentional. It's important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

Project Veritas is a right-wing, extremely partisan organization with a shady history. They are not an organization that I would trust.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#136

DoD officials are barred from answering questions about White House influence on the decision owing to its assertion of "presidential communications privilege"[1]. This is, quite simply, a confession. Nothing is solved by believing that the administration is somehow different than the dozen or so near identical leaders in other countries: that somehow this one uniquely is not pressuring companies hostile to it (in sp…

> Nothing is solved by believing that the administration is somehow different than the dozen or so near identical leaders in other countries: Perhaps true, and relevant how, when talking about American companies bidding for work for the American govt?

Government contracts can be awarded to politically supportive entities and denied to those that aren't. Of course in a nicely functioning democracy there is little reason to believe this happening.

But when the head of government intervenes in the process for no clear reasons and then refuses to explain what that intervention was or why it happened or allow anyone else to comment; and when this is defended as remaining silent because speaking "may tend to incriminate" ala the 5th amendment, then it is clear there was grossly inappropriate intervention.

The issue is not whether Amazon or Microsoft win the contract. The issue is whether contract awards are going to be used to force companies to support and obey the party in power. That and the causally related "it can't happen here" mind set.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#137
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US the press is not part of the state. Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.

Slightly off-topic, but if you consider that 90% of "mainstream" media is owned by 6 huge corporations, which are interested in maintaining crony capitalism (of which the state is a central player) - then it would not be completely outlandish to think that the press is kinda part of state (conceptually speaking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...

it's the difference between explicit and invisible force. people in favour of capitalism (in all its forms) consider the invisible forces "the way the world works".

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would offer that the Project Veritas expose of CNN belies your assertion handily. There is a mindset that dominates academia and carries on into the media. It is reflected in the political donations of journalists. And the distribution of the story bias. It perhaps one should say "stunning lack of anything resembling a distribution".

Of course academia is a "radical left" arena, as it's the domain of our youth and that is a natural expression of their view of the world. All news has bias, but some are more biased than others, and that bias varies from personal and ingrained to organizational and intentional. It's important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Project Veritas is a right-wing, extremely partisan organization…

Not to accuse James O'Keefe of sainthood, but I've an order of magnitude more regard for him and Veritas than any of the cable news networks.

Re: It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend, or his employees more than he absolutely has to. He didn't buy a newspaper because he loves giving money away on good causes.

I am quite surprised by the downvotes here. They almost make me think that people are being paid to create an appearance of a pro-Amazon/pro-Bezos consensus on this site.

I'm unsurprised but the commitment to Orthodoxy here on HN.

I've experienced copious carpet bombings for deviations from the Received Truth, however mild and documented.

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