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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

chargedretail.co.uk

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Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#491

Post by eru »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #388
eru wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be even worse in Britain before the invasion of Aldi and Lidl really had an impact. They had lots of 'buy 5, pay 3' and similar nonsense deals. Often, the software in the register would "mysteriously" not have the deal, and you pay more. And, of course, a 50% reduction usually meant that they just doubled the price in the week before. Things got much better in the last ten years or so. That's roughly when…

That is really something which rubs me the wrong way. There is no (to my knowledge) comprehensive public place/site where one could see this price devolopment over time, visualize it, show the regional differences, by vendor, product, package size/amount/volume/weight/per piece, and so on. No transparency at all. IMO this should exist. But it doesn't. In german i'd say: Fortwährende Vortäuschung falscher Tatsachen! w…

The thing is that British grocers got regularly fined (and talked to sternly) for these kinds of practiced. But they kept finding ways around the regulations or just ignoring them.

What really helped in the end to rein the practice in was new competition from abroad.

British retail banking is similarly customer unfriendly. For example a few years ago (no clue whether that's still the case), you could NOT not have an overdraft. They called it an 'unarranged overdraft'. Instead of just letting you tell the bank to refuse to let you got even a penny below zero, they still gave you the money (to an extent) but with a hefty fee.

They also ordered your outgoing bills or standing orders for the day in decreasing size: that's the order that maximizes that number of items that hit your account when its below zero.

They regularly got dinged by their regulators. Nothing much changed.

This time the new competition didn't come from overseas, but from upstarts like Monzo.

I don't know whether the incumbent British retail banks have gotten their act together yet. But last time I checked they were at least afraid and scrambling.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#492

Post by eru »

Certhas wrote: post #442
eru wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, that's probably more than good enough for fair and open elections. Lowering the complexity and thus barrier to understanding just builds an extra buffer of transparency into the system. It's a very-nice-to-have.

In a technical sense, yes. But there is definitely social value in having a system that is in principle auditable by (almost) everyone. An open source voting machine would still be only auditable by the small minority of people who can read code.

Yes, exactly my point.

You don't want to just have free and fair elections, you want to also convey the clear and unfakeable impression that your elections are free and fair.

There's a lot of signalling involved.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#493

Post by eru »

pgeorgi wrote: post #450
eru wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, that's probably more than good enough for fair and open elections. Lowering the complexity and thus barrier to understanding just builds an extra buffer of transparency into the system. It's a very-nice-to-have.

> If you have open source voting machines that can be and are audited, It's extremely hard to verify that whatever code you audited is the one used in the actual devices. No such problem with pen and paper

Pen and paper gives you both a safety margin (or transparency margin). And it allows you to signal in a hard to fake way that your elections are free and fair and hard to temper with.

(Fair as far as the voting system goes. Eg first-past-the-post on paper will still be a less fair voting system than Germany's weird proportional hybrid or my favourite, range voting. Or this fascinating gem: https://rangevoting.org/PropRep.html)

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#494

Post by eru »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #431
eru wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer to keep my money, if I can. Otherwise, I don't think any of Germans or Poles or Chinese or Americans etc are better humans than the other. Or more deserving. There's a bit of an argument in favour of buying from poorer countries, like China or Bangladesh, I guess.

It's not about being better humans or more deserving. More just about being self-reliant and supporting the economy that most directly affects me.

Hmm, perhaps. Thanks for explaining!

Though if you actually want to support America, I'd suggest you buy from the foreigner that's most likely to hoard and never spend your USD: that would mean America would get to consume some goods and services in return for ink and paper (or these days, 0s and 1s.)

The Fed targets inflation. A dollar hoarded might as well be burned. So they'll just replace it with a fresh new dollar.

(And if the foreigners eventually spend the dollar and it comes back to the economy you know and love, that's not much different than if you had spend the dollar directly in America in the first place. America just got an interest free loan of some goods and services while the dollar was abroad.

If enough dollars flow back to impact inflation, the Fed will shrink their balance sheet to accommodate. Ie they'll sell government bonds from their inventory to soak up excess dollars.)

The situation is slightly different, if you eg want to support your very local economy, eg your brother-in-law's company, or your city, your county or your state. Because the Fed target inflation in the whole country, not in one specific location.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#495

Post by eru »

why_only_15 wrote: post #474
eru wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an American or EU or other passport?

American

That makes a lot of things easier.

It's easy to make fun of America, but they still have one of the broadest labour markets; and also one of the highest paying for software people.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#496

Post by eru »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #433
eru wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about bad treatment. I'm talking about hard work. But 'what to do?' is easy to answer in principle but hard to implement in practice: lower barriers to entry for new companies, and for companies wanting to expand into other industries or markets. Make it easy for workers to move between jobs. (By, for example, not tying health insurance to your job.)

While i'm not working there, i casually know some people who did at the store level, shelving/cashier. It's not less hard at f.e. Edeka or Rewe either. That's what i meant. And health insurance isn't tied to a job here. And when you are shopping, if you are not absolutely ignorant, you can see and compare the range of tasks a single person has to do where and when. There is not much difference to be seen, and backsta…

Oh, I'm more comparing to American supermarkets. They have much higher staffing levels than what competition with Lidl and Aldi has forced the German retail landscape down to.

(Btw, 'for example' is spelled e.g. not f.e. in English. And German 'd.h' (das heißt) is i.e. in English. They are curious creatures and have a thing for Latin. Most people still pronounce eg as 'for example' and ie as 'that is'.)

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#497

Post by verst »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #485
C1sc0cat wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More lanes less congestion at each lane Its maybe that maybe Lidl / German stores are cheeping out on the store fit out - you can get lanes that can support two customers packing.

Maybe. But German grocery stores are also quite small. Like, the setup works fine for the way Germans go grocery shopping: smaller amounts of groceries, two or three times a week. It just sucks for families if you wanna buy more at once. I miss Costco.

Look for the wholesale stores where restaurants buy supplies. You can shop there too. Just like Costco those are usually at the outskirts of the city.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#498

Post by cocoland »

As a novice engineer , i would like to ask the larger community few view point questions just out of curiosity.

If you were the CTO/CIO and were tasked in building up a cloud that competes with behemoths , how would you do it. Of course it would be an "A Team" to do it , but what would be your priorities (e.g pick up cloud foundry and build things on top , take low hanging IaaS services) , there are so many aspects to it , how would you track progress and decide when to go out to market ? How would different teams (right from procurement , network , premises , to developers and ops personnel) be managed and seamlessly work ? What would be reasonable milestones and $$ spends ? :)

Note this is purely out of curiosity..any links/blogs would be fine too :)

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#499

Post by delcaran »

Tade0 wrote: post #362
delcaran wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's after taxes. Relocating is on my wishlist but I'm really too afraid to do it.

To clarify as I can't edit: my friend is Italian, I'm Polish. Anyway while you'd probably be better off relocating to Germany, France and of course Switzerland if you ever consider Poland then give me a shout at: hand @ wringing.it It's a throwaway email that I check once every week. Perhaps I would be able to help.

Thank you!

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#500

Post by fileeditview »

enitihas wrote: post #347
bencw wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this? Is there a brain drain going on?

Should be. The salary disparity in US and EU is immense.

And on the other side so are the healthcare and public services. I don't think there is a big scale brain drain to the US.

I am doing the job for about 6-7 years and I don't know a single dev that went to the US. But I know many devs that came from other european countries and even the US.

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