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Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

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Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#211

Post by laverya »

kennywinker wrote: post #208
systemvoltage wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gun ownership is split between party lines but not as much as people think. There is still a good chunk of Democrats that own guns (including myself). https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem...

Gun ownership isn't the same thing as being anti-gun control. The majority of people, many of them gun owners and haling from both "parties", would like to see some basic restrictions on how quick and easy it is to buy a gun.

This heavily depends on what the proposed restrictions actually are - and people never seem to actually know what the current restrictions are either.

Ask for Universal Background Checks, and people say "sure". Make a national registry of firearms and criminalize loaning a rifle to a friend for a hunting trip or giving your guns to a neighbor for safekeeping while you're recovering from depression? A lot of people have now completely checked out, and it's the same damn policy. So yes, perhaps most gun owners, when polled, support "some basic restrictions on how quick and easy it is to buy a gun". But that doesn't mean they want to ban all private transfers, which is what the policy proposals always seem to be. (Guess what? Every single sale from a firearms dealer, which includes just about everyone at a gun show, requires a federal background check! And now a defacto 3+day waiting period for people under 21!)

Not to mention the absolute lunacy of "a 15 inch rifle barrel means 10 years in prison", and THAT one has been federal law for quite a few decades.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#212

Post by laverya »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #184
laverya wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people really, really hate guns, and some of those charities really, really love guns. (and one has the reputation among ~half the US population of really, really loving guns, and a reputation in the other half as "Negotiating Rights Away") The people who really, really hate guns are more likely to work for tech companies than their counterparts, at least in my experience. Also, Amazon in particular has long…

> The people who really, really hate guns are more likely to work for tech companies than their counterparts, at least in my experience. Depends on the company, I have worked at a Defense Contractor for example, the sentiment towards guns was pro-guns despite the diverse political views of everyone there.

I'm not sure I would count defense contractors as "tech companies". They're a different category, even if it involves technology. (If tech includes Defense, then why not also Automotive? Or financial, medical... What isn't tech at that point?)

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#213

Post by gammarator »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #192
jen20 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it even possible to do in the app?

Yes, for the app it's a one-off setting. If you only purchase via the app, no need to remember the smile URL.

... I tried to remember to use smile for years and never knew about the app setting :-(

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#214

Post by artificial »

laverya wrote: post #212
giancarlostoro wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who really, really hate guns are more likely to work for tech companies than their counterparts, at least in my experience. Depends on the company, I have worked at a Defense Contractor for example, the sentiment towards guns was pro-guns despite the diverse political views of everyone there.

I'm not sure I would count defense contractors as "tech companies". They're a different category, even if it involves technology. (If tech includes Defense, then why not also Automotive? Or financial, medical... What isn't tech at that point?)

It's pretty broad these days. Reminds me of Uber, a ride hailing company, aka taxi service. How much of the company needs to be tech vs the service? Like Bell Labs and AT&T?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#215

Post by amscanne »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #177
SoftTalker wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and small charities like this are generally volunteer-run and a very high percentage of their income goes to their charitiable purpose. Large charities leech off the existence of the problems they are claiming to solve. If they actually solved them, they wouldn't be needed any more. Name any large organization that has ever worked itself out of needing to exist. And their executives make a lot of money.

Are you saying that e.g. homelessness in America has not been solved because the organizations working on it are not trying to solve it?

I’m sure that the frontline workers for those organizations are earnest and genuine in their effort to help, but it’s also undoubtedly true that there’s a lot of money to be made (and it’s not really in the interest of those making the money to see the problem solved). If you search the term “homeless industrial complex”, you’ll see lots of hot takes on this. I’m not really endorsing any specific perspective, but I suspect that, as always, the truth is mixed and complex.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#216

Post by laverya »

artificial wrote: post #214
laverya wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I would count defense contractors as "tech companies". They're a different category, even if it involves technology. (If tech includes Defense, then why not also Automotive? Or financial, medical... What isn't tech at that point?)

It's pretty broad these days. Reminds me of Uber, a ride hailing company, aka taxi service. How much of the company needs to be tech vs the service? Like Bell Labs and AT&T?

The lines are either far too broad or far too fuzzy, indeed. Why is Netflix tech and not Disney? Tesla but not Ford? Amazon but not Walmart, Apple but not Dell, or Robinhood but not UBS?

Hell if I know, but I know there's a line there in my mind.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#217

Post by lazyasciiart »

ROTMetro wrote: post #206
lazyasciiart wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that e.g. homelessness in America has not been solved because the organizations working on it are not trying to solve it?

California allocated 7 billion in 2022 to homelessness. There are 172,000 homeless in California. So that is $40,000 per homeless person, per year, in just state funds. Lot's of people keep a roof over their heads while making less money than that a year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dude. There were 172,000 homeless people counted in one night.

Among those people, some were chronically homeless, which basically means mentally ill, disabled and/or addicted to something. Nobody is paying for housing and health care for these people for less than $40k per year.

The majority of those people, however, are not in that group. They also didn’t stay homeless all year - over the course of one year, many times that number were nearly homeless and got help from those funds to avoid it (pay back rent to avoid eviction, pay a deposit on a new place, etc), or used these funds for services while homeless - shelter, job training, medical care, assistance applying for disability payments, etc. Besides directly funding these services, the money was also spent in paying people to manage job training programs, run the shelters, be social workers who know how disability applications work, be social workers who have to find their homeless clients to tell them about work opportunities, track available spaces in rehab programs, ……………

Your attempted equivalency there is missing so much information that it is uselessly wrong.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#218

Post by dang »

laverya wrote: post #78
vwcx wrote: post #24

It's amazing to look at the AmazonSmile form 990. It's a 2000 page pdf with a list of every charity that received a donation along with the amount: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/46262...

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting ideological battle comments (regardless of which ideology you favor) and generally stop posting in the flamewar style?

It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#219

Post by laverya »

dang wrote: post #218
laverya wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting ideological battle comments (regardless of which ideology you favor) and generally stop posting in the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My apologies.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#220

Post by lazyasciiart »

amscanne wrote: post #215
lazyasciiart wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that e.g. homelessness in America has not been solved because the organizations working on it are not trying to solve it?

I’m sure that the frontline workers for those organizations are earnest and genuine in their effort to help, but it’s also undoubtedly true that there’s a lot of money to be made (and it’s not really in the interest of those making the money to see the problem solved). If you search the term “homeless industrial complex”, you’ll see lots of hot takes on this. I’m not really endorsing any specific perspective, but I s…

I thought that recent years had finally taught most people that “the truth is in the middle” is not a rational default position.
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