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Show HN: Aldi Price Map

aldipricemap.com

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Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#261

Post by kube-system »

rendang wrote: post #257
kube-system wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acronyms under most English style guides should be written in lowercase with the first letter capitalized. Only initialisms should be in all caps, which Aldi is definitely not. e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/business/aldi-winn-dixie-... e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63015985 Aldi's corporate style is "ALDI" but that's just their internal guidance, not the rules of English.

I almost always see most acronyms (not brands with an acronym origin like Aldi) in all caps, and always considered it an odd quirk of the BBC that they did not. E.g. The NYT itself: https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=nato Even the Daily Mail: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nato+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2F... But apparently the Guardian doesn't do the all-caps either. Are there any American publications/style guides th…

Editors will make exceptions to general style guidelines when they think it leads to better clarity when reading. For instance, most newspapers will write iPhone with a lower case 'i', despite that being incorrect for a proper noun, because people are used to seeing it that way.

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#262

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #242
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, a successful business will eat some costs in order to generate more profit. That's the definition of a loss leader. When Publix sells a rotisserie chicken for $8, they're taking a loss on every one. If people only came to Publix for the chicken, they'd go bankrupt in a month. Hence they aren't passing on the cost. They hope people will buy other items too, which have higher margins, and make up the d…

In the context of the comment I replied to, I meant all businesses pass on all costs in aggregate. But the commenter I replied to then clarified they meant the business does not evenly spread the transportation costs equally amongst all customers nationwide.

Right, they're all part of the same concept. The business doesn't necessarily pass costs on to a customer. They may be intending to make a profit, and thus may recoup costs in other ways than what the consumer is directly paying for. "Eventually making enough money to keep the lights on" is a different concept than "recouping all costs".

Other examples:

- "Free" online services aren't paid for by users, so the business eats the cost of the service. But they hope to recoup the cost from advertisers or from selling data. The users are customers, and the advertisers are customers, but only some of the customers are subsidizing the business, hence the cost is only passed to some of the customers.

- Another example of the above: 40% of the profit for Neiman Marcus comes from 2% of the customers. The brunt of the cost of the business is not getting passed on to 98% of customers.

- Tech darlings (Uber, etc) lose money hand over fist for years, sometimes decades, never recouping their cost.

- Some businesses/industries are heavily subsidized. The customer sees a low price, and the business's costs are actually "passed on" to a tax-paying polity, who are often not the customer.

- A business may write down costs (due to a loss), paying the difference out of pocket, without passing on this write-down to customers.

So a business can spend more money than it makes, it can spend someone else's money [not needing to recoup said cost], it can literally just pay a cost out of pocket without any expectation of return, and it can spend a lot of money to make very little in profit.

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#264

Post by HenryBemis »

wongarsu wrote: post #255
slfnflctd wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2,356 Aldi stores in the US right now and it's probably growing. They've been expanding massively here for the past 10-15 years or longer.

There are 4.215 Aldi stores in Germany, 1.997 of those from Aldi Süd who also operates the US stores. Add to that 960 Aldi Süd stores in the UK, 530 in Austria, and a couple more in the other neighboring countries, and I think it's completely fair to be surprised if an aldi price map focuses completely on the US.

There is a big discussion in the EU for some products that are far more expensive in some countries over others. If someone who do this for Aldi in Europe, they would see that some "more expensive" countries, are selling the very same products at lower prices than some of the "more cheap" ones.

And that will piss people off, and politicians everywhere don't liked pissed-off people.

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#265

Post by tshaddox »

das_keyboard wrote: post #135
ayocado wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I did search for any available data for Germany but nothing available easily :|

To be fair, this was more of a tongue in cheek response and not really directed at you or your project directly. For me Aldi is just such a european thing that I was genuinely surprised by this.

Aldi was pretty ubiquitous in the rural Midwestern United States around where I grew up in the 1990s. We didn't associate it at all with Germany or Europe, and I had no idea about the company's origins until I read about it on Wikipedia many years later.

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#266

Post by ciex »

locallost wrote: post #253
das_keyboard wrote: post #120

How naive of me to ecpect anything else than an us-only map when this is about a german supermarket chain with most of its stores in europe...

I don't get this criticism at all. Somebody created something for free to scratch their itch, and they're likely from the US, why would they bother with anything else? If it's so important to you, you can always scratch your own itch, I doubt the author of the project would mind help.

I don’t see anything indicating criticism in op’s comment, seems more like an expression of surprise.

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#267

Post by beAbU »

atoav wrote: post #75
cottsak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you Americans need to think about your "LEGOs" problem

How long do you thing that they will turn the already-plural "data" into the hyper-plural "datas"? Or has this already happened, I am too afraid to check.

Data /is/ plural. One datum, set of data.

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#268

Post by peter_d_sherman »

Very nice!

I would love to see something like this but for all supermarkets around the world with prices in local currencies adjusted.

i.e.

Where is the cheapest place in the world to buy a banana?

Where is the most expensive place in the world to buy a banana?

Now the 'banana' -- could be any food item, it doesn't matter.

A future tool like this could be able to help future societies predict which areas of the world are in economic ascent and which are in economic decline (cheaper prices = economic ascent, expensive prices = approaching potential future economic peak and/or approaching potential future economic decline, etc.)

Anyway, looks great!

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#269

Post by atoav »

beAbU wrote: post #267
atoav wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you thing that they will turn the already-plural "data" into the hyper-plural "datas"? Or has this already happened, I am too afraid to check.

Data /is/ plural. One datum, set of data.

Exactly my point

Re: Show HN: Aldi Price Map

#270

Post by atoav »

nwatson wrote: post #160
atoav wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you thing that they will turn the already-plural "data" into the hyper-plural "datas"? Or has this already happened, I am too afraid to check.

Data is a mass/uncountable noun now (like meat) rather than a countable noun (like coin/coins). Turning it countable involves a helper noun like data point / data points. "Datum?" Almost nobody uses that in the vernacular.

I have seen it used in more than one software project and I know IT/Software people (including myself) who use it.
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