Postal Arbitrage • Hacker News Board

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#291

Post by euroderf » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 9:01 AM UTC

sgerenser wrote: post #223

euroderf wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland AFAICT there's no bulk postal rate. Instead, paper spam is delivered thru mail slots by private services that hit all the buildings in the neighborhood and drop collections of paper spam. So, many people post a note on their door opting out from this stuff. (Ei mainoksia = No ads.) It must be saving absolutely huge amounts of paper.

Fun fact: in the U.S. it’s illegal to put anything but mail (delivered by USPS) in a mailbox or mail slot. USPS wants a monopoly on that paper spam.

But when you have to push a rotten fish thru someone's mail slot, the law be damned.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#292

Post by hattmall » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #224

kergonath wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber eats / Door Dash suck so much I have no desire to order delivery food at all other than the two that run their own delivery and I know it will be a consistent experience. Same. It’s about the only reason why I order from Dominos occasionally. But last week it got delivered by Uber even though I ordered directly on their website. It also took 45 minutes to get delivered instead of the usual 10. So now the only…

Dominos lets people order from Uber Eats but still handles delivery itself. Maybe they fall back to Uber drivers when they are short staffed. I don’t know of any restaurants that previously had delivery of their own and switched. I’m sure they exist but it’s vanishingly small, for the reasons outlined. So all DoorDash does is give you the consumer more options. If you don’t like it, you don’t use it and nobody is har…

> I don’t know of any restaurants that previously had delivery of their own and switched.

>Only a small percent of restaurants delivered in the first place outside of the ones like pizza that still do.

Where I live about half of the non-chain restaurants offered delivery service. In addition to places like Domino's. Now, it's only Domino's and Jimmy Johns that have delivery of their own. I've talked to multiple owners / managers that complained how DoorDash and maybe Uber eats literally listed phone numbers under their name and paid for top ad spots and middle manned call in orders using their own drivers. So much so to the point that staffing for drivers wasn't feasible.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#293

Post by Breza » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #189

bandrami wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put all of the money Amazon as a whole has taken since it was founded in 1994 in a stack on the left, and all of the money Amazon as a whole has spent since then in a stack on the right, the stack on the left is slightly larger, but this has only been true for a couple of years now. It's the difference in 1990s billionaires and 2020s billionaires. Bill Gates was so rich because he owned a lot of Microsoft shar…

> his notional net worth increases (AMZN has never paid a dividend). But that’s exactly the loophole: you can borrow for very cheap against this notional equity without incurring a cent in taxes (since divodends are never paid out)

It is worth pointing out that many executives cash out the old fashioned way: by selling stock. That includes Bezos.

https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1043298.htm