Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#31

Post by stagger87 » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

Occam's razor. Automated pricing, not laundering, lol. Amazon provides an interface for it. Provide rules for automatically updating price. Very common in the online book market.

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#32

Post by dieselgate » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

stagger87 wrote: post #31

Occam's razor. Automated pricing, not laundering, lol. Amazon provides an interface for it. Provide rules for automatically updating price. Very common in the online book market. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Yes my thoughts as well. I’ve read similar account of very high priced items online and it was an automated pricing algo gone awry comparing two sites selling the item (like Amazon and eBay)

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#33

Post by xracy » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

Stand UP Maths has a relatively recent video that explains what happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sseSi0k3Ecg

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#34

Post by more_corn » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

A runaway feedback loop like this between two powerful AI agents is one of the proposed ways that AI can destroy the world.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#35

Post by carabiner » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

stagger87 wrote: post #31

Occam's razor. Automated pricing, not laundering, lol. Amazon provides an interface for it. Provide rules for automatically updating price. Very common in the online book market. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Exactly what TFA describes.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#36

Post by stagger87 » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #35

stagger87 wrote: post #31

Occam's razor. Automated pricing, not laundering, lol. Amazon provides an interface for it. Provide rules for automatically updating price. Very common in the online book market. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

Exactly what TFA describes.

Yea sorry for the confusion, this was mostly a response to the other comments talking about it being money laundering.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#37

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

stagger87 wrote: post #31

Occam's razor. Automated pricing, not laundering, lol. Amazon provides an interface for it. Provide rules for automatically updating price. Very common in the online book market. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

This has been discussed on other items before and a few people were able to gather price history for some and it showed a clear cycle between the two stores of regular incremental price increases with stable percentages.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#38

Post by dang » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16247254 - Jan 2018 (106 comments)

Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10289742 - Sept 2015 (94 comments)

Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475854 - April 2011 (140 comments)

I recall other threads about similar cases but don't know how to find them. Anyone?

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#39

Post by tomcam » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #13

I think I stumbled across similar behaviour, but for a used book. I was looking for a particular computer science book, couldn't find it new, and then decided to buy a used one from Amazon, ordering from the store with the best rating. It didn't arrive, and after a while (a few weeks) I received a notice that the delivery service had lost the book. I was refunded the money, though. The tracking number I got for the b…

Well that was heartening. Thank you, and the prof.

Re: Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)

#40

Post by samuelmelo » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #13

I think I stumbled across similar behaviour, but for a used book. I was looking for a particular computer science book, couldn't find it new, and then decided to buy a used one from Amazon, ordering from the store with the best rating. It didn't arrive, and after a while (a few weeks) I received a notice that the delivery service had lost the book. I was refunded the money, though. The tracking number I got for the b…

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