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A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

kleinbottle.com

451–460 of 628 posts

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#451
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should just sue for copyright infringement.

IIRC: Amazon won't tell him who it is and he suspects it's just someone out of legal reach / as the book is just self published his legal resources are pretty limited.

Which is what the infringers hope - and the major engine driving much of Amazon's profits.

Fraud.

I remember when people used to (heck still do) get worked up about Walmart but those same people not only order from Amazon all the time, they even join B mans private club (Prime).

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that a small-time reseller like Cliff has to go to the trouble and expense to register a trademark to protect his listing (which I doubt Cliff will bother with). Until about 5-6 years ago the changes Amazon made almost universally made their service better and more pro-user convenience/efficiency. Since then it's really become a nightmare. I realize they are being abused by scammers who are scheming ever…

Making the step from a hobby to a business means having to make the necessary investments, some of which may be costly and a pain in the ass, to protect one's intellectual property.

I think it's ironic that you're saying he has to pay to run his business safely, when Amazon's set things up this way specifically because they don't want to pay to run their business safely.

It's a little outrageous that a 3rd party can come take over your storefront without any avenue to challenge.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that makes you incompatible with Amazon, because they are about unbounded growth for its own sake! Small is beautiful! Stay small! - from the guy who in September 2000 bought 16 klein bottles since you only charged for prime numbered bottles, and sent you his credit card number as the sum of two 16-digit numbers sent to different email addresses! I still have a beer mug and question mark; all the rest are with…

In years past, I'd say his business is perfect for Etsy. But that is a disaster now as well.

Ebay still works very well. While not far from perfect, it's amazing how much better they appear in contrast to pretty much everyone else right now!

How sad - they didn't have to get better, everyone else just got a lot worse by comparison.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I no longer buy anything important from Amazon, this especially goes for anything that plugs into the mains, I just don't trust Amazon any more. Amazon is now just for those low value items that I might need in a bit of a rush. This is especially true now that more and more retailers have caught up with Amazon's shipping (at least here in the UK). They seem to want it both ways. They have simultaneously tried to argu…

Same. Anything that plugs in, has batteries, or goes in my family's mouths is a no go for me now. I'm pretty much down to a few books, video games, and obscure fasteners/hardware/tools (which annoyingly they're just about the only good source for).

Don't forget your family's lungs. I don't really order the right sorts of things, but my wife often orders things that arrive smelling like they were dipped in benzene before leaving the factory.

Kind of a good metaphor for how toxic Amazon as a whole is, actually.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#455
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if you can still use Subscribe and Save without a Prime membership? We use that service quite a bit.

You can (I do)

Interesting. I'm wondering if I'd be able to drop the Amazon Prime then as well. Outside of Subscribe and Save, all of our purchases could be bunched until we hit the minimum order $. We hardly ever watch Amazon Prime video, we used to use the Photo storage but now pay for Google Photos (or Google One... whatever they call it now). Not sure what other benefits it provides?

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#456
post #261

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Wait, your web server is a Raspberry PI, and its holding up while being on the HN front page. Do you have a caching service in front maybe?

From personal experience, any cheap vps that can serve static pages will stand the front of HN. The blogs that go down here typically back every request by MySQL (ahem, WordPress) which is totally unnecessary and often actively harmful since MySQL has very low default total connections allowed. The point being: don't serve requests backed by a database unless the results are likely to change very dynamically!

No need to even get a cheap VPS. You can just serve up static content in an S3 bucket or similar.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#457
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can do that or there are static site generators backed by MySQL too. So your data and configuration site can still be dynamic but your served site will be completely static. The only difference between this and adding a cache is that the cache is another piece of software in your production stack.

Can you recommend a good static site generator?

When my friends webserver died and they had no backups, I found the wayback machine was s good (historic) static site generator ;-) Just mirror it from there and voila.

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#458
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sean, I just added a few things to my note. I'll try to copy/paste 'em here, although I suspect my sleepy fingers will goof up: I haven't really reviewed what I'm posting here - heck I can't spellcheck at 12:30 in the morning: Amazon, through its "Brand Registry" allows anyone with an issued trademark to take over other brands, whether or not the brand is covered by the specific goods that the trademark was issued fo…

You forgot one. Amazon uses seller data to target which products they will produce under their own Amazon brand. So creative entrepreneurs eventually find they are completing against Amazon directly. This is why Amazon will eventually be replaced by a company that can do things better, faster, and cheaper.

Walmart was correlating credit card information in the 80's. My mind still boggles at how poorly they have handled the Internet. If there is a company that can best Amazon and provide unique experiences with their tens of thousands of local warehouses (their retail stores!) it should be them. It's utterly mystifying that instead of leveraging their strengths they ran off and created a less functional clone of Amazon. Yikes!

Re: A foreign seller has hijacked my Amazon Klein bottle listing

#459
post #388

What is the purpose of a Klein bottle for those of us not in the know? Can you store food in it or is it just the geometrical shape that fascinates children?

It is a 3d representation of a 4d object that is basically the equivalent of a 4d mobius strip. There is only one side, no edges, and in 4d it doesn't bisect itself. You could store a liquid in it, but it is impractical to clean or drink from. Mostly mathematicians would be interested in it, as a novelty.

Why can't we have even a cooler 5d object represented in 3d and sell that on Amazon?
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