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His book The Psychopath Code helped me tremendously. I remember also reading some other books from him. Good stuff, food for thought. A great loss indeed.


I think the author - who passed away unfortunately - has more than enough to say about dealing with bad actors. Read his book The Psychopath Code.


> What if abandoning entire cartons of merchandise, and then shipping replacements, just has plain-old higher ROI for Amazon, than does peeling a driver off their route to get those parcels fed back into the system for re-routing?

Excuse me? There's like a pile of boxes in the way. Amazon should clean this up, quickly. So you say it's better that random people living there should be made responsible for getting rid of a pile of boxes instead of Amazon who put them there?

What if I "abandon" a sh*tload of poo in your front garden because that's cheaper for me?


You might be overreacting. This is free stuff for whoever picks it up - yes Amazon shouldn't be littering, yes it might inconvenience something but it isn't that bad.


This is someones property not "free stuff". Its theft if you take it. These packages will actually have names and addresses of the actual owners written on them so you can't even say you didn't know who the owners are.


No, in this workflow, Amazon generates a replacement package and sends that out for the recipient. The recipient is entitled to one item that they paid for—and that would be the replacement item. The original item is still owned by Amazon, who is free to declare it abandoned, and so property of whoever finds it.

Remember, these parcels aren't being sent through the postal system (where you legally release ownership of mail to the Postmaster General by sticking something in a mail slot, which is how it can be a federal offense to tamper with their mail—undelivered mail is the government's legal property!)

Instead, these are parcels going through Amazon's own logistics carriers. Amazon never released ownership of these items—they don't do that until the item hits the recipient's door. These items are legally Amazon warehouse stock, that happen to have shipping labels printed on them.


I’m actually curious about the legality of this. Potentially those shipments contain personal information (from the invoice to the package contents). Is Amazon actually allowed to release them like that? Lost packages are one thing, but intentionally forgetting about them, idk.


It's still amazon's property until they deliver it I suppose, so charge Amazon rent.


In this case Amazon apparently advised the finders to open the boxes and donate the stuff. Sounds like free stuff to me.


Technically. Nobody is going to prosecute them for it if they just take it though. It is abandoned.

But Amazon isn't going to just abandon the people who bought stuff. They're going to get a different item. This is just Amazon signalling that it is cheaper to deliver a new item than to collect a lost item.


Though there are privacy considerations. You have the name and address of the person on a box that may contain something embarrassing or private.


Maybe not a genius, but definitely a hero.

Following your logic, then the real heroes are actually the cowards?


A hero in the same sense that Che Guevara or even Pablo Escobar are considered heroes by some people.


So a hero in the dictionary sense of the word? In the sense of the commonly agreed upon definition?


The fact that you don't agree with a person's cause does not preclude them from being heroic. Pablo Escobar was a drug kingpin, but Che Guevera at least thought he was fighting for his people.


> Look at the ease to exit just like the ease of entry.

Amen.


I did hold that belief for some time, but I solved it with the most reliable notification-method I came across thus far, and that's plain simple email from my own domain.

I understand this is not possible for specific apps that need smartphone notifications to function properly, but when you think about it: a lot of (web)apps don't need that.

In general, one might need less notifications than one thinks.


As a vendor, notifications sell more. As someone who sells things, you need to outsell your competition. Therefore, as a vendor, you need more notifications than you think.


This article couldn't come at a better time for me. I have a list of websites/businesses in my area that could profit from a redesign, which I happen to offer with my website builder. I'm now contemplating if I should automate this and go shotgun-method in the hopes some prospects turn into customers, or I could put in more time but also quality to convince only a small percentage of the list to become customers.

Stuff for thought. Thanks for the article.


Glad to hear!

A lot of my outbounding efforts with Mantis have fallen flat when I sent something that was more or less templated, but have had better results with something far more personalized.

Here's a fantastic article that might be worth a read: https://cloutly.com/blog/cold-email-template/.


Thanks for another article! Reading now. Your inbrowser chat app Mantis looks good too. And your text on the homepage got me scrolling to the end. Good luck!


I would lean towards quality. In my sales efforts, shotgun approach rarely works and anecdotally is working less over time.

Until you have case studies and social proof, shotgun will never work imo. Referrals are more important than ever.


Thanks, that's also my experience. Besides, it will never hurt to try something new.


Oh, what do I love .txt files. I use them for all kinds of simple checklists, logs, and basically everything. I had a manager once (not in the software field though) and she asked me annoyed why I kept using these strange files, and if I wanted to "just use Word and .doc files because that was more safe and compatible". I wasn't able to explain that text files were there and will be there for a long time. She also didn't understand the difference between a text file and a document. Not even when I pointed her to the .txt in the filename.


In The Netherlands there are (or were) Christian political parties shutting down their websites on Sunday automatically.


For real? Do they request medical services to be up on Sunday or the Lord protects them? :-)


I can't speak to the Christians, but even the most orthodox Jews I know support emergency services on the Sabbath -- and they'd absolutely drive someone to the emergency room if it came to that. Doing your best to observe a day of rest doesn't mean you can't choose to do work if it serves a greater good. (Whereas I'm pretty sure people won't die if they have to wait an extra day to order their camera equipment.)


In the scenario you mentioned sounds tricky...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1553-2712....


That's a great article and spot on.

And it's definitely complicated. Just because work necessary to preserve human life is allowed doesn't mean anything done in a hospital is therefore permitted -- a sizeable fraction of the work in a hospital is about bookkeeping, billing, insurance, scheduling followups, paperwork, etc which can wait a day or two without anyone dying.


In NYC, most hospitals have a special elevator that, on the Sabbath, continually stops on every floor. This is to help orthodox Jews comply with their commitment to not turning electric devices on or off--they just board the elevator at the floor they want and get off when it arrives at their destination, without ever pushing any buttons.


Nice search engine! Is it yours? Pretty accurate and nice for content discovery. Just read some interesting stuff after searching for 'bicycle carts', which is not your everyday topic I suppose.


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