Temu’s UI is unusable. You are constantly presented with roulette wheels for coupons you can’t dismiss. Its dark patterns have dark patterns. AliExpress is only mildly better in that you can dismiss stuff.
Both T and A still have listings for things that will likely result in you getting something entirely different. This usually applies to more expensive and physically larger items. You might order a greenhouse and get a photo of one or a schematic of one. And I don’t mean that the description will make it clear.
Both have a pattern where they might list let’s say an MP3 player which costs $30 but the price on the listing will be $3 because one of the product variants is just the case.
Amazon has comparatively reliable shipping and it’s included with the price on a majority of products if you have a Prime membership. While Temu and AliExpress do have US-based shipping they still don’t guarantee when the thing will arrive and if you are looking at these products the price difference basically disappears.
I am not defending Amazon by any means, but purely on usability it wins hands down.
> Both have a pattern where they might list let’s say an MP3 player which costs $30 but the price on the listing will be $3 because one of the product variants is just the case.
eBay do that too. Really annoying. Some day I'll make a browser extension to highlight it.
I've never had a problem with just getting a schematic, in my world that's typical of eBay (lots and lots of Apple boxes...).
The dark pattern on listing prices is real though. As it is the lower level of quality control - the same sellers will put the same product on both Amazon and Chinese stores, but the latter will get production batches that are lower quality (coil whine, etc).
Theres also no moral reason to support Amazon, they give nothing back to the society their buyers live in, much like the chinese suppliers. Might aswell just go with the cheapest.
You mean you don't want to buy the finest grade $59.95 blender for your kitchen from LONCEVON or ARVAGGCCY or ADVWUXITEKPRO ?
The tricky part now is identifying the individual CN vendors which are not yet well known in the English marketplace, that are also known to make good quality things (and generally they're not cheap), I'll use Sofirn flashlights and headlamps as an example. Mostly not sold via Amazon.
What's wrong with those? For established industrial designs small difference in better quality control is never worth overpaying few times for something.
I can't remember what YT channel recently did it, but they compared name brand batteries, third party batteries and knock-off batteries (equivalent to Temu) for some power tools.
The name brand and third party batteries from actual companies both performed great.
The garbage knockoffs were not a "small difference in better quality control", they had completely different battery cells, lower capacity, missing safety features, were easy to overheat, etc.
Also look at the reports coming in from governments around the world on clothes sold by some of these companies. All manner of illegal toxins. You report them, the seller changes some consonants around and relists under the new name.
I'd encourage everyone to do their own homework on this if they really think the differences aren't significant. And the problem is unless you test to failure or send things to labs you don't know if you rolled the dice and got lucky or not, until your house burns down or your toddler gets a weird autoimmune thing that you have no family history of.
Yeah, you are right, some categories of products are too risky and additional QA is actually worth it. Batteries, computer storage, anything that has prolonged contact with the body, items that come in contact with food and drinks, items for children.
Do yourself a favor and search “Agent Orange” on your preferred search engine (Sidenote: I’m trying to avoid using “Google” as a verb). Most people associate that term with the very harmful Vietnam-era herbicide, not the band. The band name may be a reference to the herbicide?
That's just your company's HR being morons. Or more likely, they were doing their best to make sure the position didn't get filled because that would cost money.
My point was that HR "just being morons" adds fuel to the fire for people pushing anti-diversity narratives. It feels stupid, because it is stupid. It came from a good place (stop shutting women out of jobs) and devolved into the typical corporate "GMD says we have to increase diversity by 10% this year" metric-chasing bureaucratic crapola. It's not even the only similar instance in my career, but I won't be doxxing myself further.
Yeah, that's a corporate problem, not a DEI problem. I agree it lends credence to the anti-DEI arguments, but that is due to those people's exiting narrow mindedness and all or nothing thinking.
Is a bit like with democracy. Its the best system we have... Everything we, as humans, do, will eventually be unfair, because, frankly, humans are just not fair. Sure, a select few have high goals, and might even DTRT... But thats always just a small group. The rest of us will try to take advantage of others, some coniscously, some unconsciously. Humankind will only be fair once it has ended.
I don't see how you could conclude that capitalism is the best system when it is the only one the west has tried since the end of feudalism. I think there is still plenty of progress to be made and capitalism creates more negative incentives than anything positive.
In "Having a specific conference for women in computing is definitely a DEI concern" I take concern to be the noun, Mirriam-Webster (1a) or (2) has something that relates or belongs to one : affair, from the context this would seem to be the definition that fits: DEI relates to such a conference, they're interested in it, rather than definition (1b) an uneasy state of blended interest, uncertainty, and apprehension which would lead to "concerning" but makes no sense in the context, as you note.
I don’t think they were expressing concern, just the fact.
I read it as a damning indictment against anti-“DEI” fanatics that they’re on the wrong side of history when they push the envelope too far in the direction of “merit-based hiring”, as if DEI was something relatively-recently concocted.
Laughably, in the days before “DEI”, “merit-based hiring” usually equated to “good old boys club”. Based on the industries in which I’ve been involved, it’s still very much “good old boys club”, despite best efforts for DEI to try to make things more merit-based.
Nobody claims that political appointments are "merit based." They're by definition political. But university admissions and employment are supposed to be merit based, not political.
He’s a carnival barker. That doesn’t change the fact that political appointments are political—they don’t have any relevance to merit-based admissions to universities or job hiring.
In fact, the distinction between political appointments and those other things is critical. In politics, you appoint people to reward your various constituencies. That’s just how politics works. But jobs and universities shouldn’t work that way.
> But university admissions and employment are supposed to be merit based, not political.
University admissions were not part of the DEI movement, they were part of the affirmative action movement. By conflating the two you’re unfairly grouping things of different types to tear them down together.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” — Anatole France
Treating people equally does not mean treating them the same (or, why don't healthy people get to be hospital patients, too?).
Don't confuse rational discourse for "victimhood". Finding reasoned discourse difficult to understand and centering it around "victimhood" is ironically an effeminate trait.
> You're talking about a generation of white men who were told growing up that treating people differently based on skin color was the worst thing they could do.
There’s a linguistic sleight of hand that you’re using here that belies your emotional attachment to this topic.
It’s not that “treating people differently based on skin color” was the worst thing, it was that using skin color as a basis for discrimination, harassment, and even violence was the worst thing you could do.
You’re equating these two things:
- giving children who grew up in zip codes with terrible education outcomes a handicap during college admissions
- lynching
… which I find laughably monstrous and points to a convenient ignorance of history
> It’s not that “treating people differently based on skin color” was the worst thing, it was that using skin color as a basis for discrimination
Those are the same thing. "Discrimination" literally means "treating people differently based on skin color." Which is what the universities were doing.
> giving children who grew up in zip codes with terrible education outcomes a handicap during college admissions
That's not what universities were doing. We know that because they said so! In Harvard's brief to the Supreme Court, for example, Harvard argued that it had no "workable race-neutral alternative" that would achieve its goal of "diversity." Harvard.Br.52-53.
What you're describing--"giving children who grew up in zip code with terrible education outcomes a handicap"--is a race-neutral approach that focuses on socioeconomic factors. Harvard told the Supreme Court that such approaches would not work to achieve its goals: To achieve diversity targets without considering race, "Harvard would have to give socioeconomic tips of disproportionate magnitude ... so large that they would 'essentially automatically put[] in any applicant ... with an average probability of admission.'" Harvard.Br.53.
> What you're describing--"giving children who grew up in zip code with terrible education outcomes a handicap"--is a race-neutral approach that focuses on socioeconomic factors.
Well you also conveniently ignore that it would be an instant victim of Goodhart’s law. There are few, if any, race neutral approaches that can’t be gamed - and the only motivation for such approaches is to satisfy those who are so fervently against the idea of affirmative action. In fact, whenever such approaches are attempted, we see that the rich continue to game the system and the expense of the lower middle class (see Lori Laughlin), so it’s really just the stupid rich kids who benefit the most from “merit-based” admissions, not some humble, poor, but brilliant, child of the wrong race.
Did you go to school in the US? There’s absolutely no shortage of educational opportunities. I’m not sure why you’re arguing about Harvard. It impacts such a small percentage of the population. It’s also hilariously one of the institutions most mired by legacy admissions and admissions based on donations. Maybe use the California system instead?
Edit: also I’m not going to get in some autistic Twitter debate about what “discrimination” means. It’s convenient for those opposed to systems and regulations that benefit an oppressed people that anything not immaculately meritocratic can be described as “discriminatory”. Am I “discriminating” against my child Peter when I give his brother Paul a cookie because his other brother Pedro stole Paul’s cookie at lunch?
> There are few, if any, race neutral approaches that can’t be gamed
The race-conscious approaches are heavily gamed too. The minority students at elite universities are rarely people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Most often, they’re the children of affluent minorities, often elites from latin america or africa who have no connection to discrimination in the U.S.
Ironically, you’re engaged in some wild racial stereotyping by flipping back and forth between race and economic circumstances. Do you think there aren’t lots of affluent minorities in the U.S.? Harvard doesn’t let in poor minorities.
> the only motivation for such approaches is to satisfy those who are so fervently against the idea of affirmative action
Yes, institutions must satisfy those who are against grouping people together by race and treating them differently on that basis. That’s not only the law, but the law is correct.
> so it’s really just the stupid rich kids who benefit the most from “merit-based” admissions, not some humble, poor, but brilliant, child of the wrong race.
The evidence shows that the people who benefit the most from objective, merit-based admissions is smart lower-class kids of all races.
> There’s absolutely no shortage of educational opportunities.
That doesn’t justify grouping people based on race and treating them differently.
> I’m not sure why you’re arguing about Harvard. It impacts such a small percentage of the population.
Have you read any of the record in SFFA? Harvard just happened to be the headline name. Almost every institution does it. The medical school data I posted up thread is aggregated across all medical schools.
And elite institutions like Harvard are especially important because they’re gatekeepers. That’s how racial preferences jumped the air gap from universities to corporations. While universities had a carve out for affirmative action, employers never did. Race-conscious policies have always been illegal in the employment context (as the Supreme Court recently affirmed 9-0). But Ivy-educated people took those ideas from universities into the workplace and a bunch of Harvard-educated lawyers gave very bad advice.
> Am I “discriminating” against my child Peter when I give his brother Paul a cookie because his other brother Pedro stole Paul’s cookie at lunch
In this hypo, neither Paul nor Peter’s cookie was stolen. People aren’t reincarnations of their oppressed ancestors.
Zip codes with terrible education outcomes are almost certainly proxies for zip codes with lots of black and hispanic students living in them. The fact that race correlates highly with zip code is why it is illegal under laws banning racial discrimination in financial services for banks and other loan-granting financial service companies to use zip code data as an input for computing the likelihood that a borrower will repay their loan. And if it's reasonable to legally ban moneylenders from looking at zip code data to determine likelihood of paying back a loan because it's a good proxy for race, it's reasonable to ban colleges from using it as a reason to give a handicap to college admissions for the same reason.
Centuries of discrimination against whole populations (women, non-whites) and I'm supposed to get bent out of shape that a university is preferring to admit people of those discriminated groups?
Given all the other advantages my male whiteness has benefited me, I think I can look past that.
(Not willfully blind, just keeping everything in perspective.)
> Centuries of discrimination against whole populations (women, non-whites) and I'm supposed to get bent out of shape that a university is preferring to admit people of those discriminated groups?
Yes, not because you’re white, but because as a citizen you have a moral obligation to help ensure that our institutions treat citizens as individuals, not as “groups.” Individuals living today shouldn’t be treated as if they personally suffered that discrimination by grouping them together based on skin color with people in the past who did. That doesn’t mean ignoring the effects of past discrimination. But those effects are baked into people’s individual circumstances and can be evaluated in those terms. Rich people should be treated alike morally and poor people should be treated alike morally regardless of the individual path dependency that led them both to the same place.
You can’t have your group identity cake and eat it too. I can’t demand better treatment than a similarly situated white person because other Bangladeshis are poor. I’m not them any more than you are them. Conversely, it’s wrong to discriminate against my wife’s poor white extended family members because other white people are rich. My kids go to private school with WASPs, some of whom definitely have slave owner legacy money. My wife’s family aren’t those people, and it’s racism to arbitrarily group them together.
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