Amazon Drivers Say Smartphones-In-Trees Scheme Has Been Thwarted (bloomberg.com) 51
Amazon.com contract drivers have noticed a sudden change this week in how the company assigns delivery routes, a sign that it has found a way to prevent rogue operators from gaming the system to snatch orders first. From a report: Bloomberg on Tuesday revealed that drivers were putting smartphones in trees outside Whole Foods and Amazon delivery stations in the Chicago area to get a jump on rivals. Drivers in Las Vegas and the Washington, D.C., area also reported spotting mysterious phones outside Whole Foods locations. Several drivers in cities around the U.S. said they're now getting more routes even when they're several miles from Whole Foods locations, an abrupt change from the past several weeks when they said such work was scarce. One driver said the phones once placed in trees near a Chicago-area Whole Foods have disappeared, along with the people who lurked nearby. A driver in Tennessee who lives next to a Whole Foods and received offers every morning said he's no longer getting them.
When you think your life stinks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine having to hang a smartphone in a tree near a distribution facility to get the edge on the other drivers, who are equally desperate to grab the next fifteen dollar delivery fee.
My "problems" at work are small, indeed.
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This is the basis of "high-frequency trading". The ASICS installed in fiber-optic leading from the stock exchanges are used to detect stock changes before ordinary dealers can even be aware of them. The information is then used to commit arbitrage, selling or buying stock at one price to resell it elsewhere or at a vary slight time delay at a different price. It does not "generate liquidity" in the market. It strips income from slower, more cautious dealers at almost no risk, since the high frequency trader
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From the original reporting, it sounded like these weren’t desperate drivers, so much as some company that had inserted itself as a middleman no one wanted by fraudulently catching all the orders so that they could take a cut as an intermediate dispatcher. They were a leech.
Re: Capitalism (Score:1)
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I don't know what you are imagining but here https://yandex.com/maps/?l=stv... [yandex.com] go for a Russian street view tour in Yalta. Yeah, I would not mind living and working there. The Russia of today is not the Russia of old and it is getting better and better not worse and worse, so....
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Actually, a race to the bottom drops living standards for everyone but the few at the top, and puts the people at the bottom into abject poverty.
You already knew that, of course, and you're happy with it because you're still somewhere in the middle, you've not dropped to the bottom. Yet.
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All countries have some abject poverty. It's just a matter of scale. Even the US, for all their pretensions to be the great moral leader of the free world, still has homeless people on the streets.
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You really believe that? Have you looked around lately? The race to the bottom benefits exactly one party - the corporations.
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More like restrict the power of government and corporations fill the vacuum.
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Or religions.
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Corporations abscond with people's assets all the time.
They can't throw you into jail, but they can throw you into poverty. Whole towns have experienced that, tempered only by government.
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Reduce the scope of government and they'll no longer need to bother with consent.
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It tends to reward productivity and efficiency, both of which raise living standards for pretty much everyone.
Sounds good on paper, but doesn't work that way in practice.
In the 50s and 60s, when the USA had much more unionized labor, higher taxes, cheaper college, cheaper healthcare, the GI BIll etc. the wealth gap was MUCH lower than it is today.
Obviously communism is the worst of all evils, but unfettered capitalism is a close second.
The nations that have the smallest wealth gaps and best livi
Re: Capitalism (Score:2)
If ALL jobs can be done cheaper and better in China than here, then YES, we should send all jobs there. Believe it or not, we will find other stuff to do.
But that's not how reality works. We do plenty of stuff that is cheaper here than it is there. On a per person level, the US produces 2x the Chinese. Technically our workforce is far more productive since we use 1/10 as many people as China in mfg to achieve that output. They use 1 out 12 people for mfg. We use 1 out of 25.
Bringing jobs back and paying
Re:Capitalism (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Capitalism (Score:1)
Itâ(TM)s called market efficiency.
Innovate or die.
The Smartphones-In-Trees Scheme Has Been Thwarted (Score:2)
(A friend of mine, from a camping trip years and years ago: "Damnit -- I can't see Nature for all of the trees and bushes in the way!")
if i was a kid with a BB gun (Score:2)
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FD: we used to throw rocks at the train cars carrying new vehicles when I was a kid, with the most accurate amongst us likely the impetus for the full protective screen you see today on new car freighting boxcars.
Yet, even fourteen year old me and golden arm Steve Monfette might've recognized that plinking the cellies of subcontractor delivery drivers wasn't hurting the Man, but the little guy we were sworn ot protect.
I guess I'm a bit slow... (Score:3)
... but I still don't understand why putting phones in trees gives anyone an advantage in getting delivery gigs.
Re:I guess I'm a bit slow... (Score:5, Informative)
It sounded like people whose phones (not their bodies) that appeared closest to the delivery warehouses were called for work more often than people who were located farther away.
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Ah, that makes sense. Good ol' GPS!
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were called for work more often than people who were located farther away.
How were they called for work if their phones were up in a tree? Serious question.
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Remote access.
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Yes, it's a lot like Uber where it locates the nearest free taxi so your wait time is reduced.
what about an union that stops the need for BS liv (Score:2, Insightful)
what about an union that stops the need for BS like this?
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You can either (a) cut down the tree's/fix the dorky app or (b) pay $20 per delivery where the deliveryman only gets $10 and $10 goes to the union.
Why does it not make a difference whether you are Amazon or the deliveryman, but only if you are "the union"?
For those that are mentally challenged, why do both Amazon and the Deliverymen choose option (a) and only "the union" chooses option (b)?
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50% to the union?
I think you mean 30% to Apple, then 40% to Amazon, and the rest of fuel and insurance and maintenance.
It's a classic scam. Price delivery below cost AND slap your own profit on top, then let the independent contractor delivery drivers figure out how to make a living from it. If they somehow seem to be surviving you know you priced it too high and can increase your profit margin even further.
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Amazon is infamously anti-union. They've been caught doing some pretty unscrupulous things, including infiltrating employees' social media groups and monitor for anyone discussing unionisation. Simply mentioning the idea is a good way to get fired.
Cat-n-Mouse (Score:2)
GPS Spoofing (Score:2)
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Easier for Amazon to just pull some strings and get the police involved. They don't even need to investigate properly - just take the phones away as 'evidence' and stick them in the lowest priority bin at the digital forensics lab, to gather dust. Eventually either the people running the scheme will run out of money to pay for new phones, or they'll go to the police to reclaim their property and have to admit ownership and prove their identity.
What's the problem? (Score:1)
If the drivers really are nearby, how is it a problem?
If they're worried that the drivers occupy parking spaces for regular customers, they could have a paid parking, possibly with a parking validation for customers so they don't have to pay, but otherwise it's not different from waiting in a queue.
If they're worried that drivers put up their phones and not waiting nearby, they could easily solve that with some kind of reputation system. They know how long it should take for a driver to get from the positi