A big deal of Walmart's success also has to do with sound IT practices.
They did do a good job of creating supply chain systems that worked well for supporting their retail stores. The problem is that model is mostly incompatible with ecommerce fulfillment. That's why Walmart is racing to build out it's infrastructure to support ecommerce fulfillment but Amazon has a huge lead.
Currently, in the US, Amazon has about 114 facilities for ecommerce fulfillment, Walmart has 14 built or in the process of being built. In addition to the raw numbers, it takes time to figure out how to make these systems work and optimize them, Amazon has been learning for 20 years.
Walmart will probably get there eventually ("there"=become a legit competitor to Amazon for ecommerce), but it will take a lot of money and many years.
I wouldn't really call it "toe to toe". Walmart is way too far behind Amazon in online sales and fulfillment to call it that. They are desperately trying any angle to catch up.
In terms of market share for ecommerce, Amazon is around 50% and Walmart is around 4% (just behind Apple). In terms of infrastructure and capabilities for ecommerce style fulfillment (e.g. high volume of small orders), Walmart is even further behind. It's a completely different animal than the types of facilities they built to support their stores. In the US, Walmart has around 14 centers either built or in process, Amazon has 114. Even if Walmart built out 114 facilities today, it takes time to optimize and figure out what works and what doesn't.
I assume Walmart will keep dumping money into catching up with Amazon and eventually will probably be a solid #2 competitor, but it will take a long time.
Okay, next item? Next item we're gonna do is uh, 5 5 2 1 6 uh 7, 7 5, 5 [actually 55-26177] This is-oh my God, look at this you guys. This is 200 carat Brazilian emerald and plasticine ring. I'm gonna start bidding for this ring at, um, let's see, eight billion dollars. Eight billion dollars, opening bid. We've gotta sell this ring today. Tell you what, I'm gonna take it down a little. We're gonna drop that price down to... $75.95. At this price it's not gonna last for lo-oh, we got a caller...
He thinks he is going to out-Toyota Toyota. If you think Toyota's approach is 'very small, committee stamped and approved, steps towards innovation' then I would encourage you to read up on the history and workings of Toyota's systems, it's pretty impressive. They were smart, from top down, no Dilbert Pointy Haired Boss stuff but rather thoughtful systems designed and tuned over the years.
Their online experience is crappy compared to Amazon? Are you serious?????
Amazon is kicking ass but it's absolutely not due to their "clean" online experience. They have probably the single worst mass of information spewing out from the page with almost no organization, all competing for your attention like the neon lights in Time's square.
They are successful in spite of their online experience, not "due" to it.
You realize that this is a problem whose solution has existed for decades, right? Retailers and consumer sales systems (catalog, phone, online, etc.) with nexus in various cities have had this requirement for as long as I've been building systems (early 80's).
We've used Vertex frequently but there are multiple companies providing services in this area, it's not a new problem.
Disagree. This is an interesting result, that the physical structure of the network (as seen in rats and used in this neural net), outperforms the network that is not structurally similar to the thing that it is modeling (e.g. 3d or 2d space).
Neural nets are universal function approximators, but that doesn't mean that all nets are equal. Mapping the structure of the net to the problem being solved to achieve better results is shown to be valid and important, and nature obviously discovered this as well.
I'm a big fan of Zoom. It is so easy and works every time. Seems like everything we used in the past had semi-regular issues like needing to install something (and being blocked due to policies) and then problems connecting etc.
"Ethan Zuckerman, MIT media scholar. Invented the pop-up ad."
This immediately came to mind:
"My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament."
You're assuming that the only way to learn and improve the systems is to allow situations like the one that just happened. But there are ways to reduce risk. For example, keep the auto-braking system from Volvo engaged, if it is triggered and the AV didn't respond, then you now have a learning moment that didn't require a death.
AI: "Based on years of historical pattern matching, your commit has been flagged as 'needs review' for the following reasons:
1 - First name of developer is 'Fred'"
Slashdot Mirror
A big deal of Walmart's success also has to do with sound IT practices.
They did do a good job of creating supply chain systems that worked well for supporting their retail stores. The problem is that model is mostly incompatible with ecommerce fulfillment. That's why Walmart is racing to build out it's infrastructure to support ecommerce fulfillment but Amazon has a huge lead.
Currently, in the US, Amazon has about 114 facilities for ecommerce fulfillment, Walmart has 14 built or in the process of being built. In addition to the raw numbers, it takes time to figure out how to make these systems work and optimize them, Amazon has been learning for 20 years.
Walmart will probably get there eventually ("there"=become a legit competitor to Amazon for ecommerce), but it will take a lot of money and many years.
I wouldn't really call it "toe to toe". Walmart is way too far behind Amazon in online sales and fulfillment to call it that. They are desperately trying any angle to catch up.
In terms of market share for ecommerce, Amazon is around 50% and Walmart is around 4% (just behind Apple). In terms of infrastructure and capabilities for ecommerce style fulfillment (e.g. high volume of small orders), Walmart is even further behind. It's a completely different animal than the types of facilities they built to support their stores. In the US, Walmart has around 14 centers either built or in process, Amazon has 114. Even if Walmart built out 114 facilities today, it takes time to optimize and figure out what works and what doesn't.
I assume Walmart will keep dumping money into catching up with Amazon and eventually will probably be a solid #2 competitor, but it will take a long time.
Okay, next item? Next item we're gonna do is uh, 5 5 2 1 6 uh 7, 7 5, 5 [actually 55-26177] This is-oh my God, look at this you guys. This is 200 carat Brazilian emerald and plasticine ring. I'm gonna start bidding for this ring at, um, let's see, eight billion dollars. Eight billion dollars, opening bid. We've gotta sell this ring today. Tell you what, I'm gonna take it down a little. We're gonna drop that price down to... $75.95. At this price it's not gonna last for lo-oh, we got a caller...
He thinks he is going to out-Toyota Toyota. If you think Toyota's approach is 'very small, committee stamped and approved, steps towards innovation' then I would encourage you to read up on the history and workings of Toyota's systems, it's pretty impressive. They were smart, from top down, no Dilbert Pointy Haired Boss stuff but rather thoughtful systems designed and tuned over the years.
Their online experience is crappy compared to Amazon? Are you serious?????
Amazon is kicking ass but it's absolutely not due to their "clean" online experience. They have probably the single worst mass of information spewing out from the page with almost no organization, all competing for your attention like the neon lights in Time's square.
They are successful in spite of their online experience, not "due" to it.
...I'm afraid I can't do that.
You realize that this is a problem whose solution has existed for decades, right? Retailers and consumer sales systems (catalog, phone, online, etc.) with nexus in various cities have had this requirement for as long as I've been building systems (early 80's).
We've used Vertex frequently but there are multiple companies providing services in this area, it's not a new problem.
In fairness to the Intel engineers, many of the same flaws affect IBM Power, IBM Z, ARM, Sparc (v9), some AMD, Apple processors, VIA processors, etc.
In addition, the flaw was subtle enough to exist for something like 10 to 20 years before anyone spotted it.
it's their website that bugs me.
Disagree. This is an interesting result, that the physical structure of the network (as seen in rats and used in this neural net), outperforms the network that is not structurally similar to the thing that it is modeling (e.g. 3d or 2d space).
Neural nets are universal function approximators, but that doesn't mean that all nets are equal. Mapping the structure of the net to the problem being solved to achieve better results is shown to be valid and important, and nature obviously discovered this as well.
Topped by Oracle?
No, the absolute grand masters of taking a straightforward concept and mapping it into the most un-intuitive UI imaginable, is.....IBM.
I'm a big fan of Zoom. It is so easy and works every time. Seems like everything we used in the past had semi-regular issues like needing to install something (and being blocked due to policies) and then problems connecting etc.
"Ethan Zuckerman, MIT media scholar. Invented the pop-up ad."
This immediately came to mind:
"My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament."
Automating complex systems is difficult.
You're assuming that the only way to learn and improve the systems is to allow situations like the one that just happened. But there are ways to reduce risk. For example, keep the auto-braking system from Volvo engaged, if it is triggered and the AV didn't respond, then you now have a learning moment that didn't require a death.
Yes, they spent that money subsidizing the cost of the rides (especially the drivers). We call that a "cost" to their operations which reduces profit.
They are not profitable. They will never be profitable at current ride rates unless they eliminate their biggest expense which is drivers.
Thanks for the informative post.
AOL cd's
AI: "Based on years of historical pattern matching, your commit has been flagged as 'needs review' for the following reasons:
1 - First name of developer is 'Fred'"
for all of my work on TPS reports?
"I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude."
Jonesy the sonar guy find the Red October
Kind of wish they would just get the Ford Explorer's transmission working before doing AI stuff
Hmmmm, I can see two possibilities for who is doing this: a disgruntled employee, or Uber
Grandm: "So the gold is in the computer? who put it there?"