Amazon operates the delivery center. Most drivers are subcontracted through a couple different messenger companies and use rented Ford Transits, and the randos in their own cars take care of the rest.
There are limits to this, as with everything. No one is going to make their emulator 3x slower to properly emulate one glitchy line in Super Mario Bros. that shows up on 1/3 of powerons based on a random clock alignment issue.
Besides that, the real console hardware could vary more between revisions than the difference between a console and an accurate emulator, so you also have to ask whose real thing is being emulated? Even with Nintendo's attention to detail on lot check, some real Game Boys won't play Prehistorik Man. There are some NES accuracy tests out there that require making your emulator behave like one specific console owned by blargg.
> No one is going to make their emulator 3x slower to properly emulate one glitchy line in Super Mario Bros. that shows up on 1/3 of powerons based on a random clock alignment issue.
Kohl's seems to be doing pretty well with that system. They print a high price on the tags, then discount it by rack, and mail out 30% off coupons with short expiration dates to some of their rewards card holders every month.
With TVs and computer parts it becomes impossible to read the reviews because they are merged with every other variation of that product from the same brand, with wildly different features and quality levels. Look up LG monitors or eVGA power supplies for instance.
The other two can be owned by the Educational Media Foundation, and all the programming can be sent in by satellite now that broadcasters no longer have to have a local presence.
White desktop PC cases seem to be popular again, and with no more 5.25" drive bays you don't have to worry about color matching your optical drive any more.
For other devices, there's still the problem that white or beige plastic gets grimy fast and will turn an ugly yellow after it's been exposed to sunlight for 10 years. If you look at photos of old iBooks or white DS Lites on eBay, some of those are looking pretty horrid.
One of the over-the-air TV channels in Los Angeles seems to be run off a YouTube playlist, which I know because it was stuck displaying the video unavailable message for most of last Saturday.
Over-the-air TV channels fascinate me as their operation is very different across the US. Do you remember which one it was? Genuinely curious as I have been working on some programs to showcase the unique over-the-air broadcasts across the US.
I'm going to guess it was one of the many foreign language channels. In that area of the country, the vast vast majority of over-the-air broadcasts are not in English (think Korean soap operas). When grapeshot described it, I was thinking one of the Vietnamese or Turkish soap operas being piped from Youtube directly into a transmitter and broadcast across southern California. I'm interested to know which station, too!
That was my guess too, but I have seen some local syndicates for NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX etc. that have some low quality productions. It wouldn't even surprise me if some of those use a similar technique.
20 cents per item just to pick it out of a bin and pack it in a box has to be a significant chunk out of the profit Amazon can make from those smaller low value items that people order individually with Prime.
Amazon does not care if one or two orders represent a loss. As long as you move more and more of your purchases, hell people shop their _groceries_ online, to Amazon, they stand to profit from locking you in.
Amazon wants your first thought on the question "I want XYZ, how do I get it" to be "Amazon".
