Commerce

You Can Now Hire a Handyman on Amazon

Last year, Amazon started toying with the idea of not only selling you a TV, but also hooking you up with someone who could mount it. Now, Amazon’s Home Services marketplace is up and running 41 major US cities so you can order plumbers and plungers from the same place. https://gizmodo.com/amazons-new-local-handyman-services-looks-super-useful-1663344626 Aside from just being…

Amazon Forces Workers to Sign Sinister Non-Compete Agreements 

If you take a temporary factory job at Amazon, you have to sign away your ability to work almost anywhere else, for 18 months after your gig is finished. The Verge recently got one of the non-compete agreements Amazon makes its low-paid warehouse laborers sign, and they’re absurdly vague and wide-reaching: Amazon is requiring these…

Amazon’s New Unlimited Cloud Storage Plan Is Dirt Cheap

Watch out Dropbox, Amazon’s coming at you with a new cloud storage plan that’s ridiculously cheap. You can now store an unlimited number of files in the cloud for $60 a year. That’s five bucks a month for everything. To be perfectly clear, Amazon’s Unlimited Everything Plan allows you to “Store an infinite number of…

Amazon Is Hosting A Robot Contest to Find Its New Employees

Some companies view their employees as an asset; Amazon views them as a problem to be disrupted along the path to perfection (and cheap 2-day shipping on paperbacks). The latest ambition is to replace Amazon’s legion of shelf-picking drones with actual robotic drones. Amazon already uses robots from Kiva, a company it gobbled up in…

Amazon Fire Stick’s New Wi-Fi Powers Let You Stream Almost Anywhere 

Dig through Amazon’s new software update for Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, and you’ll find an intriguing detail—one that shows us where streaming TV is heading. Mainly to your hotel room. The update includes a number of new features, like Bluetooth headphone support and expandable USB storage, which is certainly useful. But what’s really…

The FAA Will Let Amazon Drones Fly After All—But Only for Testing

Just one short month ago, it looks like Amazon’s drone delivery dreams were dashed. But today, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted the company an “experimental airworthiness certificate.” Does this mean your Amazon Prime will come from the sky now? Not even close. https://gizmodo.com/all-the-dreamy-drone-businesses-the-faas-proposed-rules-1686127921 Basically, all the FAA is letting Amazon do is research and…

Two-Fifths of American Households Now Use Video Streaming Services

A new report by the media measurement organization Nielsen reveals that more than two-in-five American households now subscribe to an online video streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. Of the streaming services used around the country, Netflix wins out by a clear margin. In its Total Audience Report, Nielsen claims that around 36…

Ordering Online? Target’s Free-Shipping Minimum Is Lower Than Amazon’s

Target wants your business bad, so bad that the big box retailer is undercutting Amazon on shipping prices. Now, you can get free shipping on Target.com on all online orders of $25 or more. Your goods will arrive in three to five business days, for free. That deal undercuts Amazon’s free shipping by $10 (with…

What’s Your Dumbest Internet Purchasing Fail?

Amazon is great and all, but an unfortunate side-effect of buying stuff sight unseen on the ‘net is that sometimes you end up with stuff you didn’t really mean to buy. I’m not saying that’s the reason I have three power strips for European plugs under my bed, but…yeah. I should probably read the description…

​What Have You Stopped Buying In Stores Because of Amazon?

There was a time in my life where, when I needed something, I’d pop on down to the local big box retailer and pick it up. Now I don’t. Now I have Amazon Prime. It’s been years since I’ve bought shaving soap in person. Is that weird? What have you stopped buying in person because…

The Online Store Where Preppers Buy Their Bullshit Cure-Alls

Infowars.com, radio host Alex Jones’ virtual mecca for conspiracy theorists, preppers, and otherwise non-sheeple alike, is full of bullshit. But the most spectacular of this particular brand of insanity lies in its online store. Where you can buy a chance to save yourself from the New World Order—in bulk. Most of Alex Jones’ “cures” to…

Report: Amazon Might Buy Up Radioshack Stores

Earlier today, RadioShack stumbled one step closer to death with the news that the NYSE is trying to delist its stock — basically, the company is fucked. And according to Bloomberg, Amazon — which is, let’s be honest, the number one RadioShack murder suspect — might buy up some of their retail stores. Bloomberg’s report…

What’s the Weirdest Thing You’ve Ordered From the Internet? 

You can buy almost anything online. There are lots of normal options, like shoes or groceries. But you can also order a ton of whacky shit, like a life-size statue of obese Arnold Schwarzenegger or a TaskRabbit to come stand motionless and unblinking in your kitchen while you dance around them to the music of…

Why Is My Digital Assistant So Creepy?

Siri, Cortana and Alexa are robotic personal assistants, but they are also women. They live in your pockets, their skinny smart phone bodies executing your every command. They are intimate with you. But they are also, as Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore said at the Windows 10 keynote last week, “a member of your family.” It’s…

Amazon’s Gold Box Forum Is a Beautiful Pocket of Internet Insanity

It’s an inviolable rule of the internet that if you provide people with a place to type words in public, chaos will follow close behind. Nowhere is this more true than the Amazon Gold Box forum, one of the internet’s more delightful clearinghouses of crazy. You may have never seen the Gold Box forum, even…

You Can Watch The Wire Remastered in HD on Amazon BUT SHOULD YOU

Like The Wire, but wish it was NOT filmed in standard definition with a 4:3 ratio? Enjoy streaming things on Amazon? Today is your day and no one can take that away from you, not even David Simon, creator of The Wire, who is decidedly ambivalent about the remastered HD version of The Wire that…

Amazon’s Plan to Make Films and Debut Them on Prime Right After Theaters

Amazon is already killing it with original streaming content. Transparent just won the Golden Globe for best comedy series and The Man in the High Castle is getting good early reviews. But Amazon is not resting on its streaming service laurels. No, Amazon has its eyes on a bigger screen: The company is preparing to…

The European Union’s antitrust office has published a preliminary report about a tax deal between Amazon and the Luxembourg government. Long story short: it seems “unfair” and may have enabled Amazon to underpay taxes for a decade or more. There’s more to come, but Amazon could soon foot a hefty set of retrospective payments.

Amazon’s New Series ‘The Man In The High Castle’ Is Amazing

What if the Allies had lost World War II, the Nazis had been first to develop the atomic bomb, and the Germans and Japanese had carved up control of United States? That’s the premise of the new streaming series from Amazon, The Man in the High Castle — an adaptation of the 1962 book by…

Amazon Japan Is Selling A Build-Your-Own Mech Starter Kit

You know how it is when you’re browsing Amazon – books, games, Blu-rays, even your groceries, the occasional giant mech. Wait, what? The Kuratasu Starter kit lets you build a four-wheeled mech that is almost 4 metres tall, and fully piloted by a human. Think of it almost like the world’s most ridiculous car. Speaking…