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posted by on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-wizard-of-omaha-is-never-wrong dept.

When Buffet speaks, people listen:

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has sold off $900 million of Walmart stock, choosing to invest billions in airlines instead.

The sale, which leaves Buffett with nearly no shares in Walmart, comes as the US's largest traditional retailer has been rushing to catch up to Amazon and other online competitors.

Amazon's market value is now $356 billion, compared with Walmart's $298 billion. Last year, Buffett acknowledged that traditional brick-and-mortar retailers were struggling in the face of competition from the e-commerce giant.

Yes, but is he still long on Big Cola?


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:41AM (#467728)

    At least I can pay anonymously with cash at retail stores. Amazon and such give you no such options. It's sad that so many people don't care about privacy.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @10:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @10:13AM (#467748)

    At least I can pay anonymously with cash at retail stores. Amazon and such give you no such options. It's sad that so many people don't care about privacy.

    Do you wear a full face hijab each time you do so? I believe nowadays most stores have a fair number of security cameras.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @10:29AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @10:29AM (#467751)

      Most stores, including small businesses? And security cameras by themselves do not matter; what matters is whether or not they use facial recognition technology. If most stores are using facial recognition, then maybe everyone should wear full face hijabs or masks.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:09PM (#467843)

      Big difference between a security camera and a database that records every individual purchase. One requires a human to do some investigation, the other can be spread around from a chair. Security footage would still have to be matched with receipts and timestamps, online db has all the juicy details attached directly to your name and credit card.

      But hey, anonymous cash cards are only used by criminals so we can't have those! Freedom comes with the price of giving those freedoms to criminals, so the only reasonable solution is the same its always been: old fashioned detective work.

      Simple disguises work too, but hey nice use of "terrorist" clothes to underline your point /s

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @05:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @05:25PM (#467886)
        Don't mistake "how it's done now by understaffed tech-incompetent police departments" for "required". Facial recognition is a solved problem these days (ask Apple and Facebook, if the feds won't answer your emails) and correlating that identity to the right transaction record is a simple query.

        The Walmarts of the world are already doing this, and if there isn't a startup out there looking to do the same as a cloud service for small shops, there probably will be soon. In the 90s we said information wants to be free. We were wrong, information wants to be monetized.
      • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:31PM

        by darkfeline (1030) on Thursday February 16 2017, @06:31PM (#467907) Homepage

        >One requires a human to do some investigation

        The lesson you should take away from recent advances in AI is this: information always wins. So long as you have information that is not 100% random noise, it will be possible to analyze it automatically and extract every bit of information out of it. A medium resolution shot of your face is enough to identify you and correlate the time with the exact items you bought, if not today, then some day very soon from now.

        Privacy is unfortunately a losing battle against mathematics and statistics, in the same way DRM and intellectual property are losing battles. Information always wins.

        --
        Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @12:59AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @12:59AM (#470540)

          Privacy is unfortunately a losing battle against mathematics and statistics

          And we can't regulate the use of facial recognition by giant companies... because?* It would be awfully hard for them to hide its use, and there should be stiff penalties for using it.

          *Because they bribe our government.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @07:19PM (#467920)

    Amazon themselves may not give you the option (yet), but there are third-party services that will let you pay for Amazon (or other e-tailers) with bitcoin.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:24PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:24PM (#467940)

      Can I use a blockchain delivery address for my oversized gun safe?