Amazon HQ2 RFP

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The majority of Amazon packages that i've ordered have come through the postal service for the "last mile".
 
Amazon use of USPS is much more common in more rural areas where UPS or Amazon might not have the volume to justify getting a delivery van on every street (at least not on the daily basis required to meet amazon's 2-day shipping guarantees), but USPS is going to go down every street every day anyway, so they can often offer a cheaper price for the last mile. The real origin of these complaints about USPS parcel pricing is FedEx and UPS who are upset is able to piggy back cheaper parcel delivery on its first class mail monopoly.
 
Rover said:
Another poster has been portraying Baltimore as some sort of Shangra-La and the #1 contender for the Amazon 2nd HQ. I'm merely providing a counterpoint.
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That's an outright lie and when you misrepresent others' points, you cheapen the conversation. I never wrote anything of the sort for either of the 2 contentions from your post. In fact, I wrote very clearly that current day Baltimore is nowhere near the city that Boston is.

There are people who aim to enrich a forum conversation, and then there are people, such as Rover, who merely intend to vandalize them.



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shmessy said:
That's an outright lie and when you misrepresent others' points, you cheapen the conversation. I never wrote anything of the sort for either of the 2 contentions from your post. In fact, I wrote very clearly that current day Baltimore is nowhere near the city that Boston is.

There are people who aim to enrich a forum conversation, and then there are people, such as Rover, who merely intend to vandalize them.



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I have no problem with your strident advocacy of Baltimore, but any city, be it Boston, Seattle, wherever, has to have an honest discussion of the good and bad points. Any city in my opinion where dysfunction is rampant is going to be a tough sell with the obvious caveat that none of this is up to me. Dysfunction can take several forms with a declining population and surging crime being two high profile criteria.

Beyond that though, this whole 2nd HQ discussion will IMHO bring something fascinating to the forefront, which is have and have not cities in this country. Will economic activity continue to go to the same dozen places (roughly BOS, NYC, DC, Dallas, Austin, Seattle, LA, SF, etc) or will a struggling city get a break from Bezos? My guess is no, but we'll find out soon enough.
 
Rover said:
I have no problem with your strident advocacy of Baltimore, but any city, be it Boston, Seattle, wherever, has to have an honest discussion of the good and bad points. Any city in my opinion where dysfunction is rampant is going to be a tough sell with the obvious caveat that none of this is up to me. Dysfunction can take several forms with a declining population and surging crime being two high profile criteria.

Beyond that though, this whole 2nd HQ discussion will IMHO bring something fascinating to the forefront, which is have and have not cities in this country. Will economic activity continue to go to the same dozen places (roughly BOS, NYC, DC, Dallas, Austin, Seattle, LA, SF, etc) or will a struggling city get a break from Bezos? My guess is no, but we'll find out soon enough.
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Despite your continued and (at this point) conscious misrepresentations of what I wrote, there is no "strident advocacy of Baltimore". The city currently stinks.

However, Baltimore is showing a much more open mind towards future infrastructure enhancements than Boston's Durgin Park waitress attitude. Regarding what Amazon wnts for their 2nd HQ, Boston's attitude towards 21st century infrastructure has effectively killed its candidacy. Boston's infrastructure offers are like the French before World War I increasing their cavalry forces to fight the German tanks and airplanes. Yeah, a few more horses will do it! It is D-E-A-D regarding Amazon H2Q.


It most probably WON'T go to Baltimore. However it WILL go to a city that is open minded like Baltimore regarding future infrastructure. The greatest thing Boston has done in 140 years is the Big Dig. However, to hear Bostonians talk about it, the attitude is a PTSD "Never Again".

At this point, there is no way to make it any clearer for you to comprehend.

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shmessy said:
However, Baltimore is showing a much more open mind towards future infrastructure enhancements than Boston's Durgin Park waitress attitude. Regarding what Amazon wnts for their 2nd HQ, Boston's attitude towards 21st century infrastructure has effectively killed its candidacy.
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Can you quote for me Amazon's specifications for HQ2, and then point out explicitly where Boston fails those specifications? Because it sounds a lot like you're assuming you know what Amazon wants for HQ2 despite them making a public list of requirements.
 
FenwayResident said:
Can you quote for me Amazon's specifications for HQ2, and then point out specifically where Boston fails those specifications? Because it sounds a lot like you're assuming you know what Amazon wants for HQ2 despite them making a public list of requirements.
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Not sure I get where he's going with this either. Big Dig was/is the biggest infrastructure project this nation has ever seen. Furthermore, while I'm not a big fan of it, the rail system (T + commuter rail) has to be one of the most extensive in the country outside of New York and continues to expand. A lot of other places talk, but to date I'm not actually seeing these futuristic projects shmessy is imagining. IMHO I just don't think the Houston or Atlanta massive interstate system is something we should aspire to as an example.
 
shmessy said:
The greatest thing Boston has done in 140 years is the Big Dig. However, to hear Bostonians talk about it, the attitude is a PTSD "Never Again".

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The Big Dig was a great accomplishment the problem was it went from a 3 Billion dollar project to 26Billion dollar project with lots of corruption. You know its bad when the Federal Govt steps in.

I'm all for shooting for the stars concerning infrastructure but we need to hold our leaders accountable for that type of corruption.
 
The big dig was a project of enormous complexity that was pushed through using numbers that were far too low considering the amount of work involved. That, plus some corruption, caused the projects costs to balloon.
 
tysmith95 said:
The big dig was a project of enormous complexity that was pushed through using numbers that were far too low considering the amount of work involved. That, plus some corruption, caused the projects costs to balloon.
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The National Debt in the 80's was like 3 Trillion. A billion dollars was alot of money back then.
 
That's a bit revisionist.
Maybe $2-3B was low. If it over ran to $4-6B, people would have been pissed, but it would have been reasonable considering the undertaking.
$15-25B (depending on which numbers you choose to believe) is absolutely criminal, and is heavily due to rampant corruption, abuse of power, and lots of people getting tons of hours if overtime they didn't work.

But, end of the day, it is a phenomenal success. After listening to people tell me for years "it will be obsolete before they even finish it", I can gladly tell those folks to suck it.

NSRL should have happened then but for the greed of those mentioned above. It should be a no brainier now, but you're right, too many are still shell shocked from the Dig. No one believes we can pull of big infrastructure projects. Our recent failures with the GLX doesn't help that perception.

All that said. I would absolutely still consider Boston a top 3-5 front runner for HQ2.
 
Keep your eye on the ball.

....AI theme continues and artificial general intelligence takes small step forward through Google’s “Deepmind” initiative. We believe the hype around AI is justified given it’s hard to understate the significance that AI will have on the future. In 2018 we expect the AI momentum to continue. In July of 2017, we counted 11% of Fortune 500 companies mentioned AI on their quarterly conference calls. We expect that number to grow in 2018. As for leaders, it’s clear that Google CEO Sundar Pichai is trying to get his point across: AI is the future of Google. We went back and looked at his opening comments over the last year and found he has led his prepared remarks by asserting Google’s evolution from a mobile to an AI-first company on each of the past four earnings calls. The company is pushing its AI into hardware devices (Google AI hardware note) and seeing its work pay off (Google Home’s the smartest smart speaker). Artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) is being mastered and we expect more news about the next frontier in AI, artificial general intelligence (AGI, the ability of a machine to think like a human), to be top of mind in 2018. We expect Google to play a thought leadership role in AGI with its Deepmind platform, but keep in mind true AGI is likely another 20 years away.
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http://loupventures.com/8-tech-predications-for-2018/?te=1&nl=dealbook&emc=edit_dk_20180103

Loupventures is a small venture capital firm, and the above is one of eight trch-related predictions for 2018.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
That's a bit revisionist.
Maybe $2-3B was low. If it over ran to $4-6B, people would have been pissed, but it would have been reasonable considering the undertaking.
$15-25B (depending on which numbers you choose to believe) is absolutely criminal, and is heavily due to rampant corruption, abuse of power, and lots of people getting tons of hours if overtime they didn't work.

But, end of the day, it is a phenomenal success. After listening to people tell me for years "it will be obsolete before they even finish it", I can gladly tell those folks to suck it.

NSRL should have happened then but for the greed of those mentioned above. It should be a no brainier now, but you're right, too many are still shell shocked from the Dig. No one believes we can pull of big infrastructure projects. Our recent failures with the GLX doesn't help that perception.

All that said. I would absolutely still consider Boston a top 3-5 front runner for HQ2.
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+1 on all of that except the last sentence IMHO.

Boston should be a clear #1, except for the infamous attitude from its non-University population/political class towards the future. I see that as actually knocking it below top 5 for the Amazon Sweeptakes. Boston, at its heart, wants to be a Wade Boggs, not a Hank Aaron. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but it is what it is. You are spot on that from the one time in the past 140 years that Boston dared to dream (Big Dig) it today now has a "never again" PTSD.

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shmessy said:
Boston should be a clear #1, except for the infamous attitude from its non-University population/political class towards the future. I see that as actually knocking it below top 5 for the Amazon Sweeptakes.
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Source your claims. You are making up requirements that do not exist to further your own biased opinion.
 
None of his claims make any sense. No city/region has launched a project even close to the size of the Big Dig since its completion. So, by shmessy's own twisted logic, EVERY city bidding for Amazon suffers from PTSD! Every last one. Instead he's hanging his hat on Musk maybe planning on building some futuristic tunnel to nowhere across the burned out landscape that is Baltimore, while in the meantime people are getting gunned down at the highest rate this side of Syria. Maybe the Charm City could use some of this ambition not on unrealistic transportation projects set to debut in the year 2100, but on keeping its citizenry safe instead? And no, it doesn't appear that they can do both at the same time.
 
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shmessy said:
+1 on all of that except the last sentence IMHO.

Boston should be a clear #1, except for the infamous attitude from its non-University population/political class towards the future. I see that as actually knocking it below top 5 for the Amazon Sweeptakes. Boston, at its heart, wants to be a Wade Boggs, not a Hank Aaron. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but it is what it is. You are spot on that from the one time in the past 140 years that Boston dared to dream (Big Dig) it today now has a "never again" PTSD.

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Americans cannot bet on this site, but here are the odds being played in Ireland:

Irish betting site PaddyPower: Atlanta, Austin now share 3-in-1 odds of landing Amazon HQ2

https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta...ettng-site-paddypower-atlanta-austin-now.html

Atlanta remains one of two top picks to land Amazon's HQ2, but Atlanta now has a rival -- Austin, Texas -- says Irish betting site PaddyPower.

Back in October, PaddyPower put Atlanta’s odds of landing Amazon’s $5 billion second headquarters at 2-to-1, beating Austin (3-to-1) and Boston (6-to-1).

But as of Dec. 31, PaddyPower says, Atlanta and Austin each share a 3-in-1 chance of landing HQ2.

Among other top contenders, PaddyPower as of Dec. 31 gives Boston a 7-in-1 chance; and Washington, D.C., and New York City each a 14-in-1 chance. Check out PaddyPower's odds list here.

A Jan. 2 story from Fortune notes that, "When cities submitted their bids in late October, Fortune turned to a popular betting site to see which of the more than 200 candidates had the early edge. Fast forward to the new year, and the initial favorite—Atlanta—is still at the top of the list, but its chances have declined from 2/1 to 3/1 and it now shares the perch with southern rival, Austin, Tex."
 
Can definitely see Austin as a player. Especially if cost is a dominant factor which I think magazines like Fortune and Forbes tend to rate pretty highly (kinda why North Dakota always ranks high for business in their surveys).

My issue with Atlanta is I'm not sure what it gives you that Austin doesn't. Same hard right politics that uber-liberal Bezos would have to overlook. More crowded than Austin with arguably less tech talent. It certainly has a better airport I suppose.
 
They seem to be pretty clear that they want decent access to an international airport. This would suggest to me that as well as decent access to Seattle, they want good access to Europe. This rules Austin out for me.
I think they'll head to the north east. It's Boston, NYC, DC, then Atlanta and possibly Toronto for my top 5. MIT/Harvard and the existing tech sector put Boston at the top of that heap for me.
 
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