Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape • Hacker News Board

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#61

Post by Animats » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #57

jefurii wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, different. Many of those pictures have vending machines sitting outside neighborhood mom-and-pop stores. From my experience living in Japan, those machines are most likely owned/leased by the owner of the store, who stocks them and collects the profits. They function as a labor-saving device for high-trafficked items and a way to sell during off-hours. My understanding of Bodega is that they want to replace the…

"They function as a labor-saving device for high-trafficked items and a way to sell during off-hours." Seemed to be Bodega's plan also. If they want to go after a particular market, so be it. I'd rather it be a new business than a venture by a corporate giant. That opportunity has been available to every mom-and-pop store too, right? Even if it was just one vending machine in one nearby apartment building? I can appr…

Bodega isn't innovating much. There are several other systems where you access a big refrigerator using an app and get food.

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#62

Post by bdowling » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:08 AM UTC

iand675 wrote: post #53

addedlovely wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember also getting vended fries, but hot and cold drinks alone blew my mind coming from the U.K.

Yeah, there are fresh food vending machines around in a few places... notably in government offices like city hall or ward offices where you might have to wait for a while.

More common are the vending machines that will sell you a ticket for a meal, which you then hand to the person who will make your food and give it to you.

I'm not certain if that scheme is done for fraud prevention, or if it is done for convenience in order to have fewer employees.

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#63

Post by nizmow » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:10 AM UTC

skeltoac wrote: post #19

Are there still machines selling cans of beer? That was one of the highlights of my visit to Tokyo. My host advised me that I must either stand at the machine and drink it or put it away while I walked. No drinking and walking. I was 14.

I was in Kyoto in 2013 and there were plenty of beer vending machines.

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#64

Post by throw-away-8 » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:13 AM UTC

Given that "I can get warm drinks from the vending machines" at any weather and there is one vending machine for each 23 citizens, what is energy impact?

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#65

Post by beefsack » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:14 AM UTC

saryant wrote: post #30

ISL wrote: post #2

Getting a hot chocolate out of a vending machine while the sky is dumping snow is one of life's many sublime pleasures.

After the Fukushima earthquake I was walking from Ebisu to Roppongi (all the subways were shuttered). A cold evening and I wasn't properly dressed. Then I turned the corner and saw a machine with Tommy Lee Jones' staring down selling hot cans of Boss Coffee. Made the night a little easier.

I used to love the coffee vending machines until I accidentally got one with jelly chunks in it and was afraid to ever try again.

We had a Cup Noodle vending machine on our university campus which sold the elusive curry flavour, possibly the food I'm most nostalgic about from my time living over there.

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#66

Post by nihonde » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:19 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #24

skeltoac wrote: post #19

Are there still machines selling cans of beer? That was one of the highlights of my visit to Tokyo. My host advised me that I must either stand at the machine and drink it or put it away while I walked. No drinking and walking. I was 14.

Not in Tokyo anymore, but they do have them around Kansai still.

They still have them in the vending room in many business hotels in Tokyo. Better than a minibar!

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#67

Post by sly010 » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:21 AM UTC

bschwindHN wrote: post #34

shidoshi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suica, Pasmo and the like are all contactless SCs. The Wikipedia page is a good start, and you can go deeper from there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica

Ah sorry, I mean how the machine verifies the validity of the card.

It's asymmetric key cryptography.

Every vending machine can verify signatures using a CA certificate. Charging stations and a vending machines also have a signing key signed by that central certificate. Whatever is written on the card is signed by whoever wrote it.

Charging a card goes like this: - Read everything from the card (data + signature) - Verify signature + expiration dates, etc - Extract amount on card - Decrement said amount - Write new amount to card - Sign data on card using local signing key

It's a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. In some systems the logs of all transactions are reconciled asynchronously (if and when internet connection is available) so if a card is cloned it can eventually be detected and blocked.

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#68

Post by baursak » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:30 AM UTC

Reminded me of this art: http://keebs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Night-in-Shinjuk...

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#69

Post by aikinai » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:45 AM UTC

iand675 wrote: post #45

The odd thing to me about Japan's vending machine situation is that it's largely drinks. Not much in the way of the snack vending machines that one frequently encounters in the U.S. I suppose it's probably due to the Japanese aversion to preservatives / prevalence of convenience stores, but one would think they'd have come up with some tricks like the ones they've perfected with cup noodles.

Soups seem to be pretty common in the winter. One time I had a hot corn soup from a vending machine somewhere out in the mountains.

Re: Japanese Vending Machines at Night Juxtaposed with a Wintry Hokkaido Landscape

#70

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 1:46 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #36

When the story about the Bodega startup[0] came out, it occurred to me that what they were trying to do was essentially what Japan is already doing with vending machines - automate retail at scale. Unfortunately, Bodega tried to undermine, transform and rebrand the local culture in a way that many found offensive, but that aside, I wonder what particular cultural elements make vending machines seem so successful in J…

> I wonder what particular cultural elements make vending machines seem so successful in Japan, but not as much in the US

Mostly a lack of, for a better term, conformity. There is very little crime in Japan and people trust each other way more.

In the US, those vending machines would get vandalized and probably stripped of their metal in under a week. Even if there was a market demand for them, the cost to service those machines would be astronomical.