Leave it to HN to spend 100 comments arguing about whether or not we’ve suffered some great loss by not being able to have social interaction at the grocery store instead of things like, I don’t know, the continued unemployment of humans by megacorporations automating jobs.
Inside Amazon Go
161–170 of 291 posts
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#162If we're clever enough to empower people to be responsible to shop without human oversight to charge, why don't we stop including money in the transaction and instead of shopping, we're just taking what we need?
I dont understand what the role of money is in this situation if its taken to its logical conclusion. I bet Jeff Buysus wants to keep it there, however..
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#163If we're clever enough to empower people to be responsible to shop without human oversight to charge, why don't we stop including money in the transaction and instead of shopping, we're just taking what we need? I dont understand what the role of money is in this situation if its taken to its logical conclusion. I bet Jeff Buysus wants to keep it there, however..
galaxy brain
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The example is obvious if you actually step outside your door. Anyone can get anything delivered at any time of day or year, so other than going to work, there is no need right now for anyone to leave their house, ever. But funny enough, if you go into any downtown area, any park, any waterfront, any restaurant, they're busy. Abnormally busy, based on the fact that, again, none of them have any need to be there. Turn…
> But funny enough, if you go into any downtown area, any park, any waterfront, any restaurant, they're busy. Abnormally busy, based on the fact that, again, none of them have any need to be there. I don't think that's true at all, except maybe in the sense that rich urban centers are crowded with inherited-wealthy young adults. > visit a boutique store Exactly. See above. > stop for coffee at a local cafe. Cafes are…
>I don't think that's true at all
Funny thing about the truth is that it doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. It's still true. I make a living traveling for work, and I make a hobby of finding out small downtown areas and visiting them, and there's never a shortage in basically any thriving region of people out and about doing things they want to be doing.
You can point to some dying towns and say "look, these guys closed the business so that disproves your point" but forever in the history of forever, towns have been growing and towns have been shrinking. As one place wins, another necessarily loses.
Visit the Lake Michigan beach in Saugatuck MI, walk the riverwalk in Little Rock AR, head down Broad Street in Lake Geneva WI, grab a beer at Reclamation Brewing Company in Butler PA and tell me people don't socialize anymore. Grab some wings at Chase's in Norcross GA and tell me you'd rather talk about the weather with a stranger at Walmart than eat great food and have a real conversation with Chase's mom on the patio in the cool Georgia night air.
Small talk at Whole Foods isn't socializing. You want people to talk to? Go to where you want to be, and there will be people who want to be there too, and guess what, you already have a conversation starter.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#165I know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line. Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.…
I understand how you feel that way. It feels like Amazon, and others, are creating a wholly atomized society. Where people exist without having to admit that other people exist. Where people are stripped away from society for profit. But... what if I want that? What if I don't want to be coerced into social interaction, every day, just so I get get my basic physical needs met? What if I want to engage with society an…
It's not like you'll be the only person in the Amazon store.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine it's similar to the below video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeS8TJwBAFs
I wonder how resilient it is to real life shoppers who pick things, then put them back at the wrong place.
55 seconds in it does show them grabbing misplaced items, if that's what you mean.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#167No shopping carts? If that's not a signal that this is, at best, half-baked, I don't know what is.
I've noticed several grocery stores in the largest cities I've been in (Shanghai and Tokyo) lack carts both due to space constraints and because people visit on their way home either to or from the train station. Shopping carts are mostly necessary/convenient in suburban environments where you have to drive to bigbox stores because you live too far away.
Judging by the area of the city that Amazon Go is in and the ubiquitous housing nearby. I suspect this is the model they're going for.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many stores in the USA already have self checkout, and have had it for a decade or so. Go just eliminates the checkout process all together.
Maybe I'm weird, but I enjoy self checkout line. Picking up each item, looking for barcode, scanning it, and bagging, is kind of fun activity to do every once in awhile. The only lame part is, "please place the item in the bag" mechanism.
Switching bags, finding barcodes and placing the goods at right angle so it can be scanned, all of these makes me feel like being trained for unnecessary skills, it's repetitive and time consuming, thus incredibly annoying. Sometimes things went wrong, I had to ask for assistance (yeah, more interactions please.) I just stood there like I'm a 70-year-old man who isn't good at interacting with computers (well hello?), watching the assistant guy input the barcode number manually. After all that, I had to do the whole card payment process myself, while people stared at me waiting for free self checkout slot. Ugh!
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#169Waitrose in the UK has had something called "Quick Check" for maybe the last 10 years. On the way into the store, you swipe your "My Waitrose" card and collect a barcode scanner. You then scan and bag everything on the way around and return your scanner to a dedicated terminal (which generally have no queue) and very quickly pay. More recently they added the ability to use your smartphone as the scanner so that you don't even need to pick up a barcode reader. They are only one step away from allowing you to pay with your smartphone and walk out... although as it's at the terminal they ID you if you have any restricted items that seem unlikely. Every once in a while (I have had it once in 5 years of shopping there weekly) they will flag you for a "rescan" to check you scanned everything.
It's a brilliant system and doesn't require hundreds of cameras and machine learning.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trader Joes has a lot of urban stores. For example the one at Copley Square in Boston is in a basement across the street from a Tesla showroom. Its always busy, but there's no room to expand--even add an extra register. The farther you get out of the city center the wider the isles get.
Yep - floor space ROI is calculated down to square inches in some retail stores. Cash registers don't increase the ROI.
Not linearly. But at the point where you're turning away shoppers because they won't wait in a 30 minute line, cash registers will increase ROI.