HN stop supporting sites that block information with paywalls
The HN policy on paywalled articles in general is clear. 'dang has commented specifically on the NY Times as well.
Inside Amazon Go
171–180 of 291 posts
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#172I 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.…
How about freeing you to have the social interactions of your choice?
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?),…
> finding barcodes and placing the goods at right angle so it can be scanned
You should do that anyway to help out the cashier. It's common courtesy. Amazon Go obviously gets rid of it though.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#174Waitrose 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 d…
Giant has that here and it’s a huge pain in the ass and takes way more time than just going through the checkout line to scan everything while you’re shopping, if you’re buying anything more than a few items.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seattle area here. All my life I remember waiting in lines 10-20 minutes if you go to a store on a busy day (fri/sat/sun). It's just simple math sometimes where there's so many people with $400+ carts trying to check out and cashiers can only scan so fast. Everyone with medium or small sized carts have to wait in this. I've seen great strides in recent years to advance self checkout technology and its user flow. Walm…
In my experience, Walmart has the worst self checkout software however: poorly designed and laggy as heck. QFC/Safeway are much better, even Target (which is pretty bad itself) is better.
Wal-mart's big innovation in self-checkout that i'd love to see other stores adopt is the corral. Every other store seems to just let people line up in a free-for-all and the line gets long and starts to merge in with other lines and nobody's quite sure what they're lining up for. Then some narcissist thinks that despite the obvious crowd waiting to check out, they can start a "second line" that they'll be at the front of. And the stores see this crowd as a sales opportunity, so they randomly scatter product displays in the middle of where the line usually forms.
Wal-Mart has a nice cordoned-off maze to keep the line under control - a simple solution that works perfectly.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often learn a lot at the check out lines here in Oregon. People chat, exchange information. Often banal, sometimes valuable. Always nice.
Most HN users live in urban areas. Here in NYC your average check out line is people on their phones and/or with headphones on. And before you say NYC is an outlier, it was the same when I lived in semi-rural suburban Texas.
>> Most HN users live in urban areas.
I didn't know YC published HN's demographics. Do you have a link?
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a pretty good chance that stores in Europe have video cameras already there tracking where customers move, what they look at, what expressions are on their face when they read signs, etc...
I highly doubt so. The data privacy laws are pretty strict here.
Walkbase operates in Europe and they aren't the only company in-store analytics company.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction If you shop at Whole Foods, Target, Trader Joe's, Kroger, etc. this has never been true for you, unless by social interaction you mean handing your card to the cashier or asking someone a question. Even in my local, family owned grocery store I don't see this "marketplace" attitude. I doubt it exists anywhere outsid…
While it might not have been a particularly "deep" interaction, I definitely got to know my favorite checkout person at Whole Foods, knowing what he used to do, keeping each other up to date on new things we were doing, and even following his move from being a checker at Whole Foods to being a manager at another nearby store. I miss the person who used to work at the Staples who always lit up my day when I needed to…
In the future you can just buy a crate for $4.99 that could unlock any one of 10 unique alert sounds that will brighten your day when you checkout! And for $9.99/mo you can subscribe to the feed of your favorite restocker and get daily updates about the food their eating and the cute dog they saw on the way home or how great their butt looks in yoga pants! You can even send them creepy messages up to 10 times a month if you have the premium sub (which is only an extra $2.99).
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#179Waitrose 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 d…
Giant has that here and it’s a huge pain in the ass and takes way more time than just going through the checkout line to scan everything while you’re shopping, if you’re buying anything more than a few items.
Could you elaborate on why?
I've also used the system at Waitrose and it's completely painless, so I'd guess if there's a problem it's due to poor implementation.
One particular advantage for me was that I could take my backpack around the shop filling it up, so I'd never have to worry whether I was buying too much to fit.
And it also meant I could be sure multi-buy discounts have processed before I got to the checkout, instead of having to check my receipt and make a fuss about it if they didn't.
The only minor issue I noticed is that if you're buying alcohol you need a member of staff to confirm your age, and they often don't have dedicated staff on the QuickCheck machines when it's quiet, but even then it still doesn't take long to find someone.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often learn a lot at the check out lines here in Oregon. People chat, exchange information. Often banal, sometimes valuable. Always nice.
Most HN users live in urban areas. Here in NYC your average check out line is people on their phones and/or with headphones on. And before you say NYC is an outlier, it was the same when I lived in semi-rural suburban Texas.
As someone who lives in what can be considered a rural area for the most part, it's not largely different. The last population count put the town at ~4500 for reference.
You still have people in checkout lines on their phones or parents giving their kids a phone with YouTube or a mobile game to distract them. The older folk, as you might expect, tend to strike up conversation and bump into those they don't know.
I worked retail a few years in this town (which is finally coming to an end) and the few times I can remember strangers striking up a conversation with me were mainly them spreading misinformation.
A few years back, one elderly man swore black and blue that "they" were canning all of the "irradiated fish" from the Fukushima fallout and selling it to unsuspecting customers. Another lady told me the story of a man who just happened to be stumbling around "a major Chinese city" and peering into a factory window only to see that "the Chinese" were turning cardboard into cookies and selling them to us unsuspecting Westerners.
By no means are the above stories an indicator of country folk but let's just say I have my reasons for not jumping at the chance to talk with strangers. Half the time it's just an excuse for them to offload their stories onto me rather than actually being a two way conversation anyway.
EDIT: I just mentioned the overall feel of the discussions to my dad as he's the sort to strike up conversation with anyone. Having presented both sides of the discussion, he instantly discarded one side as "wrong" without actually weighing up any of the points. While it's anecdotal, it's no wonder I'm somewhat the opposite. Each conversation turns into a debate to win rather than a discussion.
Given "equal and opposite reaction[s]", I wonder if tribalism is inevitable? Did we ever actually defuse this kind of stuff in society or was it just hidden away due to geography eg; distance between rural and urban areas?