181–190 of 291 posts
"Amazon won’t say much about how the system works, other than to say it involves sophisticated computer vision and machine learning software." Why do I have the feeling this probably actually translates to humans staring at video feeds a lot of the time?
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> will just report you to the cops if they see sleight-of-hand Why? Just add it to the order.
And when you try to cancel your Amazon Prime subscription: Hey, remember that time when you tried placing an item under your coat (video link)?
Waitrose 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…
He said that around 1 times in 10, the cashier would actually check your items to make sure you weren't stealing anything- and if you had any discrepancies, you could expect to have the cashier check you every time for the next 2 months.
The main principle is that the workload of scanning the items is spread out to the customer, who isn't being paid for their time, rather than the cashier, who is.
I 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.…
> where there is even less real social interaction Good? I'm an introvert. I don't value random, superficial interactions with people I'll never talk to again. In fact, they cause me anxiety & I dislike them. I do value the time with a select group of people. And by reducing the time I spend in the supermarket it allows more of the human interaction I do value. My social group has a wide assortment of views, from Mus…
I 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.…
In fact, I can't think of any staff I interact with less than a cashier at a convenience/grocery/big-box store. Except maybe toll workers, a job that is already becoming automated.
The place I interact with people the most is at a farmer's market by a large margin
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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.
O_O
To be honest, I've never done that, and I'm surprised that It's common courtesy. I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I had a chance to help the cashier to find the barcode. What I do myself is placing items on the conveyor belt, putting items into the bags after checkout. Was I being impolite? What's the cashier's job then? Pressing the scan button...?
Waitrose 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…
not entirely serious, but not entirely joking: in a world where all stores are like this; you drop your phone and it smashes, can you still buy food? (what about people without phones?)
This is totally a real problem. I just celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday. She still lives independently and regularly goes shopping. She doesn't own a mobile phone, let alone a smart phone. In a world where services that require phones are dominant, choice narrows for elderly and low income persons.
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> 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, the…
The point the parent was making is that these bustling public areas you're seeing are primarily made up of affluent young people, and are not actually representative of how the majority of society lives.
You have offered no counterpoint to that at all, and yet still chose to start your comment with a rude dismissal.