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Inside Amazon Go

nytimes.com

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Re: Inside Amazon Go

#191

Post by dannyw »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #150
Kalium wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You might be right, or your view might lead to social collapse. Society has been functioning for millenia; it's not clear that can work without people talking to each other. For an HN-pertinent example: If no one wanted to put together a company, would anyone have a job? Can computers really mediate all human interaction? If so, why are social connections so important in building a successful tech company?

The difference might be that you could enjoy your conversations and outings with your coworkers, but less so when you’re grabbing groceries at a supermarket.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#192

Post by hk__2 »

dyyni wrote: post #23
panarky wrote: post #19

There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. Why is this the knee-jerk response to technological progress? True progress isn't forcing millions of people into low-wage routine work. True progress would emancipate people from this drudgery entirely. Isaac Asimov questioned why the goal of bo…

>Why is this the knee-jerk response of many journalists in response to technological progress? Maybe because our society isn’t ready for such changes. The American system especially lacks safety nets and social security systems to support those without a job. The way things are now is that one needs to have a job to be able to “play”. One solution would be to tax the robots that replace the working class. Otherwise t…

> Maybe because our society isn’t ready for such changes.

Our society has been killing jobs with automation for the past 150 years or so. Think of all the jobs that don’t exist anymore because of your fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, car, etc. Before alarm clocks, people used to get paid to go yell in front of your house for 10 minutes until you got up. Before cars, there were tons of people living off horses as a transportation medium. Before automatic doors in the trains there was one employee in each coach to close them. Pretty much every complex object you touch nowadays has killed jobs when it first appeared.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#193

Post by pxeboot »

samwillis wrote: post #169

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…

Sam's Club has an app like this for some stores. Works really well for large bulk items.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#194

Post by morgante »

threatofrain wrote: post #45
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #41

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.…

The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?

> What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor.

Are cashiers not paid?

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#195

Post by isitwhatitis »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #176
sotojuan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>80% of the American population lived in what is called an urban area in the 2010 census [1]. While their definition of urban is looser than you might use, still >60% lived in 'cities'[2].

Unless the wealthier, more connected, more educated readership of Hacker News strongly bucks every trend suggested by their demographics, it's pretty safe to say we mostly live in urban areas.

[1]https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w... [2]https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33....

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#196

Post by freehunter »

aninhumer wrote: post #190
freehunter wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>there's never a shortage in basically any thriving region of people out and about doing things 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.

The counterpoint was the places I mentioned, which you've seemed to miss. I'm not talking about NYC and Austin and Seattle and SF, I'm talking middle America, normal small towns.

What's rude is people saying "Amazon is killing all social interaction" while not stopping to wonder why all of their social interaction is small talk at a Walmart. That's the problem. Again, like I've said over and over and over and over and everyone ignores to nitpick, that's not social interaction. That's small talk. I have no idea why you're treating standing in a checkout lane like it's the Roman Forum.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#197

Post by Flammy »

When I installed the app it mentions you can let others buy stuff from your account with a single phone on entry(kids, friend, etc). There is an animation that shows you tap your phone in, send your friend in, then re-tap yourself in.

Didn't see this mentioned anywhere, and I thought it was kinda neat.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#198

Post by mabbo »

tuna-piano wrote: post #49

I love this - shows why Amazon keeps growing. Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit). If it doesn't work? Lose, ~$10 million. But if it works there's likely huge upside. It's just a smart bet for a big company. Sometimes your bets turn into AWS, and sometimes they turn into the Fire phone. Most companies I've worked at are ve…

Bias note: I work at Amazon but I don't actually know anything or speak for Amazon. I'm guessing just as much as you are.

I knew people who left to go work on this project in I'm going to say early 2013. Lots of them. Assume Amazon put 100+ engineers on it, each probably making 200k/year in total comp. For five years. So that's a low ballpark of $100 million just for the engineer salaries. Now add in hardware, real estate, etc.

This was not a $10m project. But this is Amazon, where big investments in crazy ideas that might fail is normal. Just look at that friggin' Fire Phone.

Edit: and for the record, all those people who left to work on it were bastards and wouldn't tell us what they were building. Not even if you bought them beer.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#199

Post by exolymph »

snowwindwaves wrote: post #184
wdr1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My mom shopped at the same grocery store for 30 years. Some of the cashiers lived in our neighborhood, and we would see them every time we went grocery shopping and sometimes around the neighborhood. The cashiers knew me by name from when I was a baby grocery shopping with my mom. I suppose it depends on what you call a meaningful discussion, but seeing the cashiers was like catching up with a friend. This was in Ott…

Your mom's experience is not typical.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#200

Post by int_19h »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #150
Kalium wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You might be right, or your view might lead to social collapse. Society has been functioning for millenia; it's not clear that can work without people talking to each other. For an HN-pertinent example: If no one wanted to put together a company, would anyone have a job? Can computers really mediate all human interaction? If so, why are social connections so important in building a successful tech company?

Conversely, society has been function for millennia, despite all the crazy things that humans have done before - as we change, it adapts.

In fact, who is to say that the present typical amount of social interaction is optimal or even generally desirable? It's a function of our society and its tech today, it didn't come up on stone tablets from the heaven.

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