“Just walk out” technology by Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#81

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #73

shadowgovt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you don't trust the retailer with your privacy, you shouldn't use their store. That rule applies in general. Even 7-11 has security cameras capturing faces of people entering and leaving the store.

> Yes, if you don't trust the retailer with your privacy, you shouldn't use their store Easy to say, hard to do. It's pretty hard to live without having to enter a retail establishment. Particularly one that sells you your food.

Agreed; it's hard to execute trade in a society without abiding by the norms of the society regarding information exchange. I could also try walking into the 7-11 with a full face mask on (in my state at least, that's not illegal in general), but the owner and register operator really wouldn't appreciate me being that anti-social.

Privacy is a sliding scale and different people set the slider at different sensitivity levels.

And even if one's sensitivity level is high enough to cause personal problems, they're solvable. People that deeply concerned about their privacy have had proxy shoppers buy things on their behalf.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#82

Post by judge2020 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #74

kube-system wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not new issues. Retailers already rely on the trust of dozens if not hundreds of vendors for operations. Trust is established through contractual obligations, pilot programs, etc. Shrinkage in the US is about 1.38% on average currently. Any competent retailer would run a pilot and evaluate its effect on shrinkage rates.

I'm also referring to trusting amazon specifically. They're a competitor, and not one known for playing nice. I've heard that retailers are hesitant to even use AWS (I don't have a source for that and would love to hear otherwise if that's the case?) - because of competitive concerns- so will people want to work with amazon for something so core to their business?

> I've heard that retailers are hesitant to even use AWS (I don't have a source for that and would love to hear otherwise if that's the case?) -

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-ama...

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#83

Post by allemagne » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #62

dekhn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only manual laborers in 1850s England didn't rely on jobs that were replaced by machines (England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution).

The information revolution appears to be having the opposite effect, with massive productivity gains resulting in fewer employees needed. One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically. This isn't only in England, but happening in other countries too (e.g. the USA). The surge in 'nostalgic'[0] voting (Brexit and MAGA spring to mind, respectively) is one of the outcomes o…

>One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically.

That's the whole point of the comment you're replying to. This isn't new or unique to recent technological advancements. This is always the case when new technology displaces existing structures.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#84

Post by vsskanth » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

reggieband wrote: post #70

vsskanth wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised many people here mention lines at the self-checkout. I shop in a fairly busy Walmart and I never had to stand in line, even on Saturdays and Sundays. They have like 15 of those counters on each side.

It is literally a supply and demand thing. You happen to have experienced high-supply/low-demand. Why are you surprised people mention low-supply/high-demand scenarios? In fact, just follow the logic down that road. Consider highly-volatile demand purchase scenarios. A company might over-spend on self-checkout stations to cover high-demand scenarios that go unused on more typical days. A more efficient approach is to…

I guess I'm just wondering if there's data on how often you these self-checkout bottlenecks. The way other commenters describe it makes it seem like it's fairly often. Hence the surprise.

Although I agree just-walk-out scales well with demand.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#85

Post by dekhn » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #62

dekhn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only manual laborers in 1850s England didn't rely on jobs that were replaced by machines (England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution).

The information revolution appears to be having the opposite effect, with massive productivity gains resulting in fewer employees needed. One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country have been 'left behind' economically. This isn't only in England, but happening in other countries too (e.g. the USA). The surge in 'nostalgic'[0] voting (Brexit and MAGA spring to mind, respectively) is one of the outcomes o…

I think in the short term, the information revolution appears similar to the industrial revolution: a category of jobs become obsolete, but long term, the economy grows, and adds many more categories of jobs.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#86

Post by txcwpalpha » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #80

txcwpalpha wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your original comment, the statement "But you may as well" misses the entire point of the quote from the article. You only "may as well" if the only point of that quote is privacy related, but it is not. The benefit of not providing an account or downloading an app is that it provides less friction for the shopper, so you shouldn't "may as well" do it just because of an unrelated privacy side-note.

I was not commenting on the thing that the quote was intending to talk about. I was commenting on the privacy implications of what it actually said. From a privacy point of view, you may as well sign up for an account or install an app -- that's a problem for those of us who wouldn't sign up for an account or install an app due to security concerns.

>I was not commenting on the thing that the quote was intending to talk about.

Exactly, and that's the definition of a strawman.

Again, I do agree with your larger points about privacy, but the presentation of your argument rubbed me the wrong way.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#87

Post by rstupek » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

lozaning wrote: post #29

IDK what happened to it, but for a while the Mountain View Walmart had a system where your cart had a pricing gun thing and you'd scan stuff as you put it in your cart. Then when you got to self checkout you paid in the Walmart app and left with no other steps. I thought it was pretty convenient. Its no longer there and I've not seen it anywhere else so I guess maybe it was a failed pilot program or something.

Yeah the walmart near me in the Woodlands TX was the same way and I don't see the pricing gun any longer

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#88

Post by apacheCamel » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #25

vessenes wrote: post #13

Seeing a few negative comments here; I think these are short-sighted in the extreme. Labor is a major cost for retail; anything that massively reduces labor costs is going to be hugely game changing. Combined with amazon promises that it takes only a few weeks to integrate (seriously??) if this works at all, this is going to be a super fast growth group at Amazon. For reference think back to how many stories you’ve r…

Another major cost in retail is "loss" ... I can see this being pretty effective at loss prevention and coupon fraud (even my small town grocery store require an associate to visit the self-check kiosks if a customer has a coupon).

I was actually just thinking about coupons and how this would change that landscape. Physical coupons would be pretty useless I could imagine, everything would have to shift to digital, unless you could scan them on your way out, which would then just defeat the purpose of "just walking out". I think my mailman would appreciate it regardless, due to the large amount of unwanted coupons that get put in my mail almost daily.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#89

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

skuthus wrote: post #53

JohnFen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they make it accessible enough, all stores may. I think that's unlikely. There is likely to be a large enough percentage of shoppers who avoid this sort of thing to support at least a couple of stores who make it a selling point that they don't do this. But, if there is no option then I'll have to figure out what my response will be. It would likely have to be a compromise position between buying as much as I ca…

I really don't think there is. I think this is going to be more like the loyalty cards - at first people oppose it on principle, but it becomes so commonplace that opposing it seems absurd

> I think this is going to be more like the loyalty cards

That would be OK, actually -- there are still plenty of stores that don't use loyalty cards.

The difference between the two things, though, are that you can shop at a store that has loyalty cards without having to use them yourself. You couldn't shop at a store that uses this program without using the program yourself.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#90

Post by thinkling » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

nck4222 wrote: post #63

My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt. Which seems to completely defeat the convenience of just walking out in the first place. I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be char…

When I've used to Amazon Go store, it has usually taken a while for the app to update with a receipt. Last time I went to the new, bigger store it was about an hour before they had the receipt available.