Live data from Hacker News

“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

261–270 of 769 posts

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#261
From TFA: >Shoppers can think of this as similar to typical security camera footage.

Great. Now they know not just what I bought, but also what I browsed as I was walking through the store.

How long is this footage going to be stored for, and who is it going to be sold to? If there's a crime of happenstance around the store, will everyone who purchased (or looked at purchasing) the item used in the commission of the crime be rounded up and made to prove their innocence?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#262
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…

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said…

just an observation, but it is pretty obvious you have never been poor or interact with poor people. That situation is a lot more common than you would think.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#263
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…

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said…

>"This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take."

Can you elaborate? What does this mean exactly?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#264
post #258
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…

That's the point of this technology - to increase impulse buying. Credit cards purpose is that it hides from you how much money you have left. If you were paying in cash and see how much money you have left in your wallet, you're more likely end up not purchasing a given item. This is one step further, since you now don't know how much you're paying (unless you calculating the cost in your head, which most people don…

Well, that's one of the points. Another point is to not pay for cashiers or have checkout lines.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#265
It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.)

From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have heard for why RFIDs aren't ubiquitous, even though they now cost less than a penny (EDIT: I'm wrong, more like 7-15 cents), is that barcodes are too entrenched; RFIDs aren't nearly as useful until everything has one (since if you have to barcode scan half your products, and they are intermixed with with the RFID'd products, you might as well scan them all), and even retailers like Walmart weren't able to pressure all their suppliers to switch at once.

I wonder if this could have been fixed years ago with a collective-action solution like a stronger industry standards body or government regulation.

EDIT: Huh, could have sworn the cheap passive RFIDs cost less than a penny now, but apparently they are still 7-15 cents. That would explain a lot. Presumably the price would fall quite a bit if every product in America had an RFID on it, but we're not there yet.

https://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/show?85

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#266

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

Yep. I've been sitting here thinking Amazon was going to spool up tons of retail locations that leveraged their tech to create a massive moat that other Brick & Mortars couldn't possibly compete with. In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the implementation, then sell it to the world.

And they didn't just do that with AWS. They did it with ecommerce as well. Become the biggest online retailer, nail the implementation, then get everyone else to jump on your platform.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said…

>Are the prices not listed on the individual items? This is not aimed at deanCommie, but I just want to comment on the massive cognitive dissonance in effect when the issue of listing tax-included prices on individual items in America is raised. Do none of those arguments hold anymore? Why? Because it isn't European tourists asking the question?

While I agree with listing tax inclusive prices. Is it really that much of a mental effort to add 7%?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#268
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…

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said…

> Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case.

Apparently I can guess an awful lot about how you grow up based on your estimate of how infrequently that happens.

I'm betting you can guess something about how I grow up that I know you're off by quite a few orders of magnitude.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's fairly common amongst poor people. Are these people shopping at Amazon boutiques?

Amazon Go is a convenience store...if convenience stores pick this up then yes, they will shop there.

But sadly, will no longer be able to get a job there...
Post reply on HN