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

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#311

Post by HenryBemis » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

michaeltbuss wrote: post #283

jessriedel wrote: post #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…

There's no way a cart full of goods will scan properly if you roll through a scanner. RFID scanners don't handle RFID tags being stacked very well.

Apart from RFID, how many cameras would be "reading" everything and from how many angles? Will bluetooth be always on to track movement and where we paused and for how many seconds?

Just from these two technologies the "machine" can see that I picked one bag of crisps, one soda (oops wrong flavour I put it back and got the other flavour)(machine saw this and made the change).

RFID would only validate at the exit.

As for the cost 7-15 cents per RFID tag: -cash management costs. A lot. If you only do e-payments then you save from that -10 cashiers cost a lot (mistakes, skimming also costs)

Just from these two cost-cuts a super market can cover the cost to RFID everything in the store. Also the fact that a retailer (I am thinking Carrefour of Sainsbury's that move millions of items per day can get far better prices on tags).

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#312

Post by CreepGin » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

milofeynman wrote: post #287

boublepop wrote: post #246

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…

It's interesting that they rolled this out as a thing, but didn't start retrofitting all of their Whole Foods with it. Does it have problems with grocery stores? How does it handle fruits by weight, etc.

I'm wondering the same thing. Seems like the typical problem with AI in general: dealing with all edge cases in real world scenarios.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#313

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #115

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Industrial Revolution was a terrible period for workers up until the labor movement began fighting for putting basic protections in place. Lots of people got very wealthy though, that's for sure. This view of history as immutable, with the ends always meeting the means is the sort of thinking that I believe is holding us back as a society. Researchers are still studying the impact that the industrial revolution h…

Compared to what? Sure, it was awful compared to working at Google with unlimited snacks and all of that. Compared to being a peasant subsistence farmer, it wasn't so bad.

>Compared to being a peasant subsistence farmer, it wasn't so bad.

the life expectancy in Liverpool and some other parts of England during the peak of industrialisation fell to 25 years, the average height fell by almost 10cm, so actually it was pretty bad and it took decades for the situation to improve. I would have very much preferred to be a self-sufficient farmer during that time. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens goes through a pretty big amount of data that shows that traditional communities and even hunter-gatherers lived much better and longer lifes than people that had to endure the human meatgrinder that was industrialisation.

https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-livin...

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#314

Post by Crazyontap » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

mherdeg wrote: post #234

This is just an observation that doesn't contribute meaningfully to discussion, but ... Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Fool's joke. Don't know what to make of that. Maybe it's that although retail feels almost exactly the same as it always has, under the hood lots of parts have really been moving, and I just haven't noticed? The parallel observation is that when Gmail was announce…

Yeah with all the innovation it indeed seems like we are living in a fairy tale. 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass. And soon we'll have drones coming to our house with packages.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#315

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #285

Aeolun wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Absolutely, large swaths of the population can't do simple mental arithmetic like this at all. The US system discriminates against those people, no denying it. That said, I'm sure our European friends are absolutely drooling at the thought of a 7% VAT...

It's just part of the price, you don't really notice.

Like I do sometimes, but then I consider VAT policy somewhat interesting, in that it specifies the "essentials" (VAT is not charged on these) of what a tax authority thinks one should have.

But most Europeans tend not to think about it on a daily basis, because it's baked into the price.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#316

Post by zethraeus » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

Ah, the great assertion of disruption:

  their roles have simply shifted to focus on more valuable activities

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#317

Post by sykick » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

mason55 wrote: post #251

sykick wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a cashier in college for several years. Your scenario happens far more than 0.0001% of the case. It's fairly common amongst poor people. Then there are items that aren't acceptable for use by food stamps and must be paid for separately. Then there is WIK and trying return WIK items for cash refunds. You also have people who misread the labels. Then there are items that aren't in the right place and the label sa…

Then this solution sounds like a huge improvement. Instead of getting to the register and finding out you grabbed the wrong thing or overspent, which is a huge inconvenience to you and the other people in line, you can now track everything as you go. Put a can of soup in your basket. Oops! The alert I set up for items that aren't covered by Food Stamps just fired. Let me see what the issue is. Oh! I just got an alert…

What you say seems plausible and I agree with it. I was responding only to the belief that not having enough money at checkout is 0.0001% of the cases.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#318

Post by filoleg » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

milofeynman wrote: post #287

boublepop wrote: post #246

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…

It's interesting that they rolled this out as a thing, but didn't start retrofitting all of their Whole Foods with it. Does it have problems with grocery stores? How does it handle fruits by weight, etc.

Amazon probably doesn't want to radically rock the boat when it comes to Whole Foods at the moment. It is an established well-working business, and they don't want another wave of "WF went to shit after Amazon bought it out, just look at all those changes they've implemented!", given that Amazon's reputation has already been kinda questionable in the public eye recently.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#319

Post by julienb_sea » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #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…

RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as RFID blocking tech is real, and RFID at a distance doesn't work that well - especially with a lot of different RFID chips involved.

It's also very wasteful and time consuming. You'd need to chip every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor (expensive), plus those chips are essentially throwaway which adds ongoing marginal cost - adds up over time.

Amazon's solution is more expensive to spin up, but its a fixed cost. Vastly more efficient long term and vastly more scalable than RFID.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#320

Post by tzs » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

chipperyman573 wrote: post #296

This post looked kind of weird to me so I looked up the whois, it's registered to godaddy. Which is odd because it is not the same registrar as amazon.com or aws, and aws operates a domain registration service so I can't imagine a real amazon service would use godaddy. Combined with the fact that there's no concrete plans set in place, it seems really fake.

If someone else had registered the name at GoDaddy before Amazon wanted it (it was registered in 2013), and then Amazon bought it from them, would Amazon transfer it to their normal registrar right away or let it stay where it is until it is time to renew?