Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 769 posts

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#441

Post by randomsearch »

filoleg wrote: post #436
thu2111 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst Amazon Go is cool, that's not an argument in its favour. That's purely a US specific screwup. In the rest of the world you can clear contactless transactions in a few hundred milliseconds with competent retailers; that's why it's possible to tap your way through the gates at busy London Underground stations. And retailers love contactless exactly because it's so fast and it lets them reduce staffing/handle mor…

That still doesn't solve the problem of waiting while people get all their items scanned, and I doubt that countries outside of the US have managed to solve that one. Imo there is nothing in terms of convenience and speed that can beat "just walking out".

Serious question - how widespread is self checkout in the US? I rarely queue at local supermarkets in the UK, I can checkout in <30s with a few items.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#442

Post by buckminster »

baryphonic wrote: post #321
buckminster wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just as bad only with industrial accidents and diseases on top.

Entire families working in the fields all day didn't have accidents or diseases in subsistence farming?

In the UK industrial accidents were commonplace until the passing of The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The very many maimings and deaths it has (belatedly) prevented are less common in subsidence farming.

Of course farmers get sick, but they don't get the diseases created by industry. There are a great many respiratory conditions and cancers that don't occur naturally.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#444

Post by godelski »

hammock wrote: post #336
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. It's not just about "AWS"-ing the thing. It's about gaining access to all of the transaction data and marrying that to what Amazon already knows about you. A retailer like Walmart would NEVER use this tech, they know their data is one of the most valuabl…

And in this way Amazon gets a lot more data and avoids the "monopoly" issue. Better optics too. But this is the only way that Amazon can get tons of data from smaller companies that they can't (don't want to) compete with (niche products or physical spaces).

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#445

Post by filoleg »

danShumway wrote: post #407
lstamour wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used Amazon Go once as a tourist, it was frictionless only because of the Amazon app. You can scan the app instead of a credit card (your card is already linked to Amazon for payment), and when you leave the app tells you what you bought. In my case it thought I bought a drink when all I did was browse the options, so when I saw this in the app, I deleted the drink from the receipt by saying I didn’t get one,…

But, and I know I'm apparently in a minority here... I don't want an app for my grocery store. I do my shopping spread between 4 different grocery stores depending where in the area I'm closest to, what specifically I need, etc.. and I don't want an app for any of them. I already get pestered about loyalty cards, now I'm going to get pestered about installing my local Rite-Aid's mobile app?

It doesn't even need to be a special app, it could just be another Apple Wallet/Android Wallet card. If you tried the Amazon Go app, it is literally just an app that displays a QR code that you use to scan when entering the store. That's literally it, no notifications, no other extra functionality, nothing. As soon as Apple Wallet/Android Wallet integrate it, it will become even more seamless.

A good example for people familiar with electric car charing is the ChargePoint integration. I have the app, but I never open it, and I don't even really need it (as I only use it for rare circumstances where I am in an unknown area and need to find a charging spot asap). Whenever I want to charge my car at a ChargePoint station, I just open up the ChargePoint card in Apple Wallet, NFC scan it, and that's it. It already knows that the ChargePoint card is associated with my account, so I can later open the app and see how charged my car is, what's the charging rate at the moment, my billing history, etc. If I don't have the app, I can check it on the web just as well.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#446

Post by Dumblydorr »

filoleg wrote: post #440
sequoia wrote: post #388

I won't do it. Because 1. I value what's left of my privacy more than saving a minute of human interaction here and there (are you really that busy? I'm not and I have 4 kids) 2. I won't contribute to twisting the arms of my local retailers and forcing them into amazon's yoke. In short: to hell with this. Edit: yoke

Famous last words, as I predict this going just as well as people in 2020 who use cash-only everywhere or, more extreme example, people not using any kind of cell phone just to avoid tracking by carriers. When you decide to make it really difficult for the world to engage with you, the world will make sure to make it just as difficult for you to engage with the world as well.

How's he making it difficult? This is how the world has operated for millennia, pick item and pay money to cashier. Its amazon that's going to make it harder for others.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#447

Post by filoleg »

randomsearch wrote: post #441
filoleg wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn't solve the problem of waiting while people get all their items scanned, and I doubt that countries outside of the US have managed to solve that one. Imo there is nothing in terms of convenience and speed that can beat "just walking out".

Serious question - how widespread is self checkout in the US? I rarely queue at local supermarkets in the UK, I can checkout in <30s with a few items.

Cannot speak for the whole country, but after living in cities on both coasts, I can say it is extremely widespread. The issue is that even with 10 self-checkout stations, there will be a queue at "normal" times of the day, as there are a lot of people shopping at any "normal" time. And that's not even a particularly large store I am talking about, it is a local QFC. I spend at least 5 minutes just waiting in line every time wanting to buy something. Not even mentioning the process of scanning, bagging, etc.

One cool thing about Amazon Go is that it actually sends you an email afterwards telling you how much time you spent at the store. Without failure, my overall times range between 30 seconds and 2.5 minutes. While for a regular grocery store, I would estimate it to be at the very least 10 mins for an equivalent amount of items purchased. Maybe it is my own quirk, but it deeply annoys me to spend time doing things in an inefficient manner, whereas I know I can do them much more efficiently AND with less effort.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#448

Post by riemannzeta »

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.

Maybe they want to match some revenue with expenses?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#449

Post by paxys »

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.

It's likely that the domain was already hosted on godaddy and they wanted to launch first before doing the migration.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#450

Post by Polylactic_acid »

hamandcheese wrote: post #332
dosethree wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the evidence anyone will actually use this thing? Maybe eventually. You can already do this at apple, but does anyone do it? Perhaps, they will get used to it in time, but i don’t know.

I do it at Apple, but afaik Apples system is based mostly on trust? You just scan and pay with your device, then walk out. Granted, I haven’t tried to steal so there could be more tech than I realize.

I know someone who worked at an apple store a few years ago and they told me that they really had no way to know and lots of products were stolen.
Post reply on HN