Amazon Home Services • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Home Services

#141

Post by CPLX » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

shubb wrote: post #128

CPLX wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And anyway, driverless cars are happening. By "happening" you mean "not used for any real purpose besides research or demonstration anywhere in the world" presumably.

We have cars navigating america autonomously as we speak. [1] From a regulatory perspective, I think driver-less cars are making better progress than drones, because auto regulations are more relaxed than air. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006700/Driverless-c... ... Oh god I just linked the daily mail. Sorry I'm at work and picked the first link when I googled.

No, actually we don't. From your article's headline:

"Two people will be in the specially rigged Audi in case of emergencies"

Re: Amazon Home Services

#142

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:42 PM UTC

wstrange wrote: post #135

randomsearch wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it just seems outlandish as an idea, but for no real good reason I imagine safety and power issues, talking to friends who research drone tech.

And payload. A drone just can't carry any significant weight.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Home Services

#143

Post by narrowrail » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

shubb wrote: post #128

CPLX wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And anyway, driverless cars are happening. By "happening" you mean "not used for any real purpose besides research or demonstration anywhere in the world" presumably.

We have cars navigating america autonomously as we speak. [1] From a regulatory perspective, I think driver-less cars are making better progress than drones, because auto regulations are more relaxed than air. [1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006700/Driverless-c... ... Oh god I just linked the daily mail. Sorry I'm at work and picked the first link when I googled.

Just for comparison, I had phones (flip-phones, mind you) from Samsung, LG, and Motorola with NFC in 2006. We could use them at MCD's, 7-eleven, and a few other places. Fast-forward 9 years and there has been little uptake, except that there are phones actually available to people with NFC, and acceptance is more commonplace.

In general, people take much longer to adopt new technology than we would like to see.

edit: grammar

Re: Amazon Home Services

#144

Post by justrudd » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

bederoso wrote: post #67

MCRed wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a negative because Amazon doesn't have that many resources or talent. They are short on engineers. The people building things like amazon movies are being taken off of key things like product search. Bugs I fixed there were regressed in later years and are still broken-- this is key product sales bugs that are still there. The team I was on that wrote the code got dissipated away. Here's a key thing that people…

Seems like you had a very bad experience at Amazon, but you are also spilling a lot of lies about the company, and I'm afraid people might buy it. Amazon is way more than a tech company, and the tech side of it is indeed just a portion of the overall organization, but your use of quotes on "tech company" is just derogatory and unnecessary. I have very little contact with "business" people, and they in no way determin…

> As an engineer, your manager WILL BE a former SDE.

This is not strictly true. I was at Amazon for 4 years (2004 - 2008 in Supply Chain and Retail), I had 3 managers. Only 1 of them was a former SDE.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#145

Post by eropple » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:44 PM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #72

ChristianGeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never run across anyone in the U.S. who refers to postal codes as zip codes.

> I've never run across anyone in the U.S. who refers to postal codes as zip codes. Say what? Where in the U.S. do you live? I've been all over, and I've never once heard them called 'postal codes'; always and every time 'zip codes.'

I've only ever heard "postal code" in the South.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#146

Post by sp332 » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #137

makeitsuckless wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon.com is their US site. That's exactly the problem. .com US Initially this kind of behavior was "quaint" and amusingly "typically American". But in 2015 it's just f-ing annoying.

You aren't aware of their localized .uk, .de, .jp, etc sites for they have for their markets in other countries?

.us should be for US stores. .com is more universal.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#147

Post by encoderer » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #51

minusSeven wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you mean to say drone's are more expensive than people ?

Drones that don't accidentally kill toddlers and pets and create liability nightmares? Yes, considerably more expensive than a minimum wage delivery human.

But currently, delivery doesn't happen for anywhere near minimum wage. A fully-loaded UPS or FedEx driver probably costs $100k or close, and those trucks look pretty expensive...

Re: Amazon Home Services

#148

Post by flinty » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:52 PM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #98

flyinglizard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead serious. The technology is there, the economics are there - it just seems outlandish as an idea, but for no real good reason.

The economics are definitely not there yet. The insurance alone would make it prohibitively expensive. Then you need a lot of infrastructure due to low range. Light drones also can't fly when it's too windy, too rainy, too cold. And they can only carry a very small subset of usual shipments (limited size and weight). Automated cars on the other hand...

also most of northeast will be blocked off for multiple months in winter due to snow accumulation on streets and on people's doors

Re: Amazon Home Services

#149

Post by gesman » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

Do they offer IKEA furniture assembly services?

This usually is a torturous process.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#150

Post by nknighthb » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

jasonsync wrote: post #132

flyinglizard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon drone delivery WILL happen. This will be completely disruptive to how stuff is consumed. Amazon being able to reach any point in an urban environment from its outskirts, at any time of day, within minutes and at a cost of just cents, will completely change consumption patterns (at least for existing Amazon users). Once something has such a strong financial implication, any other obstacle in its way is going to…

The urban environment represents the greatest challenge. For starters. "To your door" urban drone delivery would be nearly impossible as most urban dwellers live in condos, apartments or densely populated areas where landing or hovering presents real-world, safety, security and logistical concerns most likely impossible to overcome. The best case urban scenario is Amazon "drop off points". Basically small Amazon stor…

> For starters. "To your door" urban drone delivery would be nearly impossible as most urban dwellers live in condos, apartments

Many such structures in densely-populated areas have large, flat, mostly-empty roofs. (Hell, some of the apartment buildings in my little urban area of ~40k people have flat roofs, as do most of the local dorms.)