Amazon Dash Button • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#681

Post by Intermernet » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:01 PM UTC

tedks wrote: post #643

shanselman wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"expressino"

Congrats, you caught a transposed character in an HN comment. Sometimes, I don't care enough about these comments to exhaustivley spell check them. I guess I don't have the time. Maybe you should chekc your privilege.

I wouldn't worry too much about chekcing anything. You've possibly started a meme with "expressino". I shall be using it.

Oh, and it's also remarkably close to this [1], which I didn't know about until now, and now want to try. Thanks for your accidental character transposition. It has led to good things.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espressino

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#682

Post by dkrich » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:36 PM UTC

GabrielF00 wrote: post #656

dkrich wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add one more to the list- whatever happened to that ridiculous device that sits in your living room and listens to your every word, responding when it happens to hear something it recognizes? I think it was called Echo? Basically everything you get with any modern smartphone, only larger, more expensive, and probably technologically inferior!

How is it more expensive than a modern smartphone? It's $100

It's $200 and if it only performs a small fraction of the functionality at what is almost certainly an inferior implementation that's a tough sale to make.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#683

Post by dkrich » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #667

dkrich wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be better? I would have rather seen a third party come out with these little buttons, with an open API such that they could be connected to things like: - Todo/grocery list apps that adds the item as a reminder the next time I run to the store This is exactly what I was thinking. I think the core idea is actually pretty good- a seamless way to remember to get stuff you need at the time you realize you need…

> Most people like to comparison shop based largely on price. Amazon, and many others, are betting this is increasingly less true, and not only that, but price discrimination is the most important profit maximizing method in the world. These are price discrimination buttons.

I don't think you can really make that claim considering that Walmart has been profitable since its beginnings and Amazon hasn't been profitable in about ten years. What makes you think that now is the time for a change in consumer behavior that has shown itself not to exist to this point in time?

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#684

Post by icebraining » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #576

tedks wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having copious free time has always been a privileged position. The extent to which you can waste time is a direct expressino of privilege.

>> One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling stead…

I don't see any discussion vis-a-vis the whole decades that we know spend not working, ie., childhood and retirement. My grandmothers haven't worked a single day (barring small chores) for the last 20+ years. I only started really working 23 years after I was born. I doubt any of this was true during the middle ages.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#685

Post by GabrielF00 » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 2:08 PM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #682

GabrielF00 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more expensive than a modern smartphone? It's $100

It's $200 and if it only performs a small fraction of the functionality at what is almost certainly an inferior implementation that's a tough sale to make.

It's only $200 if you don't have prime. Presumably the intended customer is a prime member.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#686

Post by jkaunisv1 » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #571

jkaunisv1 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I solved this problem with a notepad in my back pocket. Write it down as soon as I realize I need it, and refer to it next time I'm at the store. Not saying it invalidates this Amazon offering, just a suggestion if this is a real problem you're struggling with.

Same here, but just a notes app on my phone. If I think of a thing, I put it in there, and I get to forget about it. I then pull it up when I go to the store. Is this like, what society wants though? Are we all here to be waited on hand and foot, have our every need taken care of? Do we end up being able to solve more real problems this way, or do we end in a dearth of imagination? Interesting implications - we eithe…

I think society as a whole does want to be taken care of in that way. I don't know that it will ever lead to mass idiocy but I definitely notice a laziness in some friends who are overly attached to their phones or cars. Emphasis on overly attached, it's totally possible to use these tools effectively but the power can be seductive.

I think I'm better off for the effort I put into things like buying detergent, walking to work and figuring out my way instead of using GMaps. It's not like I'd be worse off if I stopped doing any one of those things, but the lifestyle in aggregate where you have a button for everything does have an impact I think.

I have a hard time seeing how people can develop the schlep tolerance and planning skill to do something challenging and big if they can't remember to buy detergent.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#687

Post by incongruity » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:52 PM UTC

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #585

hypertexthero wrote: post #455

Harper's Magazine, September 1996: > From an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in the November 1995 issue of Inc. Technology. Vonnegut was asked to discuss his feelings about living in an increasingly computerized world. >> I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this…

In reality, this man of privilege bounds into the store on a cloud of positivity, only to be met by the sullen face behind the counter, 12 hours into a double shift on a day that she wasn't even supposed to be here. At the Postal Convenience Center, the object of his affection barely registers his presence because she is fears going home to her abusive boyfriend who is probably halfway in the bag already. When the le…

> The whimsy of Vonnegut betrays the truth that too many of us suffer from too little time in the day to create genuine, shareable moments with one another.

Except that so many of those genuine moments can't be created with any sort of precision. They happen exactly because they are outside of what was planned.

We suffer from a lack of time because we have too much crap planned or demanded of us. Abstracting away all the small things sounds wonderful, but it's exactly that pursuit of efficiency above all else that is killing us.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#688

Post by incongruity » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

kristofferR wrote: post #607

evanlivingston wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we have more free time? It is precisely the post-industrialized culture of consumption, and economy of progress that is robbing individuals of our free time. When did laundry and cooking and doing work at home cease to be a social function and instead move into the sphere of "work"? http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

> When did laundry and cooking and doing work at home cease to be a social function and instead move into the sphere of "work"? Do you realize that you're basically implying that housewifes were chilling at home while their husbands were doing the real work? Home work has always been real work, but us men didn't really feel it before we had to do more of it due to gender equality.

And, now, we've traded that for an economic reality where having one person stay at home to mind the house/family/etc. is simply economically infeasible without significant compromises for most families (and one-income families, by extension, are pushed to make those compromises without option).

Don't confuse the two issues here – the ability to let one person stay home, in a traditional 2-parent household was a great thing. Expecting that to always be done and always be a woman was terrible and sexist.

But, now, are we really saying the "liberated housewives" are any more free? They're even more constrained by the need to earn a paycheck so that their families can remain at the same level as their parents or grandparents were able to achieve on one income. Yes, they're on closer (but not equal) footing with men, but I don't think I'd really say we've increased the freedom of anyone here.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#689

Post by kang » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #622

evanlivingston wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we have more free time? It is precisely the post-industrialized culture of consumption, and economy of progress that is robbing individuals of our free time. When did laundry and cooking and doing work at home cease to be a social function and instead move into the sphere of "work"? http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

>Why don't we have more free time? Than we did historically? We do. Things that I am forced to do, I do not consider "free time", although for some reason anti-technologists like to consider at-home labor to be "free time", so they can make it look like pre-industrialization people had less work than we do today. That said, with every passing year there is measurably less stuff that I have to waste time doing, mostly…

I'll ask you a simple question - Do you have to work to eat and have a shelter? Well technologically we are advanced enough to feed 10 billion people and provide free shelter to everyone on earth. The amount India's prime minister spend on his campaign could educate every Indian child for free!

Due to a broken governance model that the world uses, we have poverty; technology is already advanced enough that most of us don't even need a job. Humanity is producing enough for everyone's need (but not greed, like gandhi said) but we haven't a fair distribution. Getting a job is our way of distribution of wealth.

Re: Amazon Dash Button

#690

Post by kang » Wed, Apr 01, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

DickingAround wrote: post #525

mturmon wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a neat quote. I read it in Harper's back in 1996 and it has really stuck with me. I feel like it describes some of my days pretty well. But another part of me thinks he's writing from a very privileged position, and doesn't (want to) recognize it.

Indeed. The implication that everyone could be 'farting around' and still have an internet-using, nuclear-war-avoiding, space-traveling society is inaccurate. That's not to say everyone always has to do difficult work. But sometimes some people do and they should be celebrated for doing that hard part.

> Indeed. The implication that everyone could be 'farting around' and still have an internet-using, nuclear-war-avoiding, space-traveling society is inaccurate.

Quite the opposite I think. Our machines can 'already' work well enough to provide free food, shelter and education to every person on earth. Even still, we produce food for 10B people yet hunger is a problem.

If everyone was given free food, shelter and education, then everyone would fart around and get bored until some of them hackers gather to build a space-ship and others join in. Utopia? probably. But the real problem is broken distribution model which real means broken governance model.