101–110 of 223 posts
Paraphrasing an observation I heard in a podcast some weeks ago: We were promised little robot butlers in the scifi we read as kids, but what we got was human servants that act like robots.
Step 2: Develop AI to automate the work using data generated in step 1.
Step 3: Convince investors that your AI is close to finished. Use the money to actually build a working version.
Step 4: Fire all the humans.
It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...? This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Bruss…
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It looks like you're trying to make a clever joke in the style of mocking SV types for reinventing products that have existed for generations, except you're wrong. The parent means the Amazon delivery locker kiosks they're putting in all kinds of retail stores, where you enter a code to unlock the locker with your package. It is secure from theft, has variable sizes, works 24/7 with no waiting for a clerk, and can fi…
So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.
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So let me get this straight - it's a bad deal for the restaurants, it's an increasingly bad deal for the deliverymen and it depends on VCs subsidizing it to even work? How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing…
Operating a two-sided marketplace is one hell of a moat. Nobody's displacing eBay, Amazon, or the Google Play Store anytime soon; even Craigslist seems to be getting by. Here in Argentina, MercadoLibre established an eBay clone before eBay moved in; the consequence was that eBay just bought shares instead of even trying to compete. The VCs are betting that a similar thing will happen with delivery apps: one of them w…
That's due to network effects, not because they're operating a two-sided marketplace. And then you list an example where that moat failed (Argentina - and it's not just Argentina).
I suspect that on this particular market, network effects won't have as strong of an effect and the local players have better market insight since they're far closer to the customer.
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So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.
I do have that in my apartment building. But, instead of a code, the lockboxes have keys that only the postman can remove from them. He locks a package in the box, removes the key, and puts it in the recipient's box. When the recipient checks his mail, he uses the key to open the lockbox and withdraw his package. The key is then stuck in the lockbox lock and cannot be withdrawn again except by the postman.
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It looks like you're trying to make a clever joke in the style of mocking SV types for reinventing products that have existed for generations, except you're wrong. The parent means the Amazon delivery locker kiosks they're putting in all kinds of retail stores, where you enter a code to unlock the locker with your package. It is secure from theft, has variable sizes, works 24/7 with no waiting for a clerk, and can fi…
So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.
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For a while there, NYC was very safe. Then de Blasio got elected. Hopefully, Eric Adams can turn around the disaster Bill is leaving him.
Crime is down under de Blasio. Virtually every category has continued decreasing since he took office in 2014: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm (That link only covers through 2019, but if you look at the official CompStat data the two year trend for 2019–2021 is also negative: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist... )
Some crimes are down, some (e.g. murder) are up.
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So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.
The problem they're trying to solve is that since so many people receive packages these days those '5 large lockable mailboxes' aren't enough anymore and packages end up getting left out in the open. Also lots of places don't have those large lockable mailboxes at all. Then package theft happens. So not so much innovation in the mailbox space than just adding more "lockable mailboxes" for people to use as needed.
They can have 10 lockers if needed. If they don't have in-wall boxes then put a physical container with a few doors.
They can use the key scheme as described below.
They can leave the package at the Grocery Store across the street, which is a pick-up centre for FedEx and UPS.
Silicon Valley is not solving these problems in any meaningful way.
So the have-nots are attacking the servants of the elite. I am not surprised. In fact, I endorse this. I frkn' hate these services for inserting themselves between the customer and small mom & pop food shops. Using capital from the elites. All leading to further atomization and dependence on big corps. Go on your bike or by foot and visit your local shops.
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Parcel delivery is such a classic principal-agent problem; the customer contracts with a seller, who then subcontracts with a delivery company. But because there's layers in the middle the delivery companies can't compete on actual customer satisfaction, just on being cheap for the vendors.
I do my best to tell sellers this. I recently tried to find out where to buy a new mattress online. Usually I get them IKEA and that's fine, but their shipping is so expensive, it's generally only worth it if you boy a whole lot of large items at once. I talked to the customer repo of another shop to inquire what vendor they used for shipping and what would happen if I wasn't home - and they told me they used DPD. Tu…