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Amazon hid its safety crisis

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Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#121

Post by brnt »

ci5er wrote: post #105
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why we have a government, to adapt society to an ever changing world. You can postulate as to _if_ government will step in an enact the requisite policies (UBI, Retraining, ect) but it doesn’t take a big imagination to see a world post-automation. There’s even a whole TV series set in such a world: Star Trek.

The nature of government is reactive, not pro-active. Except when they are stepping forward to propose a solution that won't work for a problem that doesn't exist for virtue/positioning points. Star Trek is a great fantasy, but we are a long ways away from that. (Culturally, politically, legally, technologically and economically)

> The nature of government is reactive, not pro-active.

What a nonsensical thing to say. There are so many counterexamples, where to even begin?

Don't confuse your current administration or administrative culture for 'government' worldwide, throughout history.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#122

Post by kalleboo »

hinkley wrote: post #84
qppo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an utterly mindless job I worked as a picker/packer one summer. This is an understatement, even before the robots did the walking for you. It's interesting that the only thing left is to make a robot that can handle the objects to be placed, currently they cost more than minimum wage human labor unless the thing being picked is designed to be handled by a machine. Ultimately that's what I think will happen, th…

Amazon is getting big enough that it's only a matter of time before they start trying to dictate packaging on products, to make it easier for robots to pick them up. Walmart has been flirting in the same space to automate inventory management.

Amazon just needs to give a few % discount on FBA fees for approved packaging and every single Chinese dropshipper will switch overnight

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#123

Post by freeAgent »

hinkley wrote: post #84
qppo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an utterly mindless job I worked as a picker/packer one summer. This is an understatement, even before the robots did the walking for you. It's interesting that the only thing left is to make a robot that can handle the objects to be placed, currently they cost more than minimum wage human labor unless the thing being picked is designed to be handled by a machine. Ultimately that's what I think will happen, th…

Amazon is getting big enough that it's only a matter of time before they start trying to dictate packaging on products, to make it easier for robots to pick them up. Walmart has been flirting in the same space to automate inventory management.

A few products on Amazon do come in “frustration free” packaging that is unique to Amazon, so I don’t think this is far off.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#124

Post by freeAgent »

xmprt wrote: post #118
MattGaiser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely get offers to buy a review from me inside the actual Amazon product itself. The system is being gamed under the nose of Amazon.

How often are you buying stuff from Amazon that this happens? I probably buy something at least 1-3 times a month and have never gotten a counterfeit or review request. I almost want to get one just to see what it would look like to be honest.

All the time. They’re super common in electronic accessories (phone chargers, cases, etc.), for example.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#125

Post by gorbypark »

jinpan wrote: post #79

At the risk of defending a faceless megacorporation, I'm curious what injuries per package look like at Amazon vs "Industry Average". According to the article, productivity expectations per worker doubled with robotics, and Amazon has about double the injury rate per worker, so my super rough back of the envelope calculation says they should fare similarly on that metric. If the industry alternative takes twice as ma…

Yes, they have. It doesn’t matter if an employee is twice as efficient if their injury rate is twice as high. If you are going to work and have twice the risk of injury, that’s a very bad thing. This is about injuries per employee, not injuries per item picked.

Theoretically, a system could be designed where all safety standards were ignored and productivity was n times more per employee, with lower injuries per item picked, but would result in astronomical injury rates. If you were an Amazon employee, would you want to go to work where there was a 1/10 chance per day you’d be injured? A 10x more efficient warehouse employee isn’t making 10x more money, so they are seeing increased risk for no personal gain.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#126

Post by PandaRider »

Tim Bray predicted it! [0]

> Certain (not all) Amazon warehouses seem to have per-employee injury rates that are significantly higher than the industry average, as in twice as high or more. Apparent reason: It’s not they’re actually dangerous places to work, it’s just that they’ve maximized efficiency and reduced waste to the point where people are picking and packing and shipping every minute they’re working, never stopping. And a certain proportion of human bodies simply can’t manage that. They break down under pressure.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809291

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#127

Post by gamblor956 »

solidasparagus wrote: post #120
gamblor956 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds exactly like Amazon has no interest in solving the problem, and would rather waste money on legions of ML PhDs to come up with yet another technology solution that doesn't work and would simply get gamed in a few weeks even if it did work, leading to an endless tech war cycle, than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a…

> than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way that can't be easily gamed by counterfeiters. This is the kind of "I don't know any details about the problem but I am certain it is simple and easy to solve" mindset that I hate. Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some peo…

Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some people, they wouldn't do it?

Yes, I do. Because that is the choice they have actually made.

What i suggested is SOP for Amazon's competitors and indeed the retail market as a whole due to product liability laws in the US and UK. Not hiring QC is therefore a deliberate choice.

My guess would be that if you could actually solve the counterfeit problem given a budget of a $1B, Amazon would do it without a second thought.

Strongly disagree, because that's a far bigger budget then they would actually need to spend on QC staff and they still haven't done it. (They could hire over 25000 qc staffers for 1 billion. They don't need that many, a few hundred will suffice based on SOP qc processes.)

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#128

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

hinkley wrote: post #89
thaumasiotes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's cheaper, it's just that a solution has yet to exist. Once it start working, it will go out at breakneck pace. I don't think this is a single problem. There are several dimensions to it, and you can trivialize some at the expense of others. Stop storing things compactly in bins and you can make it a lot easier to grab those things with a robotic arm. Give everything very robust packaging and you n…

There still seems to be a degree of 2.5 dimensional thinking with the current robotics systems. If you occupy the entire volume of a warehouse, then the volume occupied per object becomes less of an issue than when you have huge air columns between the roof and robots, workers, or shelves. You could move most of the manual handling to the ingest side; having truck workers load product into what amounts to a fancy Pez…

I've thought of something like this, but for the stores/supermarkets themselves. Because why not?

edit: Looking at how things are packaged and presented in the lower end like Lidl/Aldi, they are often standing on a pallet, either in full carton boxes, or just with carton around the top and bottom and the sides, stacked to maybe a meter, or 1.20m high. And the boxes are perforated in such ways that you can pull on some marked corner to open them easily.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#129

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

Klinky wrote: post #96
gowld wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full automation is always out of reach, but McDonald's is extremely automated.

Is that automation or scale? Doing things on a large scale can be more efficient and require less labor, but McDonald's is still hiring people to do effectively the same thing in the stores as they did 50 years ago. A lot of industrial food tech is not new or cutting edge, and has limits, like you can't freeze dry a fully-made hamburger for later consumption.

Does it matter? There are refrigerated burgers of all sorts available in the supermarkets, you only have to microwave or bake them after unpacking. I think I've even seen some where you leave them in the packaging during microwaving. Never tried them, so far. I really mean fully 'assembled' and prepared burgers, not only the patties. In a box like the ones from the golden M, just printed different.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#130

Post by Judgmentality »

solidasparagus wrote: post #120
gamblor956 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds exactly like Amazon has no interest in solving the problem, and would rather waste money on legions of ML PhDs to come up with yet another technology solution that doesn't work and would simply get gamed in a few weeks even if it did work, leading to an endless tech war cycle, than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a…

> than spend the money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way that can't be easily gamed by counterfeiters. This is the kind of "I don't know any details about the problem but I am certain it is simple and easy to solve" mindset that I hate. Do you seriously think that, if Amazon could snuff out the problem in days or weeks by hiring some peo…

The reason Amazon doesn't stop counterfeiters from selling on their marketplace is because Amazon makes money from counterfeiters selling on their marketplace.

Why does Amazon not let you select "counterfeit item" when making a return? I mean what the hell good are all those ML researchers if they can't even get the input data because I'm not able to mark something as counterfeit? Garbage in garbage out.

Amazon has long since moved from the "value creation" to the "value extraction" phase of being a growth-obsessed company. Fuck Amazon.

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