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Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

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Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#281

Post by numpad0 »

apercu wrote: post #254
sydbarrett74 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from efforts in the US to make health care harder and harder to obtain, I'm betting on the former, especially if other countries follow suit. Slowly letting people die from untreated chronic diseases may be seen as more humane than outright mass slaughter.

I don’t understand the endgame. If everyone is poor and dying who is buying all the useless/social credit shit until there are 100m “wealthy” people left? And if “they” (whoever they are, I think we all give “wealthy” people far too much credit, many that I’ve known are pretty empty, insecure people lacking any real self awareness) want everyone else dead, why are all “developed” countries pushing for higher birthrat…

The rich wants maximum survival, the poor less so, or that's how "their" world model looks to me.

Most cutting edge technologies like advanced rocketry are not requirements for a century- to millenium-scale survival at all-around medieval technology level.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#282

Post by numpad0 »

ge96 wrote: post #241
throwaway314155 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I started drinking to get through it on my breaks That bad, huh?

It just made it more fun. There was a liquor store nearby so drive to it on the 30 minute break, pound a couple 100 proof 100ml bottles (99 Apples), back to it. That job was more fun than stow. If you're curious can read the subreddit /r/amazonfc They did recently start allowing you to buy their own approved headphones but before you'd get written up for being on your phone/having headphones in

Could this be just a real preview of post scarcity? Intellectuals imagine it as a world where everyone researches warp drives and ancient texts all day, but this - everyone perpetually working safe and drunk sorting trash in eternal pain - sounds potentially more realistic than that.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#283

Post by falleng0d »

olelele wrote: post #278
ge96 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just made it more fun. There was a liquor store nearby so drive to it on the 30 minute break, pound a couple 100 proof 100ml bottles (99 Apples), back to it. That job was more fun than stow. If you're curious can read the subreddit /r/amazonfc They did recently start allowing you to buy their own approved headphones but before you'd get written up for being on your phone/having headphones in

I’m always amazed at how easily ppl admit to drinking and driving..

[flagged]

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#284

Post by vlovich123 »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #220
vlovich123 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating read especially when viewed from the strategic angling to make Ford less profitable and cut off the minority shareholders the Dodge brothers from the dividend revenue stream they were using to build a rival company. So ironically, while the court held that the board had to prioritize shareholder profits, he would have realized greater shareholder profits by stifling the competition in its crib.

> while the court held that the board had to prioritize shareholder profits It's a bit more nuanced than that. The court held that company directors have to be acting for the benefit of shareholders. They still have wide latitude about how to do that. The reason Ford lost is because his legal position was essentially "I am king, therefore I can do whatever I want". But you can't do whatever you want. You can't lock t…

“Paying people more money makes them more efficient, motivated, and productive which benefits the company more than it costs. The expansion investment is to grow even faster to bring even more profits over the long term”.

Done. I doubt Henry Ford had trouble coming up with a fig leaf explanation if that’s all that was truly needed.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#285

Post by Closi »

gamblor956 wrote: post #213
gjm11 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a big patent lawsuit related to this, which as I understand it Ocado won pretty comprehensively. ( https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/ocado-wins-... -- case in UK court concluded that AutoStore's patents were all invalid and in any case Ocado didn't infringe them; there were a bunch of related cases in other jurisdictions but https://www.ocadogroup.com/media/news/autostore-and-ocado-se... indi…

AutoStore's patents were deemed invalid in the U.K. because they disclosed the invention prior to filing for the patents, which apparently is not allowed under U.K. law. Their patents were invalidated in the U.S. due to "inequitable conduct or equitable estoppel" meaning either that Autostore violated someone else's patents or that they led Ocado to believe that Ocado was not violating Autostore's patents in some way…

I think the story is probably something like:

* AutoStore sold a solution to Ocado

* Ocado started modifying their own installation. AutoStore gave them the rights to do this naively thinking it was for their own use.

* Ocado started aggressively patenting their own modifications.

* Ocado then decides it’s going to build everything themselves, and also start selling their own version of the solution and compete directly with Autostore.

* Then the legal battle begins!

Broadly the main thing in contention is that Ocado patented the concept of the robot sitting above a single cell (ie tote). Autostore thinks this is obvious and shouldn’t have been allowed - their main reason for usually implementing a lower robot that sits across two cells is that it’s more reliable (lower centre of mass, simplified mechanics) but that they have now been blocked from just doing a smaller design of their original invention.

Autostore were probably naive at the time (they were still reasonably new to the automation market) and Ocado definitely had better patent lawyers - or at least as they were UK based had a better grip of UK patent law.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#286

Post by absolutelastone »

rendang wrote: post #260
mattigames wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem to take into account the price of land or the price of education or the price of healthcare, therefore claiming that they can afford a better quality of life it's highly misleading, if this is taking such things into account I would like to know exactly how.

All of those are part of the basket of goods and services tracked in the Consumer Price Index

Doesn't the CPI produce an average estimate of what everyone is already paying for housing as opposed to the full sticker price for a new entrant? Meaning if most people are living in houses they bought in the past at much lower prices and interest rates, then the CPI will be heavily weighted towards their costs as opposed to the much smaller fraction of renters and first-time buyers.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#287

Post by [deleted] »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #275
littlestymaar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no indignity in “doing a robot's job” unless if you think working is indignity, because every job is a “robot job”.

Of course there is! Since you're here, you're probably a programmer or engineer, a student, or a dedicated professional in some other IT-adjacent field. How would you react if someone offered you a job in a warehouse? Once you've thought that through, apply the same reasoning to human beings in general, not just white-collar HN denizens. Few people want to work a hard blue-collar job for the same reason you and I don…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#288

Post by CamperBob2 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #274
CamperBob2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you're going to pay humans to suffer the indignity of doing a robot's job, it makes sense to pay well.

There's no indignity in “doing a robot's job” unless if you think working is indignity, because every job is a “robot job”.

I didn't flag your other reply, by the way, but I did vouch for it. Your retort about LLMs is spot-on, as was your point about how "they're all robot jobs." We just currently disagree on whether eliminating such jobs -- all of them -- is a good goal or a bad one.

You defended your perspective by arguing, correctly, that people take undesirable jobs because they don't have a choice. We agree there as well, and my point is that this is a form of coercion in itself. The status quo treats humans as if they were robots.

(And I really don't care if someone thinks I live in a cave. Life in my cave is actually pretty comfy. It beats the hell out of a warehouse or a cube maze at a click farm. It's a privilege, one I'd like to see more equitably distributed.)

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#289

Post by absolutelastone »

warrenmiller wrote: post #65
DrillShopper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now. Wait until LLMs get better and destroy the ability for junior developers to get their foot in the door.

How do you get senior developers if you replace the junior developers?

Well the obvious answer is training. Medicine requires 4 years undergrad plus 4 years grad plus 3+ years residency. You might argue medicine can be replaced by AI similarly, but the issue is risk. That 11 years is to reach the point you can be trusted to make the really high-risk and high-value decisions, not to do the easy stuff analogous to entry-level software.

Software has been an outlier in terms of its high salaries requiring only minimal training. That implies automating it will disproportionately be both easier and more valuable than many other skilled tasks.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#290

Post by pixl97 »

kajumix wrote: post #256
pixl97 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what labor are you going to be doing to afford those upleveled products?

it's a good question. what would true abundance look like? I can't wait to find out

>what would true abundance look like

If we don't solve greed first, it looks like one guy with a quadrillion dollars and everyone else starving/dead.

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