the days when the comments added value to the topic are long gone...
* i know I'm being part of that but I usually never comment, I learn from you people! (or use to)
Amazon Prime Air
381–390 of 604 posts
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#382This is an awesome idea of course. It's a glimpse into the future. I remember tweeting with Chris Anderson of 3D Robotics about a year ago about autonomous package delivery from A > B. I'm sure Bezos and team started nerding out on this concept years ago. Eventually, "vehicles" the size of UPS trucks will be delivering packages autonomously all over the world. This is definitely a glimpse into that day. And it won't…
I think there's a significant long tail for products that may be eligible for 30-minute delivery. Pretty much the only time I go to a real store to buy something non-perishable is if I'm on a time constraint and can't wait for Amazon to ship the product.
If I need a cable or other electronic peripheral that isn't carried by big box stores, there's exactly one vendor in my metropolitan area that is likely to have it in stock, and they'll unabashedly charge 5x-10x what you'd pay to buy it on Amazon if you had 2-5 days to wait for the package's arrival. I'm sure there are many markets like that right now.
The potential this has to decimate many traditional retailers is super intriguing. What are we going to do with all of that extra space?
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hacker News on Dropbox: Why would anyone want this? I can do this already with my home PC, all I need to do is install package xyz and let it run in the background. How does this handle duplicates, this is doomed to fail.
Dropbox is for people that can't use rsync+git. For the unix-competent, it's not particularly difficult and we managed for many years with the previous tools, rsync+svn or even rsync+cvs
Yeah I really miss the good old days when I could take some pictures and all I had to do to send them to my mom was provision a server with a static IP address I could send her along with some links to rsync tutorials. Can't believe Dropbox had to come around and make everything so much harder...
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#384http://www.amazon.com/primeair When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time. Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :) There…
There are two ways to present this type of criticism: lay it out and hypothesize how they are going to overcome these obstacles, or get up and say they will certainly fail because these obstacles are impossible to overcome. You can guess which one of these makes you look like a short-sighted un-imaginative cynic.
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#385(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…
If anyone can pull it off, it's probably Amazon.
I almost wish a smaller entity would have become the first major player in drone delivery. This is going to draw a lot of attention from regulators, and I can't help but think they will want nothing more than to stop or slow Amazon from further disruption in the retail space.
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#386Let's take a strategic look at this.
Its a shot across the bow at Google Shopping Express, Ebay Now, InstaCart (to an extent), TaskRabbit (meh maybe), and all the others focusing on the same day delivery business.
Its also a direct shot at Walmart, whose customers in non-dense cities all have a store within 30 min drive of their location. Walmart isn't in the big cities (in their normal fashion), walmart is suburbs. Target is suburbs. Walgreens/CVS might worry about this too, as it could kill a bunch of impulse or time sensitive shopping if amazon ran this 24/7.
Things to consider: - what is the cost per drone? - what is the cost to operate? Fuel? are these fully autonomous?
This paired with self-driving cars is potentially shifting the dynamics of delivery companies (imagine if the ups driver was just a guy in the truck, not driving it). Or the truck had 2 delivery guys, neither one driving...
Anyway, I see this as a fascinating experiment.
Worth looking into as well: http://matternet.us/ this has been around a while. I heard of it through singularity university people.
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#387The real surprising thing is that Amazon is accelerating the post industrial age. The economy is growing but wages are stagnant. A demand for human labor is declining while corporations are making massive profits. These drones are an example where machines are replacing jobs that were once done by humans. As we pull out of the recession in the US, the fastest growing job market is the low wage/retail jobs. Walmart wi…
I think optimism is the most important requirement for adaptation to any major technological change. How long has big media been kicking against the pricks of online distribution for purely political reasons, and how far has it gotten them? What could have been today if the MPAA, RIAA, and affiliated groups accepted the technological change and thought about how to best leverage it instead of sitting around sulking and suing because new strategies were required to successfully collect royalties?
The problem you're describing is purely psychological. New technologies open up many new opportunities. There's no reason the employees of the delivery apparatus obsoleted by Prime Air can't learn something new and seize the opportunity.
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#388Markerting stunt
Timed on the eve of Cyber Monday. Yathink?
Pretty damned obvious.
Re: Amazon Prime Air
#389Re: Amazon Prime Air
#390I live in a high rise with a balcony can I just leave the door open and have it come inside.