451–460 of 475 posts
I've got a suspicion that Amazon has been trialling/building this in the UK since their purchase of Yodel, perhaps earlier. A number of times some bloke in a car has turned up and delivered me a package. No uniform, no branding. Just a phone running Amazon software. I can't say it's the greatest experience.
I've got a suspicion that Amazon has been trialling/building this in the UK since their purchase of Yodel, perhaps earlier. A number of times some bloke in a car has turned up and delivered me a package. No uniform, no branding. Just a phone running Amazon software. I can't say it's the greatest experience.
Man I couldn't care less who hands me my package if it arrives intact and on time. I'm not looking for a "delivery experience".
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> There are a multitude of things you can do to reduce inequality at birth The most egalitarian folks actually dream of a society where it would be forbidden to have your own children (since it's actually VERY unfair to pass your genes down to the next generation... Smart people get smart kids, that's furthering the gap of inequalities) and let the sacrosanct government take care of human race reproduction and ensure…
Well, the whole inequality issue only matters because we're all locked in a fierce, eat-or-be-eaten competition with each other, where if you fail you end up being miserable and die of hunger or bad health. Hence basic income.
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> This seems relevant: "There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right." Except that it does not make sense at all. Take 200 years ago, most folks were farmers. Take 100 years ago, there were now much more folks working somewhat qualified jobs…
> Take 50-60 years ago, with the creation of the service industries and all the jobs that came with it. And now for the past 30 years, hipsters are getting coding jobs and getting pretty good salaries despite the fact we have been living in a past century of technological revolutions. The qualitative difference between now and 100 years ago is that those hipsters gave brains to the machines. The shift to service indu…
You think bullshit jobs are something new ? Of course not, they have always existed. Even some coders have bullshit jobs - there is probably only a fraction of jobs that actually directly bring value, among a massive amount of noise from other jobs that support the other or have indirect value to the said business.
But on the whole, there are way more "non-bullshit" jobs that there were ever before, that's why I claim you are missing the big picture. There were no scientist jobs before. There were no engineer jobs 150 years ago. There were few doctors (very few) in the same time range as well.
> that those hipsters gave brains to the machines.
and
> now they're replacing human cognitive capabilities.
No, computers are still very much stupid, there is no autonomous AI in sight - we have just been able to make them do some specific tasks very very well and much faster than humans (deep learning and the like), but in terms of flexibility and learning abilities the most advanced computer program and hardware is far behind any life form on Earth. Are you not a member of the Singularity Church ?
> because we need to have something for people to do and not starve.
People don't work anymore to bring food on the table. Food has never been cheaper. Even homeless folks have smartphones these days - the amount of excess cash that people get out of work far exceeds the money needed to get food.
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Good, then I agree with you. Then I hope you will also agree that "extinction" is too strong of a word, and we use it too often around here while in reality most jobs have a hard time disappearing completely, if at all. On top of that, not sure about where you live, but some supermarkets also have reversed their trend about industrial bread and hire "baker-workers" who actually bake bread on-site (from industrial pas…
I've seen that reversed trend, and it's the reason I go to bakeries - the bread in bakery shops is fresher and better even though they don't bake it on-site , but get it delivered from somewhere (I assume a big industrial bakery providing for the entire city) two-three times a day! The supermarket baked-on-site bread is much worse, and looks like a desperate attempt by supermarkets to keep people buying bread there.
Oh, I totally agree with you. I was just mentioning that they were reintroducing workers in a process that used to be fully automated.
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Having moved from Australia to the UK, I can tell you the delivery services I've used so far (Yodel, DPD etc) are far superior than any service in Australia. They even deliver on Saturdays and Sundays. That's amazing.
You're the first person I've ever heard compare Yodel favourably to anything, deliveries must be truly awful in Australia!
AusPost: Our national carrier, realised a few years ago that no one's sending letters any more and "pivoted" to parcel delivery. Parcel Lockers [0] are a "new" innovation here but heaven help you if you try to get a courier parcel into one. Royal Mail = Good, DHL = Bad in this case and you might not even know until the seller receives the parcel back.
Fedex: Sorry, we missed you. (And the nearest depot is 30+ minutes away somewhere where buses don't go and you can only collect after 4 on weekdays)
DHL: Sorry, we missed you.
UPS: Sorry, we missed you (or handed your parcel off to StarTrack, in which case it'll go to a parcel locker, but you'll never know if this is actually going to happen)
USPS, Royal Mail etc: Handed off to AusPost, can go to a parcel locker.
StarTrack: More expensive, more blue version of AusPost - semi private (?), the only courier that AusPost will let into the lockers
Toll: Sorry we missed you, there's a redelivery fee in a lot of cases. Tried to start up a Parcel Locker competitor and then didn't expand to many locations [1]. The website returned 500 errors for the first 6 months of its existence.
Amazon: We're not going to actually tell you who is carrying your parcel because we outsourced it to iParcel who sometimes use UPS and sometimes use AusPost. Send an Amazon (US/UK/DE) parcel to an AusPost locker at your own peril
eBay: Most Aussie sellers use AusPost, so that works, but for some reason overseas orders go through some kind of Pitney Bowes reseller - see UPS, DHL, FedEx, Amazon above.
[0]: http://lockers.auspost.com.au [1]: http://parcelpoint.com.au
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Man I couldn't care less who hands me my package if it arrives intact and on time. I'm not looking for a "delivery experience".
It's an issue or some wacko can come to your door pretending to be a delivery person.
Amazon might not do this yet but they could and obviously should.
People who are totally unconcerned about someone totally random showing up at their door carrying a potentially large(!) package are a whole different level of naive. Most of the world is not like your suburban home culdesac or Silicon Valley.
I guess i was part of trials in Northern New Jersey - a random guy showed up in a beaten up car (i noticed because it had pretty nasty oil smoke coming out of the tailpipes, almost cartoon-like). He was wearing an "amazon now" t-shirt, but then after having me sign a delivery slip, stuck around awkwardly expecting a tip. Not a good experience.
Can we agree already to not have to tip? I don't want Amazon to realize this money-saving practice at my expense. We don't tip UPS, we shouldn't tip these guys. Nobody tips me for pushing code to git.
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How was the experience bad? I never see my UPS delivery guy so I can't imagine it matters one way or the other to me how my packages "magically" show up on my front porch.
Drivers from Amazon (and only Amazon) consistently flag first-attempt deliveries as "Unable to deliver package", then successfully deliver the package the second time around without any issue. And although these deliveries could be from either Amazon-Randoms or Amazon-Yodel couriers, the issue is still a recurring one. Trying to get any sort of resolution out of Amazon is impossible, as they insulate their logistics…
I've put specific instructions on where to leave the package if I'm not there or to give me a call when they've arrived, and so far no problems there. It's pretty easy to associate the courier as a courier since a notification pops up saying the driver has arrived and you can see the person holding a big brown bag with an amazon label on it. Pretty straight forward imo.
So far a much better experience than OnTrac leaving shit wherever they please.
One of the reasons I hesitate to use Amazon Now is that big "suggested tip" field. I don't tip the UPS delivery person, why should I tip my Amazon Now delivery person? What's been the norm for you all?
There's a tip field? Is there a "shipping cost"? If there's both, that is a full stop for me. This will push Amazon's pricing above local pricing for me. Amazon wants me to willingly add 10-15% to my purchase price? Come on.
With that being said I'm also not feeling the whole tip thing because the wages should cover all that.