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Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

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Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#551

Post by UweSchmidt »

intended wrote: post #540
Johnny555 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

Fair warning to all who come after - the children comment for a decent distance below are a battle based on correct/ incorrect/ technical/ personal definitions of skilled labor.

Does that warrant a warning? That's just a natural occuring discussion, and selecting threads to follow is basic forum-reading skill. The rare gems of surprising insight are often found in the depths of slightly off-topic discussions.

Previously I've noticed another kind of meta-comment, the top level complaint by a self-appointed moderators about the overall shape of the discussion elsewhere, instead of engaging directly with the actual posts in question.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#552

Post by h0l0cube »

gruez wrote: post #477
h0l0cube wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that Edit: On thinking about this tangent, it seems that if global regulation is the only solution, it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries), rather than the wrecking side (in developing countries) which will only displace the bad practices to less scrupulous countries. A solution might be sizable amount of money that had to be paid to escrow that could n…

>it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries) Most ships are built in Asia as well. The US basically doesn't have any sort of non-military ship building industry.

Sure. But the reputable multinational corporations that dominate the industry are easy to recognize and they’re headquartered in developed countries

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#553

Post by mike_d »

awelxtr wrote: post #522
mike_d wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is almost here. Computer vision combined with some secret sauce that is cheaper than RFID that Walmart is asking supplier to implement. https://kioskindustry.org/walmart-self-checkout/

This doen't solve real time inventory. RFID does, also neither helps with EAS which RFID does'

Some of my super smart colleagues solved real time inventory with big data within a small enough margin of error that Walmart scrapped the shelf scanning robots that were being deployed.

EAS is a purely psychological deterrent, for liability reasons stores can't really do much when it goes off. As more and more shrink is the result of ORC, RFID will have a place but money is better spent on alternative technologies like facial recognition and ALPR.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#554

Post by hnbad »

Johnny555 wrote: post #239
bilalq wrote: post #190

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things. When it rolled…

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

Case in point: LLMs that only work because of armies of underpaid offshore workers assisting in training.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#555

Post by crimony »

gitaarik wrote: post #520
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure this idea has been kicked around, and is generally seen as not-super-useful because it requires a perfectly reliable low-latency connection.

To solve this issue you can integrate the person into the car.

Conjoiner Drives come to mind...

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#556

Post by Almondsetat »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #483
tbrownaw wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that "unskilled labor" is like the other two in just being spin on "I don't approve of market forces"?

To me its funny that those who always talk about unskilled labour are the same who don’t have a driving licence, nor know how to make an omelette

Do you have any statistics on that?

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#557

Post by gruez »

h0l0cube wrote: post #552
gruez wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries) Most ships are built in Asia as well. The US basically doesn't have any sort of non-military ship building industry.

Sure. But the reputable multinational corporations that dominate the industry are easy to recognize and they’re headquartered in developed countries

The ownership structure for ships used in international shipping is anything but straightforward. For instance, for the the MV Dali (the ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge) you might think we can go after Maersk, but in reality they're only chartering it. It was actually built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea for a Greek company but later sold to a Singaporean company, operated by a different Singaporean company, and crewed by 20 Indians and 1 Sri Lankan. In this complex web of ownership/relationships how do you exactly "enforce regulation from the ship building side "?

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#558

Post by onion2k »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #543
onion2k wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It usually takes about 3 days for a new worker to learn the job. Starbucks hires juniors and trains them to be good baristas. That takes a long time. Just because someone is able to work a coffee machine after a few days doesn't mean they're not skilled eventually. Your argument is like saying 'it only takes a few days for junior devs to be onboarded, so there's no real value in senior devs'.

Yes, and McDonalds hires junior burger flippers and turns them into senior and skilled burger flippers. It doesn’t take a phd to make a coffee, no matter how fancy the cinnamon/cocoa heart is.

It doesn’t take a phd to make a coffee, no matter how fancy the cinnamon/cocoa heart is.

All you're saying here is that you've failed to see the value in customer service, hospitality, speed, accuracy, politeness, etc that go with a retail coffeeshop job. The coffee is the same in pretty much every Starbucks, but the experience can vary wildly depending on how good the baristas are at everything else besides making coffee. Those skills take years to master.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#559

Post by lubutu »

gruez wrote: post #515
account-5 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since that depends on the burger flipper, I'd say yes. Gordon Ramsay would likely agree.

That's just playing with words. Putting Gordon Ramsay in the same bucket as "burger flipper" makes as much sense as putting Linus Torvalds in the same bucket as "keyboard monkey".

The distinction I suppose is that what you really mean is "the difference in [necessary] skill level between a burger flipper and an accountant".

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#560

Post by hnbad »

cammikebrown wrote: post #528
WalterBright wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The local Starbucks over the years has had many turnovers in the staff. It usually takes about 3 days for a new worker to learn the job. That makes it unskilled labor. Skilled labor is something like welding, where it can take a year to get good at it. Or things that require calculus, which take 4 years of specialized training to even get an entry job at it. Or flying an airplane - you can't just flip through the ins…

How could you possibly know that it takes “3 days” to get good at being a barista? You should try it out sometime, with a 50 person line. I’m sure it’ll be a cake walk and your labor will be fairly compensated. I’ll even give you a 3 day head start just to be fair!

They likely meant that onboarding takes three days. As there is no meaningful metric for competence beyond that (or at least no metric that is measured and used) "good" doesn't apply.

There are of course tons of ways a good, seasoned barista distinguishes themselves from a trainee with 3 days of onboarding but those are externalities. The difference between skilled and unskilled labor is not whether competence and experience can make a difference but whether that difference is measured as performance or only affects externalities.

I.e. "unskilled labor" is not about the worker but about the company. Notably these often do involve skill that directly contributes to performance but because the job is considered unskilled, it's instead treated as some nebulous a priori form of intelligence and personal aptitude. What's more, beyond a certain point skill is often actively punished (e.g. by raising quotas to take advantage of higher productivity, resulting in more work for the same pay).

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