Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Inside Amazon Go

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 291 posts

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#61

Post by sotojuan »

dennisdamenace wrote: post #46
threatofrain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?

I often learn a lot at the check out lines here in Oregon. People chat, exchange information. Often banal, sometimes valuable. Always nice.

Most HN users live in urban areas. Here in NYC your average check out line is people on their phones and/or with headphones on. And before you say NYC is an outlier, it was the same when I lived in semi-rural suburban Texas.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#62

Post by tuna-piano »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #41

I know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line. Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.…

I think you're right, and I haven't seen the answer from our society yet. If you can sit at home and get things delivered (which is easier and addicting), you do miss out on different experiences (some good, some bad). You can imagine a world where many of our storefronts could empty out.

If you work from home, get Amazon deliveries, go to school online, etc... what will you do and what storefronts do you need? Are bars, restaurants and barbers enough?

One of my favorite anecdotes that makes me think... has our whole society evolved incorrectly?

"In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one."[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluen...

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#63

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

threatofrain wrote: post #45
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #41

I know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line. Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.…

The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?

> The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers.

While I somewhat agree with you, I still think that by taking away the need for millions of people to have lots of little banal interactions, we're also erasing the possibility, on a society-wide scale, of more meaningful interactions that sometimes spring from those trivial little conversations.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#64

Post by freehunter »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #41

I know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line. Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.…

I think the standard HN reaction isn't to celebrate this, but rather to bemoan how technology takes us further from some non-existent utopian ideal where rose-tinted glasses replace reality. Like how "real social interaction" only exists at a supermarket checkout lane.

So your comment checks that box perfectly. Whining about the death of tradition is basically the "free" square in Hacker News Bingo.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#65

Post by chrisseaton »

seangrant wrote: post #55
iagooar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use these people as cashiers? I wonder if this endless line thing is something typical in the US. I've been to many European countries and other than before Christmas, you never feel like staying in line is something to even think of, because the longest you usually wait is maybe 5 minutes. In Switzerland, now that in many shops you get to scan the cart yourself (after shopping or during it) there is just no…

Seattle area here. All my life I remember waiting in lines 10-20 minutes if you go to a store on a busy day (fri/sat/sun). It's just simple math sometimes where there's so many people with $400+ carts trying to check out and cashiers can only scan so fast. Everyone with medium or small sized carts have to wait in this. I've seen great strides in recent years to advance self checkout technology and its user flow. Walm…

> It's just simple math sometimes where there's so many people with $400+ carts trying to check out and cashiers can only scan so fast. Everyone with medium or small sized carts have to wait in this.

Why don't the customers scan the items themselves as they put them into their carts while at the shelves, rather than waiting until they get to the checkout? That's what we do where I live in the UK.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#66

Post by yodon »

Wondering if the grand opening will lead to a spontaneous HN and Deep Neural Nets meetup at Top Pot Donuts on 5th tomorrow.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#67

Post by bachaco »

tuna-piano wrote: post #49

I love this - shows why Amazon keeps growing. Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit). If it doesn't work? Lose, ~$10 million. But if it works there's likely huge upside. It's just a smart bet for a big company. Sometimes your bets turn into AWS, and sometimes they turn into the Fire phone. Most companies I've worked at are ve…

>Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit).

It was much more than that. They bought Whole Foods which was worth 13 billion.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#68

Post by jvagner »

mhb wrote: post #43

No shopping carts? If that's not a signal that this is, at best, half-baked, I don't know what is.

It says right at the beginning the concept is like a 7-11. Are there carts in a 7-11?

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#69

Post by icantdrive55 »

rland12 wrote: post #28
panarky wrote: post #19

There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads. Why is this the knee-jerk response to technological progress? True progress isn't forcing millions of people into low-wage routine work. True progress would emancipate people from this drudgery entirely. Isaac Asimov questioned why the goal of bo…

Workers whose jobs we have automated did not become "emancipated." They were completely forgotten by society, government, and the private enterprise as the spoils went to the top 20%. What about this particular shearing indicates a difference in the way "progress" is made?

Plus--the future is in front of us now. We don't even need to speculate.

I guess the Midwest is an easy target, but it's there. They made their product in the cheapest country, analogous to automation, and look at the lovely result. Misery, and mind numbing drugs.

Even now, people love to quote the glorious unemployment number. They don't quote the, "able bodied, not working number", and they are not all students, or family members taking care of sick ones. And most people can't buy a Uber approved vechicle to carriage the wealthy ones around town.

They are displaced workers. Hell, the chit jobs are coveted by desperate immigrants. Jobs that students, and non career minded folks used to depend on are filled by people who treat the job as a career.

The tech society will feel the pain when this odd boom ends. Enjoy the cushy jobs while they last. I can easily see 90% cuts in labor at so many tech companies.

The next boom will be about complete automation, and watch that homeless number skyrocket.

I don't blame automation, or even globalization, but make those that benefit pay higher taxes to pay for the misery they are inflicting on society.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#70

Post by FLUX-YOU »

Attacks I'd like to try but would get picked up by the cops if I did:

- Carry empty bags/containers of cheaper items in the store and place products inside these before pulling them off of the shelf.

- Pull products off of the shelf and give them to a friend. Place identical empty bags/containers back to re-credit your account while your friend never has the item debited and walks out.

- Drape a blanket over yourself and remove products from the shelf and put them in your bags so the system never sees items removed from the shelf

Post reply on HN