651–660 of 1001 posts
Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…
Interesting that they say "Amazon Go is currently open to Amazon employees in our Beta program, and will open to the public in early 2017." Generally "beta" implies that non-employees are using it. This is more of a dogfooding program (though maybe they wanted to avoid that term since they're selling human food this way!).
What happens when my phone battery runs out while shopping in the store? What happens if I don't replace an item in the exact same place I picked it up? I'm charged for it I assume. How do you purchase produce or vegetables, all these thing need to be packaged individually I assume. So much for concern for the environment... Is the occasional line in a store really worth having your every movement tracked by Amazon a…
You're probably right.
"Weight removed from vegetable bin, vegetables are $x/lb"
This already happens at... most stores.
I think Bluetooth enrollment would be good enough or they'll send you a barcode on a PVC card stock maybe even with RFID, but sure poor people can't shop at the nice grocery store, that's always been true right?
I sort of agree, but I also think there is a real market for it. Blah blah capitalism blah. "The market will show whether the problem was real." I'm pretty sure it's going to work out and be profitable for Amazon like always.
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and income inequality has skyrocketed since then.
I agree with you that income inequality is a big problem, and it is a major cause of social discord, but to be fair, quality of life increased significantly across all percentiles since then. e.g. which society is better to live in: (low inequality, less wealth) 10th percentile average wealth: 100 99th percentile average wealth: 1000 (high inequality, more wealth) 10th percentile average wealth: 1000 99th percentile…
If the majority of people get 10x the money they used to, they're not getting 10x the purchasing power, because everyone needs a higher salary.
This is also an oversimplification. You can read more about the phenomenon here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…
https://muenglish111.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/vonnegut-3....
"How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different"
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Trying to save jobs that are no longer the most efficient way of solving a problem is not the way to promote the value of humanity, in my opinion. People want groceries as cheap and fast as possible. They don't go to the grocery store for social interaction and forcing the majority of people to pay extra for something that only the minority get value out of is not a competitive strategy. If humanity were to take your…
I am unsure we are evolving. We have evolved in many areas that solve real problems, like healthcare and such, but I'm not sure today's society is any better for all the technology that allows us to save a couple of minutes in a queue. To improve the efficiency of a particular group, we create problems elsewhere. The result may not be net positive. In fact, I think it isn't, since those saved "couple of minutes" will…
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Yes, I think you're right and that's why I think this is bad. Economically it makes more sense to buy cheaper and faster. But this eats into the fabric of society and offers nothing in exchange. And what are all these people supposed to do then ? Sleep all day ? They will fight back with their votes at first, which they are already doing in the US and Europe.. Then there's the centralisation, control and privacy part…
I think you're incorrectly separating the 'fabric of society' from the economy. The economy describes all things that are valuable to us as a society and that includes interactions with the staff at our local grocery shops. When you say "Economically it makes more sense to buy cheaper and faster" that is obviously not true for you and probably many others who are prepared to pay for the social interactions that local…
The economy often gives us good solutions, but it also often gives us bad ones. The economy doesn't care either way.
C.f. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
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I don't think that helps in the use case presented here. What is really needed is a way to talk to multiple RFID tags quickly without any crosstalk. Think of a handbag with a dozen candy bars in it. How do you scan them all quickly without missing any? The goal has always been to scan something large in one pass, say a shrink-wrapped pallet of items that could number in the hundreds or thousands. Obviously this is te…
> How do you scan them all quickly without missing any? Most RAIN Rfid readers have a read rate of 800+ tags/second. Door portals are a solved solution and now phased arrays are on the market which scan all items in realtime. Take a look at the impinj marketing material for more information. For example the RS2000 chip: http://www.impinj.com/products/reader-chips/indy-rs2000/
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If my assertions seem improbable, you have two options: * Research and decide, based on evidence you find. * Ridicule and discredit the evidence you asked for. It seems you picked Door Number Two. You mentioned you're from the heart of Walton-ville (You lived by Store #002? how interesting!). Have you spent any time in the midwest ghost towns surrounding their local Supercentre?
> If my assertions seem improbable, you have two options: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." You didn't provide evidence, you linked to irrelevant popular articles and someone's homework assignment. Not only did I not ridicule your post, I was careful to follow HN's guideline of assuming good faith even though that seems to not be the case here. > You mentioned you're fr…
Here's the evidence, because I'm sure you'll have difficulty scrolling up:
https://ilsr.org/walmart-charged-predatory-pricing/
I look forward to the creative way you will dismiss this as well.
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The claim that increased automation will enable people not to work is often cited as a defense of putting people out of work in favor of automation. This relies heavily on a number of assumptions that I think are empirically completely untested: - that automating all jobs will cause all prices to go down. (It seems just as plausible that if everything were automated, then the relatively small class of people who work…
Funny how I just finish my Thesis on automation and its effects on globalization and the workforce the day before this comes out...