661–670 of 769 posts
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Yes, IBM "thinks" the future. Other companies build them. Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key
AT&T had advertisements that said "You Will"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will I was always confused as to why they'd spend money on vaporware advertising, since I don't think they were responsible for doing any of the things.
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Yes. Amazon will know every item you buy, how much, and when. But not much different than grocery store discount cards already used by most everyone for decades. I'm sure that info is sold, traded around, and aggregated.
Yeah, and I don't use grocery discount cards either. But doing it via camera gives a ton of data beyond just what I buy and when.
I agree that this is another increase in the invasion of privacy that will probably end in a bad place. We need laws to prevent these systems, not just a few people holding on to scraps of privacy with desperate measures, like not buying a new car.
However they might create a special section in the supermarket reserved for the grocery and have everything else in a section with rfid tags, that would result in fewer jobs as cashiers.
however they might have to add people for adding rfid tags to each and every item in the store. Interesting how much every one of these options would cost them.
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Maybe they don't want to draw attention to how many people are going to lose their jobs because of this yet. Cashier is the #2 job in the US (by number of people employed) [0]. If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there. That would make this rollout a lot less exciting for a lot of people. I hope Amazon comes up with an awesome way to help the cashiers this technology replaces.…
> If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there Since Whole Foods sells alcohol, I doubt that. There are things that lots of governments won't let you have customers “just walk out” with.
They check ID entering the liquor section (and it is a human that checks), but otherwise it is bag it and just walk out.
Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…
There are number of tech companies directly competing in this space: https://standard.ai/ https://grabango.com/ https://www.getzippin.com/ https://www.v7labs.com/retail https://www.getzippin.com/ There are competitive options, if you’re in retail you do not have to give Amazon all your “retail data” or use their tech.
At PIXEVIA we develop the technology and run a fully working convenience store in Europe.
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GMail solved a thorny problem: convince users to browse the web while logged in, preferably with their real life identity. To then collect and aggregate an extensive personalized dossier of their online activity without any fear of legal repercussions. This is priceless. Then just play the trends: how much space the median user actually uses, user adoption trends, planned storage capacity, storage cost. Possibly the…
I'm not saying Google isn't evil, but I don't buy this particular piece of conspiracy theory. Every major browser including Google Chrome is starting to phase out third-party cookies, which prevents exactly that kind of tracking.
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I don't want to criticize or undermine this initiative in any way but someone like me who frequently uses Safeway's self-checkout machines at my local grocery store, to me this just feels like overengineering. I never had any problems with self-checkout and am always able to quickly scan-and-pay within a couple of minutes when I visit the store once a week.
I have never had a pain free experience with any grocery store's self check out. I suppose I am not proficient at scanning and placing items on the scale/bagging area one at a time. Or at following the prompts to swipe my credit card at the right moment. Self check out frustrates me to the point where I avoid it whenever possible.
Here's an off the wall idea. This technology could be used in airport bathrooms to enforce hand washing during a pandemic. It's well established that hand washing, or lack thereof, in an airport setting can supercharge the global spread of disease. The spread of coronavirus could be reduced by up to 60% by consistent handwashing[1] by air travelers. This tech could flag people who walk out of the bathroom without sto…
While I agree with this specific premise in general, it is still disturbing as hell to have someone or something monitor what you do in a bathroom + it opens up a door for a lot of other things. Do you want bosses to know how much time you spend in bathroom on the phone vs. actually doing the deed? Because I can almost guarantee that's where this tech will head, if we continue down this route.
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Yes, IBM "thinks" the future. Other companies build them. Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key
May I suggest a rephrasing for that? Execution can bring profit. Ideas might not. History is full of examples of visionaries coming up with ideas that have inspired and fueled others--in some cases whole industries have been founded on these ideas. For instance, Doug Engelbart gave the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968 [1]. It was a proof of concept, but the ideas he talked about were implemented by other companies--who…