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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

#661

Post by CodeWriter23 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #656
Dylan16807 wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple hundred dollars is nothing compared to the costs surrounding that PC. Compared to how often systems like that get underbuilt and laggy, using an i7 is a good choice.

Yeah but its self checkout. Self checkout had no lag when it came out like 15 years ago. What did the engineers do to their codebase to require a modern i7, I wonder?

Every other checkout I’ve used has lag time after the scan and until the scale settles. Some even have visual feedback that indicates a busy status during this repeating part of the checkout process. Not to mention the human lag time of moving the product to the scale.

There is no scale on the Home Depot units. You can scan as fast as the scan gun accepts scans. I’ve scanned 2-3 items per second with these.

Using an I7 is a move to future proof. These units will likely be in service 10, maybe 15 years from now.

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

#662

Post by rhapsodic »

Ellipsis753 wrote: post #658

Gutted to hear this. I used these in London and they were magical and extremely convenient. I would show them to visiting friends as if they were one of London's main tourist attractions! I knew they relied on some manual labor (bills were delayed), but assumed this was only an intermediate step to collect more real-world training data (until they sorted out the AI). I still think this is the future though. They coul…

[dead]

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

#663

Post by skywhopper »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #607
capybara_2020 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bring up an interesting point. Just thinking out loud for a moment here. Is the current VC business model potentially the problem area and not the actual businesses? The need for rapid growth/software company like profit margins when these companies need more time and potentially are like non-software companies in terms of profits?

Yeah, demanding software level margins for physical world businesses basically hasn't worked anywhere in the past ten years. Like the only success I can see is AirBnB and that's because houses are expensive and in short supply.

I mean, AirBnB has contributed directly to the housing shortage in many areas, so I'm not sure it "worked".

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

#664

Post by bombcar »

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.

Now I'm imagining hiding drivers under the hood, or in a car following ...

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

#665

Post by skhunted »

h0l0cube wrote: post #642
skhunted wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free trade agreements came after the environmental movements. Claiming environmental movements caused this is too strong a claim. But it is not entirely a coincidence that one followed the other.

Specifically what movements and when? It’s a strange claim that globalization was caused (or even accelerated) by environmental movements. Certainly the UN came before the environmental movements of the 60s/70s. The World Bank and IMF were also established soon after the conclusion of WWII. The wiki article for globalization makes just a couple of off hand mentions of environmental issues. I’ve only ever heard of glo…

When Americans clamored for rivers that didn’t catch fire and for smog in LA to go away it became clear to corporations that it would be much cheaper and better for profits if they setup factories in poor countries that didn’t require them to stop egregiously polluting. Thus began the momentum for free trade agreements and breaking down of trade barriers.

I used the term “globalization” as a proxy for free trade. That was bad on my part.

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

#666

Post by skywhopper »

bgun wrote: post #479
ryukoposting wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view, Uber and DD were always going to head in that direction because by any objective measure, they are worse than the solution that already existed. The introduction of a middleman created new costs for drivers, customers, and restaurants alike, yet it's actually worse at delivering food than the conventional "drivers work for the restaurant" model. Sure, you get one website where you can see all t…

Did you ever try getting groceries/food (other than pizza) delivered before the apps? Uber didn’t replace a better option, they made it literally possible to get these services in many places where it wasn’t an option at all. And in areas like Manhattan, where city cabs and delivery options abound - the the fact that many (most?) people still use UberEats/DD is instructive. The value of convenience is significant. I…

UberEats and DoorDash are still money-losing operations that subsidize the actual cost of the service, despite rising prices, barely paying their workers, and abusing their relationship with restaurants.

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

#667

Post by hotpockets »

chrash wrote: post #310

this might be my first comment here heh. i've worked on a similar product before. there's no way they were turning a profit. they definitely missed stuff all the time even with a ton of sensors. and sensors aren't the only cost. annotation is by far the most costly operational expense. new product? needs several annotated photos and recalibrated weight sensors. merchant decides to put Christmas branding on the same U…

but what if everything cost the same, like a dollar store?

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

#669

Post by Aloisius »

account-5 wrote: post #534
WalterBright wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is nearly all jobs. All unskilled labor jobs. You're not going to learn welding in 30 days. Nor are you going to learn how to design a bridge. Or program in C++. Or diagnose a patient. Or be a lawyer. Or drive a race car. Etc.

I didn't say all jobs, did I? You successfully listed (some) jobs that might take longer than 30 days to learn. The thing about "unskilled" jobs, everyone seems to look down their noses at, is that they facilite the people doing the lofty jobs of: lawyer, doctor, c++ programmer, etc. Without them getting done for you you couldn't do what you're doing. Can the brickie work without their "unskilled" laborer? Sure, but…

Bricklayer work isn't classified as unskilled labor nor are masonry helpers.

Neither are jobs like carpenters, roofers, pipelayers, cooks, truck drivers, clerks and many, many others.

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

#670

Post by robertlagrant »

lubutu wrote: post #559
gruez wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Not skill - that's an internal metric not an external one. The difference is between what people will pay for that skill.
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