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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

#761

Post by hnbad »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #739
mlrtime wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You both are talking around each other I feel. In any job there is a spectrum from bare minimum to a master. This goes for welding and baristas. Is someone who pushes a button on a Nespresso a barista? If I go get a soldering iron am I a welder? You overlay the normal distribution of all baristas and welders and look at the difficulty in learning various skills. I'm sure they are not exactly equal.

That sounds like a fun idea in theory, but in practice that distribution would require hours of research per job, or more, and I'm not aware of any source that publishes that sort of information. So it doesn't give me a way to sort jobs into "skilled" and "unskilled". Or to give them a reliable 1-10 rank on how skilled they are. I can be pretty sure welder beats barista, but by how much, how it relates to other jobs,…

I actually doubt there's a neat defineable ceiling for the skill of a welder nor a barista so it also comes down to where you make the cut-off because any improvements beyond that become negligible in terms of ROI. But that would also require being able to actually quantify that vague notion of "skill" which in turn would require an honest assessment of the actual real-world exhaustive job description of both jobs including all implicit, unstated and culturally expected parts (e.g. barista is a service job so customer service can be as big a factor as the actual coffee-making but we don't think of social skills as actual skills or emotional labor even if it's obvious when they're inadequate or badly performed).

So in other words, we could have an objective, empirical look at whether welders or baristas actually need "more skill" and which skillset is easier to master for the average person (which is its own rest nest of considerations again) but if we did the necessary (if not impossible) prep work to even get started on that, we'd have to already agree that "unskilled" is a descriptor for jobs that has very little to do with the actual skill requirements and more with attitudes towards those skills or the people doing those jobs.

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

#762

Post by hnbad »

WalterBright wrote: post #720
Dylan16807 wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. But you won't be a master barista right away either.

Starbucks coffee tastes the same whether it's the barista there for year or the 3-day newbie.

I couldn't reliably tell you the difference between a $30 bottle of wine and a $300 bottle of wine but that's why I don't claim to be an expert on wine.

Also, there are other coffee places than Starbucks. Saying barista is an unskilled job because Starbucks coffee is particularly bad is like saying programmer is an unskilled job because all Squarespace websites are equally bad.

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

#763

Post by johnnyanmac »

ryukoposting wrote: post #469
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…

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…

>What Amazon is doing is different because they're actually doing something that adds value

is scanning your groceries manually really so cumbersome to say the "just walk out" model is adding value?

It's nice, but like you said. it's not really that better than existing solutions, and knowing the underworkings makes it much worse. Maybe the tech will catch up in a decade, but it was definitely unviable with the current system.

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

#764

Post by bob_theslob646 »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #413

I think this is funny. I worked on this team at Amazon for two years after successfully building an app similar to Dash Cart for another company using Elixir (which is still going). I repeatedly tried to convince Amazon to do Just Walk Out differently, but their toxic culture wouldn't hear of it. I got bored with the project (and a little disgruntled, to be honest) and left after my signing bonus ended. I guess it is…

You worked with Medioni ?

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

#765

Post by ryukoposting »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #763
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…

>What Amazon is doing is different because they're actually doing something that adds value is scanning your groceries manually really so cumbersome to say the "just walk out" model is adding value? It's nice, but like you said. it's not really that better than existing solutions, and knowing the underworkings makes it much worse. Maybe the tech will catch up in a decade, but it was definitely unviable with the curre…

The scanning isn't the problem. It's the pedestal the size of a postage stamp upon which I'm expected to balance $250 worth of groceries. And if I fail to do so, the machine freaks out. And even if I do succeed in stacking all my groceries up as demanded, the machine still freaks out. Want a beer? Fuck you, wait god-knows-how-long for an attendant to come appease the machine.

I always go to a human cashier whenever the option presents itself, simply so I don't have to deal with the miscarriage of engineering that is the self-checkout machine. Unfortunately, my local grocery stores don't staff their registers very often anymore.

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

#766

Post by ryukoposting »

anonzzzies wrote: post #755
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…

> they are worse than the solution that already existed. In my country taxis were (and price wise still are) the worst; Uber is a vast improvement; better cars, nicer drivers, convenient booking (until very recently you had to call 1 day in advance to book a taxi) and a bizarrely lower price. The same trip with a normal taxi costing 130 euros is 30 with Uber. So yeah, no. Oh but the taxi companies made their own app!…

Ah yeah, my comment was specifically related to the food delivery services provided by Uber.

Granted, the taxi service hardly any better in many countries. In the US, it's rapidly building a new underclass of indentured cheauffeurs, chained down by vehicle maintenance costs and massive fees from service providers.

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

#767

Post by ryukoposting »

JohnFen wrote: post #692
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…

> What Amazon is doing is different because they're actually doing something that adds value, and they're solving a problem that actually exists. This shook a bit of illusion from my eyes, thank you. I never thought of Amazon's efforts in this as solving a real problem or adding real value! This is because for me, it doesn't, and I never thought it through beyond that. Once again, the human tendency to think that our…

A rare example of discernible sarcasm over the internet. Nice.

I made my case here, if you care: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39976007

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

#768

Post by freilanzer »

ametrau wrote: post #758
freilanzer wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not slaves, they are free to quit and work somewhere else. Are they not?

Right... so the line goes. They're free to go to any neighbouring city that will do the same to them now that we've destroyed the village (by poaching young people in various ways. There are many ways to destroy a city if you are strategic and have financing.) In these countries the cities are created around the factories etc and planned as part of the development. You're not free once your subsistence relies on this…

What if the alternative to these jobs is not other jobs, but no jobs? If working in such a job is considered slavery, then most of the west also employs slaves in the form of "simple, low skilled" jobs, such as cashiers. Many people don't have many options, and losing even such a job could mean unemployment.

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

#769

Post by leroy-is-here »

londons_explore wrote: post #725
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…

I want to know why these places don't simply dramatically drop the accuracy requirement. Rather than giving itemized receipts, give just a total dollar value. Then just make sure that most customers are charged within 10% of the correct amount. Only if the customer requests and itemized receipt, then go watch the video and generate them one. But after a while most customers won't request it, and that means you can ju…

The problem is taxes. Different items can be taxed differently. Itemized receipts are a must from the get-go unless you want to explain to the government that you underpaid them because you charge within a 10% error-margin.
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