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

Amazon Go

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

971–980 of 1001 posts

Re: Amazon Go

#971

Post by synicalx »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #688
crazypyro wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have you considered that life isn't all about efficiency? People shop because of the experience. This is why book stores are coming "back," eBooks just aren't cutting it for people. This is why "smart lights" won't ever truly take off, people don't want to log onto an app to turn their lights off.

Hopefully people also don't like the idea of their lights participating in a DDoS.

Re: Amazon Go

#972

Post by kobayashi »

Merad wrote: post #86

I hate it when companies offer a "how this works" section that doesn't actually tell you a damned thing about how it works. * How does my Amazon account get associated with the items I take? * How are items detected when leaving the store? If my friend and I walk out side by side, how does it know (if it does) which items are mine and which are hers? * What happens when someone picks up an item and leaves without fir…

I'm more interested to know how it handles one person taking something off the shelf and handing it to another person.

Re: Amazon Go

#973

Post by jahooma »

LesZedCB wrote: post #303
TulliusCicero wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1800's - "If you are a farm equipment manufacturer, you have to acknowledge that you are slowly corroding the farming sector, which employs most people in the country." Even if they "acknowledge" it, so what? It's not their job to create extra jobs to replace the ones that they've automated out of existence. It's never been the jobs of the companies creating disruptive technology, like farm equipment or cars or co…

and income inequality has skyrocketed since then.

Actually income inequality was highest in agricultural times (higher than today), and hit its bottom in 60s or 70s for the US/UK, well after industrialization. Life expectancy and health inequality is near all-time lows right now. Information/education inequality is also at all-time lows, with more people in college than ever, and near universal access to the internet. Entertainment inequality is at all time lows.

Just wanted to note that we're really not doing too badly with advancing technology. And if you measure actual poverty as compared to relative poverty, which makes more sense to me, we are doing even better. Have a nice day.

Re: Amazon Go

#974

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

jpalomaki wrote: post #218
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wouldn't trust 'picked up off the shelf' detection, not without the whole thing looking like a giant vending machine. RFID tags on products probably works better.

RFID has some privacy concerns, since the tags continue work when you are outside the store and somebody can scan what you are carrying. Using these as EAN barcode replacement also has the problem that the system can't tell if you bought the product from Amazon GO or if you just happen to be carrying it with you when you enter the store.

Of course it's trivial to tell. When individual items are tracked, it's exceptionally clear if the item is from the store or not.

Re: Amazon Go

#975

Post by agumonkey »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #931
scholia wrote: post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. My main supermarket (a former Safeway in the UK) has one person looking after 20 self-checkout stations. I guess most of us have learned the system by now..... Self-checkout works well for half a dozen items in a hand basket. If you have a trolley full of a week's shopping, you're going to use a cashier. In fact, in this supermarket, you can't even get a trolley into the self-checkout area. My local M&S store ha…

In our local stores in the USA, its one person looking after 4 or 6 stations, 2 or 3 of which are perpetually out of service.

Same. It seems that this is just a temporary and fragile step toward something else. Amazon Go or else.

Re: Amazon Go

#976

Post by bluelu »

giarc wrote: post #117
bluelu wrote: post #81

Maybe they also weight you when enter and leave the store. They can then cross check your weight with the weight of the items you have bought.

I can't tell if your comment is tongue in cheek or not, but I highly doubt they will make people weigh themselves when they walk in. If they aren't confident in their image recognition technology they would improve it rather than throw in an additional method of tracking.

I'm pretty sure you can weight persons when they pass the entrance and exit automatically, by adding sensors to the floor.

Re: Amazon Go

#977

Post by davidivadavid »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #741
dkarapetyan wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your view is unpopular. Plenty of people here would agree with you but it's an overly romantic view of the world. The problem isn't that Amazon is doing this and that this will drive out those mom&pop shops. The problem is that people will choose to go to Amazon and willingly destroy the mom&pop shops. The consumers are more culpable for the destruction of those mom&pop shops than Amazon. By placing the…

No, economic forces are not completely in our control, not in any meaningful sense of control. The whole human agency thing is IMO mostly bullshit; faced with a modern economy, we have very little agency. Free will is a cool concept, but drop the prices in your store by 10% and everyone will come to you instead of your competitor - that's how trivial people as a group are to control. And companies are all about explo…

Except for the fact dropping your prices by 10% isn't trivial at all. Your claims are also empirically false. People routinely buy name brand products that are more expensive than alternatives.

All you're saying is "If your offer is far more attractive than anything else on the market, people will flock to your store and buy. What a bunch of fools acting like lemmings, Lol."

How are people supposed to react when faced with more interesting alternatives? NOT choose them to demonstrate their free will? That doesn't make much sense.

Re: Amazon Go

#978

Post by dang »

anonbanker wrote: post #275

Thank you for this idea. I will be doing this every time I set foot in a wal-mart from this day forward. "Two pounds of ham, please. Can you slice it really thin? I have a date with the household appliance section of the store"

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13106391 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Amazon Go

#979

Post by mrkevinlui »

Johnie wrote: post #851
alfanhui wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please just exit the store, we don't take cash here.

You joke, but when I was in Beijing a couple of months ago, the juice vendor wouldn't take cash from me. She only accepted AliPay and WeChat.

Yup, mobile payment is so seamless in China

Re: Amazon Go

#980

Post by majewsky »

moftz wrote: post #531
jpalomaki wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RFID has some privacy concerns, since the tags continue work when you are outside the store and somebody can scan what you are carrying. Using these as EAN barcode replacement also has the problem that the system can't tell if you bought the product from Amazon GO or if you just happen to be carrying it with you when you enter the store.

Someone can already walk around a grocery store and see what's in my cart or they can just watch me checkout. Buying groceries isn't exactly a private experience unless you buy your stuff online. Securing tags in things like a passport or credit card is important since identity theft is real and hardware to read the tags is cheap. Knowing what things I buy in the grocery store might help some marketers know what sell…

> Someone can already walk around a grocery store and see what's in my cart or they can just watch me checkout.

The problem with electronic surveillance is never the surveillance part. It's the part where we can surveil billions of people at once without the need for billions of spies.

Post reply on HN