Amazon's Checkout-Free Stores Are Coming to Three More Cities (reuters.com) 95
Reuters reports:
Amazon said on Friday it plans to open its checkout-free 'Amazon Go' grocery store in New York, expanding beyond Seattle where it is headquartered. The Amazon Go store, which has no cashiers and allows shoppers to buy things with the help of a smartphone app, is widely seen as a concept that can alter brick-and-mortar retail... Customers have to scan a smartphone app to enter the store. Once inside, cameras and sensors track what they pick up from the shelves and what they put back. Amazon then bills shoppers' credit cards on file after they leave.
CNET adds: The expansion comes after two Amazon Go stores opened in Seattle. The first one debuted in January 2018 and the second opened last month... Amazon confirmed in May that it'll open Amazon Go stores in San Francisco and Chicago, but it didn't say when.
CNET adds: The expansion comes after two Amazon Go stores opened in Seattle. The first one debuted in January 2018 and the second opened last month... Amazon confirmed in May that it'll open Amazon Go stores in San Francisco and Chicago, but it didn't say when.
"Checkout-Free" (Score:1)
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Cameras (Score:2)
According to the summary, it's currently done by camera which track whatever the clients are picking-up or putting back on shelves.
Which mean that Amazon will in practice be charging for anything that it saw a client pick-up from the shelve but not put back.
Thus in the case of the parents joke :
I you dirnk your coke before leaving, you can't hope Amazon missing it (unlike if they relied on RFID tags going through a checkout gate) Amazon will charge you one bottle of coke, because it saw you picking one, but
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> Top athletes and entertainers also make insane amounts. And somehow weâ(TM)re all ok with that.
I'm OK with someone making money. But not at the cost of others who barely earn their lives. Or, as is the case with Amazon, who depend on state help *on top* of having to work full-time. That's when it becomes obscene.
I, for one aren't (and won't be, ever) their customer.
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"We" who? Speak for yourself. I don't think it's a sign of a healthy society (and I don't spend money on sports or entertainers).
And even so, what's your point? Something is bad, so something else bad is OK? C'mon, dude.
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Actually, you probably do. You might not do it directly, which is what I think you were saying, but their cost is factored into the price of many products under the marketing expense category.
If I see sports bullshit on a product, as in "official sponsor of" then I make an effort to find an alternative product. That goes double for the Olympics. I am actually willing to pay more in order to not sponsor professional sports.
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Why should I disparage someone who earns millions of dollars when I haven't had to pay them any of it unless I wanted to. It doesn't cost me anything if Taylor Swift or LeBron James are able to sell their time and talents for millions of dollars and I'm not about to start telling other people what they're allowed to
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You also make the assumption that it's the corporations that cost us something to support these people. When these people don't have a job at all (and can't get any because you've made it more expensive to employe
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Driving the push to automation is not a bug, it's a feature. It's always framed as if higher wages will get rid of jobs, instead of the reality, which is that low wages are holding back technological progress.
Now, the economics of how to transition away from human labor is a bit more complicated, although it mostly just means taxing the rich so they aren't eaten by the jobless peasants.
Re: Don't buy at Amazon (Score:2)
The difference is that technological progress improves productivity and reduces costs. A low wage job in the future may be able to afford a trip to the moon whereas now even most high wage jobs could not imagine doing this.
Re: Don't buy at Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot see how low wages holds technology back.
As long as it's cheaper to hire a human than to develop technology to automate their job, the job doesn't get automated. Thus, useful progress is retarded by making it legal to pay starvation wages.
Re: Don't buy at Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
It also doesn't make much sense when looking at history. There were no minimum wage laws and people often were paid starvation wages if they were paid at all. And yet useful progress occurred nonetheless. People are always going to try to find a cheaper way of doing something as long as there's a potential for increased profit that they can realize as a result of doing so. While there are some that don't even need that and are quite happy to work away at some problem for its own sake, they are rare.
Perhaps what you're thinking of is that there's less pressure to find a less expensive alternative when the cost of some aspect of production is low relative to the other components and that's certainly true, but the logic still does not hold. One could argue that paying starvation wages to the low skill labor leaves more money available to invest into research and development. That naturally implies that there will be higher wages for researchers if there is more demand for that kind of labor, but it does nothing for the kind of low skill employees whose plight the original poster was bemoaning.
I suppose you can try to play economic god and demand that certain jobs pay more in order to try to drive technological advancement in those areas, but history has shown that the people who try to run planned economies often make an utter mess of things.
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Which has never, ever been part of any argument. The question is not whether or not progress occurs, but the rate at which it occurs.
One would be ignoring how sensible investment works. Why would invest high-cost labor to reduce a minor part of costs? And this is especially true if the CxO structure is oriented around short
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The question is not whether or not progress occurs, but the rate at which it occurs.
If you think that low wages are holding back progress, then raising them should drive progress. Set the minimum wage at $50 and we should progress much faster. Hike it up again to $100 and even more progress, right? That's essentially what you're proposing. Are you proposing this across the board or just singling out Amazon workers because that's where you want to drive progress?
What you're failing to consider is that there isn't just one form of low wage labor. There are hundreds if not thousands of dif
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You are strawmanning like someone who's never heard of the concept of diminishing returns. Yes, bigger increases in wages will
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I cannot see how low wages holds technology back.
As long as it's cheaper to hire a human than to develop technology to automate their job, the job doesn't get automated. Thus, useful progress is retarded by making it legal to pay starvation wages.
So if we increased the minimum wage to $50 an hour, everything would be great all of a sudden. Wouldn't $100 an hour be better still then? I think the logic breaks down and it's easy to see why.
Yes, yes it is. And the reason why is your logically fallacious ridiculous example. I said that starvation wages were the problem; you responded by asking what would happen if we increased wages to CEO levels. That makes you the reason.
It also doesn't make much sense when looking at history. There were no minimum wage laws and people often were paid starvation wages if they were paid at all. And yet useful progress occurred nonetheless.
This time your logical fallacy is moving the goalposts. The issue being addressed is whether low wages retard progress, not halt it completely.
Perhaps what you're thinking of is that there's less pressure to find a less expensive alternative when the cost of some aspect of production is low relative to the other components and that's certainly true,
Yes, that's what I said. That you had trouble comprehending it is your failure, not mine.
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So if we increased the minimum wage to $50 an hour, everything would be great all of a sudden. Wouldn't $100 an hour be better still then? I think the logic breaks down and it's easy to see why.
It also doesn't make much sense when looking at history. There were no minimum wage laws and people often were paid starvation wages if they were paid at all. And yet useful progress occurred nonetheless. People are always going to try to find a cheaper way of doing something as long as there's a potential for increased profit that they can realize as a result of doing so. While there are some that don't even need that and are quite happy to work away at some problem for its own sake, they are rare.
Perhaps what you're thinking of is that there's less pressure to find a less expensive alternative when the cost of some aspect of production is low relative to the other components and that's certainly true, but the logic still does not hold. One could argue that paying starvation wages to the low skill labor leaves more money available to invest into research and development. That naturally implies that there will be higher wages for researchers if there is more demand for that kind of labor, but it does nothing for the kind of low skill employees whose plight the original poster was bemoaning.
Please try living on minimum wage for a month. Can you survive?
I suppose you can try to play economic god and demand that certain jobs pay more in order to try to drive technological advancement in those areas, but history has shown that the people who try to run planned economies often make an utter mess of things.
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It's simple. By trying to keep the price of human labor low, you discourage proper investment in automation. Why bother automating while its still cheaper to just throw cheap labor at your problems?
The same rationalization is used by opponents of wage increases, saying that increasing wages will lead to jobs being replaced by robots. But works sucks, and jobs that can be replaced by robots should be replaced by robots.
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Cheap labor may not vote early and often, but so far, they're infinitely more important at the ballot box than their robotic replacements.
The Magnus Robot Fighter, human/robot confrontation of the future might more likely develop from displaced lower class workers than an AI attempt at Overlord-ship.
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Why bother automating while its still cheaper to just throw cheap labor at your problems?
If labor is inexpensive relative to other costs, investments will be made to find ways to reduce those other costs first. After this has been done, labor will be relatively more expensive. At a certain point, it may become the most expensive and then investments will be made in order to reduce labor costs. Technological innovation is going to occur in some area regardless of labor costs and it's likely that driving down the cost of raw material inputs requires automation in a different sector. The labor tha
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Let me put it more explicitly. Outside of a few areas like doctors and developers, the wages of people who actually do direct labor has gone down relative to productivity, while profits were diverted to a small minority. Because that labor has been continually undervalued, the incentive structure has underestimated the value in labor-saving, and appropriate amounts of research and manhours have not been put into labor-saving efforts and automation. If we were to start to bring back a stronger correlation
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When the problem is not wages, but people themselves, then their jobs are going to get automated.
People committing suicide at Fox-con was really bad publicity for them.
People getting sick, HR issues, theft, strikes, holidays, work hours, labor laws etc. etc. etc.
Now that the cost of automation has come down a LOT, and it's a lot more capable you are going to get jobs automated.
I still remember the look on a woman
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People committing suicide at Fox-con was really bad publicity for them.
But did they lose any business because of it? They just put up some nets and the story went away.
The suicide story was fake news anyway. Foxconn employs 800,000 people, so there are going to be some suicides in a population that large. Foxconn's suicide rate is, and has always been, below what demographics would predict.
Interesting factoid: China is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate exceeds the male rate.
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Fair enough, but it was still bad publicity, even if it was statistically below average. If a robot dragged it's ass up the side of the building and jumped off it would... probably not make the news.
Did they actually lose business? Not sure, but I am pretty sure their stock price would have been battered, I do know that they had to implement changes to their work environment and work policies. So if it's feasible to replace humans with l
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Not to disagree here, but something is important not to forget:
labor that is not valuable
If it wasn't valuable, it wouldn't be paid for at all. Humans can do things and are still useful, even when under educated or untrained.
In the context of some people who make $25,000 per year vs some people who make $100,000 per year, it appears to make sense that the different labor involved could have different levels of value. However, when you then compare with someone making $155k per minute we're talking about societal gaming and barrier
Re: Don't buy at Amazon (Score:2)
The other is that is costs a certain amount of money for a person to live, even at a subsistence level. If the government (that is our tax dollars) have to pay this amount, will it be more
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Conversely, this methodology would actually encourage Amazon (and others) to expand their robotic workforce so "what it's costing the rest of us" would increase... unless you have reason to believe Amazon is holding these workers back from getting better paying jobs elsewhere?
Looking at it another way, opponents of welfare-type benefits have lobbied variously for implementing drug-testing and community service work to receive these government pittances some call "handouts". Amazon and Walmart, et al, accomp
What else does the app do ? (Score:2)
other than allow you to buy stuff at one of these stores. Does is: track your location; upload your contacts; ... ie generally abuse your privacy ?
Re: What else does the app do ? (Score:2)
On iOS it does not use your location and all and doesnâ(TM)t sync with any data on your device.
In essence, it just generates a one time bar code for your amazon account and it notifies you of your purchases.
Overall it works well although I found the products available in the store to be very limited.
Re: What else does the app do ? (Score:2)
It does not, on iOS at least. It doesnâ(TM)t ask for your location or any device data.
Re: What else does the app do ? (Score:2)
Re: What else does the app do ? (Score:2)
It does not transmit anything. The bar code is just to identify your account which is done when you enter.
Re: What else does the app do ? (Score:2)
How are errors dealt with? (Score:4, Interesting)
If their system screws up and charges me for something I put back on the shelf how do we prove that I didn't take the item? How do they legally prove that I did take it?
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Yeah, but at a store I get a receipt right then and there I can check and point out if there is an issue, and someone is there that can look at my cart right away to resolve it.
In this case, it'd be more like dealing with a credit card dispute which quite often ends with the consumer losing and the vendor keeping the money. If the system screwed up, say a camera didn't catch something like you putting something back, or miscounted how many you grabbed at once, then what? Anyone who you appealed to would als
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Yeah, but at a store I get a receipt right then and there I can check and point out if there is an issue, and someone is there that can look at my cart right away to resolve it.
In this case, it'd be more like dealing with a credit card dispute which quite often ends with the consumer losing and the vendor keeping the money. If the system screwed up, say a camera didn't catch something like you putting something back, or miscounted how many you grabbed at once, then what? Anyone who you appealed to would also miss the count and you'd be screwed.
The 2018 State of Chargebacks Survey from Kount and Chargebacks911 found that, of the 82 percent of businesses that said they respond to chargebacks, half win 30 percent or fewer of their disputes, one-fifth of those merchants win fewer than 15 percent.Feb 1, 2018
And, for me at least, a good part of the reason I shop online beneath the umbrella of an Amazon or Newegg is the customer-friendly dispute resolution and generous return policies... it seems likely that their brick-and-mortar stores would continue this successful practice of customer appeasement, at least until a threshold number of disputes is reached by a single customer.
and Walmart sucks now.. (Score:1)
I don't have an "app" (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't even have a smartphone, nor do I want one. Just like those "no cash, only card" shops here, I just won't shop there. Because I pay cash, and cash only.
Re: I don't have an "app" (Score:1)
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I'm about ready to go this route too in the name of disconnecting more.
Sucks more places don't or can't give a discount for cash only sales. A good number of smaller gas stations around my area do for the price of gas (you save around 10 a gallon if you pay cash)
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Sucks more places don't or can't give a discount for cash only sales.
As a volunteer at a community theatre I sometimes have worked in the box office. I HATE people who pay with cash. It is so much easier to close out when all the sales are credit card. Just press the "batch" button on the machine and it prints out a report of the day's sales and you're done.
Counting the dirty wrinkled torn cash is a tedious nuisance and then finding that you don't have enough small bills to leave as change for the next shift and somebody needs to go to the bank. Or worse starting a shift and
Re:I don't have an "app" (Score:4, Informative)
Many places do it because of the typical purchase amounts compared to the fees the processor charge.
I know that's not true for all companies/businesses, but around here a lot of smaller ones operate this way.
As a consumer, it tends to be easier to monitor spending when you have a physical representation of dollars in a wallet vs a piece of plastic for a lot of folks
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If would-be thieves know in advance that there isn't any cash on site, then they aren't going to threaten an employee there to empty their cash box in the first place. One could argue that as long as people insist on using cash, they are endorsing to continue to put such workers in harm's way.
No, it's the opponents of UBI and national health care who continue to put such workers in harm's way.
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Why does slashdot have a moderation of +1 Interesting but not a -1 Uninteresting?
I'm baffled that some moderator found your lack of a smartphone interesting. I'm interested in lots of things and I'm capable of recognizing that things I'm not interested in are interesting to other people. But your not having of a smart phone and not using of a credit card is the antithesis of interesting.
I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with you lacking things that the vast majority of the population has. I'm simpl
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FWIW, when moderating, I find that "Overrated" against something moderated "Interesting" that doesn't deserve it works just fine.
And agreed "I don't carry a smartphone" and "I have never owned a TV" are some of the most useless, narcissistic sorts of posts here. Like "Really? you think I give a single flying fuck that you're a proud Luddite? How about discussing the matter at hand instead of making a smarmy, dismissive post about how you find technology distasteful?"
The store has had "uncharged item" issues... (Score:2)
Let's see how long before the Chicago store is picked BARE.
And if anyone doubts that stealing is easy... (Score:2)
I invite you to watch this.
https://youtu.be/JbyjL9tazxQ [youtu.be]