Hacker News Reader

Japan is low-tech. The lockers are near the mailboxes.

Mailman puts the package in the mailbox which has a keypad and low-tech 1980's calculator style 1 line display.

He put package in locker. It generates and displays a pin-code, he write it down on a slip of paper with the locker number and puts it in your mailbox.

Works very well.

(I think he has to swipe a card to allow him to lock the thing in the first place. To stop random people using it).

View on HN

Swipe a card? At least in my building there's no need. It's hard to imagine random people messing with it.

The low-tech thing has its downsides: the other day the delivery guy wrote down the wrong code so I had to wait for the building manager to open it.

That said, I agree that it works very well. And I think it's a somewhat recent innovation. Apart from my current apartment none of the places I've lived here (10+ years) had lockers.

I have lockers next to the mailbox and I'm in the US. They just put a key to the locker in your box and then you go unlock the locker and the key is 'caught' and won't re-close. Yeah, it's not a perfect system, but it doesn't go out when the power goes down and it isn't going to get taken over by Bratslavian hackers to try to sell my neighbors Viagra via Twitter and even the most tech-illiterate/disabled people can use it fine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com