Amazon Key is Silicon Valley at its most out-of-touch | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Key is Silicon Valley at its most out-of-touch

washingtonpost.com

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Something a lot of people forget about with this service and Walmart's is how beneficial they will be for the disabled. If I was housebound because of a disability or had periods where I had limited mobility, I might buy exclusively from Walmart and Amazon if they could bring products into.my home and on to a table or fridge so I don't have to bend down. These services where employees can enter your home don't have to appeal to everyone under the sun for them to be successful.

disabled population is a tiny percentage of the overall population and isn't large enough to drive a profitable business model at Amazon/Walmart scale.

I don't agree with the splitting of the population into "disabled" and "temporarily abled," but it does make a point very well.

There are many people who are not permanently disabled that have a temporary disability at any given time. Broken a leg, or an ankle? Had surgery that requires you to keep both eyes bandaged? Those things can be extremely disabling, even if you'll recover in a few months.

That depends on just what disability we're talking about, but the total for the US is nearly 20% of the population[1]. Which seems like a sizable potential market...

1: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellane...

the kind of disability that needs help opening a door and bringing a package inside.

This article actually says more about the writer than Amazon or Silicon Valley.

Silicon valley has ALWAYS been "out of touch". That's by definition, because silicon valley builds stuff for innovators and early adopters in the innovation adoption cycle.

But what's different nowadays though is some idiots who belong in the laggard zone thinks they can judge the products that are barely at the innovator/early adopter product cycle. And they happen to be journalists, or people with a lot of followers on Twitter.

I guess the real takeaway here is that social media has brought us to a point where the boundary among each of the phases in diffusion of innovation graph has become blurry. Some people who definitely don't understand the technology can easily bury a small startup that's trying hard to make it happen in the early adopter zone by writing up some propaganda piece.

See also anyone commenting on a "fashion show": that's ridiculous, who would wear that in real life?

She's not trying to "bury a small startup" she's talking about the biggest eCommerce company in the world.

And the idea that this critique is a new phenomena is silly. New tech has always been criticized in media. Just because she disagrees with you doesn't make her an "idiot" or a "laggard."

i was more talking about the startups she mentioned in the article, such as Bodega.

Also I didn't say this type of critique is a new phenomenon.

Funny enough, I had pretty much the same skepticism as the author re: Amazon Key. With IOT "security" scandals floating by seemingly daily, this feels like a poor tradeoff.

_However,_ this product seems like a great opportunity for a small hack: install the whole thing as a locker/bench/cabinet on your front porch. Almost all of the convenience, and no increase in risk. In fact, I'm a touch surprised that this isn't how the product was conceived and launched in the first place: as a personal package locker.

Something very close to that did launch first: Amazon Hub. It's a shared unit for apartment buildings though.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/amazo...

One can replicate this in all but one respect already; I've a big box by the door to put parcels in. It doesn't lock; you just open it and put the parcel inside.

I expect it wouldn't work for everyone, but I'm yet to have anything stolen from it in a decade or so or using this system.

Depends on where you live. I used to live in a pretty sleepy neighborhood that had a huge problem with package theft, largely owing to having a middle school on one side and a low-income neighborhood on the other.

Were the packages left in plain sight? In my experience (which, sure, is anecdotal), people don't stop by my box every day to check if there's anything inside it to steal.

>Amazon Key is perhaps the most outre example of this phenomenon yet. Yes, I do value convenient deliveries, but I value my security more — better to strategize around postal schedules than be assaulted by a person hiding in one’s home! And while I dislike rained-upon packages, I prioritize privacy enough that I’m loath to install a corporate-controlled surveillance apparatus inside my house.

>I prioritize privacy enough that I’m loath to install a corporate-controlled surveillance apparatus inside my house.

I feel like this woman's logic is inconsistent here. I can understand that you dont want a "corporate-controlled surveillance apparatus inside my house" but then why you do you carry one in your bloody pocket?! I can, with some degree of confidence, say that she owns a smartphone (probably an iPhone) which is basically the same.

Personally, I think Amazon Key is really pushing the boundaries of tech and making our lives better. If you have an Amazon camera pointed at your door which the delivery guy KNOWS is being tracked by Amazon and his job is literally to deliver the package safely which is also tracked etc. etc. For this person to do something malicious the payoff should be rediculously high (i.e. steal a Monet or something) because his livelihood (i.e. job/reputation) depends on it. Now that I think of it, Amazon has the ID of the delivery driver so if the driver passes any further than the front door Alexa can basically (after a suitable warning) immediately call the police, no?

I, for one, welcome our new overlords.

I think you are overestimating the need for the payoff to be ridiculously high for someone to commit a crime. For that to work the criminal justice system needs to follow through and charge and incarcerate the person. As an example, here in Chicago if you are caught in a stolen car, you are given a ticket for "Criminal Trespass", a misdemeanor(1). So, I would never ever sign up for Amazon Key here in Chicago when our justice system does not punish those who commit crimes like car theft, I have 0 faith in them charging or doing anything if they stole something while in the house, even with it being on camera. (1) source: https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170913/near-west-side/ridi...

She doesn't make much of an argument for why this product is bad, just expects us to follow along with her moral outrage.

I agree. This article has no substance. What does this have to do with Juicero? Amazon is trying to solve the problem of not being home when someone attempts to deliver a package. She didn't even attempt to provide an alternative solution to the problem.

She just claimed that it's dumb idea because some people like interacting with people. Sure, that's fine. But I just bypassed a store to order something online and not interact with people. Why would I have the desire to interact with my delivery driver? I wouldn't. I just want my package delivered.

I just want my package delivered

...and not stolen off your doorstep. Happens in every neighborhood. Amazon's tape and labeling all over the box isn't helping things, but that's another issue.

You could tell it was just a rant from the first sentence:

> Amazon wants to let strangers into your house and train a surveillance camera on your front door. Oh, and they’d like you to pay them $250 for the privilege.

For one, they aren't strangers, they are postal office employees, and of course they are not giving out a door lock and camera for free.

To be pedantic Amazon is based in Seattle which is not in Silicon Valley.

I'm fascinated by the appropriation of the term "Silicon Valley" to represent all of (a certain type of) technology. I think that the name alone will contribute to the future primacy of the Bay Area in software.

It reminds me of this excellent scene in "The Founder", after Kroc has managed to buy McDonald's and is conversing with its original founder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FxHY-vLMgs

s/McDonald/Silicon Valley -- makes for an interesting perspective.

All Amazon did was integrate with the better selling smart locks. Amazon.com sales probably already provides the data to evaluate the feasibility of such a service - high traction on smart locks among prime members. I don't think this journalist has a clue about what's happening

This is why the post office model is superior. The local post office receives the parcel and keeps it safe until you come to pick it up. Nowadays (at least in Canada) these post offices are colocated in pharmacies and other businesses that can spare a bit of space and are open outside of 9-5 hours.

If a Fedex or UPS would buildup a network of similar business partnerships in residential areas (or just rent some space in a shopping mall) then people would use then in preference to this expensive key gimmick.

Why hasn't anyone ever thought of that before? Delivering goods to people in their local shopping mall?

Maybe because Silicon Valley is hung up on disruption and replacement so they never noticed that simply taking over existing businesses could be a lucrative model.

UPS (in the US, at least) does this with a program called UPS Access Points. If you sign up on the UPS website, you can choose to have any UPS deliveries addressed to you (from any merchant!) automatically redirected to a nearby Access Point for pickup.

My local deli is an Access Point. Presumably they're getting paid by UPS for their shelf space, where packages are stored until you come in to pick them up.

Amazon already delivers to local shops as 'Amazon Lockers' in India. Turns out Americans are lazier, distances are longer, and they want deliveries at home.

The comparison between Amazon Key and Bodega/Juceiro seems off. The latter, he correctly states, do not solve problems average people actually have.

But Amazon Key, the author admits, solves a problem a lot of people have: who the hell has the time to wait around in the middle of the day for a package to arrive? We don't all have a stay-at-home husband/wife/partner that can do that.

Now, the veracity of the idea of installing a security camera on your front door that goes to Amazon's cloud is another thing, but that's in the same conversation of whether having an Echo is a good idea.

I don't think this is a great example of Silicon Valley being out of touch, this is just the author being big-brother conscious (which is valid).

No mention that Walmart announced this first?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/09/22/w...

Doormen, of the human kind, are a most convenient convenience.

Am I paranoid in thinking this might all just be a test to see how readily the public might open their doors?

Seattle isn't in Silicon Valley...

Word of the day of articles to ignore - Juicero

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