>> That means a phone in a tree outside Whole Foods’ door would get the delivery offer even before drivers sitting in their cars just a block away.
That seems ridiculous. Plus or minus what, a minute? There has to be a better way to select drivers.
The simplest solution is therefore that, yes, someone 10 feet away will get it before someone 20 feet away.
The developers would have to go out of their way to add a buffer zone, e.g. find the closest person, add 1,000 feet, find everyone within that range, then select randomly. Or create a "local zone" distance range and a queue. Or other options -- once you try to figure out "what's fair" it gets really complicated.
That extra code is only going to get written if it has to.
So there's nothing ridiculous about it at all. In fact it's the simplest, most expected solution.
Now that it's news, however, Amazon might actually come up with more sophisticated requirements.
It would be nice to have perfect knowledge beforehand of how an otherwise reasonable algorithm will be gamed once it's out in the wild.
The reason you're reading this on hn today is specifically because it is novel group behavior.
By handing out jobs to the closest device and not checking the last job that device received is poor programming.
It's similar here, when an algorithm is in charge of optimisation it has its heuristics, they will be gamed as they are measures that became a target.
The actual phrase should be "as the crow flies." If you say "bird distance," you might get confused looks from people.
Just trying to help. :-)
That said, "bird distance" is going in my lexicon.
You may then proceed to explain this refers to the distance by camel.
You: Except on a globe, it is a great circle.
Me: 'Nobody said on the surface. I'm tunneling through.'