Visit to a Noteworthy Robot: The Amazon No-Check-Out System

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Amazon has been developing a no-check-out system for retailers…the idea is that the customer just picks up up what he wants, walks out, and automatically gets charged the proper amount.   The systems were initially installed at some Amazon Go stores, and there is now one installed at a Whole Foods in the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington, DC.

I needed to pick up some groceries, and had been curious about how well the system actually works, so stopped into this store last week.

You scan your phone (with the appropriate app installed) when you walk into the store.   There are cameras everywhere; they watch what you get and, anything you put back on the shelf.   When you’ve picked up everything you want, scan your phone again when walking out (there are numerous parallel stations for doing this) and just walk out. Within an hour or so, you will get a receipt that shows what your bought and what you were charged for it.

I didn’t have a lot of time (the Uighur restaurant across the street was very slow), so didn’t get a much. But I did pick up 3 black plums, 2 bananas, and a steak…being curious about whether the system could really deal with picking an item and then putting it back, I did just this with a can of black beans…took it off with the shelf, took it around in the shopping basket, then came back to the shelf where I found it and returned it there.

The receipt did show up about an hour later, and was correct, including the absence of the black beans from the list.

Interesting question as to why it takes so long to get the receipt.   I’m sure there’s a lot of image processing involved, but an hour seems long for a fully automated process.   I suspect that there may be human involvement to deal with cases where the automation gets confused.

This system would seem to have quite a few advantages for a retailer…lower labor costs, potentially-improved customer satisfaction (compared with the often-very-irritating self-checkout systems in common use), AND better use of floor space…the typical grocery store requires a nontrivial amount of its space for the checkout lines and stations.

On the other hand, there’s no assistance for those who would like help with bagging.   And people without credit cards and phones are out of luck, there have already been some objections from activists on this point.

Has anyone else had any experience with one of these installations, either at the Whole Foods or at one of the Amazon Go stores?

 

Random Pic

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Nancy Pelosi and I Have Something in Common

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…both of us will benefit from increases in the price of Nvidia stock.

Paul Pelosi acquired 20,000 shares of NVDA (via a call option exercise) in June of this year.   I’ve been an NVDA shareholder for several years, and sold part of the position at prices considerably more favorable than today’s price of $178/share.

Given that the CHIPS act, which is intended to benefit the US semiconductor industry, is now before Congress, concerns have been raised about whether Paul Pelosi’s purchase might have been influenced by insider information related by his wife.

I note that Nvidia is not thrilled with the bill as currently drafted: it provides benefits for semiconductor manufacturing companies, and Nvidia is not a manufacturer…it is a   ‘fabless semiconductor company’, ie, a design, software, and marketing house.   The actual manufacturing is done by contract manufacturers, especially Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.   Some market participants do,   however, have hopes that in the final version of the bill the subsides will be expanded to encompass chip-design companies.

The bill would include ‘guardrails’ to prohibit recipients of the subsidies from making investments to expand chip manufacturing capacity in countries of concern, namely China. There may be an exemption for countries-of-concern whether that chips being made are at >28nm notes, ie, a long way from high-end.   But one industry analyst said:

The guardrail doesn’t change that most of Intel’s or Texas Instruments’ test and packaging is done in China and will continue to be done in China. What use are new fabs for national security if they have to go to China for test and packaging anyways?

I think there are a couple of issues here.   First is the issue of Congresspeople potentially profiting from inside information.   The Pelosi buy does look very bad from this standpoint, especially when there are headlines associating Nancy Pelosi’s support for the CHIPS bill with increases in certain stocks–which include NVDA.   It’s quite possible that this particular transaction is an innocent one, given that the bill as it stands is not one that Nvidia would have preferred, and also that NVDA price is now low enough, in the context of recent history and the general excellence and positioning of the company, that one could develop an entirely reasonable ‘buy’ case without benefit of any inside information.   But the issue of officeholders profiting from inside information is a serious one, and becomes more serious with every further entwinement of government into the details of the economy.

But there is an even more important issue: Do we really want the level of investment in particular industries to be largely controlled by government?   It is true that the semiconductor industry is vital to the US economy and to US national defense…but this is true of a lot of other industries as well.   How about pharmaceuticals and their precursor materials, for example?…I seem to remember threats from Chinese sources to let American burn in the fire of Covid by withholding pharmaceuticals.   What about large transformers, which are vital to the electrical grid and take a long time to manufacture?   What about key minerals, many of which are in fact present in the United States but are mostly sourced from elsewhere because of legal and cultural hostility toward mining?   What about machine tools?

I have low confidence in the ability of Congress, or of government in general, to determine what industries and what specific segments of those industries are truly vital.   There are many complex interconnections which are not easily understood.   I remember that during the pandemic, GE Healthcare was asked to produce a large number of ventilators in an accelerated timeframe. It turned out that they were using a very small contractor…a 3D printing shop, IIRC…which had been shut down as ‘nonessential’.

I’d prefer to see legislative solutions which improve the US business climate for manufacturers in general and for ‘thing’ businesses in general, to the crafting of specific ‘solutions’ for specific industries.   Legislation should deal with the general case as much as possible, rather than functioning as a Reverse Bill of Attainder.   But developing such legislation requires ability to think in abstract terms, and is not a comfortable to politicians who think mainly in terms of interest groups to be used or placated.

Here is the text of the CHIPS bill.

There is also a proposed broader US competitiveness bill, the United States Innovation and Competition Act.

Here’s a WSJ Opinion piece on the CHIPS bill and its proposed galactic expansions.

And here’s Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and Ford CEO Jim Farley arguing the case for semiconductor subsidization.

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Called Acting, Dear Boy

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Or so Laurence Olivier is supposed to have said to Dustin Hoffman, during the filming of The Marathon Man, when Hoffman got a little too deeply immersed in his role.

It’s acting convincingly pretending to be a person you are not; experiencing events and emotions on the stage or screen that the actor might or might not have really experienced. It’s pretending, in the service of storytelling. In our current over-the-top state of extreme wokery, any kind of illogical insanity seems to rule; in this latest example, an American soprano singer, one Angela Blue, has made a great show out of quitting an opera performance, because of her objections to another opera performance and singer in the same venue. Angela Blue objected vociferously to Russian soprano Anna Netrebko singing in the title role of Aida, while made-up to appear as … gasp … Ethiopian. (A production design originated by the late Franco Zeffirelli, as an aside.) Angela Blue, who is African-American, terms it as ‘blackface’, although comparing serious grand opera to the buffoonery of vaudeville minstrel shows of a century ago is considerable of a stretch. What adds an interesting twist to this, is that the opera performance which Angela Blue walked away from was La Traviata, and her role as Violetta a French courtesan, and in the original concept, a woman not of any color save lily-white.

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Extremely Cool

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An animated explanation of how a mechanical watch works.