A visit to Amazon Go, the really hard part is tracking of people

I was at University of Washington today meeting with a supply chain professor and had time to add a visit to the Amazon Go store. The store is next to Amazon domes.

Before I went I found this coconut cake I wanted to try. I also picked up a drink, chips, and a sandwich.

what was interesting is the 2D code that amazon packaged items had versus a UPC code. Which then got me to think that there are cameras pointing from the bottom and surrounding areas to read the UPC code and detect it gets moved to your bag. When you put it back it removes from your cart. OK. easy.

Then i thought what is the hard part is uniquely identifying all the people. When you look at the the number of cameras it makes sense to track the people. See this Arstechnica article for more details.

So basically by watching me. Amazon know my height. Can guess my weight. Can track my movements. How i walk. Facial recognition. Most likely. I have now been cataloged by Amazon. tracking thousands of people a day as unique individuals is much harder than tracking a few hundred grocery skus with known locations and bar codes.

I will go back to the Amazon store with a Microsoft friend and do a walk through. Yes I still a friend at Microsoft. :-). 

The store was interesting and got me thinking of some new stuff.  But actually my talk with University of Washington Supply Chain Professor was 10X more valuable. But I am keeping that conversation to myself and friends.

Bill Hunter transitions from Gone Fishing to TBHE Consulting LLC

I've known Bill Hunter since his days at AT&T, then Disney, then Amazon. We would keep in touch socially and most of time stay away from company talk especially when he worked for Amazon. In 2016, Bill left AWS after 5 years and he changed his LinkedIn profile to Chief Fisherman and "gone fishing."

Today Bill updated his LinkedIn profile to Consultant/Owner, "TBHE Consulting LLC." Bill and I are both in the Seattle area and we chat about the industry much more often now that he isn't traveling the world for whatever he was doing at AWS.

Know many of you have been asking what Bill is going to do when he left AWS. Now you can contact him on LinkedIn.

Cutting the Cable TV cord

I am sure all of you have thought about cutting the cable TV cord. Yesterday I did. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works. Worst case go back to the cable TV vendor. There are plenty of reviews on cable TV alternatives, but the guidance is mostly for non-technical people and they focus on things like getting an HDTV antenna.  I can’t use an HDTV antenna because all the trees, mountains, and houses that get in way of a signal. And the same applies to satellite TV options.  Anyway most important part if you are going to cut the cable TV cord is how good is your internet connection and your network gear?

I have a Comcast Business Internet connection which gives me about 65mbps down and 12mbps up. PFsense running on Netgate gives me performance statistics and the ability to do traffic shaping.  Here is a daily total network performance.

I can see hourly data and get other statistics like the queues. What are queues? Queues are what you set up as how to manage the traffic allocation. One of ways I get customer feedback for how well network is working is whether my son has any problems playing Xbox One games. In the queues there is a specific one for games. Also can see when facetime is being used as well.

So network is set and I can check how well things work.   Back to cutting the cord. Checked out DirecTv Now, Hulu, Google, Sling TV, and Playstation Vue.  After going around I decided on Playstation Vue. Not the lowest cost, but it has all the broadcast stations which I needed given I couldn’t get an HDTV to work. Got it running on Apple TV, iOS mobile devices, and Amazon Fire TV.  Not running on Xbox One of course. :-)

What is nice is I knocked a hundred dollars off my cable TV package. Part of that cost was $30 a month to rent the set top box devices. For $10 a month I could easily justify spending $200 for a new Apple TV 4K, but don’t have a 4K TV yet.  

One reason I can make this switch is I have business comcast Internet at home which doesn’t have any data caps. If you do have data caps then you need to worry about your data usage when cutting the cord. 

Car Companies tracking you like Google, Amazon, Facebook and others

Washington Post has an article on how car companies are now tracking drivers.

“Honda wanted to track the location of his vehicle, the contract stated, according to Dunn — a stipulation that struck the 69-year-old Temecula, Calif., retiree as a bit odd. But Dunn was eager to drive away in his new car and, despite initial hesitation, he signed the document, a decision with which he has since made peace.

“I don’t care if they know where I go,” said Dunn, who makes regular trips to the grocery store and a local yoga studio in his vehicle. “They’re probably thinking, ‘What a boring life this guy’s got.’ ”

Dunn may consider his everyday driving habits mundane, but auto and privacy experts suspect that big automakers like Honda see them as anything but. By monitoring his everyday movements, an automaker can vacuum up a massive amount of personal information about someone like Dunn, everything from how fast he drives and how hard he brakes to how much fuel his car uses and the entertainment he prefers. The company can determine where he shops, the weather on his street, how often he wears his seat belt, what he was doing moments before a wreck — even where he likes to eat and how much he weighs.”

There aren't many who think that in order to hide their activity they shouldn't use their car. Turning off your phone is another thing you would do to hide your activity, but how many would do that.

Tracking your activity is still in the early stages and will grow fast as so many companies' business models are built on analyzing your activity and monetizing it.

Chayora announces Data Centers for Beijing and Shanghai

Chayora has a press release announcing its China data centre campuses.

Beijing is currently under construction.

“it has finalised agreements with the government of Beichen, Tianjin, to begin construction of the company’s first hyperscale data centre campus in China. The 300MW, 32-hectare / 80-acre campus will serve the greater Beijing region that is home to more than 150 million people in the JingJinJi mega-metropolitan area of northern China.”

And soon the 2nd data center will start for Shanghai.

“Forthcoming in the second quarter of 2018, Chayora will begin construction of its second hyperscale campus, a 280MW data centre to serve the greater Shanghai region. Unlike most other options for Shanghai, Chayora’s facilities will be newly-built and designed from the ground up to international standards with all necessary permits to enable global corporates to access Shanghai and the surrounding provinces of eastern China, a population of more than 200 million. Shanghai is a key location for global organisations, including financial services, e-commerce and cloud service providers, and is in need of significant high performance data centre capacity.”