IBM RFID Commercial-The Future Supermarket
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as proof that walk-out shopping was envisioned long before Amazon's version, and as an appealing vision of the future.
What it is
A 2006 IBM commercial depicting a future supermarket where shoppers walk out and RFID automatically charges them for their items.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec 3x35r22m4u · 2024-01 · on “The failure of self-checkout technology”
Back in 2006 IBM already had predicted how self- checkout should work[1]. Their TV ad made was so cool, so well done and so "I want to live in this world" that became one of my favorites even today: [this video] [1] [LINK]
Cites beloch · 2020-03 · on ““Just walk out” technology by Amazon”
IBM viewed this tech seriously enough to be marketing it to the public in 2006. It wasn't a "Hey, we're making this." ad but more of an, "We're cool because we're working on this, sorta maybe." ad. [this video] 14 years later, it's still vaporware. There are a lot of fairly tough problems that need to be solved to make it work. Today, Amazon is probably better positioned to sucker/bully retailers into adopting their solution than IBM is. It remains to be seen if they can actually pull off the tech side of things though. IBM is not a company that's easy to laugh at.
Cites benlivengood · 2022-07 · on “Preventing Loss Dot JPEG”
Worth the read just for the context around "A much larger problem with RFID than its satanic origins remains the cost of tags" alone. I remember ads from IBM about 20 years ago where a guy walks out of a store with several items looking all shopliftery but cuts to an IBM-logo'd terminal where magic EAS tags have charged his credit card automatically. Edit: [this video]