After Edward Snowden leaked that the National Security Agency (NSA) used backdoor channels to gain access to smartphones, webcams, and traffic cameras, people have become paranoid that the government is watching through our devices. The rise of sticky notes and cover slides attached to webcams is a testament to that fact. (Never mind the hackers […]
We thought that only a Fool would consider Amazon an artificial intelligence stock, but there’s no shortage of pundits stating the same. To be fair, it’s rather difficult to place Amazon in any GICS-type industry classification bucket. As the world’s second-largest retailer by sales, Amazon is not considered a pure-play online retailer either. The company […]
Even the Americans can be forgiven for not knowing much about a little-visited European country called Belarus. Often referred to as the “lungs of Europe,” 40% of the country is covered in forests through which European bison roam – the inspiration for the delicious “bison grass vodka.” It’s a shame that not many people visit Belarus […]
One of the most famous bonehead quotes from a chief executive who brushed off technological disruption came from Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes in 2008. He said, “Neither Redbox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.” Two years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and Keyes got a job stocking DVDs in […]
Shoplifting comes in many shapes and forms, from the broke pre-teen who is about to learn a valuable life lesson to a sophisticated gang of criminals that brazenly robs stores right in front of security cameras. In whatever form it ends up taking, shoplifting is when someone takes something from a store without paying for it – […]
If you can’t tell the difference between a Danish pastry and a croissant, new automated checkout systems might earn you your friends’ respect next time you arrange the ultimate friendcation Sunday brunch by helping you differentiate them. They are that good. A few months back, we explored retail automation solutions that help us feast upon […]
Earlier this year, autonomous retail store Amazon Go opened to much fanfare, which just goes to show you how much we love buying it. Every organization on the planet—even the 24-hour Elon Musk show known as Futurism—covered the event as if it were a visit by the pope. Headlines declared that the store of the […]
There was an article published by the Scientific American earlier this year titled Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?, and it’s probably worth a read if you have 45 minutes (yes, it’s that long). We gave up about halfway through when we came across the following specimen which CB Insights affectionately refers to as “bad data viz”: […]
Since most people do their grocery shopping at normal hours during the day, they don’t see the overnight stockers that come out late at night and work until the sun comes up. They’re distinguishable by the box knives they carry around in their aprons, the scar tissue all over their hands from being cut by said […]
From the outside looking in, shopping hasn’t changed all that much in the past decade. Sure, it’s more common now to find a brick-and-mortar synced efficiently with its online presence (Target is great at this). But those still seem to be the exception to the rule. Behind the scenes, however, it’s a very different story. […]