Great improvement by only adding one feedback prompt:
Change the rotation axis of the wheels by 90 degrees in the horizontal plane. Same for the legs and arms
Some time I think I should spend $50 on Upwork to get a real human artist to do it first to know what is that we're going for. What a good pelican riding a bicycle SVG is actually looking like?
IMO it's not about art, but a completely different path than all these images are going down. The pelican needs tools to ride the bike, or a modified bike. Maybe a recumbent?
It would be next to impossible for anyone without insider knowledge to prove that to be the case.
Secondly, benchmarks are public data, and these models are trained on such large amounts of it that it would be impractical to ensure that some benchmark data is not part of the training set. And even if it's not, it would be safe to assume that engineers building these models would test their performance on all kinds of benchmarks, and tweak them accordingly. This happens all the time in other industries as well.
So the pelican riding a bicycle test is interesting, but it's not a performance indicator at this point.
I think this is a ridiculously brilliant idea. It's probably hard for Americans and folks in the West to imagine why this is a big deal. There are millions of vendors who basically dominate India's retail market, which is probably one of the largest unorganized corners of the global economy with the world's largest population. There have been tons of efforts and a significant amount of VC funding to digitize unorganized retail (the Kirana segment) in India, and many of these companies have struggled. I think part of the challenge is that they were trying to get shopkeepers to change behavior and force them away from their existing sales and checkout process. The elegance of the Kirana sale/checkout is efficiency - no barcodes to scan, no POS to deal with, and it's probably 3-4x faster than any modern checkout process. However, there is one tool they always use - a calculator.
This product basically enables me to do what I already do as a shopkeeper and maintain existing efficiencies while I also have the opportunity to digitize my transactions. I think it could be a game-changer.
Full disclosure: I grew up in a tiny town in India, and this was pretty much 100% of my retail experience!
India's informal "shadow" economy makes up nearly 40% of GDP. There are clear advantages to maintaining proper books, such as improved planning and better access to credit. But do you think the smaller merchants this tool is designed to help will want to move into the formal economy and accept the responsibilities-- namely higher taxes-- that go alongside this? Or is tax evasion generally not an issue among smaller merchants in India?
> Or is tax evasion generally not an issue among smaller merchants in India?
I've read income tax evasion is nearly endemic there, but don't know how reliable that was. In retail the more likely problem is avoiding collecting sales taxes etc, but India has a goods and services tax which means most of that is baked in by the time you hit retail.
> This product basically enables me to do what I already do as a shopkeeper and maintain existing efficiencies while I also have the opportunity to digitize my transactions. I think it could be a game-changer.
Perhaps a stupid question on my part, but I wonder whether it'll really help you "maintain existing efficiencies". I'd imagine that a classical calculator-based workflow has efficiencies of the following kind:
- Approximately zero latency on I/O. Whether it's adding a digit or performing a calculation, screen updates instantly. This is something no smart device I've ever seen offers, because modern tech stacks make it near-impossible to achieve.
- Optimized for speed. Beyond no latency, this also means error-tolerant workflow. You can feel when you make a mistake, and it's easy to nuke the entire calculation you're doing and re-do it again. On the product site, I couldn't find a video showing how it's actually used, but going by the diagrams alone, Tohands seems to be effectively committing every time you press the "=" button. That feels like adding a pain in either having to undo things, or having to be super careful.
Please tell me if I'm wrong about the product, or the calculator-based workflow. I didn't work in retail, but I did observe people doing calculator-based retail and accounting in the past.
Super interesting. I think you are right. The whole play is about latency. How quickly can I get in and out is the only calculus in the minds of most retail customers in this segment. Like my mom would send me to the store to buy ingredients while she is literally cooking because she ran out of something, and I would need to be in and out in <4 minutes (including travel time)!
I agree that the calculator is literally in every one of these stores because of zero latency. The design question is how can you build something that has greater digitization and data storage capabilities (and I/O to connect to payments/phones) while keeping latency as low or close to a calculator. I'm just saying this comes close, where every other $100MM VC funded play wants to add significant latency to the design and thus have seen much lower adoption.
The latency is not clear from the demo videos, but there's no reason why the device couldn't sync with the cloud in the background. It's probably fine if cloud syncing is not done in real-time, which leaves plenty of time to provide an instant response. I'm sure this is something the engineers thought about, considering they seem to know their target market well.
"The elegance of the Kirana sale/checkout is efficiency - no barcodes to scan, no POS to deal with, and it's probably 3-4x faster than any modern checkout process. However, there is one tool they always use - a calculator."
As someone that has worked a cash register both with barcodes and scanning, and doing the same thing with a calculator when power/computers crashed, I don't know how you can say a calculator is more efficient than a proper POS.
Labour efficient? Time efficient? Tax avoidance efficient?
Went through the onboarding and signed up for a trial with payment details. But the Download buttons don't work. I'm surprised that small bugs haven't been worked out before launching a product where you pay $12 a month!
Yikes, that's not good, sorry. I wonder if there's something specific with your setup, we haven't had any problems like that from other users today. If you could email help@rescuetime.com I'd love to help figure out what happened.
Not sure how ubiquitous it is. Nevertheless, given that Android is 90 percent of the market in India, may be this can help overcome the iPhone OS-level constraints that makes it necessary for both platforms to work together in markets like the US.
Lived and invested in India for the last four years. This is definitely not China and I dont see the inclination among Indian consumers to shell out $1000 for an iPhone. India is the most competitive Android market in the world, with high-end, competitive phones with same features as an iPhone retailing for $200 - $300 (see Pocophone F1 by Xiaomi). Apple would need a radically different game-plan if they are serious about India.
I would love to see the resurgence of RSS and other public protocol enabled start-ups and solutions. This is the time.
RSS is also a prolific engine for curation, given how flexible and extendable the protocol is. The emergence of expert-run email digest frenzy should be built on foundation of RSS, where individuals can parse hundreds of sources and quickly construct a digest for easy circulation.
I can definitely see RSS taking off in the future more than ever.
We finally are getting to standard formats in the digital age. JSON obviously is the leader in storing object data. RSS would be great for making multi-platform content.
As a programmer and content creator, writing something 1 time and it working everywhere is the future.
From Bangalore too. Amateur programmer, but have a ton of experience and networks in a niche sector. I pull in decent amount of money in passive income.
(1) I would say focus first on value rather than money. I delivered my service for free or on trial basis for almost 6 months before clients signed up to pay.
(2) As a freelancer, focus on long-term retainer relationships, built on your value-proposition. And work with clients who have solid reliable cash flows. This way, your income would be guaranteed via 1-2 year contracts.
(3) Please stay away from consumer focused businesses/services if you are looking for small side income (this can be your focus for your big main start-up idea). B2B is always better. The only exception I think is if you get lucky in the app economy or if you could build 1m+ page-view site (Amit Agarwal)
