I can already foresee a dozen people showing up in zebra-striped hoodies to see what happens when they shop together.

Amazon will counter by convincing third parties to resell their goods on the shelf. Amazon takes their cut of sales, but doesn't chip in on losses or fraud. Oh wait...

Does Amazon already do this?

It's a nod to their online model. You sell android phones as a 3rd party on Amazon.com. Buyer claims "not as described". Keeps phone, puts potato in Android box and returns it. Amazon forces you to refund. Probably distressing to Amazon that they can't foist off losses of physical in-store shoplifting onto 3rd parties.

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13955981

We had a discussion about Amazon.com comingling inventory with seller inventory.

More discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546

They realize that amazon now measures the height of each customer, also has a miniature drone following them around and each floor tile measure the weight of the people for that extra data point, oh and some have employees disguised as customers whom help the system when in doubt.

'Who help'. 'Whom' is the objective case, parallel to 'them'; a good way to test the correctness of a particular use is to substitute the latter for the former and see if the sentence is still grammatical.

Weight belts, got it.

and platform shoes.

I'm sure that some people will but there will almost certainly be security in the store that will politely ask them to stop.

Time for some "identical twin" experiments.

I am an identical twin and on my brothers surface book I'm able to fool windows hello for some reason.

> for some reason

Hmm, maybe it's because he's your identical twin?

Forgot to mention that Microsoft claims that I shouldn't be able to do that.

Really? Microsoft says a webcam should be able to instantly tell the difference between you and someone who looks literally exactly identical to you?

A lot of people will turn up to play basketball, while someone in a bear suit steals things.

It was a gorilla suit, not a bear suit ;):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

There's a variant with a moonwalking bear which is rather well known: https://youtu.be/Ahg6qcgoay4

Interesting. Your post got me to finally look up the history of this [1]. Apparently it was a woman with an umbrella in a 1975 study, but made extreme by Simons in 1992 with the gorilla. The moonwalking bear is apparently from a 2008 Transport for London advertisement [2] to remind people to see cyclists.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/16/transport-invisib...

You know you can already get things for free at current stores.

It's called shoplifting and it's REALLY EASY.

The truth is in Western Society most people don't do this.

And after an initial novelty factor (which I'm sure Amazon will account for), people won't bother any more than they shoplift now.

P.S. Nor will they shoot Amazon Prime AIr drones out of the sky like other HN threads fret.

Shoplifting by outpacing a tracking algorithm has high levels of plausible deniability.

It's not illegal to hurry, and if Amazon fails to notice you picking up a product, that's their problem due to the system they thought up.

That would entice a lot of people.