10 ms·
Amazon One palm authentication discontinued
- nickorlow 8mo agoAmazon it on a killing spree lately it seems
- radicalethics 8mo agoI think they are going all in on Alexa+ and cutting many other teams (speaking fully as an outsider). The new Echo Dot Max makes controlling your TV/Browsing youtube with natural language really nice (same for exploring Amazon Music - Spotify needs to catch up with this fast). Subscriptions for AI in the living room is what they are first movers of at the moment.
- Bluecobra 8mo agoHow does that compare with Google? I tried updating my Google Mini smart speakers to have Gemini and it still seems dumb as a box of rocks.
- radicalethics 8mo agoNo experience with Google yet. Amazon still has more work to do with making their tool-use calls bullet proof, but I've been able to search Youtube naturally and "open the first video" (this is still rudimentary, it's not perfect yet). Pretty good success moving around the Fire TV app with voice (open, exit), reasonably good at switching Live channels. Really fun with Amazon music, "pull up a Taylor Swift album, but acoustic only, from 2010s ...", stuff like that. It's great, and I expect it to become rather ... perfect in time. Other things: - Great for todo/reminders with timers - "Hey Alexa, turn my lights on at 5 everyday, close them at 12" - Not great at controlling Prime Video yet, can search it, but not great yet at all. Expecting this to be perfect at some point as well. It's almost like a ... voice operating system.
- arjie 8mo agoThis has been the worst downgrade for me. Response times have skyrocketed. The minimum time to response is now a few seconds slower and the responses continue to be low quality. The speaker seems to have even lost some functionality where it says "I can't do that yet" for a thing it mostly could already do previously. If I could tell anyone with Google Home devices one thing, it would be to not 'upgrade' to Gemini.
- nickorlow 8mo agoGoogle update sucks. Not only is it slower + generally dumber, but their AI alignment has made it refuse to answer very normal questions (I got scolded by my speaker for asking about the hours of the nearest liquor store)
- stefan_ 8mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796745
- driverdan 8mo agoIn other ways too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/the-wiretap/2026/01/27/immigration-record-spend-on-amazon-and-trump/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/the-wiretap/2026/01/27/immigrat...
- nickorlow 8mo agoWonder what stunted adoption of this? High costs, users not liking it b/c privacy, credit cards/tap to pay being a good enough experience already? The handful of times I used this, it was nice.
- jasonjei 8mo agoI was personally creeped out by it at the handful of Whole Foods I saw this. I’d rather tap and pay or pay by QR code.
- adastra22 8mo agoI just signed up and used it at Whole Foods. For me, and for that use case only it removes a step of loading the Whole Foods app to scan a QR code for my account. But have no idea why anyone else would adopt this.
- squokko 8mo agoPeople don't want to give Amazon their biometrics?
- iamjake648 8mo agoIf you trust Amazon, they were never storing images of your actual palm but instead creating and storing unique hashes from that data. Again, if you trust them, they did it in just about the most privacy protecting way possible.
- astrashe2 8mo agoMy doctor's office was using it. I didn't want to give them my biometric data.
- Auracle 8mo agoI'm completely unfamiliar with these, but it seems like you need to press your palm against the device, no? The doctor's office is the last place I'd want to do that.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Bluecobra 8mo agoThey also had this as option to pay at Amazon Fresh, which seemed odd to me. You needed to use your phone to scan the QR code from your phone anyway, and they charged the credit card on file in your Amazon account.
- crazygringo 8mo agoI didn't even know this was available to other businesses -- I've only ever seen it at Whole Foods. Curious if they're keeping it at Whole Foods or discontinuing the hardware altogether? Can't say I've ever once seen someone actually use it to pay there.
- brk 8mo agoI used it once, a couple of weeks ago. Had been meaning to sign up for a couple of years and then just randomly completed the process recently.
- adastra22 8mo agoI literally just signed up for this. Guess I have the killing touch. I don’t see the point though. It is a payment solution in search of a problem. It is a nice bonus first party payment solution at Whole Foods though.
- llsf 8mo agoWell, that is not just a payment solution. It can be linked to other things, and primarily to your Prime account, but it could be linked to other loyalty programs too. So when you wave your hand, you get your Prime discounts, you pay and you get your points. Just by waving your hand. No need to reach for a phone, an app, a card, scan a QR code, etc. The tech had some advantages. I used it every time at WF. I liked it.
- adastra22 8mo agoOther PoS systems I used have no trouble linking my CC to my loyalty account.
- kidfiji 8mo agoThey've had them permanently installed at Seattle's largest indoor sports/entertainment arena
- arjie 8mo agoThis is sad. I loved paying by palm at Whole Foods because it was definitely the fastest way to do things. You just scanned and you were out. Now I've got to slowly type in my phone number for Prime and then tap my watch and select the right credit card (palm scan always used my groceries card). Ah well, perhaps adoption was low.
- crazygringo 8mo agoI just scan the QR code from the Whole Foods app on my phone. Then tap the button to pay with the credit card linked to the account. For security reasons, it makes sense that if you use your phone number rather than the QR code, of course you don't have the option to utilize the linked card. Meant to register the palm thing but just never got around to it, wasn't even really sure how/where? That was the main blocker for me -- was never prompted to do it as part of checkout, and didn't want to waste time going over to customer service to ask how.
- criddell 8mo agoThe Whole Foods we go to is in a cellular dead zone. So much time is wasted by people standing there waiting for their phone to load.
- crazygringo 8mo agoI've been bitten by that. I genuinely can't even guess why it needs internet to generate the code. Shouldn't it just be a TOTP-type thing?
- iamjake648 8mo agoIt doesn't seem like a big deal, but this is just so much more annoying than using my palm that not only links my payment method but also prime membership. Now I need to tap through a stupid app and scan a code. We always stopped at whole foods on the way home from the gym, and I didn't always have my phone with me or readily accessible. This will definitely cause me to cut back on this quick stop in / impulse purchases.
- ColinWright 8mo agoClick on the link to read about this: 403 ERROR The request could not be satisfied. Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation. Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront) Request ID: IFiQvbhPlrP5MaRdM5km5yAdFAEmvC_IUx2LA899aXly11zm3wAoKg== Is it the HN "Hug of Death" ?
- jsheard 8mo agoI doubt HN could knock over an Amazon site. They're probably geoblocking regions where that service never operated.
- swiftcoder 8mo ago> I doubt HN could knock over an Amazon site Not every amazon site is cloud-scale. Niche product like this might be running bare metal under someone's desk
- ErroneousBosh 8mo agoNo, apparently eu-west-1 went castors up earlier. I wouldn't be surprised if there was something related to this error. The site came back around eu-west-1 which, while correlation isn't causation, it does look meaningfully in causation's direction and wiggle an eyebrow suggestively.
- tecleandor 8mo agoSame right now from Spain. I guess it could be a geoblock, although I expected something more from Amazon
- quotemstr 8mo agoIt's interesting how despite Google and Amazon both canceling products constantly, only one is infamous for the practice.
- woah 8mo agoIs this what the 16,000 were working on?
- dfajgljsldkjag 8mo agoThese were neat to use at whole foods but I never saw them anywhere else. I guess Amazon just didn't really have much penetration in payment terminals in general. Maybe a deal with clover or toast could have changed things.
- llsf 8mo agoI agree. And being Amazon might have created some reluctance for other retailers to adopt the technology. I wish Amazon could sell the tech to someone more neutral and have it deployed more broadly.
- Helithumper 8mo agoI found the palm payment at Whole Foods to be very convenient for the same reason as others in this thread. The steps without using Amazon One were * open the amazon app * open the checkout thing * click the QR code button * click the amazon QR code * Scan it * Open Apple Wallet * Pay I hope that they will at least add the amazon QR code to apple wallet to make payment faster in store. That or something to make payment (with Amazon Prime link) as fast as with Amazon One even while not continuing Amazon One itself. I wonder if they could use a NFC tag or something to quickly open the amazon app on your phone to pay or something?
- nickorlow 8mo agoCan they not just associate your debit/credit card w/ your account?
- jabroni_salad 8mo agoRight.... every independent coffee shop I go to is able to credit me a loyalty point when I hit their toast terminal with google wallet. If I am filling up at Shell I get my points as long as I use the linked credit card. Any other experience is an unforced error.
- bastawhiz 8mo agoThey have that option in the whole foods app
- davidmurphy 8mo agodownload the Whole Foods app. It solely exists to display the QR code on startup.
- llsf 8mo agoBut like OP mentioned, you need to reach for your phone, open it, open the app, show the QR code to scan it. As opposed to just wave your hand, to get your discounts, pay and get your points.
- 8mo ago
- yalogin 8mo agoThis was a terrible idea to begin with and am glad it’s discontinued. Hope they delete the biometric data securely.
- llsf 8mo agoI do not think they store any biometric data, they just compute a key out of the image. So, those keys are useless. Very difficult to create a fake living hand with all the living blood vessels with just a key.
- wiether 8mo agoMore details in their FAQ: https://aws.amazon.com/one/faqs/ https://aws.amazon.com/one/faqs/
- cmiles8 8mo agoThe tech here was good but the product implementation was terrible. These scanners just showed up randomly in places and just sat there unused. I literally both saw them all over and never actually saw anyone use it. No clear onboarding pathway, no explanation as to what it did or why use it, no clarity on what happens to the data. Just a box sitting there. It was as if all the focus was on the tech and nobody bothered to think about how to actually deploy a product to market.
- Izikiel43 8mo agoI used them in whole foods all the time
- Eric_WVGG 8mo agosincere, non-trolling question: Why? You clearly saw some value in the convenience. Smartphone and smartwatch NFC offers that convenience everywhere. Even setting up palm authentication feels like unnecessary work.
- atkailash 8mo agoI used it at Whole Foods cause it did my prime code and charged me at the same time without digging my phone out of my pocket but also my Whole Foods has bad reception so it’s annoying to use
- Eric_WVGG 8mo agoYou don't need reception of any kind to do an NFC payment, as long as the terminal has network access (even through ethernet). the Prime code thing is a good point tho
- stevewodil 8mo agoPrime discounts were automatically applied if you use the credit card on your Amazon account I thought
- munchler 8mo agoThis seemed like a bad idea to me from the beginning. Giving personal biometric details to a monster corporation is a nonstarter for both techies and normies.
- burnte 8mo agoExactly, this is why it failed. Suddenly in every Whole Foods is an Amazon device saying "give me your hand print!" Uh, no.
- llsf 8mo agoI agree in theory, but yet I have an iPhone, and Apple is managing my biometrics. I do not have Clear, or TSA preCheck, etc. but still my biometrics are in the US database. So, in practice, I am not sure if that is truly a non-starter for "normies" and even some "techies". I already gave up on my face biometrics living in US.
- closeparen 8mo agoYour biometrics are in the secure enclave of your specific phone. Apple doesn't have them in a database.
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoThey do have ways to access to them, which is the same thing in my book. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/809154/apple-silently-patched-zero-click-ios-1841-exploit-with-secure-enclave-theft/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/809154/apple-silen...
- closeparen 8mo agoI don't think this shows that at all?
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoHow else can you patch an exploit if you don't try it first? The first step in reverse engineering malware is to try the exploit in a controlled environment.
- mmmlinux 8mo agoThey must have collected enough bio-metric data, or deemed hand prints to be not useful.
- throwway120385 8mo agoOr they've proven that you can use vein patterns in human skin to positively identify individuals well enough that payment losses are an acceptable risk, and now they plan to just integrate that into their surveillance apparatus everywhere.
- kstrauser 8mo agoI was always surprised there wasn't an uproar about these. A substantial chunk of Americans, i.e. a huge portion of evangelicals, devoutly believe a few things: * The Bible book of "Revelations" is an accurate prediction of things that will happen exactly as described. * Revelations predicts that in "the end times", it will become impossible to buy or sell anything without "the mark of the beast" on their forehead or right hand. * The "mark of the beast" would be administered by the Antichrist. From Revelations 13:16-17: "And the second beast required all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name." I grew up in an extremely religious part of the US with a large evangelical population, and I know firsthand that a lot of people believe that all of the above is literally, precisely true. It's exactly what I was taught in Sunday School as a kid. I do not believe this; please don't feel the need to tell me why these ideas are not true because I already agree with you. However, a lot of my family and old neighbors would 100% agree with all of the above statements. And yet, they seemed to have no problem with buying stuff from Amazon with a palm print, or using Sam Altman's creepy Orb eye scanner thing. I'm genuinely surprised at how little fuss there was about them.
- gear54rus 8mo agoSo did you ask any of them about this? These religious lunacy always seem like they are from some other planet to me haha.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- kstrauser 8mo agoNo, that's not the kind of subject I'd typically bring up in conversation. That would imply that I wanted to hear the answer.
- 15155 8mo agoThey are a useful tool if you need to keep your civilization preoccupied and blissfully unaware of their current circumstances. Existential crises are expensive. "Keep working! The next life - that's when it gets good!"
- bokohut 8mo agoYet again another failed attempt to move to biometric identification linked to a payment instrument thus allowing one not to need to carry that payment method on person. This is not the worlds first biometric payments failure, as that belongs to PayByTouch, nor will it be the last. Having been deeply involved in the technology systems around the worlds first attempt at PayByTouch I do wonder why the "easy" is not embraced by more? I think I know however as it is likely religious in nature and the beliefs around such things. I can vividly recall being told to hide my employee badge while walking through the crowd of protesters holding signage about "Mark of the beast" and more in my attempts to enter the PayByTouch headquarters which used to reside at 1 Market in San Fran CA many years ago. Wash, rinse, repeat : Everything old is new again. Just give it time as biometric payments will come around once again for absolute, third times a charm?
- llsf 8mo agoI guess the "biometric identification linked to a payment instrument" issue is mostly trust. Do I trust the entity that identify me using biometrics ? Do I trust it with my biometric data ? If I link a payment method, do I trust it with access to my payment details ? With Amazon Go at WF, I was fine to let Amazon know and store my hand biometrics, and I was fine enough with Amazon know what I purchase at WF, as long as I had something back (loyalty program). Scaling this though would negatively impact the trust. Maybe I do not want Amazon to know "everything" I purchase everywhere (even though Visa/MC/Amex already know it...)
- wnevets 8mo agooh no! [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46781444#46782289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46781444#46782289
- maest 8mo ago> 403 ERROR > The request could not be satisfied. Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation. > Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront) Request ID: UoLb14OXMP21NeXt-jvgxvRHVY7LFDkZcFJU6hbH1xEsm4qqaOwD6g== Lol
- bastawhiz 8mo agoI've always wondered what the play was with these. I can tap my card. I can tap my phone. I never leave home without either of those. I can't use Amazon One online, it's purely a retail thing. I need the thing it's replacing in order to onboard. So... Why? If this came around on 2010, it would have been a hit. Maybe even 2015. Now, it's simply redundant, or something more nefarious (but I can't imagine how).
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> I can tap my card. I can tap my phone It was convenient in Whole Foods. Prime discount and payment together. Remembering to keep the card on file updated was annoying, though.
- bastawhiz 8mo agoIf you have the whole foods app, you can already scan the QR code for prime and pay in one action. And at CVS, I can use Google wallet to tap to use my loyalty card and pay. Amazon didn't have to invent a new thing.
- CobrastanJorji 8mo agoWasn't it obvious? One of Amazon's founding focuses was "make it stupidly easy to pay us." They went overboard to make it easy to buy things. The most obvious is their infamously patented "one click" purchasing, but there were lots of other things. For example, in the early days, they would let you create as many accounts with the same email address as you wanted because "sorry, an account with that email already exists" was an error that might keep you from purchasing. The Amazon stores were the ultimate physical expression of this ideal. Walk into a store, pick up what you want, wave your hand vaguely at a scanner, leave. If they could have reliably gotten your ID without your involvement at all, they would've done that instead, but the hand scanner was the closest they could come. There's nothing malicious about it. They just want you to be able to consume as easily as possible with as little friction or opportunities for second thoughts as possible.
- EngineerUSA 8mo agoI know someone that implanted it in their wrist lol.
- mzajc 8mo agoSite is either down or aggressively geoblocked, archive: https://archive.ph/LX5PG https://archive.ph/LX5PG
- arnmac 8mo agoI worked with a few customers on implementing this for some of our products. The customers never went live due to the eventual cost of the individual devices being more than they wanted to incur.