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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • It’s faster until you need the human operator to keep coming over because the anti-theft sensors keep getting tripped up by false positive readings. Or you need to find some vegetable code that a normal cashier has memorized.

    Self checkout is great when it’s done well, and total shit when poorly executed. And unfortunately, it’s not always just a matter of technology (which normally keeps improving); it’s often a matter of business model: sometimes customer convenience is really important, other times loss prevention (which creates frustration) is more important.

    I’ve seen countless good self-checkout experiences backslide into crap experience because the business felt that a controlled client is more profitable than a convenienced client.


  • Driving off with the rental car is a fine analogy if we were comparing this to not returning a DVD you rented.

    But this is not that. And that is kind of the point.

    Piracy is a breach of contract for sure. The point the author is trying to make is that our current licensing contracts around media are out of touch with the social contract (you pay for something, you get it).

    Hence the moral hazard. So companies will flaunt the social contract (like in the case of Sony) with impunity but will get rightous as soon as people flaunt the legal contract. It’s a double standard, where all the power is in the hands of those with the biggest legal department.

    You can’t define “theft” untill you first define justice. And if consumers and media holders can’t even agree to a just system, then why bother categorizing anything as theft at all?



  • There’s a fine line between deserving of being scammed because of who they are and consequences of actions or inaction and it’s important we do not cross that line.

    People have to take some responsibility to think critically about the content they consume. If people are not capable of consuming content responsibly, perhaps they should not consume content at all.

    The alternative is policing content itself, and that is a very dangerous place to be for a whole host of other reasons.