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Joined 1 year 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.


  • The carbon sequestered in the earth in the form of coal, oil and gas hasn’t always been in the earth. After all, hydro carbons are in fact hundreds of millions of years of dead trees buried under mud sequestering atmospheric CO2. Which implies there was a time with all that CO2 in the air yet still trees to capture it. By releasing it all, we reset the biosphere’s clock to about a time when earth supported a different kind of life (one without us in it), but life nonetheless.

    Frankly, the comparisons to Mars and Venus seem a bit overblown.


  • 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?


  • Cataloging individual DNA data casually at a massive scale opens the door for massive genetic discrimination of all kinds, from discriminatory health insurance premiums and hiring discrimination to aparthied, eugenics, and genocide. “Don’t be silly that’ll never happen here.” Is the height of affluent arrogance.

    Humans have proven themselves to be fully capable of these horrors, it is just a matter of time until it happens again, and when we create tools of consolidated power-- just like IBM created machines that enabled Nazi concentration camps–we only increase the chance of enabling some deranged element of society oto repeat these catastrophic horrors.

    All that downside just so we can consume 15 minutes of dopamine.





  • SkyNTP@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.worldEuropean Union Presses Ahead with Article 45
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    11 months ago

    It’s stupid shit like this why regulation is not the answer to big tech. But then we wouldn’t need regulation if big tech didn’t ruin all that was good about the Internet to begin with.

    People are the problem. At large scale they turn everything to shit. Both in the private sector and in the public sector. Both meddling, making decisions on your behalf. In all cases taking your power away. It was better when we were just small communities, suffering and learning from the consequences of our own actions.







  • Am I throwing away all my mice, keyboards, DAC, digital pens, and other peripherals just so I can have a connector with more bandwidth than I’ll ever need? Nah.

    Am I buying them or adapters all over again just so I can be compatible with a new universal standard that I don’t need? Double nah.

    KVM switches, or breakout hubs that these devices plug into, then a single USB c device goes to the computer is the most logical avenue for a migration. But this will take a long time. Most people don’t even have that kind of luxury.




  • 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.