Is there a name for these types of "overbearing" and visually busy "TUIs"? It seems like all the other agents have the same aesthetic and it is unlike traditional nurses or plain text interfaces in a bad way IMO. The constant spinners, sidebars and needless margins are a nuisance to me. Especially over an ssh connection in a tmux session it feels wrong.
This assumes that govt and individual families are the only players in the game. Now as in other historical periods large corporations hold arguably more power than either of those groups and reining in govt leaves little obstacle to them consolidating even more power and wielding it globally.
The Ian's Secure Knot is what I've used for years and the only shoelace knot my kids were taught. Trivial modification of the usual bunny ears and hardly ever comes undone.
IANAL but I don't think it's so cut and dried that creating a crowdsourced map of publicly visible ice operations is illegal. Yes such a map could be used by illegal immigrants to avoid detention. It could also be used by law abiding citizens that want to avoid the hubbub these operations cause or by legal us citizens that don't wanna be targeted just for being in the neighborhood. It seems like a decent lawyer could make a case that publishing the location of an ice operation is not the same as acting with intent to interfere with the operation.
Do people really have problems with self-checkout? I use it all the time in box stores like Kroger, Walmart, Home Depot, etc. It seems to work just fine for me and doesn't add more than a minute or two vs just walking out of the store.
Self checkout is fine, if the happy path works. If everything scans once and doesn't accidentally scan a second time, if everything scans at the price you thought it was posted for, if you don't have any controlled substances requiring approval, if the weight sensor doesn't freak out incorrectly or from putting your bags on it, if it accepts any coupons you have, if it accepts and processes your payment method correctly.
If everything goes fine, self checkout is fine. But the exception handling process for any of those is thoroughly aggravating, as you wait and try to get the attention of the one overworked attendant dealing with a dozen of these machines constantly throwing exceptions, as the computer screams at you for whatever it thought you were doing wrong.
Yeah I agree that it can potentially go wrong but in my experience here in east TN the machines have gotten better to the point that hasn't happened for me in the past few years. Also it seems like the "just walk out" process would have more potential error modes but I never visited one.
The best machine I've seen so far is one in my local gas station, where there's just a surface and a camera. Toss whatever you want onto the surface, all haphazard like, check that the screen agrees with reality (it always has so far), and bump your watch/phone/credit card and walk out. We're talking substantially less than 30s, oftentimes less than 10s.
Yeah, I've been using self-checkout at my Jewel (grocery store) in Chicago weekly for about a decade (multiple times a week in the past, before I bought my own cart, I walk to it), and had maybe 5-10 issues with the scale in total. None recently.
I've had three failures in the last week. I had the "thought my bag was product" problem, the "I somehow double scanned" problem and the "need a reset but no one can explain why." The first and third were on the same visit.
Interesting! Thanks for the reality check. I personally like the home depot ones with the very prominent handheld scanner for big items. Hopefully it will keep improving. The days of waiting in line to check out were terrible and I don't want to go back.
Here in Germany, the newer generation self checkout terminals are fine. I use them all the time. No issues. The first generation ones were terrible.
The issue with the first generation was that they were too strict with bag placement, weight sensors, etc. They were impossible to use without having to call a very grumpy shop attendant to unlock them. Sometimes multiple times. They were grumpy because all this was technically user error but when a largish percentage of users run into the same issues over and over again, it gets really annoying to deal with.
They fixed most of the glaring UX issues with the newer generation. No weight sensors. No prompts to put the item in the bag it is already in, etc. The new ones basically only need people to unlock things like alcohol purchases, but are otherwise fine. The first generation was over engineered and had way too many failure modes. They still have them in some super markets but they are getting replaced with better ones.
Anyway, it's getting harder and harder to hire staff for supermarkets. These are low wage jobs and most of these people can get better paying jobs. Self checkout creates some opportunities for shop lifting of course. But that is offset by the wage savings. They compensate with security, cameras, etc.
The bag weight sensors was something I was very happy to see go away. I hated self checkouts for years because it was a miserable experience of it freezing every third item and requiring someone to come get it working again. I only realized this tech had changed when COVID forced me to try self checkout again and it was suddenly a very pleasant experience, though one I have to imagine causes a lot of shrink for stores.
If you find value in it, that's fine. I not only find value with interaction with the lovely checkout people, I dislike the cost of scanning and managing the items during checkout being my problem so a huge company can save money. If they were to implement a discount as a way to say "we'll pay you for your work to give us your money" I would consider it.
That's not to say the value of the convenience is never worth it. I exclusively use Sam's Club scan-and-go because the time I save is much larger than the publix/walmart/ect.
So much of the past decade has been the internet infecting the population with 19th century thinking like this. Alliances are a thing, and might makes right is something we have told ourselves for generations that we oppose. I am so tired of this nihilism dressed as edge.
Google really knew what they were doing by hiring Marc Levoy. The Google camera is the only thing keeping me from getting something other than a pixel phone.
It's not censorship to concede a point in a civil debate or discussion. Republicans used to debate better than the other side back when I often voted for them. But there is no room for this in maga. It is simply willful ignorance or arguing in bad faith and it helps no one.
Can you give an example of fraud that has been found by doge? If so it is to be commended, but I suspect they are just labelling stuff approved by congress and previous administrations fraud whenever they don't like it.
I can give an example. DOGE uncovered a plan to rebuild critical SSA infrastructure fraudulently and on an incredibly short timescale by giving it to the least competent people possible thanks to political nepotism [1].
