171–180 of 183 posts
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I'd like to think so. A grainy, CCTV at a gas station with ZERO FACIAL RECOGNITION is not correlated and crossed check with my passport photo or physical movements.
CCTVs don’t have to be grainy and low-res anymore. Recording 4K video and storing a finite amount of it is getting cheaper every day.
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That’s not the right comparison. What you want to compare is how long it takes at a staffed queue vs an unstaffed one once you get to the front of the line (for the same purchase). Things might be faster now with the unmanned ones, but the contention is that that’s only because they opened more checkout terminals. Granted, they wouldnt have done that with staffed ones because of the increased expense, but let’s not g…
This seems like a faulty comparison. Space for registers is naturally limited. A single traditional register is replaced by 3 self-checkouts at my local grocery stores. Usually they opt for 6x self checkout replacing two traditional registers, manned by a single employee who can help with problems. In these cases it's not a question of staffing, but of space and the increase in space efficiency.
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And inbound is only because they have installed kiosks that they guide everyone to. Otherwise if you go to a CBP agent they don't take your photo if you're a US passport holder. The kiosks are an end-run around tradition/rules about how CBP can treat Americans.
> they don't take your photo if you're a US passport holder This is very much in the "you don't have to go through the body scanners" at the airport category. By default they take your photo and fingerprint, even if you're a US citizen; the specific language on CBP's website is: "At this time, CBP does not require U.S. Citizens to have their photos captured when entering or exiting the country. U.S. Citizens who requ…
Photo, yes; fingerprint, no. Every customs station I've been through when re-entering the US has taken photos but not fingerprints. (They do require fingerprints from non-US-citizens.)
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Per item? Sure. For small numbers of items, counting time spent waiting? Heck no, I regularly get through self-checkout much faster than people who get into a regular queue, in no small part because there's often a few times more self-checkout scanners than there are open checkouts. When you have a full cart or two, the speedier scanning at a traditional checkout pays off. But usually both are available, not just sel…
Not round here. The big Tesco nearby has a single combined queue for all the 20 or so self-scan checkouts. They are rarely all in service. With a few items it is now always faster to go to an operator checkout unless you go in at 4am. The express lanes of "under 10 items" or "cash only" are a memory of a former, much faster time. There is often an employee aggressively marshalling people to the self-scan checkouts at…
>> “It doesn’t matter,” Maryland resident Kim Meekins said of not being informed ahead of time. “You go to different airports and they do different things depending on their technology. If it’s another safety measure to make sure everyone has a safe flight, I’m all for whatever. I didn’t need to be notified ahead of time.” "I'm all for whatever"! The hell does one engage rationally with that ?
Frequent fliers are business people, professional people. They fly all the time to get things done. Very unlikely to care about privacy issues. They most likely use several cloud services with no worry at all. These are the majority of people in the world. HN is a bubble.
> These are the majority of people in the world. HN is a bubble.
Yep. We're past the point of caring. The frog has been slowly boiled.
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This seems like a faulty comparison. Space for registers is naturally limited. A single traditional register is replaced by 3 self-checkouts at my local grocery stores. Usually they opt for 6x self checkout replacing two traditional registers, manned by a single employee who can help with problems. In these cases it's not a question of staffing, but of space and the increase in space efficiency.
Space comes with a price too. If you ignore all costs, a traditional checkout that is read when you walk up is probably faster most of the time vs an available self-checkout.
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>> Self-checkout is all about cutting labor hours, period. That is exactly the case. If you pay 10$ an hour for 3 shifts 8 hours each, this makes 3x8x10 = $240 a day. That is $7200 in 30 days per one checkout spot. To setup equipment for self-checkout and maintain it order of magnitude cheaper compared to self checkout. Another factor is eliminating managerial overhead while dealing with human beings, as one store ma…
Oh they can be rude to customers all right! And their attitude - push this button! Scan again! Put that item back on the scale! Alert! Alert! I despise them with every fibre of my being.
Self-checkouts trade one kind of unhappiness for another, and many (most?) are horrifying experiences. There are a few that are reasonably quick and user-friendly, but certainly not all. Most seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel in an effort to squeeze a few more $ off the purchase price.
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Per item? Sure. For small numbers of items, counting time spent waiting? Heck no, I regularly get through self-checkout much faster than people who get into a regular queue, in no small part because there's often a few times more self-checkout scanners than there are open checkouts. When you have a full cart or two, the speedier scanning at a traditional checkout pays off. But usually both are available, not just sel…
That’s not the right comparison. What you want to compare is how long it takes at a staffed queue vs an unstaffed one once you get to the front of the line (for the same purchase). Things might be faster now with the unmanned ones, but the contention is that that’s only because they opened more checkout terminals. Granted, they wouldnt have done that with staffed ones because of the increased expense, but let’s not g…
Maybe if you're selling a checkout system. Personally I care how fast I can go from "got things" to "left building". (or maybe more accurately: left home -> returned home, but that has a lot more variables)
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This seems like a faulty comparison. Space for registers is naturally limited. A single traditional register is replaced by 3 self-checkouts at my local grocery stores. Usually they opt for 6x self checkout replacing two traditional registers, manned by a single employee who can help with problems. In these cases it's not a question of staffing, but of space and the increase in space efficiency.
Agreed that space is a part of the comparison, but what I've seen is that although they put 3 checkouts in the y-axis space of a single staffed lane, they end up having to use up almost 3 times as much space in the x-axis to allow people to pass each other, which simply isn't necessary to allow in a staffed lane. So I don't believe the amount of space is that different.
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> The real benefit... It is possible for there to be multiple benefits. In fact this is the most desirable, since when there is an immediate economic benefit to both sides, it is incentivized to happen. In the case of supermarket self-scanning, sure, the supermarket can reduce costs. However, the benefit to the customer is in a shorter total time through checkout. Entropy causes customers to arrive at checkouts in sp…
> On the other hand, the cost of maintaining extra self-checkout machines costs very little. So in practice, they tend to be available to handle spurts of activity If only! At the (UK) Tesco metro near my workplace, the staff have this insane habit of keeping half or fewer of the available self-checkout machines in operation. The rest of them have a big symbol like a stop-sign and are unusable. Only if a big queue bu…