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Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

bbc.co.uk

311–320 of 428 posts

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#311
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My store will shop for you, and deliver to your car. So if you value the time, that's a solution here.

You still have to make an order for everything you need and then go to the store to collect it. So the only time you really save here is the difference between collecting stuff from the physical shelves and the online counterpart. Cant imagine that being more than a couple of minutes of saved time for me.

That was the comment being responded to. That it takes an app to find stuff. Which is onerous and presumably takes more than a couple of minutes.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Danish parallel to BankId - NemID / MitID is also partly owned by the banking cartel: https://digst.dk/it-loesninger/mitid/partnerskabet/ It is a curious construction; we wouldn't accept a personal id card issued / owned by banks but for the digital equivalent we do so with little debate.

Banks issued ID cards in Sweden for decades. Source: I worked as a teller and knew the procedure. Passports only became legal IDs in the last decade or so.

Even then you usually needed a letter proving your identity (personbevis) from the government, right? So the bank was not the arbiter of "who was who", but issued the ID cards.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#313
post #186
post #162

There will be a market for both automated and manned grocery stores in the future. Until we have developed artificial general intelligence, I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. In stores with a reasonably wide selection of goods, I usually have to ask for the location of at least one thing. Although locating stuff _could_ be solved by looking it up with an app, I would…

I like your sentiment but you are here on HN so assuming you are somewhere with food and an internet connection. Life is good. I see people around me begging on Facebook from the public library internet connection for cans to return so they can eat. They won’t care for one second about a human in the store they only care about getting the cheapest food they can. These automated stores I can really see being a hit esp…

I seriously doubt they are cost-saving. Small volume, expensive electronics, remote location == higher prices, not lower?

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is growing awareness that this service should not be run by private companies/banks. At risk of sounding snarky, I'm growing in awareness that the anonymous nature of paper money and coin had a lot of advantages. I would be unhappy if the only option for groceries in my area required me to strongly identify myself to shop there.

Why? Why are you worried about disclosing how much milk and eggs you buy? I know this is the age old "I have nothing to hide" argument but I truly am curious why people are so afraid of saying where they're travelling (train tickets) or what they're buying (shops). Don't you think that once that dystopian future comes - when that info might be used against you - we'll have much worse things to worry about?

Its not the milk and eggs its the condoms and birth control.

Its the data on why you suddenly stopped buying alcohol after buying a pregnancy test a month before.

Who works at the store? Your former teacher? A prior fling? A neighbor? Does it matter when it can all be leaked with everyones data by a hacker anywhere when the ransom isn't paid by the store?

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're going to have an extremely difficult time in Sweden. The same system is used for online banking, paying you taxes, verifying online purchases, accessing online pharmacies and medical systems, and using online doctors. I'm sure there's a dozen more services that I'm forgetting that use BankID.

I read it's also required to book an appointment to get the covid vaccine

Yeah, that's be part of what I meant by online medical systems. It'd be required for booking any type of medical appointment online.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#316
post #202

The BankID service seems to trip up many people here. Swedish residents have a personal identity number issued at birth or immigration. Format: YYYYMMDD-NNNN. More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed... BankID is a service run by the Swedish banks that interfaces with the banks, individuals and third parties (like this chain of unmanned stores). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID T…

> There is growing awareness that this service should not be run by private companies/banks. I don't agree. I'm a Swede too (as I assume you are), and I have basically never heard anyone complain of BankID being owned by the banks. I am really happy that our government does not own BankID, since they suck badly at developing software.

It is an issue that digital identification in Sweden is run by a single private company. The drawbacks are not clearly seen from a consumer standpoint, but they do charge service providers for each login, and can set their prices freely since it's a monopoly.

They also have rules against being logged in for too long, and against identity transfer (directly or indirectly using BankID to authenticate for a different login method) [1], since that would result in fewer BankID logins and less revenue for them.

One result of the latter restriction is that any letters containing authentication codes need to be sent by physical mail, since all digital mailboxes such as Kivra and the government-run "Min myndighetspost" support login by BankID. The University Admissions service (antagning.se) were forced to stop sending codes through digital mailboxes due to this [2].

[1]: https://twitter.com/antagningse/status/1178957770978140160

[2]: https://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.643894/skatteverket-s...

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks issued ID cards in Sweden for decades. Source: I worked as a teller and knew the procedure. Passports only became legal IDs in the last decade or so.

Even then you usually needed a letter proving your identity (personbevis) from the government, right? So the bank was not the arbiter of "who was who", but issued the ID cards.

Correct, but banks were responsible for devising security features etc.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#318
post #306
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting is that this is not Amazon Go. Customers have to be honest and scan items. We're not civilized enough here in the US for such nice things.

I'm not so sure it's a matter of civilization - it's more a matter of infrastructure: The other piece of the puzzle is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Enforcement_Authority Basically the government runs debt collection in Sweden. They have the ability to withdraw money from your bank account. All of this is enabled by every resident having a (public) personal identity number.

Meanwhile in California people can steal from physical stores with impunity [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/HmOIQv0yu-U?t=480

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#319

I worked in a supermarket for a while and there was plenty of old people who came to that shop almost daily just to interact with another human being.

I used to shop daily when I was poor.

Shopping daily does not implies being poor, I'd argue its mostly cultural, for example, many Japanese prefer to buy daily and keep low stocks on their pantries.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Why are you worried about disclosing how much milk and eggs you buy? I know this is the age old "I have nothing to hide" argument but I truly am curious why people are so afraid of saying where they're travelling (train tickets) or what they're buying (shops). Don't you think that once that dystopian future comes - when that info might be used against you - we'll have much worse things to worry about?

the actual dystopian future is corporates have so much data they have collected for years that they don't know what to do with it. so the most likely scenario is even if data will be collected on you, nobody will be able to use it in any meaningful way

Why would people not use the data? Would they stop having questions?
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