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Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

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Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#201

Post by amanaplanacanal »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #25
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drive to the store, pick things up off the shelf, carry them all around the store, take them to my car, drive home, bring them into the house, but moving the items twelve inches across a bar code reader is "work"? I need some low paid worker to do that trivial part so I can feel some sort of status of having been served?

No, it's to offload the burden/liability of being accused of shoplifting. If a cashier messes up, it's on the store. If you do, it's on you. Thanks but I'm not willing to assume that liability with little benefit to me.

I use self checkout all the time and have never been accused of shoplifting. Other stores in other neighborhoods might be different, and I wouldn't be surprised if skin color makes a difference too.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#202

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

npteljes wrote: post #199
apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try unloading an entire cart and scanning each one individually and putting it back, after spending a tiring hour shopping. I will be very surprised if you still feel the same.

Do you not do the same with a cashier? (This is getting tangential, but I do exactly what you describe, and I really appreciate that I can do it on my terms, without having to accommodate three other people: the one in front of me, the cashier, and the one next in line.)

I was thinking of Costco, where loads are big and they do a good part of it for you, except for the smaller stuff.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#203

Post by giraffe_lady »

andy99 wrote: post #173
ruszki wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK improving on poverty is a more effective approach.

Is there evidence of that? That seems to have been the prevailing view over the last many years, and it's not clear to me that it's improved anything. There seems to be more homeless camps, more petty crime, more drugs.

Where do you live where that's the prevailing view? Where I am police funding has increased year after year for decades, and people are routinely prosecuted and jailed for petty offenses. For the most part bmn's position is the prevailing view, they have already gotten what they're asking for and it has failed to achieve those goals. At what point are we going to acknowledge the evidence and try something else.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#204

Post by distances »

conductr wrote: post #124
novok wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if your dealing with forgetful / tech confused old people. Now your putting 75 year olds in jail when a sooner alerting system would've made them notice if they were not using it correctly.

I'm not a trained cashier, if I forget to scan something it's not the same as theft. Not sure how it would play out in a court situation but this is always my go-to when I get accused of fucking something up in the store; also why I decline the receipt check at the door (legal in my state). Most professional cashiers are only trained in one merchant's POS. Suddenly, me a layman consumer is supposed to be a flawless o…

It's thankfully still an option not to use self-checkouts. I sometimes do that if I have one item only, but basically always queue to an actual cashier.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#205

Post by hopelite »

immibis wrote: post #175
andy99 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there evidence of that? That seems to have been the prevailing view over the last many years, and it's not clear to me that it's improved anything. There seems to be more homeless camps, more petty crime, more drugs.

Is it rich people in the homeless camps?

Then you are looking at it from a totally wrong perspective anyways, just like most people do. The homeless encampments are full of people with mental illness challenges and/or in one or another way related to drugs. It is why I cannot stand drug use apologists and drug dealer/traffickers defenders that at the same time lament poverty and homelessness.

The poverty is not the cause, it is the symptom of the system’s rot. Especially when you compare other countries and societies that are poorer, but have far fewer of those problems and less crime. Drug addiction is not cheap.

The irony is that your very perspective is the very kind of mentality that has led to the circumstances where we can’t do anything about it even if we wanted to, while the powerful and rich simply do a cost benefit analysis of it because of that and conclude it is easier to, e.g., import replacements for the humans that have been destroyed by drugs and mental illness, which then also drives down the wages/salaries, and drives up the costs of living and drives up the profits of the rich you blame. It’s a kind of “the blind men and an elephant” problem. You keep scratching at the scabs of your self-inflicted cuts, but they don’t seem to be healing.

It really always astonished me that even here, in a community of people in a domain where logic is necessary there is still this stranglehold of irrational proto-religious, emotion based belief and dogma.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#206

Post by 4ggr0 »

benchly wrote: post #177
4ggr0 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As an aside, this is not the first time I've seen a discussion (mine and your comments) about racism downvoted on HN. It makes me question the crowd I'm attempting to mingle with, here. I get that the site is primarily concerned interesting tech-related things, but if anyone thinks that we can just avoid politics, social and economic issues that tend to surround those things once in awhile, they're delusional.

i noticed the same, my comment was at 0 votes for a moment and yours was even greyed out. also can confirm that it's not the first time i see a discussion talking about social justice which gets downvoted.

> if anyone thinks that we can just avoid politics

some people still don't understand that everything is political. if you think something isn't, then you're just not in the part of the population which is negatively affected by it. it being whatever.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#207

Post by ryukoposting »

itake wrote: post #163
idiomat9000 wrote: post #94

I want to be paid in rebates for working at self checkout.

I'm paid in shorter checkout times for working at self checkout.

I have yet to encounter a self-checkout system competent enough to actually speed up the experience.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#208

Post by eth0up »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #182
eth0up wrote: post #20

I frequent the Home Despot and Lowe Life's, until recently, traditionally favoring the Home Despot. The last two visits revealed the complete elimination of checkout lines and the appearance of a new cluster of self service registers with a new orientation perpendicular to the old lines. As I stood before the register, looking at the large monitor, I watched my dehumanized face beleaguered by green lines. I realized…

Your experience, or your perception of it, clearly made you feel like you were the main character in a dystopian thriller - what's not to like?

[flagged]

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#209

Post by codingdave »

fercircularbuf wrote: post #165
kjkjadksj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shoplifters don’t care. Look at any hardware section at homedepot. Half the bags are ripped open. Try and find some stock they say is there online. Its not it already got stolen. The registers is not where they need to be combatting theft. It is everywhere else in that store.

As someone living in Japan, the sheer number of instances of theft in your description shocks me. Is this that common there?

Nope, I've never seen anything like that. To be fair, I'm sure some stores have higher crime rates than others, and just knowing human nature, people whose experiences are pleasant and uneventful probably aren't taking time to share anecdotes about their local stores.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#210

Post by mattlondon »

The people at the checkouts are typically not the ones stealing things.

There is a bit of a spate here in the UK where just walk in, literally empty shelves into bags and walk out. Some security guards or assistants try to intervene, but apparently some security guards (e.g. ones at apple stores) are told not to try and intervene so really what's the point?

The plot twist for this though is that the police are increasingly using "facial recognition vans" to spot people walking around in town centers and apprehending them for thefts from stores, sometimes months previously since they have CCTV footage of them doing it. One hopes there is more evidence than just a hit on the facial ID database as we all know how inaccurate and biased they can be.

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