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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

#301

Post by bee_rider »

randallsquared wrote: post #220
closewith wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put the criminals in prison. Do it often enough, and shoplifting ceases to be a problem of plague-like proportions. Big fan of accountability and immediate personal consequences and enforcing the law. This just doesn't work. A high-trust society cannot be built by force. > I am fatigued of the suicidal and deleterious empathy of those in charge who refuse to take second-order effects into account. The irony here is…

> This just doesn't work. A high-trust society cannot be built by force. To badly quote Mead, "It's the only thing that ever has". If the incentives are such that defecting becomes less attractive, defection will decrease.

I don’t think that’s what a high trust society is. In fact, I’m pretty sure the whole point of the thing is that people in a high trust society don’t defect even when they don’t think they’ll get caught, because they understand that not-defecting is part of the bargain everybody is engaging in to keep the good thing going.

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

#302

Post by cooper_ganglia »

closewith wrote: post #149
bmn__ wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Put the criminals in prison. Do it often enough, and shoplifting ceases to be a problem of plague-like proportions. Big fan of accountability and immediate personal consequences and enforcing the law. This just doesn't work. A high-trust society cannot be built by force. > I am fatigued of the suicidal and deleterious empathy of those in charge who refuse to take second-order effects into account. The irony here is…

A high-trust society cannot be built any way other than force!

Once you've removed the dredges of society (by force), all of the good, law-abiding citizens have better lives.

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

#303

Post by DaSHacka »

black_knight wrote: post #122
Ekaros wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why we are even using it anymore? Why not then close down all the prisons? If there is no deterrent effect or rehabilitation effect. Wouldn't it be greater savings just to close it all down and let everyone out?

Yes.

Lol, I'm all for letting them all out in whatever county you live in, at least.

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

#304

Post by Scoundreller »

rovr138 wrote: post #185
stephen_g wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed at supermarkets here that of the dozens of times those 'you haven't scanned something' warnings have come up, only one time the item hadn't actually scanned when I thought it had. Every other time has been a false positive for me. They're pretty dodgy, the workers always seem pretty frustrated with it as they go around clearing them for people (sometimes a handful of people waiting, falsely accused by th…

The worst part for me is when they prevent you from scanning the same item twice. Yes, I want 2 boxes of cereal. I just find it easier to go to a cashier.

Or the ones that prevent you from scanning item2 until you bag item1.

Wastes a lot of time for those of us working with >=2 hands.

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

#305

Post by flir »

4ggr0 wrote: post #206
benchly wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 negative…

The opposite position gets downvoted too. (By me, for a start). But it's also more likely to be deleted as being out-and-out offensive, so if you're a casual reader maybe you don't see it as much?

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

#306

Post by aaronbaugher »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #166
ruszki wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK improving on poverty is a more effective approach.

It's not mutually exclusive. Just because poverty exists you shouldn't legalize theft, as that hurts both business and the community as a whole, since nobody wants to run a business and create jobs where there's a lot of crime so then the entire community spirals down into a shithole.

Yep. Eventually the businesses shut down the stores that have too much theft to be profitable; then people complain about problems like food deserts and accuse the businesses of isms; then well-meaning people elect politicians who promise to make it all better; then the politicians use tax breaks, sweetheart deals, and social pressure to get the businesses to open stores in those areas again.

The cycle continues because we can't learn a lesson that sticks for more than a generation, and the next generation thinks it'll be better this time because they care more than their parents did.

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

#307

Post by flir »

hopelite wrote: post #205
immibis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

What makes you think the arrow of causality doesn't go homelessness->drugs?

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

#308

Post by ruszki »

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.

According to this for example, the correlation is significant: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

Also it’s absolutely not prevailing in America. Especially in a European sense.

But even when you push to a good direction, it can be misleading. Like Portugal legalised hard drug usage, but they slashed funds of organisations helping to drug addicts. Of course, you will have a problem after a while (and they have now), even when decriminalisation is a good step. But politicians can pretend that that’s the “prevailing view”, while they just make some pretexts to point their finger to the “prevailing view”.

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

#309

Post by fluoridation »

DaSHacka wrote: post #299
fluoridation wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company chooses to allow the thefts to continue unimpeded, why should it be anyone else's problem? Like, if someone walks into your home, picks up some items from your shelf, makes eye contact with you, and walks off, and you let them keep doing that over time, at some point you're just consenting to it. I think if you tried to sue them after they stole some arbitrary threshold, a judge would be right to ask w…

Hence why this very post is about the method those companies are using to prevent such theft (in this case, facial recognition).

This subthread is not about the use of such a technology, but about Home Depot tracking a customer to build a prosecution case over time. So, no, they're not using it to prevent theft, they're using it to punish theft they've allowed.

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

#310

Post by flir »

DaSHacka wrote: post #277
Henchman21 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is your empathy for your fellow man?

Empathy for the criminals making the rest of us deal with these increasingly patronizing technologies? But don't worry, I'm sure they stole that Milwaukee drill set to eat it, and only shoplift the bare necessities.

>>fellow man

>criminals

Nice bit of dehumanizing language there.

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