Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 627 posts

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

#361

Post by ryandrake »

gblargg wrote: post #101
AngryData wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not sure we should allow such premeditated charge stacking, it is just further weaponizing the law and fueling our prison industrial complex for zero gain to society. Who is to say many of those people wouldn't have stopped after being caught and charged the first time? Imagine if cops sat on the side of the road not pulling people over, just recording minor traffic offenses in a file, and then a year or so later…

I thought it was because the stores can't press charges if it's a small thing, so the only way they can bring any action is to build a case.

Stores don't decide whether to charge someone with a crime, the prosecutor does. They probably wait for small to become big because shoplifting a small amount doesn't reach a high enough bar to make prosecuting likely.

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

#362

Post by itsanaccount »

neilv wrote: post #76

I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks. The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up…

> at one upscale grocery chain > a chain pharmacy

so you're complaining, but also defending the position of the companies and intentionally refusing to name them.

its like you dont know you're in a class war here, and you'll be sick of these increasingly authoritarian practices until you fight back.

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

#363

Post by HankStallone »

ebiester wrote: post #354
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID is down from its peak, as I understand. It's just very much not gone, and by no means less nasty. We had the opportunity to wipe it out with a short, synchronised global lockdown, and we squandered it, and now it's like plague.

We never had that chance because you cannot coordinate 8 million people, much less 8 billion. And nobody was going to shut down all the coordination points of society such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and hospitals. The CDC knew this at the time. The "flatten the curve" message was "slow things down enough until we know more and can avoid our hospitals from being overwhelmed and more people dying."

True. Even in the strictest US states, the lockdowns were actually voluntary stay-at-home orders, because very few people could survive more than a few days without trips to get food, and there are a lot of necessary services that have to happen. Just for one small example, how many homes across the country need a plumber in a typical day, and would have sewage problems and disease eventually if plumbers weren't allowed to move around to do their work?

The idea that the virus ever could have been stopped if we'd just all cooperated harder was a retcon invented later by people who wanted to criticize other people for not caring as much as they did. The actual experts always said the best we could do was spread it out.

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

#364

Post by itsanaccount »

benchly wrote: post #139
neilv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less relevant, but reminds me of my all-time favorite grocery store LP encounter, near MIT. The chain was running this big promotion with lots of tear-open prize tickets that are either coupons or game board pieces, so I had been visiting often, to buy ramen noodles (one ticket per package!) and I had a small stack of coupons in my wallet. I was checking my coupons for this visit in the middle of a center aisle, and…

Appreciate the story, but what's the hangup about naming these companies? It's not really a secret that retail LP generally abuses their role across the board and allows prejudace to run rampant in its ranks, giving that it is almost entirely comprised of people from backgrounds that lack any higher education and recieved a few months training at best to do what they do. Heck, step in any active American mall and you…

> what's the hangup about naming these companies?

Without snark I think we're on a site where being anti-corporate could hurt someones stock investments, naming companies is seen as rude.

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

#365

Post by bitwize »

ebiester wrote: post #354
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID is down from its peak, as I understand. It's just very much not gone, and by no means less nasty. We had the opportunity to wipe it out with a short, synchronised global lockdown, and we squandered it, and now it's like plague.

We never had that chance because you cannot coordinate 8 million people, much less 8 billion. And nobody was going to shut down all the coordination points of society such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and hospitals. The CDC knew this at the time. The "flatten the curve" message was "slow things down enough until we know more and can avoid our hospitals from being overwhelmed and more people dying."

New Zealand had about 5 million people, and PM Ardern successfully implemented a total lockdown that drove new COVID cases to effectively zero. Then she was voted out, and per Aurynn Shaw the plague ships were let back in.

It can be done. It just requires leadership, discipline, and the willingness to take strict, decisive, politically unpopular measures against violators and spreaders of misinformation. As Schwarzenegger said, when there's a pandemic on, screw your freedoms.

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

#366

Post by ryandrake »

Izkata wrote: post #327
jolmg wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out. I've seen this sentiment in recent years, but with respect to time, self-checkout was always faster than human cashiers. You didn't need to wait while the cashiers did procedures like counting the money in the drawer and waiting for a supervisor to sign-o…

Also, self-checkout itself is faster here anyway. We don't have baggers, so in the cashier lanes you have to unload onto the conveyor and put your items into the bags yourself, with some awkward maneuvering since the register is between the conveyor and the bagging area. In self-checkout unloading and bagging is combined into one action: Lift item from cart, pass over scanner on the way to the bags, place in bag, and…

I think self check-out is only faster if you compare it to really, really slow checkout clerks with no dedicated bagger. I've been in grocery stores with fantastic checkout staff where 100 items were checked out and bagged in a minute and a half. Ain't no way I'm going to achieve that rate standing by myself there over a tiny kiosk where I need to find a bag, put every item into bags before scanning the next one.

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

#367

Post by llm_nerd »

no_wizard wrote: post #324
neilv wrote: post #76

I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks. The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up…

Wage theft is the largest form of theft in retail, out numbering shoplifting by a good margin. Perhaps loss prevention should look at management for the stolen money

These are orthogonal. Maybe we should have max enforcement in both? Indeed, seems like separate groups should be enforcing both?

However I suspect it's also an outdated claim. Shoplifting and other merchandise loss has exploded. In the past five years it has increased 100%+ in many areas. It has almost been normalized where some groups will proudly boast about how they've scammed and stole, especially at self checkouts.

I have zero problem with max enforcement. I'm not a thief and if you have a thousand AI cameras tracking my every move through the store, I simply do not care. I also don't see a particularly slippery slope about systems that highlight the frequent thieves. Further I appreciate that retail operates at a pretty thin margin, so every penny they save (both on labour and by catching/preventing thefts) is actually good for law abiding society. So more of it, please.

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

#368

Post by cryptonector »

bevhill wrote: post #317
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go Did I just step into a time portal to 2022? Have you... been in a coma for the past several years? haha

Peak COVID never ended. It's more important now than ever to stay vaccinated, maintain social distance, and mask up.

sarcasm detector broken

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

#369

Post by ryandrake »

itake wrote: post #162
AidenVennis wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is the same for the USA, but worker shortage is the main reason why self-checkout became popular here in Europe at least. Aging population, very low birthrate and higher educated people all contributed to this problem (although not for all countries in the EU).

In the USA, the self checkout line is easily 5x faster than the human line. Cities are growing, but the size or number of grocery stores is not.

This is only true because of having to wait in line for the checkout personnel. Once you get to the person, if they're even reasonably skilled, they can check out your groceries faster than you can.

My local grocery store has something like 15 checkout aisles, and usually only have one or two open. If they manned each aisle, there would be no wait and self checkout would be pointless. But they are not going to staff properly because the CEO needs another yacht.

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

#370

Post by tehwebguy »

hollerith wrote: post #337
MisterTea wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? They do not want to confront trash bag man for good reason. What happened is people who don't give a fuck and have no problem with using violence realized there's nothing stopping them from loading up bags of goods and walking out of the store. "Oh you want to stop me? just try mother fucker." Even so called security gua…

>Even so called security guards want no part of trash bag man because there is a high chance of violence and most humans do not want to engage with that. There are plenty of reliable young men who enjoy engaging in violence and will take low-paid jobs in store security. (There are many more who don't actively enjoy it, but don't mind engaging in it and consider being competent at violence an important part of being a…

Or maybe they just don’t want any violence in their stores at all? I will avoid shopping somewhere that has regular ass whoopings way more than I would avoid shopping somewhere with regular shoplifting.
Post reply on HN