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

Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 356 posts

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#131

Post by lotsofpulp »

ryandrake wrote: post #128
xenocratus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plus, if you see somebody stealing food, no, you didn't Don't tell me, in your view the cost of shoplifting is begrudgingly covered by those evil rich people who own everything, right? It's not passed down to customers, and therefore affects those who obey rules, and especially those who are in a precarious financial situation to begin with, right?

I don't understand why we'd defend a megacorporation. Both the corporation and the shoplifter can be wrong.

The business is not wrong for choosing to use automation. Everyone does it every day, and it is not considered "wrong".

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#132

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

neuralkoi wrote: post #118
Aboutplants wrote: post #29

I was in college when self checkout became a thing and it took us all of about 45 seconds to realize that you could just check everything out as bananas. Steak was weighed and priced at 4011 (banana code) as the stoned teenager cashier paid no attention. Everything on the receipt was literally Bananas

Yesterday I went to Walmart, and at the self-checkout the system quirked out and an attendant came by. She reviewed some sort of draconian overhead cam video of me trying to locate a tag out for a product to scan. Gave me "guilty until proven" innocent vibes. Are these systems actually effective?

Sam's club has 'the arch', and one time when I did self checkout I did miss an item (thought I scanned it and I didn't apparently) and so far that's the only time they've actually checked the cart, the rest I was just waved through.

So seems pretty good. Obviously erring on the side of having an employee double check makes sense when their profit margins are generally single digits. One missed tshirt means they lost money on your $300 cart.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#133

Post by doctorpangloss »

gavinray wrote: post #63
hnburnsy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video was staged, at Target electronics need to be paid for in the electronics department where there is no self-check out. In addition Target has the best Loss Prevention in the business, including let shoplifters continue until they accumulate enough goods that their crime is a felony.

Partner spent a significant time working at Target, can confirm Their Loss Prevention is so advanced that FBI has collaborated with them for case help https://thehorizonsun.com/features/2024/04/11/the-target-for... I also worked there briefly in my teens, they are a great employer.

they have the best marketed loss prevention: by getting nerds to talk about, people are like, ooo i shouldn't shoplift at target

of course, without any real data, how would anyone know?

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#134

Post by estimator7292 »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #66
petterroea wrote: post #55

It's always funny when people publish source code and have a disclaimer saying "You CANNOT use it for bad!". When is the last time a criminal read such a disclaimer and thought "Oh right, guess this isn't for me"? Sure, at least the developer can say they did say so, but it doesn't matter. To me it seems more like avoiding responsibility. You published the tool, and by doing so you changed the world, even minutely, a…

What would you prefer they say?

Presumably they want nobody to ever publish or even explore "bad" things.

Because as we all know, if something "bad" is possible, but no one has published a GitHub about it, no one will ever be able to do the bad thing! Society is saved at last!

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#135

Post by the_sleaze_ »

Hilliard_Ohiooo wrote: post #108
culi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, grocery stores made record profits during covid. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of an "open sourced" grocery store that's extremely transparent about every detail. Think electronic price tags that give you a complete breakdown of the cost of an item, cost of labor, cost to account for "loss", over/under-supply, etc. I feel like there's a niche out there for hyperinformed consumers

That's basically Costco, the price they pay is what you pay, the system paired down to bare necessities, and it is incredibly popular.

Costco mandates a maximum of 11% margin on goods in the store and aggressively monitor suppliers on that cost.

One of the reasons I like costco actually 10% or so is a fine margin to pay.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#136

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

bombcar wrote: post #83
manarth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most self-checkouts I've come across have weight validation – "Unexpected item in the bagging area". Categorising things as "bananas" tricks the checkout into accepting the weight of an item, and you pay the appropriate price per bananagram.

You can build a socioeconomic graph of the country by how anal the unexpected item in the bagging area sensors are. Some places will detect a fly farting on the damn scale, others can take three or four kids climbing on it before it complains.

The walmart near me apparently doesn't even use the scale at all, I had a full cart once and asked the attendant what to do, and they said just put the bag back in the cart.

The grocery store down the street though is exactly like this, gotta stack everything up on the scale to make it happy.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#137

Post by nilamo »

xenocratus wrote: post #120
GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if a store does not want to hire capable staff to perform an essential function, they should not expect laypeople to perform that action for free (or at higher cost, as we've seen with grocery prices in the US as human cashiers are reduced) at the same level as a trained staff member. we do not have to accept this decision to reduce staff and raise prices as a matter of course. plus, if you see somebody stealing food…

> plus, if you see somebody stealing food, no, you didn't Don't tell me, in your view the cost of shoplifting is begrudgingly covered by those evil rich people who own everything, right? It's not passed down to customers, and therefore affects those who obey rules, and especially those who are in a precarious financial situation to begin with, right?

Don't tell me, you think the store actually expects to sell all that milk before it goes bad?

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#138

Post by Jeremy1026 »

bombcar wrote: post #83
manarth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most self-checkouts I've come across have weight validation – "Unexpected item in the bagging area". Categorising things as "bananas" tricks the checkout into accepting the weight of an item, and you pay the appropriate price per bananagram.

You can build a socioeconomic graph of the country by how anal the unexpected item in the bagging area sensors are. Some places will detect a fly farting on the damn scale, others can take three or four kids climbing on it before it complains.

There is a grocery store about 2 miles from my house that will freak out if you look at it funny. I gave up one day, the helper person came back for the 3rd or 4th time to unstuck the "self"-checkout in my ~20 item shop. I told them they can just cancel the transaction and walked out. I now go to the grocery store 8 miles away, that always has at least 1 human cashier open in addition to their self-checkout lanes. I rarely use the self-checkout because they are the ones that are only useful for a handful of items, but I've never had it give me a problem.

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#139

Post by happyopossum »

culi wrote: post #96
gavinray wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partner spent a significant time working at Target, can confirm Their Loss Prevention is so advanced that FBI has collaborated with them for case help https://thehorizonsun.com/features/2024/04/11/the-target-for... I also worked there briefly in my teens, they are a great employer.

Yeah Target is notorious for its surveillance technology. Before the rightwing boycotted Target for it's lgbtq+ merch and before the liberals boycotted Target for its rollback of DEI initiatives, many of us had been boyoctting Target for decades because its advancement of surveillance technology and cooperation with companies like Palantir https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/09/san-francisco-gets-inv... https://www.bl…

> Yeah Target is notorious for its surveillance technology.

Can confirm - my wife called in a complaint about some graffiti / vandalism or something that was obscene in a target, and when she got a call back from a rep they were able to pinpoint everywhere she went in the store to determine which sign she was talking about...

Re: Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero

#140

Post by landl0rd »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #92
DangerousPie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, you have discovered the concept of shoplifting!

if a store does not want to hire capable staff to perform an essential function, they should not expect laypeople to perform that action for free (or at higher cost, as we've seen with grocery prices in the US as human cashiers are reduced) at the same level as a trained staff member. we do not have to accept this decision to reduce staff and raise prices as a matter of course. plus, if you see somebody stealing food…

I live in a town with a massive, well-stocked food bank. I don't think anyone is stealing a crust of bread to feed his hungry children.

If I see someone stealing food, yes, I did. It's immoral for you to do otherwise.

Post reply on HN