I heard someone call these kinda of people “fence turtles”. Nobody knows how they got up there, they don’t do anything useful, and they’re not likely to come down anytime soon

Big fed energy here… Or you’re 12…

I definitely get what you’re saying, and in any other context, I’d definitely agree. I just can’t quite see it working without some sort of identifying thing, like a loyalty card or some intense customer tracking (and we all know how that went with the Amazon Go stores). Mainly because there’s not a good way to identify a specific item taken from a shelf full of the item, given UPCs are the same for all units of a product so it’d have to be done by cards or tracking.

I could be wrong, but given the current state of tech, I don’t really see it working in a large, busy store like a Walmart or Canadian Tire. At least, not to reliably target individuals. I could see it being used to change prices for everyone, based on time, date, temperatures, and stuff like that, but yeah…

Also, apologies if this doesn’t make full sense. I’m radically under caffeinated right now 😅

I haven’t seen the QR codes linking to the product page yet, but I’ve seen the flashing tags to find stuff, and it’s cool af! Like, yes we may be quickly sliding into a dystopian hellscape, but we can have some cool little things along the way… As, y’know… A treat lol

I agree… Sorta. They can be petty little dickheads sometimes, but I find it’s more often that lack of stimulation. Their smart makes them crave chaos lol

I dated a girl with severe, unmanaged BPD… It led to a LOT of wild arguments over the weirdest things lol

I also recently got into an argument with someone over whether or not Huskies and malamutes misbehave out of spite/revenge, or a lack of mental or physical stimulation…

God, right?! I could fill a bag full of the things nearly every day when I was cleaning before they switched over! I literally had a little bin I’d save them up in to take home to use as kindling for the fire pit cause they’d already been replaced. Though, I think the lack of waste is more a pleasant side effect than a reason why these companies did it. Either way, it’s still a positive!

Cause that’s commie shit! What next? Gonna make us eat bugs?!

/S (I hope it was obvious lol)

I worked in a Walmart on the overnight shift (cleaning, separate company) when they rolled them out 3+ years ago here in Canada. They’ve honestly become the norm in grocery stores and other large stores here. If some company was going to be sleazy about them, it probably would’ve happened already (Loblaws, I’m looking at you).

I straight up asked why they were being installed, and it’s two-fold. One, they can save money cause now they don’t have to pay staff to go around and change the little paper tags, which takes an absurd amount of manpower and is easy to fuck up. And two, they can all be changed over to a barcode/QR code during inventory, which speeds up the whole process. I’ll be the last person to defend corpos, especially Walmart, but I don’t think this one was done with the intentions of directly fucking over the customer.

This ^ All the grocery stores in my area have them and it has yet to be an issue.

Also, not sure if you know this, but apparently if you have the Crappy Tire app, you can get the tags to flash/blink if you’re looking for a product. Not sure how exactly it works on the customer’s end, but my mum was telling me about it lol

Like everyone else said, funding=/=ownership. I do suspect, however, that part of why these big tech companies fund Linux is because they rely on something built on Linux in one way or another. Linux tends to be the better options for things like servers, low processing devices, and more, and if they keep funding it, it continues to exist so they can use it. You’d be surprised about how much of the world actually uses Linux in some way.