News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:“Just walk out” technology by Amazon by vessenes on Monday March 09, 2020 @02:37PM (#22528268)
This reminds me of the Aberhart quote recommending airports be built with spoons and forks, not modern machines, if a jobs program is what's required. Perhaps we could add more jobs by having people hand total receipts and the computers could just check them for accuracy :)

My own perspective is that it is basic reality that a large number of low-skill jobs will be automated over the next 10 to 20 years. Rather than complain, I prefer to think about what society can and should do about it.

In my case, I don't believe that we should create makework low skills jobs to 'solve' this 'problem' of humans no longer being needed to run cash registers though; I have a hard time imagining most people preferring to run a cash register as their ideal day job.

Re:“Just walk out” technology by Amazon by ar_lan on Monday March 09, 2020 @03:03PM (#22528560)
I don't understand the notion of moving backward in order to keep jobs for people. I get why people say they want that (fear of losing their jobs), but I don't really understand the logical progression to getting there and I believe its influenced by:

a) Practically, this imposes a big problem to future society if low-skill jobs are gone. b) I'm definitely privileged to have a "high-skill" job so my fear factor here is irrelevant.

That said - if this were really a concern people were serious about, I don't see why we don't just ban cars/trains/airplanes/etc. and have caravans to do all trading once again. It would create tons of jobs all in the name of regress.

Re:“Just walk out” technology by Amazon by femiagbabiaka on Monday March 09, 2020 @07:50PM (#22531245)
believing that the only options available to us are ruining lives or technical regression is a pretty nihilistic worldview.