Where the fridge cases were previously lined with simple glass doors, there were door-size computer screens instead. These “smart doors” obscured shoppers’ view of the fridges’ actual contents, replacing them with virtual rows of the Gatorades, Bagel Bites and other goods it promised were inside. The digital displays had a distinct advantage over regular glass, at least for the retailer: ads.
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These internet-connected fridge panels, developed by a Chicago startup called Cooler Screens Inc., frequently flickered, crashed or showed the wrong products. Every so often, they caught fire. But store managers were stuck with them. As part of a 10-year contract with Walgreens for a split of the ad revenue, Cooler Screens had installed 10,000 smart doors at hundreds of US locations like this one. It planned to install 35,000 more.
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On Dec. 14, Avakian’s team secretly cut the data feeds to more than 100 Walgreens stores in the Chicago area. The dozen or so smart doors affected in each of these stores either glazed over with white pixels or blacked out altogether. Customers could no longer see where the Coke and Red Bull and Hot Pockets and Heineken sat, and either assumed the fridges were out of order or found themselves rummaging through one by one. Some staffers pasted pieces of paper on the opaque screens that read, for example, “assorted sports drinks & coffee.”
Ads are the cancer of Humanity.
I feel this so hard. Ads and PtW are slowly becoming the only business model because we have stone-age-level impulse control. Hopefully, someone like the EU eventually unfucks it and we switch to micropayments to cover server costs.
The only way it could get worse is if they started banning anyone too poor to properly whale.
Nah. That would make it better. The whales can go whale in their little ecosystems and we can keep using and making the fediverse better.
That’s true. At least there’d be a wave of people forced to discover better ways. It’d suck for things like YouTube videos that have too much overhead to be free, though.
Since I posted this, it also occurred to me that predatory lending could make it’s way in. That’s how a lot of other underclass-serving businesses work.
i’ve got an ad-blocking DNS on home network and my phone, i use youtube revanced, i’ve even got a fucken apk patcher to strip ad shit out of mobile games. it’s WILD to me how tolerant people are of ads. like anytime someone’s showing me a video on their phone and an ad plays, i have to do a little mental math on whether it’ll be annoying or mutually beneficial to just start playing the video on my phone instead.
and it takes such little effort to get rid of them! i’m constantly offering to teach people how to use patchers or revanced, folks are just like “nah it doesn’t bother me” MAN, HOW? sponsorblock alone is a goddamn godsend, sometimes more than 30% of a video is just ads and self promotion! how does anyone happily throw away their time like that‽
People value their time far loo low. You’ve only got a limited time on the planet. Don’t waste it listening to people telling you what you need to buy.
I love what Sao Paolo in Brazil did: banned all outdoor advertising. I’d love to live in a place that did that. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/
We live in Idiocracy.
You love to see it
Sometimes you can have a thing that isnt a computer. Sometimes you can just have a glass door. I promise it’s okay.
When I walk through my house I have sweet motion activated lights and doodads that I have spent hours tweaking and I enjoy thoroughly.
In the bathroom I use a switch.
Not everything needs to be “smart”
I’ve got small dumblights that are motion-activated and run on AAA batteries. Bought one for the bathrooms specifically so getting up in the middle of the night to take a leak doesn’t involve turning on the full light. They worked well enough (and they were cheap enough) that we now have like 6 in various places.
Same, I’m running homeassistant. Things that are out of the way like PC under desk get WakeOnLan from HA, or chandeliers, and grow lights for my wife’s indoor trees get smart treatment. Kitchen lights are switches, because if I’m in the kitchen I will be by the switches and opening phone to launch HA app and scroll to a smart light button would take much longer.
I have my bathroom fan turn on if the lid has been open more than 45 seconds … some things you just don’t (yet) know you need to be smart :-D
For me, all of our lights are smart (some bulbs with smart switches that talk to the smart bulbs and some just smart switches), but, everything needs to be able to function like it’s dumb … nothing needs an app to function. The wall switches will function as expected … home assistant adds additional functionality, voice commands add extra functionality, but, it all works as you’d reasonably expect it to if you just go and hit the wall switch.
In tech, SMART is an acronym. I shit you zero nots, this is for real.
Self Monitoring And Reporting Technologies
Fuck SMART everything. I am fundamentally at odds with telemetry, what is it up to half our mobile data plans are lost to advertisers? W.t.f.
Have they tried subscriptions? I’ve heard it’s the next big deal after ads.
Comedy gold, except for everyone who has to try and shop at a Walgreens.
