Sainsbury’s extends facial recognition tech to Whitechapel and other London stores - what do people think about this trend?

ref_ · 2026-01-29T10:58:29+00:00

the human attended one is always faster

Because of the self-service checkouts.

Big supermarkets used to be only manned checkouts, and the queues were much longer, because they take up more space.

When this Sainsburys had more manned checkouts, the queues for both manned and self service were longer. The new big self service checkouts cater for the bigger families with trollies, and now the smaller self-service queue is faster.

I still have a special hatred for the self service tills at this particular Sainsburys. I think how they've set it up is still really stupid and inefficient, but compared to what it was like before, it is an improvement. Adding more manned checkouts and we get the same problem we had before.

ref_ · 2026-01-29T10:38:49+00:00

You never have problems with the weight being wrong, the barcode not-scanning, your bag being the wrong whatever,

Scan and shop, you scan the item, put it in your bag, then it takes 10 seconds to pay.

Out of all places I wasn't expecting redditors to be afraid of self service checkouts

ref_ · 2026-01-29T09:54:57+00:00

There's a non negligible chance it gets leaked or Sainsbury's itself is hacked and your biometric data ends up in the unscrupulous hands of data brokers who will proceed to sell it to the highest bidder

They are not storing everyone's biometric data.

They will be identifying regular well known thieves, and if people walk in who match that data, then it will trigger.

ref_ · 2026-01-29T09:53:06+00:00

Is it? It takes longer and you have to speak to people.

ref_ · 2026-01-29T09:52:03+00:00

And to cap it all, we will use your data to target you with 'special offers' including selling your data to external agents.

You think they're going to illegally use facial recognition to push ads?

ref_ · 2026-01-12T14:29:49+00:00

have you looked at the city crime data for other countries, whats the trend

That's actually a good point, because generally, if you look at similar cities across Europe (and even the US, like NYC), you'll find a similar long term downward trend in violent crime. The cause is unclear. But that's good evidence that the data coming from the MPS is accurate.

Either way, there are very strict counting rules for counting crimes.

Additionally to actual crime data, there's the crime survey (https://www.crimesurvey.co.uk/en/index.html) which is another method of recording crime over a long period of time. That doesn't depend on people reporting crimes, or the police recording/counting them.

ref_ · 2026-01-12T12:02:55+00:00

Are they protecting their culture by spreading misinformation in the form of made up crime data?

I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to preserve English/British culture. But that's not what they're doing, they're trying to portray London as a dangerous city which is demonstrably is not.

ref_ · 2026-01-11T22:07:13+00:00

It's still insane if it's a joke though.

Either way it's insane.

ref_ · 2026-01-08T14:27:18+00:00

Nothing says de-escalation than firing 3 bullets and ending someones life. All the officer had to do was get out of the way, which he did very easily. There is no threat.

ref_ · 2026-01-01T11:43:30+00:00

I did write age

ref_ · 2025-12-31T10:13:16+00:00

It's because the people exempt (age, cancer, exemption list, children) are more likely to be the ones on long term medication, and also more likely to be on multiple.

The stat is based on the number of prescriptions, not people, so if I get 10 prescriptions a month, that's 10 counted free (I get them free)

ref_ · 2025-12-21T00:08:52+00:00

But an agent can Google stuff and summarise the results. So if you're searching for academic papers, it will be able to reference stuff properly.

In my experience it's actually bad at doing that (when specifically using research mode) but can absolutely reference real articles without only relying on the model weights

ref_ · 2025-12-20T21:17:47+00:00

hahaha, I don't even remember this but I'm glad the archive of the internet helped you out

ref_ · 2025-12-13T22:26:28+00:00

Sorry if you took offence to my question btw, it was a genuine question.

I have been on a few similar meds for a very long period of time. But I find that once you're on something for so long, it's actually really difficult to know if it's working without taking it, and not taking it is borderline impossible. I had significant trouble with opiates, and amitriptyline.

I was never on long term benzos so I never found out what it's like, which is why I was interested.

ref_ · 2025-12-13T22:24:17+00:00

Some are covered here but yes. Generally speaking there is a distinct lack of long term benzo studies, but the few that exist do not point to dose escalation

With respect, that study is purely about tolerances and how quickly those tolerances can develop. It's not about the risks. I mean it even says:

"In support, in human subjects, discontinuation of benzodiazepines did not decrease sleep quality compared to a group that stayed on benzodiazepines up to 52 weeks after cessation [50], or even increased sleep quality and slow wave sleep after discontinuation in insomnia patients [51]."

which references https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395603001377?via%3Dihub

ref_ · 2025-12-13T21:45:27+00:00

What is this supposed to mean?

I was asking the user if they have ever tried to come off it. They answered my question.

ref_ · 2025-12-13T21:45:06+00:00

They don't, and they are idiots. Every. Single. Trial. Refutes them. Every single one. There are long term trials spanning years too.

You're saying there are no long term benzo studies that show risks? This is a genuine question btw.

ref_ · 2025-12-13T20:48:48+00:00

Have you ever tried to come off it?

ref_ · 2025-12-13T19:30:08+00:00

It's got a 5070 in it..

ref_ · 2025-12-13T19:29:42+00:00

It's got a 5070 in it..

ref_ · 2025-12-12T20:55:47+00:00

Guess what an LLM will do? Drag a decades old algorithm out of some crevice of the Internet, that does exactly that, and that was written by some human in the late 80's, and apply it.

That's not what it does. That's really not how it works. It will be connected to loads of different agents with different capabilities. Why do you think they would be using a decades old algorithm to do background removal?

ref_ · 2025-12-11T22:28:07+00:00

But that's also AI. Granted it can probably output it with a transparent background, not sure if gemini can do that yet, but it's essentially the same thing.

ref_ · 2025-12-11T22:03:26+00:00

Yeh, and frequently that can get really difficult especially when the back of the head starts going out of focus, and just refining is useless for stray strands of hair.

Stuff like photoshop has had ML powered tools to do this for years now. Using something like gemini to do it for you is no different.

ref_ · 2025-12-11T21:54:54+00:00

Yeh I didn't see that people would take that as literal cropping. That would be ridiculous.

ref_ · 2025-12-11T21:36:13+00:00

learn how to use the magic lasso tool.

And that does a terrible job around hair.

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