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Comment by koala_man | Hacker News Reader

I hope society will one day reach a level of honesty and trust where we can just leave stores unlocked and unattended at night.

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It already has, in Singapore. There are Starbucks which close at night simply by drawing a plastic chain across the storefront and emptying the cash registers. I think they still lock the Frappuccino fridge, but no one knows for sure because we don't go test it.

The point would be that people could still come in and buy stuff with self checkout. It doesn't sound like this is what that Starbucks intends you to do.

I think that may have happened to me accidentally once: a couple years ago I was sick and unable to sleep, so I went to a grocery store at about 1 AM to buy decongestants so I could maybe get some sleep. Most of the lights were off inside and I didn't see another person there, it was sort of creepy actually, but I figured, meh, 1 AM. I bought my pills with the self checkout and left.

About a week later I was at the same store and saw a sign on the door that said they close at 11...

Don't think that's possible. They have to open and close registers for accounting etc.

Maybe someone was in the store and just had not yet closed down the checkouts.

There are a number of reasons to reopen a machine after end of day close including testing hardware. Also someone could have forgotten to close it out.

For a machine where all the cash is locked in or more likely emptied their is not much risk in that.

On the other hand someone who would leave the door unlocked might also be someone who wouldn't close out the registers.

Or maybe there was someone there and I didn't notice. I was sick; I was pretty out of it.

I’ve seen a few luxury condo buildings in Canada with a 24/7 convenience store and self-checkout, though with an entrance that only tenants can access (and I guess surveillance).

So this is starting to happen already, but proliferation really depends on expanding the social contracts that can enable this. The above convenience store wouldn’t last in an apartment building where the tenants weren’t exceedingly well-off as the world is now.

Gas stations are already this way. I've pumped gas at unattended or closed stations. The credit card machine works the same either way.

It’s pretty hard to steal gas from a gas station though. They take the money first and you can’t really take extra gas since it’s all measured.

That's not how it works in a lot of places. I almost always need to fill it up then go inside to pay.

Way back when, Safeway’s 10c off per gallon rewards would just continue stacking up. I saved up until my discount was more than the price of gas, and got myself a free tank.

I’ve always wondered how much it would have let me pump. The limits I’ve seen on pumping have always been on the dollar amount, presumably because they verify they can charge that amount before you start pumping.

It seems like China already has this

https://youtu.be/mc8htuhSyWE

https://youtu.be/0QKrHi-G9WQ

It think it will go that way but not because level of honesty increase but because the survielance tech becoming so advance that it can quicky identify you if you stole something

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