Recreate the Amazon experience in a store by asking for their name so you can show them different prices and offers, then write down everything the shopper looks at, adds to their basket, and after they've paid sell their information to advertisers so they will see adverts for the lawnmower they've just bought for the next few days.
I walk into the grocery store to get some fuji apples. I keep asking for fuji apple" but I am affixed with horse blinders and walked to the cell phone isle by a helpful clerk, and a bunch of iPhones are presented.
I ask the clerk for "fruit fuji apple", and I am escorted to a different isle with all kinds of accessories for iPhone.
I walk over to the fruits & vegetables department, stand in the isle with all kinds of apples, and ask for the "fuji apples" again. The clerk promptly walks me back to the iPhone accessory isles, and leaves me there.
I go out of the store, ask a passer-by where the fuji apples are in the store, she tells me exactly. I walk into the store, go to the exact location, and see the fuji apples.
I put it in my basket, walk to the check out. At the checkout the clerk asks me if I want to include a 1 year protection plan, or purchase a charger for my apples. I decline.
I purchase it, go home and wait for the apples to show up at my door.
Two days later the fruit show up. They are williams pears.
At least the checkout clerk didn't shove a giant bilboard into your face asking if you want a subscription for their video rental and premium delivery businesses.
Not the question being asked exactly, but there are quite a few people testing the market for live dynamic in store shelf pricing where they can drop or raise on demand. Its a little odd to think that a jug of milk might be cheaper at 1pm than at 6pm.
Rather than being smug, pompous, and having nothing useful to say, you could provide a recent source.
What I did find on Google is several years old, and I can't replicate the pricing changes even with a VPN, different OS, different hardware, and different account. Even asked friends and family to tell me what prices they see.
Yep. Sorry. It did feel like you were asking for evidence for (what I believe) is received wisdom, which is a standard tactic for trolling. If you really have not had that experience, I am truly sorry .. and envious.
Browse without login from another device+ip. Back in the day it was subtle and you'd have to browse some category of shit for a while before the prices were inflated for your account.
By "back in the day" I mean 10+ years ago, and you'd have to browse for a few days.
I am not sure why I am being downvoted for something that I and others have observed; must be the Amazon fanboys having a hard time acknowledging they work for a shitty company. Other companies have done this for years too, like airlines. It's also not like you need to search very hard to see all the lawsuits Amazon is involved in, but here is one link describing price changes (which occur due to many things, of course, not just user profiling):
With in-store (B&M) tracking based on WiFi/Bluetooth signatures and facial recognition ... this is actually in many cases a near future if not already present reality.
The principle difference being that shoppers aren't actually asked for their names.
(Names are determinable through interpolation of those signatures, or through payment information by credit or debit card.)
> Big heavy adverts that overlap the content and weigh pages down
PC Magazine, and other similar mags in the 90's/00's, was literally like this. I used to spend several minutes ripping the thick cardboard ads from every issue before trying to read it. At least web sites don't give me paper cuts.
Yeah, but if you rip out all of the cardboard ads, read through, and then close the magazine the cardboard doesn't crawl back into the magazine for you to pull out again if you pick it back up.
Pickup an issue of Wallpaper, if they're still around.... A design magazine with cover to cover advertising and the occasional bit of editorial content. The advertising is curated and not so in-your-face but it's advertising none the less.
It should come with free cookies wrapped in consent notices.
> * Agree to all sorts of scary things to take off the plastic wrapping
Wouldn't it just be that one page (not visible without opening it, of course) has the terms and conditions you inherently agreed to by reading the cover?
No, only the first couple articles you read are free, the rest are printed in disappearing ink so you get ONLY the ads and pop ups after that until you buy a subscription to the magazine on auto renew.
(mild spoiler alert) It took me 00:06:20 to complete and I enjoyed it a lot. I especially liked the ambiguous form state; I was never sure which part of the form is active or has been selected. I appreciate that it didn't feel needlessly unfair; e.g. when I accidentally clicked a "select all" button that undid all my work, there was also an "unselect all" button within reach.
The ultimate Turing test? I'm willing to bet not even ChatGPT-11 will have the sheer boneheaded level of determination only a human could ever achieve...
This is what my nightmares are like. I have to do something simple like fill out a form or unlock a door, and everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong
Getting there! It needs to completely randomize itself about halfway through your workflow. And more ratings! Don't forget to like us and give us five stars. About the exact moment you are ready to finish.
Love this! There used to be a similar site on HN some time ago, something in a sense "How I see internet these days" and endless pop-ups kept on annoying you. Anyone remembers that?
Oh, I know that one. It comes built-in as an easter egg in uBlock Origin - you can open it by clicking the big "Power" button that shows after you click the uBO logo in the browser toolbar.
I literally was unable to purchase something from Currys on my phone, it was so bogged down in JS madness that it just didn't work. It would only work on my computer, and then only in Chromium (the payment flow just stopped loading after entering the card details on Firefox). When I did manage to place the order, the payment was processed twice, so that white loading screen in Firefox did so something. When I picked it up, I was told that they can't process online returns, I would have to take the extra one away, arrange a return online and then bring it back.
You are, of course, exaggerating a bit for rhetorical effect, but it is indeed too close to home. The bulk of my time was spent grappling with things that frequently give me a hassle on real websites.
The dialog box
The strenuous password requirements
Especially the "select all pictures of" bit. Anyone who has tried browsing with a proxy can confirm.
The site actually crashed Chrome as soon as I uploaded an file, to the point where even mouse clicks on the address bar or other tabs wouldn't work. I didn't think that was supposed to be possible. I guess we can dig into the code and figure out how to crash peoples' browsers with a website?
@ChromeDevTeam Your bug reporting process is too complicated so I'm just leaving this here on the internet for you to find
Reminds me of the cursed form fields that don’t allow pasting for bank account numbers, which I’ve seen recently at multiple financial sites. What on earth makes them think that typing something manually twice is less error-prone than literally pasting it from a known-good source??
My pet insurer's web site has a box for you to enter your policy number, which only accepts numbers and has a spinner. The policy number is seven digits long. It's sort of fun typing the first few and then playing with the up and down arrows.
4:49 for me, but I cheated. My address number is 1744, and I quit incrementing at 5. I suspect it would've been well past 7 minutes if I'd been determined to enter accurate information.
* Agree to all sorts of scary things to take off the plastic wrapping
* Peel off multiple big stickers on every page
* Big heavy adverts that overlap the content and weigh pages down
* Built-in Tile/Airtag to track location
* Chumboxes for other magazines at the bottom of each article
...etc