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Johan Bové

Had my first "Pick & Go" supermarket experience

2 min read

Around the corner of where I live in Düsseldorf Stadtmitte, more precisely "Am Wehrhahn" opened a hyper-modern "Pick & Go" Rewe supermarket.

This morning I went shopping there for the first time and I must admit, it worked seamlessly. Grabbed all the things I needed and placed it in my wheel-carrier, weighed the bananas and went to the self-checkout where I was greeted by a friendly hostess, and just confirmed what the system had registered in my purchase, without even having to take out everything again from the shopping trolly, confirmed the purchase, paid using NFC and walked out after scanning the code on the receipt. No app or initial registration was necessary. The system registers customers as avatars and then algorithms, (marketing term here is _AI_), deducts if you wanted to buy something or not through over 700 cameras and other sensors in the shop.

The tech is awesome. But it was for me still very nice to be greeted by a smiling human face at the end. And this is the key for me: instead of tediously scanning articles into the register, people can now help where needed and I do believe this gives them a stronger sense of work satisfaction. Don't get me wrong - there is nothing wrong with being a cashier as a job. What I experienced today was just a bit more personal, as contra-dictory this may seem.

More about the system and the tech behind it: https://mediacenter.rewe.de/pressemitteilungen/rewe-pick-and-go-kuenftig-auch-in-duesseldorf and also https://www.trigoretail.com/customer-stories/rewe/

Johan Bové

I upgraded the camera hardware in my @fairphone

1 min read

Pretty proud that I was able to replace the camera modules in my 3 with the latest camera upgrades.

It is really awesome how Fairphone made a truly up-gradable phone possible and they made it really easy to take apart the phone.

The process does require steady hands and some nerve to execute. Detaching the screen from the frame was exciting. You need to get everything to "click" and not "break".

Everything came apart as planned and taking out the old modules and putting in the new was no issue. I did forget to take away one of the blueish protective covers of the front-facing camera module, after I had put the phone back together. So I had the exercise of taking apart the phone twice.

Followed the instructions from Fairphone themselves

The old modules are on their way to IFixit in Stuttgart Germany for refurbishment or recycling.

Johan Bové

Known Questions

2 min read

These are some questions I have about my Known server instance.

Q1. Redis Support?

My web host supports Redis. Anyone know if there is a plugin for Known which activates Redis cache? Does it make sense to activate Redis for a single-user Known site?

Q2. AsynchronousQueue on a shared web host without sudo access?

Also, I'm on a shared web host where I have access to a limited SSH access, without sudo; how can I set up Known cron for the AsynchronousQueue event queue?

Q3. Which PHP 7.3 Extensions should be active?

Which PHP (7.3) extensions should be active for a Known server instance? See my list here in the screenshot below:

screenshot of active PHP 7.3 extensions

 

Q4. RESOLVED - How can I get the Twitter POSSE plugin working? 

I currently need to manually mention the https://brid.gy publish webmention endpoints to repost my posts and status updates. The Twitter plugin by Known doesn't work on my server. Suspecting an outdated dependency on the tmhOAuh PHP library. Would be awesome if I can get that to work.

Resolution: update the tmhOAuth plugin and cacert.pem certificate.

Q5. Tagging with Known input forms is missing the dedicated tags field

Check why.

To be continued...