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Comment by wasabi991011 | Hacker News Reader

This is just complete hyperbole with no substance.

For 1, I still have yet to go to a restaurant where I couldn't ask the waiter for a physical menu instead of reading the QR code (not to mention that QR code menus are still far from the majority in every city I've been to, small and large). Are there any other examples where you "need" to be online when going out?

For 3, I've never been to a supermarket that doesn't have fresh local produce. The existence of a ready-made meal or of a more complicated snack food doesn't make produce in the same store any less real.

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Yes, you can still get a paper menu, but you need to ask for it in many places. Also, in Asia, for example, many places require you to order using a tablet, and for me, that's not appealing at all. But yes, you can still live with it, of course.

About point 3, yes, you can find local products, but 95% of the products in supermarkets, at least in Spain where I live, have more than 10 ingredients.

> Yes, you can still get a paper menu, but you need to ask for it in many places.

Having to ask for something makes it a luxury? I don't like having to do it either, but let's not kid ourselves here.

I won't make a comment about Asia since I don't know enough about it, but tbf the author is Spanish and lives in Bulgaria from what I understand.

> About point 3, yes, you can find local products, but 95% of the products in supermarkets, at least in Spain where I live, have more than 10 ingredients.

The author doesn't talk about foods with less than 10 ingredients, he talks about "one-ingredient foods". Furthermore, having more options of many-ingredient-foods doesn't make few-ingredient-foods a luxury. Finally, the entire premise here is flawed imo, as more ingredients doesn't make something inherently worse (TFA doesn't strictly say this outright but implies it heavily). Tell me, how many ingredients are in a paella for example, and does that make it worse than a two-ingredient mixture of lard and sugar?

> restaurant where I couldn't ask the waiter for a physical menu

Happened to me. In one, "Ok, if you don't have own ways to read our electronic menu, I'll hand you the owner's tablet". (Bankrupted after a few months after years of prestigious service to its customers - the quality was good, the management "simple".) In another, "Ah, oh, so you do not have a way to... Really?! Well... Ok... Look: what would you like to eat?" - the manager did not know his own menu (but was open to discuss possibilities).

The point is not with the exceptions: it is with the creeping ignorance that gives assumptions for granted. And you should be ___very___ worried when the ignorant is not a service provider, but maybe your administration that takes for granted electronic money or a google|apple|microsoft account.

> The point is not with the exceptions: it is with the creeping ignorance that gives assumptions for granted. And you should be ___very___ worried when the ignorant is not a service provider, but maybe your administration that takes for granted electronic money or a google|apple|microsoft account.

This is not at all the point TFA is making.

It is not the point that the chunk in the submission literally made, it is a crucial substantial point that comes from it in a rational informed assessment.

The implicit contract is that you are online if you have to ask for the damned menu. It is not an improvement in the dining experience to scan a QR code to order, or to read a menu, an important part of the dining out experience, on a cell phone screen. Yes I can ask for a printed menu. Nope, I don't want to. I'm eating out to get away from staring at a screen. Is that really that hard to grasp?

And then they want a tip from their QR code ordering system. I love AI, and I work with AI, but JFC tipping an honest to god waiter (and ya know, if it's a charming robot that puts on some theatre as a waiter - not a gloried tray on wheels, that's cool too, but my cellphone isn't that) is an important signal to the quality of the service and you've rubbed me wrong from the get go forcing me implicitly to bring my phone in the first place.

AI's prominent spokesmodels considered harmful IMO

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