not so technologically advanced..

I think Amsterdam is the only place you can indulge if you are a foreigner.

Only for citizens, or can frequent visitors sign up?

No more, they stopped that. Because too many from countries nearby went on a buying spree, customs (mobile teams) in Belgium has many French buyers stopped and searched, prosecuted.

To be fair, there is more to do in Nederland than pot and prostitutes. I hate it when people ask me what I did for holiday and tell them I saw family in the Netherlands, and then they do the toking thing and mention the red light. Stront/merde.

That’s not the same! Stront is poop, merde is damn. :wink:

The headquarters for the Uni-President just revamped their first floor. They got rid of the Mr. Donut and updated the 7-Eleven and Starbucks. The Starbucks is basically the same, but the 7-Eleven is now something called 7-Eleven X.

I guess this is the same concept as the Amazon Go. Essentially, there are gates at the entrance that open after you subject yourself to facial recognition. Then, apparently, you grab whatever you want and will be charged accordingly. I assume that’s the idea but it’s technically not open to the public yet.

Interestingly, while they say the stores are ‘unmanned’, there are 3 7-Eleven employees constantly watching the coffee machines to make sure nobody steals any.

Here’s some more info.

Face pay lol

i saw either this or something similar yesterday. no staff, you needed an app and an icash machine to use it. there was another normal 7-11 opposite. nobody was in this one, the normal one was full as usual.

i can see why, its a few steps less convenient than the normal store. pretty pointless. i could see how this sort of thing would work in china where everybody already has a uniform app they all use to pay for stuff but its asking a bit much here.

meanwhile rival Family Mart (全家) will be launching its first wave of technology concept stores making use of artificial intelligence to make coffee and offer other services, reported CNA.

Hmmmm
:ponder:

Hasn’t this been done before, like long, long ago?

24E901BB00000578-2923545-1947_This_coffee_machine_was_released_by_the_National_Automatic_-a-151_1422027472476 5694346c2a00002d00030429

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AI to make coffee? How would that work out?

Whisky served in paper cups? I guess that’d be fine if you were dispensing white lightning outside a homeless hostel, but the marketing guys who thought that one up should have been fired without severance pay.

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Ice cold whisky as well…Just weird.

I bet they were Styrofoam. To keep the temperature.

To enjoy the coolness without diluting the flavor with ice. Like those metal cubes they use now.

That’s what I thought. Do Irish people add ice to their whisky? No wonder the Scots and the Irish don’t quite see eye-to-eye.

the carrefor 24 hour store nearby now has 2 self service checkouts.

they actually look pretty decent. you can only pay using a bank card or EZ card though. which i don’t like.

90% of people here pay for everything with cash. so please don’t make a self service machine, with no option for cash. it defeats the point of it being a more convenient option.

Which is many times faster than fiddling around on your phone to scan a QR code.

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Yes, I drink it with ice usually . But traditionally we just added a drop of warm water. They just tell the barman add a wee drop .
Some people would even put sugar in it. Remember Ireland invented Irish coffee although that’s a recent invention but very popular .

Whiskey in Ireland wasn’t a fancy drink it was just part of life you could drink it any way you wanted. We are not going to savour 10 year old single malts every day in the pub. It’s also not the only liquor we had an even rougher (illegal) one called Poitin made from potatoes and a lot of older people used to drink Port , Sherry and Brandy. Heavy drinkers the Irish lol. My grand aunts and grand uncles would have drunk me under the table. :sunglasses:

Younger people are infected by too much modern foreign culture.:grin:

I kniw I should post this in the other thread.

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That’s unfortunate, the machines in the Tienmu store take cash.

I wish we had the local carrefour store here !