I'm going to disagree and say that self-checkout has been good, and I only see the systems improving at stores I frequent and more stores are adding it every day. I'd call that a success.
it's not an exaggeration, there were also stores near where I live in <major city> that tried to do something similar with scanning apps and then abandoned it due to theft and added the standard self-checkout stations you see everywhere now.
The only way to win is not to play at all.
Ignore people talking about things they don't know about.
Take everything with a grain of salt and verify everything, even this.
I love TCMC, its my favorite story, but I enjoy reading the abridged version more. I find that every time I read the unabridged I end up feeling like it was slightly too long.
I have a hugo site on gitlab. I don't even bother with the tooling anymore. I use the web ide to add a new post and cloudflare builds and publishes it when I commit. All for free.