#this isnt about whether you should be able to get assisted suicide for mental health issues

[sssecret-identy]

Seriously, there is so much that needs to be done before we can incorporate something like this into our healthcare system, and the experts have said themselves there is no objective way to discern whether somebody can or should qualify because mental illness is so hard to quantify. We need a robust mental healthcare system and we should not be focusing our efforts on making dying more accessible right as we slide into times of hardship.

I need you guys to listen so bad, but I’m at least glad people on Twitter are starting to talk about this. The government of Canada is expanding Medically Assisted Death to cull the poor and disabled, and now suicidal and mentally ill (these are usually interchangeable of course here). It is EUGENICS and every single disabled rights organization is against it.

Disability payments are $1,200 a month. The average one bedroom apartment rent in the Greater Toronto Area (greatest pop. area by far here) is $2,000 a month. People with mental illnesses are on months long waitlists to get even a single publicly funded session. Weeks to get privately funded care which costs at least $200 a session. There is no housing here for disabled people. We are in one of the worst housing crises in the world right now.

Doctors are now offering MAiD unprompted to young suicidal people. This woman is 21, a health practitioner literally suggested she kill herself.

This is one of the worst Disability Rights Violations we’ve ever seen in Canada. The government is killing us because it is cheaper than funding healthcare, cheaper than giving people housing and food and basic human rights.

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

18 Feb 2019: Walmart: “We're just going to call the program Go”, UK Parl’t: “We must make sure that people stay in charge of the machines”

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading and please do send ideas, questions, corrections etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

[Image: Caspar David Friedrich via the London Tube]

Walmart’s checkoutless plan undone by shoplifting and low adoption

Walmart on why it abandoned its scan and go programme:

"In our efforts to minimize friction points, we found that the program created some of its own such as receipt checks, weighted produce, and un-bagged merchandise resulting from using the program [...] Additionally, low adoption played a role in the removal of the program."

And this quote was good (and it echoes Amazon’s “just walk out” story): "We're just going to call the program 'Go' because the customers can't seem to 'Scan' anything”. Walmart’s now trying a the-cashier-comes-to-you model.

Amazon in the home

A few weeks ago we discussed whether the “Amazon wins the kitchen, Google wins the living room” thesis of smart home assistance was being replaced by an “Either Amazon or Google wins the home” one.

This week, Amazon bought smart wifi router company eero. (The smart bit is that it’s easy to plug more eero boxes in to extend your wifi range without needing to fiddle with passwords etc.) You can see a few rationales: make Alexa hardware better value and “just work” to a deeper degree, compete against Google’s Nest, get Prime onto every device and into every room. Own the last few metres to the home.

Previously: “2024: Amazon Prime Home team lead Karyn steps around a Freshco grocery delivery drone twitching on the path. It has been jammed by your home’s router for a breach of delivery licence, and will be released shortly.”

Climate change: slow then quick

The effects of technology change often look like this: practically nothing for a long time, then suddenly everything. The internet was around for a long time before the mid 90s, when it eventually/suddenly started changing everything. New companies chip away at an incumbent’s market for a long time, the incumbent dismissing them because they’re small, or serving the lowest-revenue customers or whatever… then the new company replaces the former incumbent.

Climate change seems to have that nothing-then-everything quality to it, though the effects and the stakes are much higher. Collectively, we haven’t done enough for a long time. And in future our world is either going to change a lot because we’re busy trying to fix it, or it is going to change a lot because we’re not.

Many children walked out of school lask week to protest the lack of climate change action from government (or the generations above them). This was a Bad Thing from the perspective of things like wasted planning effort for teachers, school attendance records etc, and some politicians took that line. From the perspective of 2050, it might look like a Good Thing.

Lyft and Uber: regulation, competition, maps

Lyft lobbies to prevent US cities from regulating to manage the local impacts of it and Uber. The argument seems to be that too much regulation makes it difficult to provide transport services that deliver value to passengers. The counter-argument would be that population density in cities results in different effects than, say, rural areas, so the city is the perfect level at which to place the regulatory function.

Uber and Lyft may compete with public transport as much as (more than?) car ownership: “When Uber and Lyft enter a city, the app-based taxis decrease rail ridership by 1.29 percent per year and decrease bus ridership by 1.7 percent”

Uber has released travel time maps for several cities. Here is Manchester’s.

“We must make sure that people stay in charge of the machines”

The Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s final report on Disinformation and 'fake news', says technology is currently “hijacking our minds and society”:

“enforcement of greater transparency in the digital sphere, to ensure that we know the source of what we are reading, who has paid for it and why the information has been sent to us. We need to understand how the big tech companies work and what happens to our data. [...]

The big tech companies must not be allowed to expand exponentially, without constraint or proper regulatory oversight. But only governments and the law are powerful enough to contain them. The legislative tools already exist. They must now be applied to digital activity, using tools such as privacy laws, data protection legislation, antitrust and competition law. If companies become monopolies they can be broken up, in whatever sector. Facebook’s handling of personal data, and its use for political campaigns, are prime and legitimate areas for inspection by regulators, and it should not be able to evade all editorial responsibility for the content shared by its users across its platforms.”

Trusting chatbots and computers in healthcare

Sometimes people find it easier to speak about some issues when they know they're not speaking to a human. Relate found that people open up more readily when they understand they are talking to an AI counsellor. (More background on theraupeutic uses of chatbots.) And an NHS Trust in South Yorkshire has been testing the use of AI to identify mental health patients at risk of suicide.

On the other hand, flinging technology at healthcare isn’t an easy answer, as the NHS has found in the past. (It also leads to some unusual analogies, for instance the NHS Secretary wanting the NHS to take Tesco grocery delivery as an exemplar.)

Co-op Digital news

Data hackathon: how can we make better use of our data?

Lack of trust in relatives leaves adults unprepared for later life.

Events

Shifts show & tell - Tue 19 Feb 10am at Federation House 6th floor.

Web team playback - Tue 19 Feb 1pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Health team show & tell - Tue 19 Feb 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Data ecosystem show & tell - Wed 20 Feb 3pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Manchester WordPress user group - Wed 20 Feb 6.30pm at Federation House.

Python NW - Thu 21 Feb 6pm at Federation House 6th floor.

Membership show & tell - Fri 22 Feb 3pm at Federation house 6th floor.

Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 25 Feb 1.30pm at Federation House.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 26 Feb 1pm at Angel Square 12th floor.

CMO CRM show & tell - Tue 26 Feb 2pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Greater Manchester Democracy Hub - Tue 26 Feb 5.30pm at Federation House.

Tech for good live - How to make people care - Wed 27 Feb 6.30pm at Federation House.

Membership show & tell - Fri 1 Mar 3pm at Federation House 6th floor.

More events at Federation House. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved and thoughtful readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s flunky @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog.