With the increasing number of self-service checkout machines popping up in stores for convenience, there is one simple feature that is used to put off potential shoplifters - mirrors. There's a good chance that you've looked at your reflection in the screens fitted to these machines, and the purpose of it is for potential shoplifters to catch themselves in the mirror in the hopes of making them feel guilty. This pang of a guilty conscience is hoped to prevent them from committing any crime (it's not just there for vanity purposes like most of us use it for). Research also backs up the theory that people who see themselves in a mirror are less likely to do something bad. A 1976 study from Letters of Evolutionary Behavioural Science found that when people are around mirrors, they "behave in accordance with social desirability". "Mirrors influence impulsivity, a feature that is closely related to decision-making in both social and non-social situations." When participants in the experiment were looking at mirrors, their "private self-awareness was activated" by them and as a result influenced "decision-making as a non-social cues". Similarly, Psychology Today notes how a mirror allows "people to literally watch over themselves" and this "dramatically boosts our self-awareness". Meanwhile, the issue of self-service checkouts and shoplifting was highlighted in a report by Mashed last year which it appeared to confirm that Walmart's attempt at combatting this problem was a psychological method with the addition of mirrors (though Walmart, alongside other supermarkets, has never confirmed the purpose of their mirrors at their self-service checkout services). Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

UPDATE: May. 11, 2023, 5:00 a.m. EDT This post has been updated to reflect the

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IQ tests offer a formula that allows you to compare yourself to other people and see how average (or above average) your intelligence is. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is dubbed the world’s shortest IQ test because it consists of just three questions. It assesses your ability to identify that a simple problem can actually be harder than it first appears. The quicker you do this, the more intelligent you appear to be. Here are the three questions: 1. A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? 2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? 3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Here is what a lot of people guess: 1. 10 pence 2. 100 minutes 3. 24 days These answers would be wrong. When you're ready, scroll down for the correct answers, and how you get to them: 1. The ball would actually cost 5 pence or 0.05 pounds If the ball costs X, and the bat costs £1 more, then it will be: X+£1 Therefore Bat+ball=X + (X+1) =1.1 Thus 2X+1=1.1, and 2X=0.1 X= 0.05 2. It would take 5 minutes to make 100 widgets. Five machines can make five widgets in five minutes; therefore one machine will make one widget in five minutes too. Therefore if we have 100 machines all making widgets, they can make 100 widgets in five minutes. 3. It would take 47 days for the patch to cover half of the lake If the patch doubles in size each day going forward, it would halve in size going backwards. So on day 47, the lake is half full. In a survey of almost 3,500 people, 33 per cent got all three wrong, and 83 per cent missed at least one. While this IQ test has its shortcomings – its brevity, and lack of variation in verbal and non-verbal reasoning - only 48 per cent of MIT students sampled were able to answer all three correctly. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

TL;DR: As of June 15, you can get a Mac mini (Core i7, 32GB RAM,

SANTA ROSA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 15, 2023--

Meta could soon launch a web version of Threads, as users grow frustrated with the lack of features on the platform. Threads was launched early in July, and quickly became the fastest growing app ever. It appeared to have been launched early to capitalise on the problems that have engulfed Twitter since Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X, and quickly gathered users as a result. That speed of launch does however appear to have left the app without a variety of basic features. In the weeks since, the company has been rushing to add new ways of using the app that have been missing since its launch. In recent days, for example, Threads has added the option to share threads posts on Instagram DMs, see a list of liked posts, and sort the accounts that are being followed. But it is still lacking perhaps the most basic feature of any social network: the ability to use it outside of an app. While many rival networks such as Twitter began as web versions, Threads still does not have a version that can be used on desktop computers or outside of the app. In a recent post, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said the company is “working on it”. “We’ve been using an early version internally for a week or two,” he wrote on Threads. “Still needs some work before we can open it up to everyone though…” Mark Zuckerberg also said two weeks ago that the company was looking to build a “vibrant long term app” and that it had “lots of work ahead”. That includes the addition of “search and web”, which he said would arrive “in the next few weeks”. Now the Wall Street Journal has reported that the web version of the app could come as early as this week. But it noted that the “launch plans aren’t final and could change”. Threads does offer some features on the web. Users can click on links to Threads and see individual posts and replies, for instance, but there is no way to get back to a feed of accounts that a user is following. Instagram has always been relatively resistant to adding new platforms to its social network. The main Instagram app has only a relatively scaled-down version as its web offering, and it still does not offer a version of its app for iPad. Read More Mark Zuckerberg hits out at Elon Musk for wasting time over cage fight Japanese scientists hoping for a message from alien life imminently iPhone 15 could bring two major changes to fix battery life

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