Probably different models for different sets. The set I work with are purely wifi. They have a light on them to blink is the only extra thing they do

IR on them does sound stupid though, in a store environment that can be blocked rather easily

No they are wifi controlled

A bit of the selling point for the chromebooks is that it can run a lot of stuff from the playstore. Why called it a cousin.

While posible, don’t forget about the pixel series, Google dipped into hardware. So at least for a good bit they are going to stay the course. Chromebooks are a cousin of android and is something I bet they have support contracts via education for years to come.

Though it’s Google so it’s posible

The insurance generally doesn’t kick in unless its 100k plus. It is “planned” for that a certain amount of theft and such will happen,

As for getting sued, meh, merchant rights protect doing reasonable things. Issue comes up when someone “thinks” someone stole and does shit without thinking. Generally All the stores don’t want to have any type of liability with anyone getting hurt so no touching and/or heavy interacting is in policy

Moving to block somebody’s path That I would agree with on being an escalation.

I have seen a lot of times by just there being a few people around giving the we know and we can see you can make someone ditch all the stuff and (some times) cuss out everyone as they leave.

I will admit that I would not advise the technique when it looks like someone is going to be very bold and just walk out with items “clearly” stealing (the cable on it still) and the OP story kinda shows why

Then again anytime I am around a shoplifter doing something like that being very aware of how they are moving or doing is important. Ill do my job but fuck getting hurt for the stuff, nothing in any store is worth it.

Ish on the deter by being there. I can’t speak for all companies but the major one I work for would have you act as just a visible deterance by just standing there. The grabbing the cable and stuff would be what would be “to far”

It probably links to it being illigal at the federal level still so ada would have to be sly about it.

The instance can control it and another instance can create a “competition” of the same instance. Diffrent mods for each and not being locked to 1 type.

Though hopefully we get something similar to supper communities that are multiple of the same under 1 listing