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The students should get together and jack the machine away into their hacking club and do some reverse engineering, so that we get more information on how the data collection worked as opposed to just trusting the company's statements. If a hacking group like the German Chaos Computer Club got behind this, they could release their findings while keeping the perpetrators anonymous. However, I’m pretty sure the machine is just a frontend to a server, which got shut down as soon as the students complained, with no GDPR-like checkout being available in the jurisdiction.
“Where Cadillac Fairview was ultimately forced to delete the entire database, “
LOL yeah right.
“OK BUBBA! WE DONE DEE-LEETED THE ENTIRE THANG!!”
Bollocks.
They probably gave the ‘enforcement’ agency a blank hard drive and said “Well, gee, shucks. That’s all we had!”
Why are you caricaturing Canadians as Hillbillies? They didn't even apologize once, this is totally unbelievable.
People from Alberta larping that they're Americans.
I love how vending machines run windows now
Tons of Point of Sale terminals run Windows instead of Linux for some reason, probably because the software they run is only written for Windows.
A low end Windows PC can be had very cheap these days. Why bother doing something proprietary, if you can just cobble together something from off the shelf parts?
This isn't even remotely true. Everyone knows that if you're trying to do a cheap embedded product, you use SBCs and Linux. Using Windows for these kinds of applications is almost always the result of a company having a contract with Microsoft that leads their development strategy towards Microsoft's offerings rather than the best offerings.
Also, in what universe is a Linux platform more proprietary than Windows?
Makes sense, but a vending machine shouldn't need a fully fledged OS in the first place imo
I don't get it either. What do vending machines need to be computerized for at all? What was wrong with the old kind that was around for decades where you put your money in, pushed a button, and stuff came out? I certainly can't think of a reason for a vending machine to have a camera. That's nuts.
It's 2024, most people don't carry cash, and the whole world runs on automation. These kinds of vending machines are completely over the top, but it's actually a pretty bad idea to not use computers for this application. Just knowing when machines need to be refilled remotely saves more money than such an implementation would cost.
It's not hard to know when machines need to be refilled. You just come regularly, take note of how much or little stock has been purchased, then adjust your refill amounts and times accordingly. This has to be done regardless of a handful of computerized machines because plenty of them still aren't.
Accepting a credit card or tap-to-pay would probably require computerization, but the technology should be no more complex than any other, similar piece of hardware and the machine should even be able to work if the card network is down and just accept cash if that happens.
So sure, part of the machine should be computerized. The part that accepts money. The rest is unnecessary, probably raises the price of the machines unnecessarily and certainly never justifies a camera.
It’s not hard to know when machines need to be refilled. You just come regularly, take note of how much or little stock has been purchased, then adjust your refill amounts and times accordingly. This has to be done regardless of a handful of computerized machines because plenty of them still aren’t.
I worked in the arcade/vending business in the 1990s. That blind maintenance model was a crapshoot for the machine owners. We had to routinely send a crew (usually me and one other person) to drive to a location - near or far - with games, photo booths, vending stuff, etc. just in case the supplies in some machine or another ran out, something needed fixing, etc. Sometimes we'd arrive and learn we have hours of refilling and/or maintenance work to do on a machine, sometimes it had been a slow week or two and a crew had just spent their whole workday and a tank of gasoline to collect $50 from the cash box and go home again. Remote administration really changed the game for that whole business.
Fair enough. Sounds like I was wrong.
An IoT SIM costs a whole lot less than sending a technician to every machine to check stock. I'm not arguing in favor of facial recognition, I've already made that clear, but you are dead wrong if you don't think automation at scale isn't economical.
If you're already putting a modem in the box for credit cards, why not collect some telemetry? Sensors are cheap and effective.
They have to go to every machine to restock regardless. All they have to do is note down on a little notepad or even an app on their phone what sells, what doesn't and how quick.
I'm sorry, I just can't go along with internet-connected public vending machines. If you want to connect everything in your house to the internet, fine. But a machine that sells candy bars does not need to be connected to the internet just because it's marginally more efficient to do so than the way it had been done previously for decades. Because it results in this sort of shit. And unnecessary price-gouging through selling a university expensive machines with an unnecessary connection to the internet instead of something that worked perfectly well already and didn't cost as much money.
They have to go to every machine to restock regardless.
But by managing stock over IoT one can minimize the amount of visits to only when machines need restocking, instead of also having to go to check stock
As if Linux based vending machines aint a full fledged OS even with a minimal installation?
This aint embedded.
Yes of course Linux is a fully fledged OS, my point was a vending machine should not need any OS, my bad if I didnt make that clear
Why not? A full windows environment (though not really, because these things run what's called the kiosk mode) can run on cheap SBCs and gives you a ton of hardware and software flexibility, and is also pretty convenient. It's very commonly used for very good reasons.
TIL about windows kiosk mode!
I can understand it from the perspective of the developers who need to implement all this crazy tracking/advertising/graphics functionality, but imo a vending machine should only do three things:
- Let me see what is available (preferably using glass)
- Accept payment
- Give me what I paid for
Vending machines have done this for decades without requiring an operating system. Keep it simple!
Simple in what way?
You could make logistics simpler by giving these things networking capacity so you can remotely track their stock and cash levels.
If your software needs to run on multiple different device configurations, you can simplify development and deployment by letting the OS handle a lot of the low level stuff.
In other words, a simpler machine is not necessarily going to be simpler to operate for the company.
Hmm.... facial recognition vending machine huh....
Finally it's time for my jammer & some script from c/netsec to shine
Time for me big sledgehammer to shine
That's obvious vandalism though, you wanna fuck it up covertly so you don't get caught!
why do people think it's okay to do this shit? if you're coding facial recognition for a vending machine, that's like 80 steps too far down the capitalism ladder
if you took this machine back to the 1920s and told people what it was doing, they'd shoot at it. and probably you
In the article is a sound explanation: the machine is activated by detecting a human face looking at the display.
If this face recognition software only decides "face" or "not face" and does not store any data, I'm pretty sure this setup will be compatible with any data protection law.
OTOH they claim that these machines provide statistics about age and gender of customers. So they are obviously recognising more than just "face yes". Still – if the data stored is just a statistics on age and gender and no personalised data, I'm pretty sure it still complies even with 1920s data protection habits.
I'm pretty sure that this would be GDPR conform, too, as long as the customer is informed, e.g. by including this info in the terms of service.
80 steps too far down the capitalism ladder
This is the result of capitalism - corporations (aka the rich selfish assholes running them) will always attempt to do horrible things to earn more money, so long as they can get away with it, and only perhaps pay relatively small fines. The people who did this face no jailtime, face no real consequences - this is what unregulated capitalism brings. Corporations should not have rights or protect the people who run them - the people who run them need to face prison and personal consequences. (edited for spelling and missing word)
Wait-they'll shoot me at the machine??
Some people pay for that sort of treatment! And you get it for free!
The first question that came to my mind was - A M&M vending machine?. The the actual fuck society
U no like
"over 5 million nonconsenting Canadians" were scanned into Cadillac Fairview's database
fully scanned facially by automated kiosks in malls.. the database was deleted only after an investigation..
To the people that allowed that gross invasion to happen:
Oopsie woopsie, diddums make a widdle fucky wucky? Yes you did. Yes you did.
Then do what you'd do to any other child: take away the toy they misbehaved with.