nicerdicer2

An excerpt from a related article from the same website:

And making the low-budget movie meant long hours and, as the title suggests, a lot of running. “Run Lola Run” finds its 20-something protagonist in a race against the clock to help her boyfriend replace a drug dealer’s bag of money that he lost. Most movie stars would sign up for a few triathlons or employ Usain Bolt’s trainer to get ready for such a gig. Not Potente.

“I didn’t do any preparation really,” she admits. “I was probably smoking two packs of cigarettes a day at that point. And I was doing all this running — I was running in rehearsals, I was running when we shot all the different takes, and I would run again so we could get the sound right. I was carried along by all this energy.”

Ah, the 90s... It ~~was~~ still is a great movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Lola_Run

There is an eerie resemblence between the smallest neuron and the largest structure in the universe - Galaxy Filament

Correct. The said vending machine was collecting data without users consent. And because it was facial recognition data it means that the collected data can be tied to an individual.

It would have been different if the collected data was just a counter which indcated the number of users of that machine. These kind of data could not have been tied to a specific individual.

That is correct. Switzerland is not a part of the European Union. The manufacturer, Invenda, is located in Switzerland. That is where their headquarters are. It might be possible that their vending machines are produced within the EU (another country where production costs are lower). It might be possible that these specific models (those who offer data collection) are designed for markets outside of EU.

They advertise their product as "Made in EU" (see brochure). This could be made on purpose to implicate that their data collection meets GDPR requirements, leading to believe that everything is compliant with the law.

Bad news, the manufacturer is located in Switzerland and, as stated in the brochure, they advertise their product as "Made in EU". Probably to implicate that any data which will be collected and processed will be under the terms of GDPR.

I haven't looked up the terms regarding GDPR, but I assume that their data collection is somewhat "compliant" with GDPR, which does not necessaryly mean anything. It can just mean that data is not stored locally, albeit it will be send to the manufacturer (but probably entcrypted). However, under GDPR you can enforce your right of deletion of the collected data - that is, if you know that data about you has been collected.

What makes this issue so severe is that it would have never been detected that data has been collected and processed, if it weren't for a malfunction.

Edit: grammar, spelling

The worst part of all is that no one would think of the fact that a vending machine is performing facial recognition techniques, because in general it is assumed that a vending machine is a mechanical device, as it has been in the past. There is not any user benefit in that.

I researched the manufacuter and in their brochure (see page 6) of a similar vending machine it is revealed what data can be processed:

Among the worst data sets are:

• product demographics
• measuring of foot traffic
• gender/ age/ etc.

Bonus: on page 7 of the product brochure they introduce an app which allows the customer to make purchases directly from their smatphone, with features like

• consumer engagement through gamification, interactive marketing, gifting, scratch-and-win receipts, product sampling and cross selling

"What do customers get?"

• a fun and engaging payment process

Finally! I always thought that payment is not fun enough. What a time to be alive.

As for an addition to the topic I leave this link to a study which gives some insight to consuming behavior:

Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence

Here’s a crazy thing no one talks about; Bugs. Dad taught me to clean the car’s windshield at every gas stop. Ya know, use the squeegee at the station? That was normal car maintenance. We’d often stop just for that purpose. Bug guts everywhere.

This. When I was a kid during the 90s, cars were covered in bugs during summer. Today there are bugs on windshields too, but compared to back then it's maybe only 10% of them. What also comes with the decliine in the insect population is a decline in the population of birds, because there are lesser and lesser natural habitats and food sources.

I am from Europe. What I also noticed is that, when you find insects or spiders and such, many of them are invasive and originally located in southern Europe. But each year they appear farther north, probably because of cilmate change.

For instance, the spider Zoropsis spinimana is a relatively new species in our region, and it's venomous*. Due to it's similarity it can be confused with Tegenaria domestica which is harmless to humans.

Also, with a warmer climate there are more ticks which are prone to spread diseases harmful to humans.

• Addition: the bite of Zoropsis spinimana is compareable to a wasp sting and is only dangerous to people who have allergies against the venom.

You will not be able to connect it directly to a computer. In marketing, this will be to meet rigorous water safety standards.

Making devices water-proof is also a marketing scheme to avoid replaceable batteries :

Some manufacturers are already eyeing an exemption for batteries used in "wet conditions" to opt out electric toothbrushes and possibly wearables like earbuds and smartwatches. The exemption is "based on unfounded safety claims," states Thomas Opsomer, policy engineer for iFixit, in Repair.EU's post.

Despite the coming up regulation on batteries and waste batteries by the EU Council batteries in water-proof devices will probably be exempt from being replceable, because the water proof feature of the device cannot be guaranteed. This undermines the right to repair and manufacturers can hope that customers replace their entire devices soon. Making phones water-proof is a loophole to seal off the device so that it is not to be repaired, at least without keeping the water-proof features after repairing.

It only would be a big problem if household devices like washing machines are built in a way that makes a connection to the internet mandatory in order to function properly. Imagine you can't do your laundry because of an internet outage.

Name any household device (washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, toaster, water kettle, iron, coffee maker, (microwave) oven, ...) that has been improved in functionality by connecting it to the internet, making it a internet-of-things-device. I can't think of any.

We have a washing machine that cannot be connected to the internet. After starting the program, we set up a timer on our smartphone, 15 minutes longer than the time the washing machine display is predicting. Works like a charm.