I wouldn’t want to know that. Imagine even if you get to know only a part of that knowledge, for instance, you get to know that you will die on a Tuesday or within a specific month. With that information in mind you would dread every upcoming Tuesday (or a specific month) and in the end it all may lead up to a self fulfilling prophecy.

The last time I bought a map was around the early 2000’s. I drove to another city and bought a city plan along with a newspaper. I used both to search for appartements to visit and rent while being there for the whole day.

The last time a physical map got handed to me was when I registered as a citizen in yet another city I went to study for. Students who moved there were handed a shoulder bag filled with some brochures along with a map of the city and a book with the timetables for all public transport routes as a welcoming gift. That was in 2007.

That’s an interesting one. When I was a child I liked the smell of new books and magazines. They had a rather pleasant odor. But since a couple of years now fresh-printed things smell just awful. I think the ingredients of the ink or the paper have been changed.

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

Ads in, before, and after videos suck.

But wouldn’t be an ad, which is displayed during a paused video one of the least annoying? Because, when I pause a video, I’m usually doing something else (bathroom break for instance, or, when staying at the computer, doing something in another browser tab or in a different program) and I’m absent from the video. Also, I can mute sound easily (one push of a key on the keyboard - which is a workflow that has to be executed then in addition to simply pausing the video and therefore would be annoying).

Or did I miss anything else crucial? Do you pause videos and stare at the paused video without doing anything else?

Anyway, this probably won’t be a problem if you use an ad blocker. Or if you download the video.

Bad Wolves - Zombie

This would be the Movie Posters, A.I. generated:

@[email protected] draw for me Space ship people get up from sleeping coffin and have eat. Computer woman find strange noisings on planet and astronauts go to seeing. Astronauts find big elephant man who dead then find too many egg. Astronaut is possess by egg demon and new egg demon is come when eat bad noodle. Seven friends and cat all try to find egg demon before space ship go home but is hard working. Who will life to escaping? Who is bad milk blood robot? Scream not working because space make deaf.

style: albedo

@[email protected] draw for me Space ship people get up from sleeping coffin and have eat. Computer woman find strange noisings on planet and astronauts go to seeing. Astronauts find big elephant man who dead then find too many egg. Astronaut is possess by egg demon and new egg demon is come when eat bad noodle. Seven friends and cat all try to find egg demon before space ship go home but is hard working. Who will life to escaping? Who is bad milk blood robot? Scream not working because space make deaf.

style: albedo

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.

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 other songs performed on that channel (…as if it were writen by Dire Straits) are also top notch!

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