• The University of Waterloo is expected to remove smart vending machines from its campus.
  • A student discovered an error code that suggested the machines used facial-recognition technology.
  • Vending Services said the technology didn’t take or store customers’ photos.
  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    At this point it costs more money to make a “dumb” vending machine. The cost of a SBC is nothing, and it has more than enough horsepower to process transactions. All that extra horsepower + a 10 cent camera could be used to generate more money with facial recognition so naturally they’re gonna spend the extra 10 cents + cost to drill a hole to do it. It’s practically free to do it.