nicerdicer

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.

Back in the 90s our school had one room with a permantently installed TV set. Class was taking part in this room once a week. When we all behaved - and we did! - we were allowed to watch MTV in this room for the last remaining 15 minutes of the lesson. It was the time where boy groups and Euro Dance music was at its peak. For us 5th or 6th-graders this was the most important thing every week.

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.

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

Perhaps there will be a time in the future when we look back to when everything was “just” flat design. Meanwhile the UI will adapt the aesthetics of AI generated imagery which will be the new design thing then. Everything will look overly saturated but also a bit blurry, like AI generated landscapes. .

Or not. It depends on what data an AI will be fed with. Maybe it goes Frutiger Aero all over again (at least what the AI interpretation of Frutiger will be) since AI generators could be fed with the existing examples of such an era. We would have gone full circle.

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

Back in 2565 BC cameras weren’t that advanced like they are today. Due to the long exposure time these people had to stand still for several hours in order to avoid too much blurriness of the photo. You can see that the people in the background (middle left in the photo) were moving slightly as the photo is a bit blurrier compared to the foreground.

Bad Wolves - Zombie

“House of the Rising Sun” has been covered numerous times. The most known version is from The Animals. I was today years old when I learned that this is the original version of the song. However, my personal favourite cover version is from BTO.

Another well-executed cover version is of the song “Johnny B. Goode”, covered by Peter Tosh, beause it is tranferred into a different music genre.

I bet that is on purpose.

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.

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

It is woth mentioning that Friedrich Merz made up accusations against refugees recieving free dental work in the past. He said: “Die sitzen beim Arzt und lassen sich die Zähne neu machen, und die deutschen Bürger nebendran kriegen keine Termine.” which translates to: “These [refugees] are sitting at the doctor and get their teeth done, and the German citizen does not get an appointment” This is grade-A-populism.

Also, the CDU, the party Friedrich Merz is a member of, refused to participate in the protests against the raise of the Nazis with the reasoning, that the left party (die Linke) is participating as well, and that the CDU wouldn’t support anything the left party stands for.

It it safe to say, that our democracy is theratened by the CDU as well. Also, because members of the CDU took part in a meeting which discussed the mass deportation of foreign people. The CDU party is quite hesitant to distance themselves from it. This meeting sparked the ongoing protests, where - as of today over 300,000 people participated in.

Edit: spelling

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.