[eagle2com]

> Retailers could glean valuable insights from tracking how a shopper scans shelves and selects items.

What a dystopian prospect. This being the second possible application thought of (as a good thing!) by a team member is quite disturbing. Have people become so desensitized to the omnipresent ads and tracking that they only consider the monetary rewards anymore?

[pavel_lishin]

I almost won a hackathon based on something like this, although we were just using cameras to track where a person was standing.

Alas, my teammate managed to commit something like ten thousand jpegs to our git repo, which completely fucked up our ability to work on it. (Please resist the urge to give me advice on what to do to fix this situation, unless you can travel a decade back in time and give it to my younger self.)

[fnordpiglet]

I do have such a machine but I’m using it to collect shoppers future behavior to inform advertisers in the past how to best target them in their future purchasing. Turns out even better than tracking them in the present!

[kleiba]

Would you think differently if the application does not model the individual user but rather treats them as completely anonymous? Like, the main interest is in stuff like: "a person that ended up buying product X was previous looking at the products on shelf Y for 23.4 seconds on average".

Just curious, I'm not in favor of such applications but I am interested in what privacy aspects are important to people.

I find that privacy is often held as a very high deed when considered on its own right out of any context. But in reality, people are happy to use cash reward cards or pay everything with credit card when they go shopping, or use gmail, or walk around all day with a smart phone in their pocket, etc. (Disclaimer: I do some of these things myself.)

[kevinventullo]

The disturbing aspect in my mind isn’t even the privacy per se, it’s that we have this fundamentally novel technology and rather than thinking of ways to truly improve people’s lives, their thought is “Okay but how can this be used to sell more coca-cola and designer belts?”

[hammock]

How could it possibly be anonymous? Would you be ok with your ring camera and external Tesla cameras being posted on a webcam streaming site (likely with no direct compensation to you) with filters for demographics, rough geolocation, etc as long as your name was not attached?

[kleiba]

This is a false analogy.

I wasn't talking about publishing streams to the internet but about evaluating sensor data without any attempts to identify the subjects, instead leaving them anonymous.

[aprilthird2021]

Retailers already do this. I worked at a company piloting (many years ago) cameras that can do eye tracking and provide things like a heatmap of physical shelves.

These are expensive so they're usually installed in a few major stores and the insights are extrapolated to everywhere else.

[smeej]

It almost makes me glad that my tear ducts are defective and I can't wear contact lenses. I think I might genuinely be willing to live without whatever advantages people think these will provide if it means avoiding having all my visual attention monitored at all times.

[Solvency]

It makes me happy I can wear analogue contact lenses so I can avoid wearing heavy hard objects around my face and nose 24/7, constantly dealing with smudges and spots on the glass, removing them to rub my eyes or itch around them, exercising, sweating, etc. Glasses are medieval torture devices set to slow burn.

[smeej]

Wow, it sounds like you've had an unusually negative experience with glasses. Mine aren't heavy, or even hard, and I certainly don't wear them 24/7. 16/7, I guess, but I definitely don't sleep in them!

Mine pretty much just let me see stuff. And they're kind of cute.

[camhart]

Smart lenses able to count blinks could help prevent meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD). Which would be pretty fantastic. Though we'd need to make sure the tech isnt doing more harm than good.

MGD is on the rise, and the current theory is its due to changes in lifestyle (predominantly from stareing at a screen for too long, which reduces blinking, which causes the glands to stop functioning and eventually die permanently).

Also worth noting. If you're having issues with your eyes and you stare at a screen a "normal" amount by todays standards, go to a dry eye dr. You probably have MGD.

[smeej]

Thanks for the recommendation. I know what my issue is, and it isn't that, but hopefully others can benefit from the info you've shared!

[amelius]

Indeed. What I want is contact lenses that replace billboards by artwork.

[beretguy]

Or contact lenses that just make billboards disappear. Contact lenses ad blocker. I bet even people with perfect vision would want these.

[JoshTriplett]

I read a sci-fi story in which someone managed to "disappear" in front of the protagonist's eyes; he found out later that the person wrapped themselves in a passing advertisement banner and was thus hidden by the personal adblocker everyone has.

[amelius]

Imagine a truck covered in ads ...

[jajko]

Add 3-5x zoom, thermal/night vision and you have 7 billion buyers

[rjsw]

Already being done with glasses [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/05/loose-fr...

[smeej]

This article was a big surprise to me for another reason: I've lived in a variety of regions in the U.S. and loose produce has been the norm my whole life, at least for items that aren't really small (berries usually come in packages). You can buy a sack of 10 oranges or something, but the norm is to select your own oranges one by one.

I'd very much have expected the U.S. to do whatever makes the most profit, so I wonder why there's such a cultural divide.

[micromacrofoot]

yes, youtubers and the like have made selling out cool

[schwartzworld]

It's giving Ubik