> The designers are considering adding facial recognition technology to the design.
Um, what
> In fitting with the trend towards more personalized, data-driven flying experiences, New Territory is keen to add facial recognition technology to the mix too.
> The idea is that as the seat wing recognizes that you've fallen asleep, it'll automatically turn off the movie playing on your IFE.
This could be the worst idea ever. Have cameras pointed at every flyer for the duration of the flight, for the incredibly minor benefit of stopping your movie? To me this sounds like they wanted to add facial recognition regardless, so they found a problem to their solution.
> This could be the worst idea ever. Have cameras pointed at every flyer for the duration of the flight, for the incredibly minor benefit of stopping your movie
This seems to be uniform across all surveillance technology. The purported convenience is so laughably minor that it's almost a parody.
Like Alexa - people are willing to have a Big Brother-esque speaker inside their homes for the convenience of playing some music? Is that all it takes?
>Like Alexa - people are willing to have a Big Brother-esque speaker inside their homes for the convenience of playing some music? Is that all it takes?
Here's my workaround: my smart speaker is tied to the lightswitch. It's only on when I'm in that room and if Google can somehow make use of the fact I stream a podcast or the local NPR station while bathing and shaving more power to them.
After nearly 5 decades of declining traffic fatalities, the number has been increasing (at least in NL) for the past 3, with mobile use being one of the main drivers. I don't like surveillance everywhere, but I like people playing with their phones while driving even less, so I personally can't wait for those camera's to be anywhere.
Also, my Tesla is filming constantly while I drive, so that's a much bigger deal.
I’m also a cyclist, but I know there would be much safer ways of making this a reality if it’s actually a big problem.
For example in Japan the car navigation system can only be used while the car is in park. This would be more effective then using cameras which will only be semi-perfect and still people will try use their phone anyway.
There are thousands of speed cameras in Australia, people still speed all the time and time from high speed crashes.
We live in the safest world we have ever lived in yet it amazes me the willingness people have to give up privacy and Liberty under the guise of a marginal increase in "safety"
But at the end of the day it's a cultural thing— this is the same America that rejects any form of common sense gun control because liberty is more important than kids not shooting themselves in their own homes.
Voice control of smart devices is extremely convenient. I can only imagine what a quality of life improvement it is for someone with physical disabilities.
Getting a Google home isn't mandatory, at least not yet. I personally use mine almost exclusively as an alarm clock. I have a tendency to wake up several times a night to check if I remembered to set an alarm, it's probably an anxiety thing. So I cast around my room for my glasses or press my face against my alarm clock or cell phone. Now when I wake up I just ask Google and it cheerfully informs me of the time. I also put a smart light bulb in my bedside lamp. In return Google may be able to gain some insight into my sleeping habits, and if I ever get back to having sex they can listen to that too.
Obviously I'll avoid purchasing optional "smart" devices that send my data everywhere, outside of my control. The problem is mass acceptance of ubiquitous surveillance, and those promoting and pushing it. I guess that means I will have to do my best to avoid visiting anyone who happens to have an Alexa (or whatever) hiding somewhere.
Even Google's devices chief, Rick Osterloh, says people using his product should warn guests that their conversations are being recorded. To his credit, he even does so(!):
> “Does the owner of a home need to disclose to a guest? I would and do when someone enters into my home, and it’s probably something that the products themselves should try to indicate,” Osterloh said.
Osterloh hits on the truly insidious thing about about microphones -- they never indicate when they are listening and sending your data out of your control. (Camera LEDs also certainly cannot be trusted, but I digress).
To be clear, again, I have full empathy for anyone needing the conveniences this technology promises. I have zero empathy for the companies, "officials", and "authorities" who claim that they must exfiltrate my data so that it can be used for adding convenience, or security, or safety or whatever. It is unnecessary. Smart, creative engineers have proven they can do pretty amazing things with data processed locally, with no exfiltration required. Let them do their job, and let my personal data stay under my exclusive control.
I used to attribute this laziness to incompetence, but the advertising industry has proven over and over and over (decades!) that they are openly and unrepentantly hostile to users. They are malicious. I cannot and will never again trust them.
Or have any friends that want to buy one. I have one friend who's pretty in to home automation. Fortunately he doesn't host get togethers very often, but I've seriously considered declining invitations before because I don't want to be in a house with all that crap in it.
I have, and do, decline to attend events, dinners, parties at home where people refuse to depower their devices. Many were taken aback, and took it as a cue to examine their own stance. You start by having a spine, and follow through with action, while explaining your stance in a thoughtful way. The change starts with us.
I'm not really sure how to answer that. I guess it amounts to peer pressure. If you're up against a group that has already decided that these kinds of devices aren't a problem, it's hard to articulate an argument against subjecting yourself to it that they find convincing.
And doesn't this perfectly demonstrate the issue with the "just don't buy one" argument? It's still _possible_ to make choices about your privacy (ex. don't get a smart phone, don't buy a smart speaker, etc.) but it requires progressively more conviction as acceptance of this kind of tech becomes mainstream.
Think back 200,000 years when modern humans first appeared. That is less than 20,000 generations of humans where for a long time, it was kill or be killed.
Think back to about a thousand years ago. That is less than 100 generations where for a long time, slavery and serfdom were common.
"Big Brother" is nothing more than a tool for the apex of the pyramid of human society. This is how "they" are able to get away with molesting hundreds of children while Joe who takes a drunken piss in the park at midnight is classified a sex offender for life.
So if you understand from _that_ perspective, it makes perfect sense. However, in contrast to every other time before, today the commoner "feels" like they are free. This changes the way they think and speak. The commoners don't feel inferior to the apex of humanity's pyramid. I expect if we get too far out of line, we'll be reminded.
You can completely disable Siri or whatever your device's equivalent is. The entire purpose of Alexa is to be listening all the time. They're not equivalent.
Can you prove that you've disabled it? That it's not listening all the time and logging interesting sounds?
I don't see a huge difference between a speaker that's designed to have an always-on mic listening for a code-word and we're just going to trust that it doesn't log anything unless it hears that codeword, and a phone that's designed to have the same, but has a software option to turn it off.
Either way, we're trusting that the device isn't abusing the fact that it has a mic.
No, I can't prove that it's disabled, but that doesn't matter much. There are people out there who probably could and would be more than happy to publish their results if they did.
More importantly, the difference is in intent. I don't intend to carry around a device that's always listening to me. Anyone with an Alexa device is intentionally inviting Amazon to listen to every word spoken in (part of) their home.
It is always listening. A coworker has Siri enabled and it regularly interrupts meetings because it thought some random noise was a wake word. It then proceeds to do whatever Siri does, which I assume involves sending whatever it hears after that point back to Apple.
I carry around and iPhone where I've done my best to completely disable Siri so I expect it not to be listening. That's antithetical to the use-case of Alexa and similar devices.
But the intent isn't there for Amazon to listen to everything you say - which is why hotword detection is done locally on Alexa and only then is an audio stream sent to their servers.
I have a coworker who has Siri enabled on his phone. It regularly wakes up and starts recording seemingly at random. Maybe "always listening" isn't the correct phrasing. "It might be listening at any time" might be better.
Of course, but the convenience of a smartphone does outweigh the potential surveillance. I getwork done on my phone, book cabs and flight tickets, get food delivered. I've tried living without my smartphone but it's not feasible.
To be fair, everybody who has Alexa already has a phone constantly with them everywhere. So it's just one extra microphone, not something completely different.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and I make sure to disable all voice commands from my smartphone (which is admittedly useless if my device is compromised because I'd need a hardware killswitch, but it's a start). On the other hand those assistants' whole purpose is to work with voice controls, they're useless without them.
It's not completely different but it's far from completely the same in my opinion.
A smartphone is more transparent than a device explicitly designed and advertised to record audio in entire rooms? Or did you mean the smartphones signal more system status?
In my experience a lot of people have privacy concerns over the speakers, and underestimate the smartphone.
I meant that security provisions for smartphones are way better than for Alexa type devices.
People do underestimate the smartphone, but I feel the problem with smart speakers is even more pronounced. I mean, voice is the primary interface for a smart speaker.
What kind of Android do you have? Are you sure you went through all the settings?
And, still, I can install LineageOS or other privacy-respecting systems on my phone. We don't have any custom firmware for an Echo or Alexa yet (to the best of my knowledge.)
The number of phones actually supported by lineageOS is a rounding error, unless you count unofficial incomplete builds by random untrusted people on some forum.
Almost none of my family members understand the implications of the voice assistant let alone know how to turn it off. You’re a techy type and are thinking my uncles or grandparents operate at your level.
What fraction of iPhone users do you think have turned off Siri? Based on my circle, it's zero. Android seems a bit more complicated because registration for Samsung or Amazon might be decoupled from device setup, but I'd imagine those are mostly turned on. So most people do have an always or nearly always on microphone in their pocket as the post higher up was trying to point out.
Anecdata, but most of my friends that have iPhones has Siri enabled indeed, but the minority that is aware of the "Hey Siri" feature (the only thing that needs an always-on mic) has not enabled it. Most of them find it creepy.
Astro-turfing for what? I guess this falls into the "uneducated" category. From my apparently uneducated perspective, phones need to be a concern if you're worried about your voice and activities being recorded. Most users have no idea that, for example, Google Assistant is always listening on Pixel.
Siri is not enabled by default, they use a different approach to get users to opt in. Step 8: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202033 has a much bigger button to enable Siri, but users are given a choice and skipping Siri takes less time so it’s easier if you’re not going to use it.
If you choose to disable Google Assistant completely, follow these steps:
Open the Google app and select Menu (the three bars)
go to Settings
Google Assistant section click Settings > Phone and disable the Assistant option
I have a custom domain and disabled it for my family:
Switch off Google Assistant (for entire custom domain)
Click Search and Assistant. Tip: Scroll to see all services.
...
Control who uses Search and Assistant in your organization
At the left, select the organizational unit.
Select On or Off.
To keep the service turned on or off even when the service is turned on or off for the parent organizational unit, click Override.
That's the thing - smartphones are surveillance devices as well, but their utility makes them a necessity. It's possible to argue that you'd submit to the surveillance if you're getting all that you get from a smartphone.
But a smart speaker just plays some music and tells you the weather. It's not nearly enough utility to be worth the privacy risks.
To you maybe, but not for everyone. I get lots of utility out of my Echo (alarms, music, checking the weather, controlling lights, etc.) that I'm fine with some random Amazon contractor listening to my commands to Alexa.
And if you are worried about the companies lying about not recording 24/7 why do you trust them to disable the recording done by assistants on your phone?
I still receive decks with great regularity that drag the blockchain in by the hairs. Extremely boring and a very quick way to end up in the round archive. One of those two days ago. It was so cringeworthy I'd almost post it here but that's sort of rude. This one was a borderline scam with a whole pile of content recycled from other decks and fake education records for the participants. Who ever thought we'd check up on that stuff, so just lie away with abandon.
It's good stuff to keep the partners sharp though, see if they spot the mistakes.
Tricky territory. Lots of people will embellish something when they're in sales mode, in this case the same set of schools could be found for several different people who all happened to be involved in the coin scene. The chances of that being coincidence are nil, but that's not quite proof. That said I'd bet a couple of grand on it without being too worried.
This is particularly funny for me as a person who works for an ISP at layers 1 to 4 on the OSI model. There's always some real hardware somewhere running it. Can't escape from the bare metal, only abstract it away behind layers of obfuscation.
I'm sure somewhere on Earth right now there is already a startup based on block chain storage of convolutional neural network learning face recognition.
VC returns are not what you think they are. There is a lot of dumb money floating around and the long term returns of quite a few funds are much lower than what you might think. A couple of funds outperform the remainder quite handily which results in an average that looks acceptable but quite a few people lost a lot of $ on becoming an LP of a badly managed fund.
That won't stop the fund managers from making out like bandits, the carry may be nil but the management fees will more than make up for that. Beware of investing in funds where the fund managers do not have substantial skin in the game.
I do the same, but I measure in terms of Instagrams. I might take your idea for sub-Instagram units, though measuring by units of $120 million adds more overhead than units of $1 billion.
I'm pretty sure many airlines already have cameras looking at your face.
The last few international United Airlines flights I was on had IR LEDs just below the seat entertainment screen shining in my face the whole flight. I worked for an 3D camera company at the time and was pretty tuned in to IR (~850 nm) LED's dim red glow. There is no reason for them being there unless there are cameras looking at your face.
"As with many other airlines, some of our premium seats have in-flight entertainment systems that came with cameras installed by the manufacturer," a United Airlines spokesperson said. "None of these cameras were ever activated and we had no plans to use them in the future, however, we took the additional step to cover the cameras."
I flew a United 787-9 recently and noticed an IR LED too, but I assumed it was a proximity sensor (when you bring your hands close to the bottom of the screen the home button, headphone jack, and USB charging port light up).
They probably put it in to do gaze tracking in the hopes of selling that data back to movie studios/advertisers. I'm not sure if they currently sell this data, but I'm sure we will find out when/if some disclaimer flashes on the screen in the beginning of the flight.
The other intended function is to measure & monetize viewer engagement and sentiment, so that IFE can offer personalized ads as an additional revenue stream for the airlines.
I was in a taxi in Japan with a TV screen in the headrests. It started with a message saying it uses facial recognition to tell if you are male or female, in order to provide you with the most relevant content, where the content was entirely advertising.
So a camera records your face to send the pictures to God knows whose server and your preferences are dictated based on your assumed gender instead of being asked for...
I saw an NHK video on YouTube that talks about vending machines with the same feature. It uses your face to determine your gender and age range, and then recommends a drink for you.
There must be some Japanese company that is pushing this technology hard.
I must admit, when travelling I sort of accept a lower level of privacy. Other people who probably have location, purchase, or photographic data about my trip
All the governments and airports involved of course
Star Bucks saw my credit card appear for the first time across HK and Japan, hopefully the last time
JR Rail Companies, all of the train stations
NaviTime, the transit app company
Google would know pretty much everything about my trip, GMaps was very helpful.
My Bank would have a bunch of data
The 7/11s, Lawsons, FamilyMarts and their payment providers/banks
My Bank knows everything I did
Instagram probably has more location data than it should
SoftBank wifi saw me travel across the continent, there was almost nowhere safe from a SoftBank SSID and I'm sure they keep track.
The list likely goes on. It's almost futile, but not quite. I did my best to be cognizant, but unless you become a hermit in the hills I don't think you can avoid it.
I don't care. I think that even if it is unavoidable it is very much worthwhile to resist and to indicate as early and as often as possible what is and is not acceptable. The only times when it is worth giving up some of your privacy is (1) when it is with your active consent and (2) when there is a tangible benefit to you and (3) as a result you are not causing 'collateral damage' to the privacy of others (who have not given their consent). Privacy is a great good and giving it up should be done very carefully lest we all end up regretting this in ways that can not be undone.
It must be my overactive imagination but I can see so many ways in which this data can be abused that there is no possible upside that I'm willing to trade for. Consent withdrawn and if the last taxi is outfitted with facial recognition software I'll be happy to walk.
Of the options available, I thought this was the most reasonable. The markup available doesn't make it particularly easy to do lists on HN. It's either a codeblock to get the list items close, or one line per paragraph that takes up lots of vertical room.
The 'people behind HN' are fewer in number than you would likely guess and are working hard to keep the community on the rails, on top of being responsible for the development. It is not as though they are drowning in capacity.
Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. If you want to object to websites that allow codeblocks don't visit those websites, and if you do bring inferior devices to read with then don't complain.
HN is one of the most readable websites out there as of today and the degree of bitching about details such as these is infuriating, just look at the ad plastered animated bs you see elsewhere and then realize how trivial this particular gripe is.
Rendering is mostly a client side affair, you have all the control you need to make it look any way you want.
I didn’t expect for a minute it would actually work in real-time. Maybe they record the footage and have humans analyse it and try make more engaging commercials in the future?
It’s Japan and sadly it’s become incredibly outdated technologically. I’m not sure many people realise this. I was shocked at what I saw quite frankly.
Sorry I don't recall the name, but I was in Sapporo, and the taxi was an odd shape compared to the others. Like a black hatchback with a sliding side door that opened automatically, unlike the Toyota Crowns I normally saw.
Regardless of how interesting I find them, meetings at work trigger something deep inside me that cause me to sleep. It’s like a biological switch has been flipped. Cavemen talking around a fire into the night, getting ready for the long rest for the day ahead...
Sometimes I fall into a fugue in which I am semi-aware and a dream fills in part of the speech of meetings. I hear the most bizarre things when that happens, and worst of all, it makes sense!
I don’t have any sleep issues aside from this.
Standing up sometimes helps but cannot always be done.
It's not just the interestingness, but the lack of engagement. When that meeting starts, your brain is likely shutting off the flow of orexin. That orexin may have been the only thing keeping you awake. You get bored or disengaged; you conk out.
I'd guess, just from hearing that short description, that you don't get much natural sunlight in your workplace, the meetings are happening just after lunchtime, between 1 and 4 PM, and that you have some amount of sleep disorder that would be almost trivially manageable if your medical insurance plan were more reasonable. You can't drive more than a few hours without getting sleepy. On planes, trains, or buses, you conk out almost immediately, and somehow wake up just before arriving at your destination. But you don't fall asleep during movies.
Schedule a visit with a sleep specialist in the first week of January, after your deductible resets, and get a sleep study done. If you get a prescription for a CPAP, or some other durable medical equipment, buy it outright, and send a copy of the receipt to your insurer. Do not rent. If you have been putting off any other medical treatments, get them done next year too. If you can't hit your deductible with a sleep study and CPAP on the books, you probably never will.
Seems a bit of a stretch to assume the guy has _sleep apnea_ if he nods off during a likely pointless meeting. If he's passing out at his desk, then perhaps.
I assume nothing. Sleep apnea is simply one of the most common sleep disorders, and one of the easiest to treat, so it makes sense to test it out first. The sleep study required to do so will also reveal most other sleep problems that are not caused by apneas.
Falling asleep involuntarily in the middle of the day is not normal, regardless of the circumstances. Sleep problems can lead to heart problems, and preventable deaths.
> meetings at work trigger something deep inside me that cause me to sleep
I get this, though I know that it is in part because I don't get enough good sleep often (due to a mix of insomnia & bad sleep as symptoms of being a bit bi-polar, and life just being too darn busy) even at times when I am feeling well rested & wide awake it still happens.
A meeting room full of people, even the big "board room", tends to be warmer and cosier than our usual open-plan office which is definitely part of what causes the effect.
Also, the start of a meeting that I'm not running is a point where the brain shuts off a bit: I'm no longer concentrating on my work but there is nothing else to take my attention while waiting for others to file-/dial-in or the chair to get things started. Normally when I down tools it is to do something else, for instance my lunch-time march in the fresh air, rather than to just sit and stop for a moment in a warm room. Of course there is "networking" going on rather than it being completely dead time, but that isn't the same as concentrating on a work task or physically doing something.
I'm not a doctor, so please take this with a truck load of salt, but you may want to get tested for sleep apnea. You can apparently go a full night of sleep, waking up seemingly well rested, and then your body just shuts down to sleep all of a sudden because it turns out you barely slept at all. Snoring is a symptom apparently, but even if you don't snore it might be worth getting tested.
I thought I was the only person with a serious case of useless-meeting narcolepsy.
Keeping relatively active helps, just like taking walks roughly every hour at minimum during work. If I'm absolutely going to sleep I'll stop paying attention and focus on my work, but then I'll miss opportunities to talk when needed.
I'll owe my career to anyone who can find a solution.
Hate meetings as I know I will be doing all the tricks to stay awake. Pinching my legs, rotating feet, shifting about, hoping my drink lasts...
Which is why I hate meetings that are longer than 15 minutes. Hardly any need to be any longer. If they do then they are workshops, not meetings.
I get quite frustrated and often walk out before they finish as often a possible solution and plan has been decided on quite quickly, then people realise they got another 45 minutes to go of the booked meeting so might as well discuss another subject or worse: guessing hypothetical responses to what might happen after the meeting.
No, let's just quickly do what we just all decided was the best plan. If that doesn't work, let's talk again. Most of the time it will work and we saved a lot of wasted time. And frustrations.
I don't actually hate meetings. I just hate long meetings. 1 hour is a long meeting.
Cheerios (or some similarly nibbleable vittle). Eat one unit at a time, and space it out at minute intervals or so. That completely solved my mtg / conference / lecture narcolepsy problem.
Maybe don't see meetings as "opportunities to talk?" If that's all they are at your company, pushing for clear agendas and strong meeting facilitation might work.
Not sure if this is true, but I suspect certain sounds make me sleepy, such as the sound of airplane engines in the cabin, some projectors or airconditioning units. On most airplanes, it is near impossible for me to stay awake.
I have the same problem as your parent, and I'm convinced I don't have the usual sleep issues for several reasons.
1) I'm very sensitive of lack of sleep, and so I take having 8-hours or more of good sleep extremely seriously.
2) Most days I don't have any sudden sleep syndrome.
3) I've had cases of sudden extreme sleepiness for no particular reason since I was a child. The only thing in common I can think of in this cases is being indoors.
I never thought about it before, but I might have a case of narcolepsy or something similar.
In my senior year at Caltech, I flew out with some others to interview at HP. HP made a group presentation to us. I fell asleep halfway through the presentation and woke up halfway to the floor, and hit the floor with quite a crash. I inspired quite a bit of laughter with that.
This is why you always bring a coffee to presentations/meetings. Even if caffeine is not strong enough to stop you from falling asleep the activity of picking up a cup and taking a sip every few minutes will do.
I didn't get hooked on coffee until I started at Boeing. There's nothing like Boeing MIL-STD coffee. It was years before I realized that my Sunday morning headaches were caffeine withdrawal (I'm really not very smart).
I still like my coffee black and tasting like industrial waste.
I think the sleepiness in meetings is mostly related to lack of fresh air. I remember reading some articles that the air during meetings (talking about physical meetings in rooms here) has a very high CO2 count.
It sounds like the author is misunderstanding a bit. This isn't facial recognition, it's facial detection. Distinguishing a sleeping face and an awake face doesn't require the face to be identified. Also, I'd be shocked if there aren't already cameras covering every square inch of modern airplane cabins. Also also, you can't get on a plane without showing ID and boarding pass with a seat number, so it's not like they don't already know exactly who is sitting where.
> I'd be shocked if there aren't already cameras covering every square inch of modern airplane cabins
Now that you mention it, I don’t recall ever seeing a camera on an airplane before. I see them on busses and trains, airports and stations. But not in aircraft cabins. If they’re there, they must be better hidden than in other places.
Yeah it seems like one of the few places people would be willing to trade some privacy for security, and they aren't doing it. Maybe because they don't want to end the mile high club.
It's probably a financial decision, everything about modern commercial aircraft is designed around getting the cheapest tickets possible.
This isn't recognizing your specific face, it's about watching your general expressions.
Many modern cars already have something like this to see if you're falling sleeping while behind the wheel and will start vibrating the seats and steering while sounding alarms to get you alert again.
That being said, it's definitely over engineered compared to a "are you still active" button on the screen.
Clarification of the difference between recognition and general detection is not an argument for or against, though perhaps you should re-read my last sentence for my position.
Your post is making the mistake that, just because all this function needs is detection, that therefore this is the only thing it's actually doing. "What this is about is..."
This isn't about detection and isn't about triggering a sleep mode at all. It's not even about over-engineering for this particular function, because this particular function is not the point. What it's actually about is doing everything they can conceivably think of to monetize engagement tracking, while continuously pointing a camera at your face as you watch movies and adds.
Those are some wild assumptions. You're discussing an entirely different topic about cameras and privacy that I never mentioned.
It doesn't make my post a mistake for not accounting for every last thought you had about a different conversation. And if you need it to be clear, by over-engineered I do consider these unnecessary and unwanted.
Don't worry, the algorithm only checks if you're asleep. By algorithm I mean outsourced workers in 3rd world call center, that is until our actual algorithm starts producing better results.
It would also have less false positives. I sometimes close my eyes and just listen to the audio, for TV documentaries for ex. and there are also radio programs.
+1 to this. I don't love trying to sleep on planes at the best of times, but when you're surrounded by people who have happily fallen asleep in front of some bright flashing screen it drives me out of my mind. Flight attendants will usually switch them off if you ask, though.
> Have cameras pointed at every flyer for the duration of the flight, for the incredibly minor benefit of stopping your movie?
I flew on an Emirates A380 recently that had a front-facing camera in the IFE system. I'm not sure what its intended purpose was - perhaps to allow video calls?
I had no way to tell if it was in-use during the flight, but i assume there were already other cameras in the main passenger cabin with sufficient resolution to tell whether someone's eyes are open.
That probably works great for your children, and I'm very happy for you, but not shouting works a treat for me. If a child slept through shouting that was loud enough in my house to be heard (we have 3 foot thick stone walls) I would be worried about their hearing.
Also, I mean this in the most polite way possible, but unsolicited parenting advice is often not received as well as one might hope.
I rejected wireless intercoms at the time because every wireless thing I bought had horrible sound quality, like the worst walkie-talkie. Even with simple analog electronics, wired had good sound quality.
I did install some speaker wires, but the times when I wanted to play music in one room and hear it in another are just about never.
Guess I'm just not finding any point to home automation. Even if I had installed a home automation system, the intervening years would have turned it into expensive obsolete junk anyway. I've heard of people, when they try to sell their homes, having to rip it all out and put in conventional wiring.
What did pay off was running Cat5 and RG6 cables in a star configuration. Wifi has improved greatly, but it's nothing like a wired connection for smooth, problem free operation.
>I did install some speaker wires, but the times when I wanted to play music in one room and hear it in another are just about never.
I have speakers around my house, including on my deck, wired to a stereo receiver for music and I do use it. But Sonos didn't exist when I had the various renovations done when the wiring was added. If I were doing it today, I'd almost certainly just go with some sort of wireless system.
How so? There is already a button to get the flight attendant to come over without having to move yourself, and you are going to talk aloud all the same. In fact with video calling you may disrupt a larger number of people since the flight attendant is also going to talk aloud in a different part of the cabin, creating two disjointed pockets of noise.
Using a call button, the flight attendant has to come over twice - once to find out what you want, and then again to bring you the thing you asked for. Any form of remote communication (video chat, text message, whatever) reduces that to a single interaction.
Fewer trips down the aisle, less time spent leaning over other passengers, etc.
If I were the PM on this project I probably would've used a standard menu of services (get a blanket, refill water bottle) in an app on the IFE display instead, but the principle is sound.
Finally! A use for all those free webcam covers I keep getting at trade shows. You're welcome, fellow passengers. Or failing that there's always duct tape.
it a very good idea.. for advertisers. because likes are a thing of the past, now we will display ads and collect facial expressions and emotions in real time :D
What would be far more helpful is to just turn off screens that the person hasn't interacted with. I've been on too many late night flights where the screens for empty seats, or for people who are staring at their iPad have made it really hard to sleep(eye masks are uncomfortable for me). I've even seen people actively trying to sleep with the full brightness screen right in front of them because it's not obvious at all how to turn them off(usually you have to find the brightness menu and press the down button a dozen times).
Since I know nothing about airline electrical systems, movie deals the airline might have made etc. I wonder if it might not be beneficial to the airline if it manages to turn off a small number of unused movies during a flight.
Why is it so hard to believe that that is the intended purpose? The feature is small yet a nice touch and I can't think of any sinister usage of adding this technology (I'm sure they have hidden cameras/microphones/facial recognition at the gate for security, anyway).
> Have cameras pointed at every flyer for the duration of the flight, for the incredibly minor benefit of stopping your movie
Besides, all these electronic devices have a high environmental impact, for virtually no benefits. It makes you wonder how we're going to decrease our CO2 emissions...
I'm pretty sure the cost of even manufacturing (let alone just operating) these screens pales in comparison to the cost of, you know, igniting hydrocarbons to make a giant airplane fly in the air at hundreds of miles an hour.
Um, what
> In fitting with the trend towards more personalized, data-driven flying experiences, New Territory is keen to add facial recognition technology to the mix too.
> The idea is that as the seat wing recognizes that you've fallen asleep, it'll automatically turn off the movie playing on your IFE.
This could be the worst idea ever. Have cameras pointed at every flyer for the duration of the flight, for the incredibly minor benefit of stopping your movie? To me this sounds like they wanted to add facial recognition regardless, so they found a problem to their solution.