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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.
As it has been pointed out by others, research data shows that plastic bottle caps are a significant part of trash that is washed onto beaches. In order to prevent that bottles now come with tethered caps. From this point of view this measurement might be understandable. But does one really lose the caps of these bottles that often? Is this really the problem?
Where I live these kind of bottles are part of a deposit system. When you return them at a supermarket you get your deposit (25 Cent) back. This alone ensures that these bottles barely end up anywhere in the enviroment in the first place. When these bottles are returned at the supermarket, all of the bottles do have their respective caps screwed on. This method is practical, as you can collect these bottles wtihout having to deal with leakages of excess liquids.
I never had any issues regarding that the cap is still attached to the bottle, which could be an issue when it comes to recycling these bottles. One major problem when it comes to recycling of plastics is that it is crucial that these plastics are separated by the material they are made of. That is why it is impossible to recycle compound materials, as they can’t be separated from each other (i.e. tetra pak, tetra bric). The most common way of getting rid of these kind of packings is to burn them and use their heat for generating electricity.
These plastic bottles on the other hand can be recycled easily, as they consist of only one material (PET) - given, that the label is made of the same kind of plastic like the bottle itself.
I don’t know if the bottle cap is made of the same material (PET) or if this is another kind of plastic (ABS, PS, …). Making these bottle caps from the same material as the bottle itself would impose a greater impact than tethering them onto the bottle.
At first glance this measurement sounds like a low-hanging-fruit-greenwashing-attempt that hurts nobody. Very similar to the ban of disposable plastic cutlery or the ban of plastic straws. Don’t get me wrong - I think that these things are an important step towards reducing pollution and garbage overall, but did you ever ask yourself: “How does the garbage get into the ocean in the first place?”
There is an eerie resemblence between the smallest neuron and the largest structure in the universe - Galaxy Filament
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:
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
“What do customers get?”
Finally! I always thought that payment is not fun enough. What a time to be alive.
It only would be a big problem if household devices like washing machines are built in a way that makes a connection to the internet mandatory in order to function properly. Imagine you can’t do your laundry because of an internet outage.
Name any household device (washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, toaster, water kettle, iron, coffee maker, (microwave) oven, …) that has been improved in functionality by connecting it to the internet, making it a internet-of-things-device. I can’t think of any.
We have a washing machine that cannot be connected to the internet. After starting the program, we set up a timer on our smartphone, 15 minutes longer than the time the washing machine display is predicting. Works like a charm.
These all are valid points. From the technological point of view nuclear technology is pretty safe and the margin of error is rather low. There are many redundant fail-save measurements to retain a save operation. But if something will happen, it will be devestating. Most famous incident is Chernobyl. Also, nuclear waste management is a huge issue. Not many (if any) locations for waste storage have the capability for eternal storage. The Asse II mine for instance is a former salt mine which has been re-purposed as a deep geological repository. It was supposed to last alt least several thousand years. After only 30 years of usage it has been detected that water seeps into the vault which leads to corrosion of the barrels filled with nuclear waste which
will resultalready resulted in a release of radioactive elements. This is how the barrels were handled and stored. I am no expert but thirty years into almost eternity is a pretty bad figure.And there is another thing - and in my opinion this is a really serious one: Nucular power plants are operated by corporations within the private sector. This means that such a power plant is conducted with an economical focus (= profit). The incentive to make profit will result in skipping maintenance, bribing inspectors and downplaying any technical difficulties. Even when assumed that all the other issues (waste management etc.) are solved, every technical malfunction that resulted in the leakage of radioactive material woult be not be made public voluntarily. There were many incidents that have been made public, because the law required them to do so.. The hidden number of incidents that were not required to be made public is probably much higher.