This IoT Mesh Network Watches You As You Shop - Without Cameras

[sman]

This IoT Mesh Network Watches You As You Shop - Without Cameras

"https://www.thingsquare.com/blog/articles/iot-mesh-retail/"

Online retailers know a lot about how their customers are navigating their virtual stores. Offline retailers are not so lucky.

Together with consumer behavior experts B:Clarity and a multinational home appliance brand we built a system to help understand customer movement and behavior.

The system consists of wireless sensors that are installed in electronics stores. A few hundred sensors in each store.

There are two types of sensors:

Vibration sensors. That trigger when someone is trying out a product.

Light sensors. Trigger when someone is standing in front of a product.

With these sensors, we can see what items are most popular, how it correlates to sales data – and how to take action to improve sales.

But without collecting any personally identifiable information.

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RV64X: A Free, Open Source GPU for RISC-V

"https://www.eetimes.com/rv64x-a-free-open-source-gpu-for-risc-v/"

A group of enthusiasts are proposing a new set of graphics instructions designed for 3D graphics and media processing. These new instructions are built on the RISC-V base vector instruction set. They will add support for new data types that are graphics specific as layered extensions in the spirit of the core RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Vectors, transcendental math, pixel, and textures and Z/Frame buffer operations are supported. It can be a fused CPU-GPU ISA. The group is calling it the RV64X as instructions will be 64-bit long (32 bits will not be enough to support a robust ISA).

Why now?

The world has plenty of GPUs to choose from, why this? Because, says the group, commercial GPUs are less effective at meeting unusual needs such as dual-phase 3D frustum clipping, adaptable HPC (arbitrary bit depth FFTs), hardware SLAM. They believecollaboration provides flexible standards, reduces the 10 to 20 man-year effort otherwise needed, and will help with cross-verification to avoid mistakes.

Edited February 1, 2021 by sman

[Hardhead]

I quit shopping at Amazon because they often don't describe where the product is made and also print false information about there products that they sell. Just my experience and you wouldn't believe what you have to do just to unsubscribe from Amazon account. It's called "Hidden Data" if I remember correctly.

I never you free WiFi anywhere and use an VPN and I would never let anything scan my phone at any store. I also have the camera on my laptop blacked out and use blockers to keep my privacy if there is such a thing. LoL.. Even with new and old phones they already know much about what you do. I often even leave it at home but there are certain ways to block some things but not everything.

[sman]

Rightly said, Hv to be alert from such prying devices / methods. Anything to improve service is ok but not at the cost of privacy intrusions.

[Amaroq_Starwind]

1 hour ago, Hardhead said:

I quit shopping at Amazon because they often don't describe where the product is made and also print false information about there products that they sell. Just my experience and you wouldn't believe what you have to do just to unsubscribe from Amazon account. It's called "Hidden Data" if I remember correctly.

Don't even get me started on what happens to items you return. It actually hurts.

 

[sman]

4 hours ago, Amaroq_Starwind said:

Don't even get me started on what happens to items you return. It actually hurts.

 

Cost economies of return & reuse.

[Hardhead]

Oh BTW, I stand to be corrected. IT is called "Dark data".

[sman]

Dark data is a grey area and largely wasted w/o means to process it in real time to make informed decisions. Something for the future, for systems with capabilities to analyse & help to improve services.

[Amaroq_Starwind]

I do like the idea of gathering telemetry that explicitly has no means of identifying who the data was collected on.