Jul 02
BenQ is baq–and it’s ditched the Siemens
(Credit: Crave UK) You may remember that BenQ bought Siemens Mobile in 2005 and produced a series of so-so handsets. As evidenced by the lack of BenQ Siemens phones in shops, the partnership didn’t exactly last very long, and while the BenQ Siemens “squond” (square and round) campaign did …
written by CoolGadget
Jul 02
Japan’s face-authorizing cigarette machines no match for Bruce Willis photo
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Remember those
Japanese vending machines that use face recognition to scan for wrinkles and saggy skin before authenticating cigarette purchases? Surprise, they’re so easy to circumvent that even a nicotine-addicted kid can do it. Turns out the cameras will authenticate “a 15-centimeter (6-inch) wide magazine photo of a man who looked to be in his 50s.” Smaller clippings work too as demonstrated by a successful cigarette vend using a 3-inch photo of a woman in her 30s — a 1-inch wide photo failed, however. Still, only 4,000 of Japan’s 570,000 cigarette vending machines feature the cams and these are due for a software update in response to the flaw — the rest use RFID readers to check the smoker’s Taspo age-verification card. Nevertheless, we don’t think it’s much of a stretch to predict that this system, like that of DRM controlled music, is destined to fail.
[Via The Raw Feed]
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written by CoolGadget