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.

Your future is now.

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...

Yep! You don't get asked or consent to anything either, it just happens. Pretty untoward.

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.

Do you remember which taxi group that was? I live in Japan and haven’t noticed that yet

At the very least Nihon Koutsuu (日本交通) [1] does this.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Kotsu

I also a similar message in a Koutsuu but it was something about "Watching you face to see if you find the content engaging".

I guess they think they can keep tailing the information to you until you can't seem to look away? Very creepy.

I would immediately switch to another cab.

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.

Please don’t use code blocks for any sort of text other than code. They’re nearly unreadable on mobile.

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.

Please don't blame the commenter. Criticise the people behind HN for introducing this user hostile design and refusing to fix it for many years.

You can get an extension/userstyle for your browser so that code blocks will not bother you anymore.

It's not 'user hostile', at worst it is 'device hostile' and HN has plenty of mobile adapted clones out there.

For instance:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidr...

And plenty of others.

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.

Yeah, next time I’ll just hang My jacket over it.

I haven’t seen it have any effect on what is playing. Maybe I should look more grumpy until it’s actually showing me interesting advertisments.

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.

Similar to this, if not perhaps exactly this: http://hokkaidotaxi.com/category/sapporo-taxi-cab/

NY taxis have adverts in them. I therefore use uber in NY.

the airline should already know exactly who is sitting in the seat for personalised ads.

Engagement and sentiment in what they are watching would be another thing though