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> While the initial applications surround food, Sharon says that the technology is not just for checking out food freshness and nutritional information; it’s go

> While the initial applications surround food, Sharon says that the technology is not just for checking out food freshness and nutritional information; it’s good at analyzing body fat, and distinguishing real pharmaceuticals from their fake counterparts. “We’ve done a demo that distinguishes real Viagra from fake Viagra,” says Sharon. “That’s the most commonly counterfeited drug.” Now that's interesting. I wonder if they've considered marketing it as a way of testing the purity of illegal drugs?

ajmurmann 10y ago
Mentioning illegal drugs sounds always like a shady money grab is coming up. However, that's where this could truly safe lives.
xkcd-sucks 10y ago
It could also be good for cosmetics, as they're heterogeneous and probably pretty consistent. Although it would be limited to checking brand authenticity rather than interrogating composition
cr0sh 10y ago
Or perhaps testing strains of mj (in the "legal" states - medical and otherwise) for potency or whatnot?
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
> The user starts out by simplifying the problem a bit by identifying the category of the item to be examined—it’s not “What fruit is this,” but, “This is an apple, is it any good?” Consumer Physics’ cloud-based software then taps into its knowledge base, for an apple, it defines “good” as “sweet” (hence the Brix measurement), and considers an apple’s typical range of sweetness based on thousands of scans. A graphic on the phone then places the apple on a quality range. The important data and algorithms are held in their servers, not in the phone app. This gives them a lot of control and responsibility over the models, leading me to believe that they wouldn't store data on illegal drugs. I also feel it's kind of scummy to keep this on the server. There is no reason that this functionality couldn't be offline and on the phone, except to let them charge you monthly for the hardware you're effectively leasing from them, rather than letting you use the device you own. Also, I expect if this does take off that someone will replace their app's phone home behavior and sever-side components with an equivalent on localhost. Slightly later will be the cloned scanners that plug into the app. They should focus on providing higher-quality and higher-accuracy scanners than competition can achieve, rather than trying to lock out competitors.
- xkcd-sucks 10y ago
  I mean, somebody could just build a model in which "Cocaine" is renamed "thiotimoline" or something, unless they already have data on known illegal drugs. On the other hand, government agencies will use better equipment so the only way that would happen would be if they were specifically trying to catch people using their device on Bad things

ajmurmann 10y ago

Mentioning illegal drugs sounds always like a shady money grab is coming up. However, that's where this could truly safe lives.

xkcd-sucks 10y ago

It could also be good for cosmetics, as they're heterogeneous and probably pretty consistent. Although it would be limited to checking brand authenticity rather than interrogating composition

cr0sh 10y ago

Or perhaps testing strains of mj (in the "legal" states - medical and otherwise) for potency or whatnot?

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

> The user starts out by simplifying the problem a bit by identifying the category of the item to be examined—it’s not “What fruit is this,” but, “This is an apple, is it any good?” Consumer Physics’ cloud-based software then taps into its knowledge base, for an apple, it defines “good” as “sweet” (hence the Brix measurement), and considers an apple’s typical range of sweetness based on thousands of scans. A graphic on the phone then places the apple on a quality range. The important data and algorithms are held in their servers, not in the phone app. This gives them a lot of control and responsibility over the models, leading me to believe that they wouldn't store data on illegal drugs. I also feel it's kind of scummy to keep this on the server. There is no reason that this functionality couldn't be offline and on the phone, except to let them charge you monthly for the hardware you're effectively leasing from them, rather than letting you use the device you own. Also, I expect if this does take off that someone will replace their app's phone home behavior and sever-side components with an equivalent on localhost. Slightly later will be the cloned scanners that plug into the app. They should focus on providing higher-quality and higher-accuracy scanners than competition can achieve, rather than trying to lock out competitors.

xkcd-sucks 10y ago
I mean, somebody could just build a model in which "Cocaine" is renamed "thiotimoline" or something, unless they already have data on known illegal drugs. On the other hand, government agencies will use better equipment so the only way that would happen would be if they were specifically trying to catch people using their device on Bad things