6 ms·

Over ten years ago, I used to work for a company that provided system [and device] to track when employees arrived and left the building. Most of these employe

Over ten years ago, I used to work for a company that provided system [and device] to track when employees arrived and left the building. Most of these employees work in the fields handling heavy equipment. Most of them had no fingerprint since they'd been worn out. We ended up using palm recognition. The idea that "all people have a unique fingerprint" is a widely believed falsehood.

gbraad 6y ago
It should always be a combination of biometrics; from fingerprint to retina, etc. Even the tools or superglue I use prevents my fingerprints to recognized most of the time. And that is just for hobby.
cryptixvi 6y ago
Similar story here. The company I worked for provided devices which would create and read a topological map of the back someone's right hand. There were a couple of instances where users would be missing fingers or had deformities that would throw the machine off. In these cases we would have them put their left hand upside down in the device and map that instead. In cases where there was issues with the original and alt methods we could remove the check altogether (employ would place their hand and it would go through so nothing was suspicious). This only happened once in the hundreds of thousands of people I'd deployed to. As an aside, this method of tracking users in and out of work was markedly more digestible than reading someone's fingerprints and increased user adoption. Working in 1st 2nd and 3rd world we heard all kinds of stories from employees not wanting to provide fingerprints from not wanting to be framed for murder to stealing a part of your soul by extracting sacred finger marks (similar story to photos in some cultures). https://us.allegion.com/en/home/products/categories/biometrics.html https://us.allegion.com/en/home/products/categories/biometri...
enw 6y ago
Had the same issue with skateboarding, as holding the grip tape would scrape off my fingerprint, making Touch ID terribly annoying to use.
Brian_K_White 6y ago
I was thinking about that "disease" label too. Anyone who thinks of the condition as a disease or deformity or handicap, is likely to agree that it should be "cured" if possible. After all, it's a public health harm to everyone else allowing them to breed and inflict their deformity on innocent babies that would have otherwise been normal. And then one day an actual disease based on a germ of some sort comes along that just loves to live in the valleys of human fingerprints, and the entire human race dies because we erased the few people we had that would have been immune. I don't understand the excuse for failing to recognize that the value of diversity outweighs it's inconvenience. I don't know how long that has been grade-school knowledge. If not multiple hundreds of years, sure at least it's been a known thing since before the brith of any currently living person? We are turning ourselves into human Cavendish banannas.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  I don't think the problem you're complaining about exists. Eugenics have fallen out of fashion many decades ago, and most countries have laws to protect people with unusual medical conditions/disabilities - typically, the more developed they are (i.e. the more resources they're able to spend), the better the protections.
  - handedness 6y ago
    On the contrary; eugenics has been normalized. Iceland only sees 1-2 births with Down syndrome per year, and not because they've identified a way to prevent a full or partial copy of chromosome 21. They test and terminate. My personal experience (and that of many friends) is that western OBGYNs push prenatal testing and corrective action quite aggressively. (There is reasonable room to disagree about what their motives are, and the profit motive may be sufficient for such testing.) And many people want it. We can debate the ethical implications separately, but regardless of where one lands on that issue, eugenics has very much been normalized.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      I've tried to find a definition of eugenics and it's very fuzzy. I feel like we could do better by adding some modifier that differentiates removing "undesirables" and terminating pregnancy which is likely to result in death or low quality life under constant care. Otherwise talking about eugenics in general becomes a bit silly. In the same way we have different words for murder and euthanasia. Bunching those together only seems to empower religious extremists who want to prevent any kind of abortion. (see Poland recently)

gbraad 6y ago

It should always be a combination of biometrics; from fingerprint to retina, etc. Even the tools or superglue I use prevents my fingerprints to recognized most of the time. And that is just for hobby.

cryptixvi 6y ago

Similar story here. The company I worked for provided devices which would create and read a topological map of the back someone's right hand. There were a couple of instances where users would be missing fingers or had deformities that would throw the machine off. In these cases we would have them put their left hand upside down in the device and map that instead. In cases where there was issues with the original and alt methods we could remove the check altogether (employ would place their hand and it would go through so nothing was suspicious). This only happened once in the hundreds of thousands of people I'd deployed to. As an aside, this method of tracking users in and out of work was markedly more digestible than reading someone's fingerprints and increased user adoption. Working in 1st 2nd and 3rd world we heard all kinds of stories from employees not wanting to provide fingerprints from not wanting to be framed for murder to stealing a part of your soul by extracting sacred finger marks (similar story to photos in some cultures). https://us.allegion.com/en/home/products/categories/biometrics.html https://us.allegion.com/en/home/products/categories/biometri...

enw 6y ago

Had the same issue with skateboarding, as holding the grip tape would scrape off my fingerprint, making Touch ID terribly annoying to use.

Brian_K_White 6y ago

I was thinking about that "disease" label too. Anyone who thinks of the condition as a disease or deformity or handicap, is likely to agree that it should be "cured" if possible. After all, it's a public health harm to everyone else allowing them to breed and inflict their deformity on innocent babies that would have otherwise been normal. And then one day an actual disease based on a germ of some sort comes along that just loves to live in the valleys of human fingerprints, and the entire human race dies because we erased the few people we had that would have been immune. I don't understand the excuse for failing to recognize that the value of diversity outweighs it's inconvenience. I don't know how long that has been grade-school knowledge. If not multiple hundreds of years, sure at least it's been a known thing since before the brith of any currently living person? We are turning ourselves into human Cavendish banannas.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
I don't think the problem you're complaining about exists. Eugenics have fallen out of fashion many decades ago, and most countries have laws to protect people with unusual medical conditions/disabilities - typically, the more developed they are (i.e. the more resources they're able to spend), the better the protections.
- handedness 6y ago
  On the contrary; eugenics has been normalized. Iceland only sees 1-2 births with Down syndrome per year, and not because they've identified a way to prevent a full or partial copy of chromosome 21. They test and terminate. My personal experience (and that of many friends) is that western OBGYNs push prenatal testing and corrective action quite aggressively. (There is reasonable room to disagree about what their motives are, and the profit motive may be sufficient for such testing.) And many people want it. We can debate the ethical implications separately, but regardless of where one lands on that issue, eugenics has very much been normalized.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    I've tried to find a definition of eugenics and it's very fuzzy. I feel like we could do better by adding some modifier that differentiates removing "undesirables" and terminating pregnancy which is likely to result in death or low quality life under constant care. Otherwise talking about eugenics in general becomes a bit silly. In the same way we have different words for murder and euthanasia. Bunching those together only seems to empower religious extremists who want to prevent any kind of abortion. (see Poland recently)