8 ms·

I was in a Uniqlo in Manhattan a few months ago and my guess is that they've deployed some kind of computer vision tool for identifying purchases. I went to th

I was in a Uniqlo in Manhattan a few months ago and my guess is that they've deployed some kind of computer vision tool for identifying purchases. I went to the checkout kiosk and my purchases were already on screen, no need to scan barcodes, no visible RFID tags. It was incredibly friction free and if it got deployed universally at all major retailers would eliminate hundreds of thousands, if not millions of retail jobs.

jstx1 5y ago
I saw this just today in London! I was like "where do I scan? oh... oooh!". I wonder what they're actually using to detect the items.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  If you hold the tag to the light you can see a paper thin rfid tag sandwiched inside.
RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
But isn't building the system (0 to 1), harder than scaling (1 to 100)? Why do they need all the engineers now?
throwawaynay 5y ago
It's not visible but I'm 99% sure it's RFID or something similar. This would be so freaking easy to completely break. Have a friend deposit some clothes in a booth => go get the clothes => checkout with all those clothes for free
- gkoberger 5y ago
  You could also just walk out the front door with them, too.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Everything you could possibly think of off the top of your head they've already either solved or don't care about. Retail theft, in general, is not the problem people seem to think it is.
- tyleo 5y ago
  As many replies have stated, retail theft is already trivial RFID or not. When I was in university, a roommate made it a habit of ringing out several pounds of alcohol as celery in self checkout on a monthly basis. They got caught after years of this behavior. Probably thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands in theft. Their only punishment was a slap on the wrist (don't come back to this specific store).
  - plumeria 5y ago
    I think Amazon Go is a counter example. It won’t be affected by the traditional way of shoplifting.
    - adventured 5y ago
      The current traditional way of shoplifting is to just walk out the front door. Employees are (properly) instructed to never attempt to stop the criminal, and unless the criminal steals thousands of dollars of merchandise the retailer most likely won't bother to call the police unless the person is doing it multiple times at the same store. It's a national epidemic in the US and is presently thrashing just about every major retailer. Huge store changes are coming because of that this decade and it'll be ugly. Amazon can photograph/record the criminals all they want, stores already do that. If they try to stop the criminals from leaving, they're setting up a hyper dangerous violent confrontation scenario with the criminal and the customers still in the store (you do not want that under any circumstances, you want to just let the criminal go). Amazon will do the obvious thing and not stop the criminal after a few customers get murdered in the store from a thief that flips out after getting 'caged,' if they're dumb enough to try to stop them (and or Amazon gets a few customer hostage scenarios). Nobody in power in US urban areas gives a shit about any of this any longer, the US is collapsing in the style of a Latin American Socialist paradise (see: Los Angeles rail thefts). No laws, increasing corruption, and it's going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. Strip mine the US for the $$$ and get the hell out, that's all it's good for now, and the clock is ticking on that (inevitable far higher taxes in exchange for nothing better (the higher taxes are just to pay for past spending mistakes, debt, at this point) + value debasement from USD Fed damage will considerably erode that equation's effectiveness over the next ~20 years).
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  You mean “walk out carrying stuff you didn’t pay for”? Not particularly a new idea in the theft scene. The RFIDs play no role there.
cochne 5y ago
I shopped at a Uniqlo in Brooklyn and their checkout automation is very good. If you look carefully at the clothing tags, they have some RFID circuits in there. The result is you drop your clothing in a big self-checkout bin and it just rings up everything for you perfectly.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  “Perfectly” I put two pairs of jeans in one last week; it somehow made up a scarf that didn’t exist. Still pretty impressive!
Avshalom 5y ago
RFID tags are very tiny, at Target we got them in stuff like the tags on dish towels. Not the paper tag held on by a plastic string but like the wash/materials tags.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  I hope those tags are microwave safe. People warm towels by wetting them and microwaving them and plates by placing towels between the plates in a stack.
- grayfaced 5y ago
  But for clothes it has to be on removed tag, otherwise whenever they wear those clothes to store, it will try to charge them again. Unless it's individually serialized and they have a large database, which is scary from a tracking perspective...
  - adventured 5y ago
    > Unless it's individually serialized and they have a large database They already have that large database, those purchases are all already tracked and associated with a customer (to the extent they can depending on context). If you buy something at a major retailer, you'll get a receipt with a transaction number on it, with all the items of course on the receipt; the retailers are usually permanently warehousing that data. The data is text and trivial and gets easier to store closer to active space every day that passes (as opposed to only keeping the huge piles of data on ice; you want it rapidly accessible if you need to always be able to check for any transaction in the past, eg in that scenario of past items coming into the store from who knows when).
unixhero 5y ago
American Airlines now does the same at Dallas Forth Worth for international flights. No boarding card, only face. EDIT: I was not even aware of when they had taken my photo.
bushbaba 5y ago
They embed rfid tags into their price tag labels. Do a search for rain rfid or 900Mhz rfid. These tags are very cheap ~1cent per and can be embedded directly into the clothes stitching.
- rapnie 5y ago
  If it is in the stitching are you then wearing a beacon that can be used for targeted advertising, data harvesting, etc?
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    “Honey, why are you microwaving your jacket?” “I’ll explain later, dear.”
    - bushbaba 5y ago
      You joke but there’s been militaries debating forcing all brought in items be microwaved to avoid hidden electronics being inadvertently sent to a secret military location.
      - kstrauser 5y ago
        I’m mostly joking, but I can understand why some entities would be completely serious about it.
  - justinlloyd 5y ago
    Yes, you are. Most of the tags (the cheap ones) wear out after a few washes, but some do not (the expensive ones). And the expensive ones will eventually become cheap. I worked on commercial tech a while back that can scan these tags. And I built a smart home dashboard that does this to track wallets, phones, car keys, my cats and my dog within my home. Tags embedded in pet collars and wallet linings. I also wrote a prescient short story, titled "Smart Furniture", published 20+ years ago, where the protagonist's day job was driving past people's houses to scan the tags on the interior, and he considered himself "better" than those folks who stood around in malls scanning the clothing of people as they pass by and accosting them with special offers. The ultimate form of "browser fingerprinting" in a way.
GistNoesis 5y ago
Probably RFID, tags are so cheap they are permanently embedded everywhere nowadays, like for example Victoria's Secret Bras.

jstx1 5y ago

I saw this just today in London! I was like "where do I scan? oh... oooh!". I wonder what they're actually using to detect the items.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
If you hold the tag to the light you can see a paper thin rfid tag sandwiched inside.

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago

But isn't building the system (0 to 1), harder than scaling (1 to 100)? Why do they need all the engineers now?

throwawaynay 5y ago

It's not visible but I'm 99% sure it's RFID or something similar. This would be so freaking easy to completely break. Have a friend deposit some clothes in a booth => go get the clothes => checkout with all those clothes for free

gkoberger 5y ago
You could also just walk out the front door with them, too.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Everything you could possibly think of off the top of your head they've already either solved or don't care about. Retail theft, in general, is not the problem people seem to think it is.
tyleo 5y ago
As many replies have stated, retail theft is already trivial RFID or not. When I was in university, a roommate made it a habit of ringing out several pounds of alcohol as celery in self checkout on a monthly basis. They got caught after years of this behavior. Probably thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands in theft. Their only punishment was a slap on the wrist (don't come back to this specific store).
- plumeria 5y ago
  I think Amazon Go is a counter example. It won’t be affected by the traditional way of shoplifting.
  - adventured 5y ago
    The current traditional way of shoplifting is to just walk out the front door. Employees are (properly) instructed to never attempt to stop the criminal, and unless the criminal steals thousands of dollars of merchandise the retailer most likely won't bother to call the police unless the person is doing it multiple times at the same store. It's a national epidemic in the US and is presently thrashing just about every major retailer. Huge store changes are coming because of that this decade and it'll be ugly. Amazon can photograph/record the criminals all they want, stores already do that. If they try to stop the criminals from leaving, they're setting up a hyper dangerous violent confrontation scenario with the criminal and the customers still in the store (you do not want that under any circumstances, you want to just let the criminal go). Amazon will do the obvious thing and not stop the criminal after a few customers get murdered in the store from a thief that flips out after getting 'caged,' if they're dumb enough to try to stop them (and or Amazon gets a few customer hostage scenarios). Nobody in power in US urban areas gives a shit about any of this any longer, the US is collapsing in the style of a Latin American Socialist paradise (see: Los Angeles rail thefts). No laws, increasing corruption, and it's going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. Strip mine the US for the $$$ and get the hell out, that's all it's good for now, and the clock is ticking on that (inevitable far higher taxes in exchange for nothing better (the higher taxes are just to pay for past spending mistakes, debt, at this point) + value debasement from USD Fed damage will considerably erode that equation's effectiveness over the next ~20 years).
ricardobeat 5y ago
You mean “walk out carrying stuff you didn’t pay for”? Not particularly a new idea in the theft scene. The RFIDs play no role there.

cochne 5y ago

I shopped at a Uniqlo in Brooklyn and their checkout automation is very good. If you look carefully at the clothing tags, they have some RFID circuits in there. The result is you drop your clothing in a big self-checkout bin and it just rings up everything for you perfectly.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
“Perfectly” I put two pairs of jeans in one last week; it somehow made up a scarf that didn’t exist. Still pretty impressive!

Avshalom 5y ago

RFID tags are very tiny, at Target we got them in stuff like the tags on dish towels. Not the paper tag held on by a plastic string but like the wash/materials tags.

cgriswald 5y ago
I hope those tags are microwave safe. People warm towels by wetting them and microwaving them and plates by placing towels between the plates in a stack.
grayfaced 5y ago
But for clothes it has to be on removed tag, otherwise whenever they wear those clothes to store, it will try to charge them again. Unless it's individually serialized and they have a large database, which is scary from a tracking perspective...
- adventured 5y ago
  > Unless it's individually serialized and they have a large database They already have that large database, those purchases are all already tracked and associated with a customer (to the extent they can depending on context). If you buy something at a major retailer, you'll get a receipt with a transaction number on it, with all the items of course on the receipt; the retailers are usually permanently warehousing that data. The data is text and trivial and gets easier to store closer to active space every day that passes (as opposed to only keeping the huge piles of data on ice; you want it rapidly accessible if you need to always be able to check for any transaction in the past, eg in that scenario of past items coming into the store from who knows when).

unixhero 5y ago

American Airlines now does the same at Dallas Forth Worth for international flights. No boarding card, only face. EDIT: I was not even aware of when they had taken my photo.

bushbaba 5y ago

They embed rfid tags into their price tag labels. Do a search for rain rfid or 900Mhz rfid. These tags are very cheap ~1cent per and can be embedded directly into the clothes stitching.

rapnie 5y ago
If it is in the stitching are you then wearing a beacon that can be used for targeted advertising, data harvesting, etc?
- kstrauser 5y ago
  “Honey, why are you microwaving your jacket?” “I’ll explain later, dear.”
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    You joke but there’s been militaries debating forcing all brought in items be microwaved to avoid hidden electronics being inadvertently sent to a secret military location.
    - kstrauser 5y ago
      I’m mostly joking, but I can understand why some entities would be completely serious about it.
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  Yes, you are. Most of the tags (the cheap ones) wear out after a few washes, but some do not (the expensive ones). And the expensive ones will eventually become cheap. I worked on commercial tech a while back that can scan these tags. And I built a smart home dashboard that does this to track wallets, phones, car keys, my cats and my dog within my home. Tags embedded in pet collars and wallet linings. I also wrote a prescient short story, titled "Smart Furniture", published 20+ years ago, where the protagonist's day job was driving past people's houses to scan the tags on the interior, and he considered himself "better" than those folks who stood around in malls scanning the clothing of people as they pass by and accosting them with special offers. The ultimate form of "browser fingerprinting" in a way.

GistNoesis 5y ago

Probably RFID, tags are so cheap they are permanently embedded everywhere nowadays, like for example Victoria's Secret Bras.