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Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

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Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#291

Post by Eisenstein »

hinkley wrote: post #209

Reminds me of cities shortening yellow lights to make money off of red light cameras. The thing is that the cameras are supposed to make the public safer. That’s what they are meant to do. But they’re so expensive that you need a certain number of tickets to offset them (but whoever heard of public safety being a profit center instead of a loss leader?). It’s a proven fact that short yellows lead to more accidents. S…

Markets are efficient at extracting value from things, but what that value is needs to be determined before we blindly create a market for it. In the traffic light case you mention the value is money, when it should be safety. Traffic lights are installed to ensure traffic flow and safety, so getting a monetary return on a safety device should be non-sensical, but here we are.

We should not be involving private market players as partners in 'investments' with public organizations tasked with public good, or else we get misaligned incentives since the partners both expect different types of returns.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#292

Post by mr_toad »

nickdothutton wrote: post #275
recipe19 wrote: post #259

It reminds me of a hotel I stayed at that had a stocked mini-fridge. Removing any item from the fridge resulted in an automatic, silent charge. Putting it back did not remove the charge. So if you simply took something out to check it in, or if you wanted to chill your own beverage, they counted that as consuming the item. They removed the charges if you checked the bill and objected at checkout. But how many people…

Got billed (via corporate) for this because I put my own coke in a beer can slot and found myself in an interview with HR about it later, very strict no alcohol policy on company expenses. At the time I was tea total.

teetotal.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#293

Post by const_cast »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

Synopsis and excerpt: [Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream" with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking. Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels. The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong…

They're disrupting the scam market by creating new and innovative ways to scam customers out of their money.

Seriously, why does every company these days seem to be running scams? You don't need that! You already make money - just keep doing that!

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#294

Post by vitus »

FireBeyond wrote: post #150
gpm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person outputs about 1kg of CO2 per day, which is less than 1 gram per minute. A cigarette weighs roughly a gram, which means it probably emits roughly 3 grams of CO2... or less... (The O2 comes from the environment, and weighs 32 to carbons 12, but the cigarette isn't actually pure carbon). I don't know... that's maybe detectable? You'd need a pretty sensitive CO2 sensor and to be tying it to other signs to avoid…

> A person outputs about 1kg of CO2 per day, which is less than 1 gram per minute. I'm skeptical about this. Normal adult tidal volume is about 500mg, with a normal respiratory rate of 12/min, so 6L/min. Normal air is about 0.05% CO2, so you're at 3 grams/minute atmospherically that is inspired and expired. We actually output closer to 4% CO2. 240ml/minute. With the windows and doors closed in my 10x20 living space a…

You're mixing your units -- 0.05% of 6L is 3mL. In order for that to weigh 3g, atmospheric CO2 would have to be as dense as water.

Most figures I see peg 1mL of CO2 at closer to 2mg (it's about 50% heavier than the equivalent atmospheric volume, since that's mostly N2 with some O2). Your estimate of 240 mL / minute is about 346L per day, or about 700g of CO2. That's roughly the same order of magnitude as the cited 1 kg / person / day.

edit: Another way of thinking about it: if you scale up your numbers to grams per day, you'd end up with a ludicrous 346 kg / human / day. Multiply that by 12/44 (mass of Carbon-12 vs CO2), and that's the equivalent of a human shedding 100kg of carbon every day from just breathing. Most humans don't even weigh that much.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#295

Post by SoftTalker »

Marsymars wrote: post #268
jfengel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recall the last time. Smoking in the US is way, way down. Not gone, to be sure, but it was crashing even before vapes.

In particular, it’s way, way down among the cohort of the population that have lifestyles amenable to staying in hotel rooms.

Truck drivers and lots of trades crews (e.g. linesmen) stay in hotels all the time. But typically they are not staying at the Hyatt.

There is a whole tier of hotels and other services targeted at the traveling working class which you won't encounter as a highly paid tech professional simply because your company won't book you there.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#296

Post by const_cast »

egypturnash wrote: post #160
lxgr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their "NoiseAware" main product line also sounds incredibly dystopian. Apparently, that's a "privacy-safe" microphone listening in rental properties, to "detect crowds gathering"...!? This type of creepy stuff, together with Airbnb's horrible business practices (last time they wanted access to my checking account transaction history via Plaid!) and enabling scammy hosts, is why I'm back to just staying at regular hot…

AirBnB partiers are a real problem, I live in a tourist destination and regularly hear horror stories about a residential neighborhood suddenly having crowds descend on a house that's become a party rental. There's nobody to notice it getting out of hand and tell them to chill before the neighbors call the cops because the owner is a holding company on the other side of the country. Of course Airbnbs are also a real…

Then don't rent your house. This is a risk of rental properties.

Look, if you have a house in a tourist spot and you say "no parties!", you're not gonna make any money. And if the residents don't like said parties, they can rally together to make AirBNBs illegal in their area. That's how many (most?) touristy places are.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#297

Post by WWLink »

recipe19 wrote: post #259

It reminds me of a hotel I stayed at that had a stocked mini-fridge. Removing any item from the fridge resulted in an automatic, silent charge. Putting it back did not remove the charge. So if you simply took something out to check it in, or if you wanted to chill your own beverage, they counted that as consuming the item. They removed the charges if you checked the bill and objected at checkout. But how many people…

Those things should just be illegal. I can't even imagine how much energy and plastic/paper/food goes to waste in those damn things.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#298

Post by hackyhacky »

nickdothutton wrote: post #275
recipe19 wrote: post #259

It reminds me of a hotel I stayed at that had a stocked mini-fridge. Removing any item from the fridge resulted in an automatic, silent charge. Putting it back did not remove the charge. So if you simply took something out to check it in, or if you wanted to chill your own beverage, they counted that as consuming the item. They removed the charges if you checked the bill and objected at checkout. But how many people…

Got billed (via corporate) for this because I put my own coke in a beer can slot and found myself in an interview with HR about it later, very strict no alcohol policy on company expenses. At the time I was tea total.

> tea total.

If it was totally tea, why were you drinking coke?

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#299

Post by SoftTalker »

hinkley wrote: post #217
john-h-k wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t imply that. I’m pretty sure it is all false positives, but that number does not imply that. It could simply be that only ~1 in 84 smokers was being fined before

No, this is a statistics trope. “Our revenue has grown 50x this year” always means “our revenue was and now it’s ” Because when your revenue goes from $10 million to half a billion, you just say that. Percentages are papering over bad initial or final conditions.

Drug companies do it all the time. They market something as providing a "50% reduction" in some metric and in the fine print you find it's a change from 0.5% to 0.25% in occurrence.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#300

Post by SoftTalker »

vkou wrote: post #286
gpm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No... it could be false positives, it could also be that almost no one (~1%) of smokers were caught before and this is actually a miracle technology that detects smoking. Frankly it tracks that almost no one was caught before.

The hotels don't ever catch people in the act, they just let housekeeping report that the room smells like smoke and they take the fine out of your deposit. That's why they demand a deposit (or a card), by the way.

Leave a $20 for the housekeeper and you won't get reported.
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