Why do a university's M&M vending machines have facial recognition software installed?

This is a question being asked at the University of Waterloo (Canada) right now as the machines are being planned for removal.

If you're into IT like I am, or like reading computer security newsletters that show error screens of crashes or failure to loads, a student noticed a screen at one such vending machine on campus that showed a classic Windows error dialog that said "Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe", and he asked the question 'WTF is facial recognition software doing on a vending machine?' Subsequent casual browsing of Invenda's web site found a sales brochure that "... promised "the machines are capable of sending estimated ages and genders" of every person who used the machines without ever requesting consent." While Canada may not have Europe's GDPR, their privacy laws come pretty darn close, especially on facial recognition. And the fecal matter impacted the rotary impellers.

Now, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here as a programmer. They could be using this app to simply detect 'Hey! Someone is standing in front of the machine! Let's turn on the lights and do our little dog and pony show and try to entice them into buying something!' without storing or transmitting any biometric information whatsoever. It could be 100% innocent and they're using the tech just to detect someone staring at the machine.

Do I believe this?

Nope. I'm sure the app could do this, but if this is what they were using this for, you'd think someone would have +1 point of IQ to say 'Hey, maybe we should rename the app to FaceDetectApp.exe, just in case the name of the app leaks out'. But they didn't. And most vending machines have cell phone systems built-in to tell the managers what supply levels are, validate credit cards, and sometimes send diagnostic info if the machine needs repairs. It would be trivial to send biometric data. Modern vending machines are very sophisticated computers these days.

The article mentions a previous Canadian facial recognition scandal where a mall operator was covertly scanning people walking around a mall (or perhaps several) and collected biometric face data of over FIVE MILLION people! He was forced to erase those databases.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/vending-machine-error-reveals-secret-face-image-database-of-college-students/

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/24/0012232/vending-machine-error-reveals-secret-face-image-database-of-college-students

Microplastics found in sediment layers dated to 1733!

Wow. Microplastics in Antarctica, microplastics in our internal organs.

And we keep buying water bottles. I wish they'd bring back glass bottles with deposits on them. I made a nice bit of coin when I was a kid in the '60s and '70s collecting those bottles and taking them back to stores.

*sigh*

This latest discovery comes from Latvia, where they were dredging up sediment samples from a lake for study.

One comment from Slashdot had some interesting takes:
Other possibilities:
1. Samples were contaminated.
2. Microplastics are not really plastics
3. Microplastics have always existed and occur naturally
4. Method of detection of microplastics is flawed
5. Microplastics didn't really appear in the samples, but the researchers have an agenda
6. Story was misreported
7. Microplastics come from something other than post-1950s life on earth
8. Researchers are funded by a group that wants microplastics to show up everywhere, even on Mars and the Moon.
9. Story was mistranslated.
10. Microplastics are really midi-chlorians but don't tell anyone.

Or microplastics are supermigratory. Let's see if they appear in drilled core samples.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/microplastics-sediment-layers

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2343252/microplastics-found-in-sediment-layers-untouched-by-modern-humans