Hacker News Reader

There's probably a nicer way to say this.

On the other hand, maybe a broken vending machine wouldn't be a national talking point if even one person in this entire chain of events had simply accepted that the machine was malfunctioning and might not actually be an instrument of the surveillance state.

Amazon is well known for surveilling its staff. Why act surprised that staff think the worst when they find another piece of surveillance gear in the breakroom?

This is a good point. Many are in glass houses on this issue as who amongst us can say that they have bought a vending machine that doesn’t come with a built in camera

Don't necessarily disagree, but also there's a lot of conspiracy theorist nonsense here for something that could well simply be explained away by "Cheap Android off-the-shelf tablet used as a UI for something". It would've been useful to see some screenshots/pictures of the UI before writing a scare-mongering article about it.

gorkish's comment does at least bring things back down to earth.

I agree with that, but I'm also surprised the vendor didn't go through the process of custom-ordering the off-the-shelf tablet in an MOQ so they could shave cost off by flagging things like the camera as a DNP part.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com