Detroit’s new personalized flight information board is straight out of sci-fi | Hacker News Reader

Detroit’s new personalized flight information board is straight out of sci-fi

thepointsguy.com

144 pointsnotacoward166 comments

I don't want to be a naysayer, but my reaction to this is not positive. First of all, I wouldn't want random people in the airport to see my personal information. I guess the display can show different information depending on where you're standing, but I don't imagine this works perfectly. Second, facial recognition is creepy. Some comments are arguing that this isn't a problem because you're already being tracked anyway by other cameras around the airport. But just because it's already happening doesn't make it okay. Third, it seems technically impractical. It takes the relatively simple task of picking a flight out of a list and turns it into something brittle and error prone.

I get that the technology is impressive in a way. And my first two points are perhaps less concerning since the Delta program is opt in. But overall it seems to cost more than it's worth. Maybe that makes this more of a marketing gimmick than anything.

> First of all, I wouldn't want random people in the airport to see my personal info

If I understand the tech, they have to be right on top of you to see what you see. Each display is supposed to be able to show 100 feeds to 100 different people at the same time.

Totally agree with you on the creepiness though.

Yeah, who knows? Maybe the positional display tech works better than I imagine. I guess if it could narrow the viewing angle down to the eyes on a person's face, there wouldn't be much of a concern. But I have so many other questions. For example, does standing further away from it effectively broaden the viewing angle for a specific view? Maybe that could lead again to privacy issues.

But I should admit that the viewing angle tech is pretty neat. Maybe there could be other interesting applications for it.

And if the system is not properly re-tuned some of the time, like most tech that requires precision, could it happen that it shows the information exactly 5° next to you, but never to you?

What exactly will someone do if they find out what airplane you're getting on?

Off the top of my head, someone fleeing a domestic abuser wouldn't want the abuser to see where they are headed. Stalkers, harassers, etc.

There are plenty of reasons why people might want to keep such information private.

If your stalker knew you were taking a flight and bought an airplane ticket just to get pass security and is currently right behind you — after you have opted into this — you’re in big trouble already.

If they're in the airport terminal looking at the same screen you are, can't they just watch which gate you use to board your flight? There's a big screen right by it that tells everyone who can see it where you're going.

They can just follow you to your gate.

I don’t want random people knowing my name. You can look up a lot of information about a person with a name.

Yes this. Even a first name.

I work in a 200k employee company and I'm the only person there with my first name. Not everyone is named Fred or John :)

The video shows otherwise, i don't know if it is manipulated, but its filmed from behind the person looking at the board.

Oh good point, I didn't watch that yet.

You're right, it seems to be pretty wide, especially when she walks away.

I wonder how they manage to do 100 simultaneous feeds with such poor accuracy though. But perhaps this is a "best case scenario".

If someone else is too close to me, couldn't that person's feed block mine? What about groups of people travelling together, standing together? Which person's feed gets priority?

Also, there's the chance that I'll meet up with someone I know that I usually keep polite relations with, but which I may not want to share my itinerary with. It is not reasonable that I should be avoiding them on the floor just to keep them away from reading my feed.

Then don't opt in for the service? Pretty easy.

Is it creepier than the airport security team looking at you on their displays?

> I wouldn't want random people in the airport to see my personal information.

Why not? I'm as much a privacy advocate as anyone, but I don't see the big deal here.

The board seems to display your first name, your gate number, your destination city, and your departure time. Why is it a concern that strangers potentially standing next to you might see this? You already see tons of boarding passes while waiting in various airport lines.

My point is that people don't typically care about these four data points, so why is it a concern that they're displayed on this board (which ostensibly only you or someone directly in your space can see), especially when someone can go to a random gate, and ask your name, and now they all the same data points.

Maybe it's just embarrassing. And if someone were to ask why, would that really be a fair question? In this particular case, I don't have a complicated argument about security. I just generally expect to be able to remain anonymous in public. I guess that's why I wouldn't opt into this program.

I'm genuinely not understanding the embarrassment. If you're saying you're embarrassed about going to a particular destination, do you not sit in the designated gate area? Do you sit elsewhere? What do you do when it's actually time to board? This seems like a personal neurosis that would far surpass any potential issues with this technology.

Anyone will know the same points of information about you that are on the board: your gate number, your departure time, and your destination city - without having to occupy the same spatial coordinates as you, as they would to see your custom display. At that point, all they'll be missing is your first name, which they can ask you for.

If the board displayed information like your confirmation or ticket number, then I agree there would be cause for concern regarding exposure of personal information. But I don't see how destination city/departure time/gate number/first name constitute a privacy concern.

Strictly speaking he’s right in that you are still leaking a little extra information that a targeted attacker could use against you in an attack. This is your first legal name, and which gate you may be heading towards in the future. It’s not much information but it is still extra information.

If an attacker is targeting your first name, there are any number of ways they can extract it from you in ways that are far, far easier than having to more or less literally sit on your shoulders so that they're in the same spatial coordinates as you to be able to see the custom display. They could catch your name on your boarding pass, unless you never display it inadvertently. They could read it from a luggage tag. They could catch your name off an order at an airport restaurant or cafe, unless you never give out your real name. They could also just ask you at the gate, unless you always give a fake name when introducing yourself to people as well.

The point being that 'guarding my first name at an airport' seems like an extremely niche concern, that far surpasses this particularly technology.

Yea, and this is basically just yet another way for them to extract that information. Add it to the list… but having one more option does make it easier in case the person doesn’t have a luggage tag, opted for a digital boarding pass, or reasonably refuses to give their first name when asked. Just because there are other ways to do something doesn’t make extra ways moot. If you have multiple authentication methods your security is only as strong as the weakest one, and the same concept applies here in terms of the information being leaked. Having more attack surfaces increases the attack surface.

But... How?

They might know that Vlad is going to gate Los Angeles at gate A5. But, even assuming this display is not precise, how are they going to know that I'm Vlad?

They will know that someone around them matches that information, but airports are generally busy places. Especially with new technology that people would want to try out.

You likely have that information on a card in your hand anyway. It's a minor increase in the ability for this information to leak, but it's hardly private information.

You are telling me that if a random guy walks up to you and hits on you by addressing you by your first name that it would not be creepy and unexpected? Your first name is definitely not public information that is associated with your face. There is also no reasonable expectation that you have to hold up your boarding pass for everyone to see, which is what is implied by a big screen.

> hold up your boarding pass for everyone to see, which is what is implied by a big screen.

I feel like you missed the part where only the person standing at specific coordinates can see your name, i.e. you. That's the whole point of this tech.

To clarify, my concern is much more about the privacy aspect than the security one. I agree that there's technically not much threat in giving up your first name. From a security standpoint, it doesn't really expose much more threat surface than what already existed. I'm more talking about the general creepiness factor; the expectation of public privacy. This is more subjective, but I think there's a logic to it that is worth questioning.

I think you don't understand the embarrassment because you're trying to pick this apart too surgically. First of all, I should call out that I think our conversation is really about a hypothetical situation in which a display like this was operating in an airport for all passengers, whether they opted in or not.

That being said, I think it would be totally fair for a person to feel embarrassed about any personal information being displayed publicly on a monitor without their consent. Sure, all of this information could in theory be gleaned from other sources, but I don't think people are bothered by this because they know it would take some particular effort by someone who was interested. That falls under the average threshold of concern. What's more, it's just a fact of life. I don't think people expect water tight personal information security. But I do think people have an expectation of privacy. The example you gave is illustrative. You said someone can ask you for your first name. If they're an airline employee, fine. That's necessary for them to run their business properly. But if they're a stranger on the street, you're perfectly entitled to tell them to get lost. Now let's consider that a hypothetical, non-opt-in PI display in an airport would be rather like a stranger walking up and asking you for your first name. Yes, there's not much actual threat in giving it. But who would want to do that? No one. I'm not sure I could say why, but I don't think it's fair to ask why and I don't disagree with the instinct not to hand out one's first name on demand.

I think it's important to take into account these kinds of "first-person" concerns that have a sort of common sense to them. You might be able to diffuse them from a strictly logical point of view. But that doesn't do away with the fact that an average person would still have the concern. And maybe there's an unseen logic in the common sense viewpoint.

> That being said, I think it would be totally fair for a person to feel embarrassed about any personal information being displayed publicly on a monitor without their consent.

OK, but this is a pure fantasy, if not outright delusion. The way this display works is 1) it requires your consent, and 2) the information is only visible to a person standing in specific coordinates, i.e. you.

Please reread my comment. I laid out my assumptions in the second sentence:

> First of all, I should call out that I think our conversation is really about a hypothetical situation in which a display like this was operating in an airport for all passengers, whether they opted in or not.

You should try and engage me on the argument I'm making. Also, characterizing my comment as "pure fantasy" or "outright delusion" doesn't do much to make me more receptive to your viewpoint.

Sorry, I have zero interest in discussing some nonexistent hypothetical. Obviously, a technology that 1) was not opt-in, but universal, and 2) broadcast your information to not just you but everyone, would be problematic. You might as well add that this hypothetical system also broadcasts your credit card number while you're at it, and say that you would find this quite troubling indeed.

I could imagine a woman prone to being harassed being put off by this technology.

My wife flies for business and (occasionally) gets hit on by strange men. Not all the time, and usually not very icky, but there’s been at least one that veered into creepy territory.

If I were her, I would be unhappy about a weirdo being able to covertly snag her name and destination and using it disingenuously - e.g. pretend to be an old acquaintance that you must have forgot.

This seems unrealistic. Especially because, as I pointed out in another comment, there are tons of other far easier ways for someone to get someone's first name at the airport. I think perhaps people are misunderstanding how this tech works: you need to be standing in specific coordinates for the information to be visible to you.

I was replying to the parent, who asked why someone might be sensitive about these data points.

I don’t claim to know the fidelity of the targeting. If someone is walking behind you in the same line and can see the data, I can see feeling concerned. If it’s truly being beamed right to your eyeballs, not an issue.

A harasser would just follow her to the gate...and then what? Try to board the plane they don't have a ticket for?

More likely hit on her in a creepy fashion at a restaurant near the gate. That seems to be where it usually happens.

Are we really going to stop progress in the name of your wife? She can just opt out of the feature. Perhaps she should opt in to a burka or a covid mask.

I think you’ve taken this to an extreme that I didn’t.

I’m explaining why women traveling alone might not want strange men to know their name and destination.

But if you want to debate the merits: It’s unclear to me that this particular technology constitutes progress in a meaningful way. Show me my flight info on my smart glasses, or play me a recording of my gate info over my earbuds. I’m not interested in some janky billboard I have to stand in front of to get a tiny bit of information that is in no way hard to find.

I certainly don’t believe the benefits of this tech justify any level of privacy loss. Again, if targeting is sufficiently good, maybe this is a non issue.

Generally I lean toward the view that the right amount of privacy to trade for technology is “none.” But I’m willing to make exceptions for particularly useful innovation.

Fair enough, I do think it's kind of cool if there's no loss of privacy and it's a direct beam-to-eyeballs. But there isn't much about the actual tech provided.

I’m not sure why they mention facial recognition as it doesn’t seem necessary. The system works by identifying yOu after scanning your boarding pass and then tracking you physically via motion sensors. So it doesn’t rely on detecting your face. They probably do that just to verify your identity initially in the same way that CLEAR does (and saves having to have the TSA person check your face).

But how would they know who is entering the viewing area without facial recognition? Eg if you go to the bathroom, come out, and walk to a viewing area

This company will bring personalized ads to the highway, bus stops, malls, and restaurants. They will make a lot of money and use most of it to record what we look at and how long, and store it forever.

I predict that these ads will eventually be like Tiktok. Every moment that your eyes pause on an ad will be recorded. They will use the data to pick videos that are better at holding your attention. The videos will be super interesting or shocking, with ads interspersed.

Eventually, the system will use deepfake tech to insert ad content into your tailored videos. As you walk past a shoe store, your eyes linger for a second on a particular shoe style. Half a block later, the bus stop ad shows the latest Tiktok fad video but the people are wearing the shoe style you looked at.

Eventually, the video ads will cause a lot of vehicle accidents and will get banned on roads. Then the billboards will show static ads, but still personalized and still recording your gaze as you drive by.

Some people will die from exposure after standing in front of ads for too long. There will be lawsuits. School districts will sue to have the adboards removed from near schools. Vending machines will let you pay by watching ads.

The ad companies will categorize people as desirable and undesirable. When an undesirable is standing in front of a billboard, the system will show a blank screen or a disgusting video to make them leave.

With so much face & eyeball data, the billboards can pick audio or a video+audio tracks to maximize their income. A group of teenagers are watching a music video on the board. The audio suddenly switches to an ad for expensive men's clothing, just as a wealthy man walks around the corner in earshot of the board.

Directional audio tech will add personalized audio to the adboards. Adboards will increase volume to reach people across the street. Cities will get much louder. Vandals will use spray glue to damage directional audio systems.

Personally, I don't want my physical movements and eye gaze recorded. Only regulation can prevent it. We need regulation now, before the companies get too powerful.

This sounds freaking awesome.

Wait. Actually... no it doesn't.

The more I think about it, this sounds freaking terrifying.

It sounds terrific... in both the original (terror-inducing) and modern (amazing) senses of the word.

This started out very insightful and turned into a weird fan fiction right around “vehicle accidents”.

I think most of the things you predict prior to that will be accurate.

Sounds like a black mirror episode

Nice one. Consider adding them to "Ask HN: What are you predictions for [YYYY]?" (ie https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236) with a link to this comment.

> Eventually, the system will use deepfake tech to insert ad content into your tailored videos.

I just had a horrible premonition of every billboard you walk past using a video of your crush or dead mother to address you by name and tell you to buy an SUV. Then the following cries of "but you agreed to it when you agreed to facebook's TOS so you could sign in to the doctor's office it'a voluntary" when you complain.

A little part of me wants to see something like this just to see the counter culture develop with eye-tracking countermeasures. Imagine mirrored eyes like Molly from Neuromancer...

> Delta passengers can opt in to the experience by scanning their boarding pass once they are through the security checkpoint in Concourse A of DTW’s McNamara Terminal. Customers enrolled in Delta’s biometric digital identity program need only show their faces to a camera at the kiosk.

At this point, despite the apparent good use case in this instance, we technologists should be exceedingly mindful of the dystopian future we're giving our overlords. I know many here on HN are aware of the great social responsibility, but all too many of us are willing to implement this stuff for the lolz or the money alone. Do I want cameras recording me and going through an increasingly disproportionate number if ML systems? What about the data? Where does it go? Who is in control of any one singular ML system running these things? What happens when that company starts failing? My data, my biometrics... all sold to the highest bidder.

For a research prototype we just used a mobile phones acceleration sensors to couple a phone (who uses printed boarding passes) with the tracker. No biometrics needed. Tracking does not survive the camera context.

Considering that there are alternatives you really wonder why they care about biometrics. You could probably also generate other types of markers that are stable without needing sth you have to stick with for the rest of your life...

>we technologists should be exceedingly mindful of the dystopian future we're giving our overlords

Look, at this point, you know it is inevitable that this dystopian future you speak of is going to happen. Why not just embrace it now and live worry free since you will no longer need to be concerned about it happening. You're less productive to the overloards when you're stressed. /s

Sounds like wasted effort. When’s the last time you heard about a technology not being invented because developers decided it shouldn’t be invented? As long as there’s a legal business case, you’ll find someone who can and will build it for you. But I agree with the sentiment. I think that the right place to concentrate your efforts if you don’t like a technology is through the legal system. Regulations and laws.

Why would you expect to ever hear about it even if it was happening? The result would be a company failing to build a working product due to struggling with hiring, which is an incredibly normal thing. Interviewing with a company, deciding you don't want to work on the thing they're building and then later hearing that they failed isn't exactly unusual, but no one involved is going to know that it failed specifically because developers were morally opposed to it rather than some other reason.

Paul Baran was one of the co-inventors of packet-based switching whilst at RAND in the 1960s. He wrote an interesting set of monographs while there, among them:

"On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy" (1968)

https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3829.html

His complete works were made freely available to the public following a request I'd made a few years back.

I'll be dead-honest with you: I think most of the security-posters and privacy-posters on this site are doing so by ostentatiously cargo-culting. So none of the concerns any of you espouse about this stuff bothers me. I literally don't believe you guys believe this and if you do, I don't trust your competence in arriving at that conclusion logically. So, no, I'm willing to implement lots of stuff because I want it to exist.

System is described in US Patent 10778962.

The claims are actually written pretty well. It's like looking through a bunch of magnifying glasses at an LCD. Depending on what angle and distance you look through the magnifying glass from, you see a magnified image of one specific area (a diffuser is employed so you don't end up peeping the sub-pixels, which is also why the color depth is very limited). With detailed tracking of your location, the software can switch the pixels underneath the magnifying glasses you're looking through to produce a coherent image at a subsampled resolution.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US10778962B2/en?oq=1077896...

Their first prototype used a grid of off-the-shelf portable "pico projectors" (half a million pixels per projector was mentioned, so perhaps each pixel had 800x600 "rays").

https://youtu.be/p1b3wEsFlCY?t=913 (2018)

The patent mentions this system a few times, and it sounds like they moved away from this model due to mainly cost/benefit and scale up reasons. Laser pico projectors are certainly an easy way to do this, they're literally just a laser aimed using a mirror and you can steer a beam exactly where you want it. I'm surprised they're not hacked on more as they're probably one of the coolest gadgets around technology wise.

I actually tried this last week. The way they advertised it sounded like some kind of AR technology but it was pretty vague. I wasn't in a rush to my gate and there wasn't anybody else using it, so I thought "why not?" and scanned my boarding pass, and sure enough, my info appeared on the screen in big letters. I didn't know about the unique properties of the screen, which I suppose are interesting, but it was otherwise pretty underwhelming given it didn't display anything different than what was already on my Delta app. Beyond that, I wasn't personally concerned at any privacy implications at that time (especially given there wasn't anybody around, and if there were they didn't care), but I can definitely understand why others would be put off.

It's at best an expensive gimmick. McNamara terminal at DTW is a Delta-only hub so it makes sense Delta would put it there as a marketing stunt.

McNamara Terminal is also extremely easy to navigate, so it's kind of an odd example.

Obviously it's early for the tech, but I could see a day where every screen you look at shows you what you want to see. Maybe you already know your flight info, so you tune that screen to a TV network that you like, or news headlines, weather info, etc. It's nothing our phones can't offer, but phones haven't made TVs obsolete. Large screens are convenient when you phone is in your pocket as you're walking through the terminal, or when you're talking on your phone, etc. Content switching is faster and easier when you have two screens, but now you don't have to carry that second screen, you just borrow the ones that are already there.

Phones haven't made TVs at home obsolete, but they've definitely made an impact at airports and planes.

There are fewer seatback entertainment systems anymore as aircraft have wifi and stream movies to personally owned devices or rent out tablets. Fewer people look at the departure and arrival list because that information is duplicated on the airline app on their phone, which also has their boarding pass. No one is watching CNN on the TVs at their gate; everyone's looking at their phone.

> it was otherwise pretty underwhelming given it didn't display anything different than what was already on my Delta app

This is my highest question for this tech. Privacy issues aside (and they are many), I just don’t see the point. Delta already knows where I am going and has the ability to send messages directly to my phone/watch. Maybe it could be useful for a navigation experience for someplace like ATL, but this just seems like a marketing stunt to me. A solution in search of a problem. Even navigation within a terminal could be handled by the phone app with Bluetooth beacons if necessary for inside location tracking.

The issue with technology trying to be "smart" is that it's all nice and stuff as long as you are within the designed use case of it, but once you step outside, there's an issue. For example, what will the display do if you are a traveller and some other traveller approaches you and asks you which gate their flight is? If there were a non-personalized display, it'd be easy: you would just look up their flight on the table. Now all you can do is to tell the traveller to look at the personalized billboard. But what if they have bad eyesight and can't read it? Maybe also the angular resolution of the billboard is not good enough to show a different thing to them so it shows the same to you as it shows to them, which might be your flight, or might be their flight.

Another such example is the issue of deadnaming trans people. They will probably be not happy at all to see their disliked birth name printed on such a large billboard, even if it's only visible to them. If the name is visible to the people they travel with, it can cause even more issues.

Privacy issues being what they are...

...I also LOVE the idea that the sign could tell ME which way to go, instead of presenting 60 ways to go and I have to figure out which one applies to me. Airports are confusing monsters and there's always an element of time pressure. This is brilliant.

Except the time until it gets used for something much more dystopian is probably measured in hours now.

One thing I don't really get is why they don't take advantage of the screen that everyone already has in their pockets - and which has built-in tracking to boot. All they need is an app.

And this way it would be totally opt-in by installing the app.

I know this tech is also opt-in, however, the facial recognition itself is seeing everyone, even the people who haven't opted in, and is probably tracking them. Just doesn't know who they are.

It tracks via motion detectors, not facial recognition. I’m not totally sure but it seems the facial recognition is just part of the initial authorization step.

So it’s not reading your face in front of the display to determine what to show, but rather you scan your pass and verify your identity, then walk around the airport where it tracks your position to keep track of who you are and where, and when you then stand in front of this display it knows where you are relative to the display which can deliver a directionally targeted image to your eyes.

I feel like that would contradict the information in this article, which says:

> Ng said. “In this demo, as soon as you walk out of the viewing area of the display, the system forgets everything, and all of the data is purged.”

If the system tracked you throughout the entire airport, it would not be forgetting you once you walk out of the viewing area. Not to mention, the airport would lose track of you once you enter a bathroom, which afaik don't have cameras

This wouldn't work, the moment it loses track of you for only a second it won't know who you are anymore. Even if literally every corner is plastered with camera's, there's like another poster said, bathrooms.. Ergo, every sign will have to have face recognition.

Because the next step is to show personalized ads before the flight number.

Would work on the phone app as well.

Not everyone has that screen in their pocket.

Not to mention, it's a lot more natural to just walk through a space and look for signs rather than holding your phone up for directions. This could also be really useful when your hands are full, like if you're pulling luggage and holding a coffee. It's not necessary of course, but I can see the benefits.

Not everyone uses this personal display facility either.

And I think the mobile device percentage among airport passengers will be extremely high.

Because GPS doesn't know which way I'm facing, or which hallway I'm in. Indoors precision is pretty bad, and location beacons are mediocre at best in their present state.

The sign, on the other hand, knows which way it's mounted, so it can always direct me with a useful arrow.

The answer is augmented reality, although I’m not sure what the question is.

So many times I have found signage in terminals confusing, frustrating given they must cost $$. Arrows on signs can be really confusing (up right arrow means foreword right or up the escalator to the right?). Sometimes they are just missing (which way is gate A60), or outdated (terminals are permanently changing).

Is this not a form of reality being augmented?

I was just in the DTW airport a few weeks ago and experienced this firsthand!

The representative said there can be up to 100 people in this large-ish rectangular area and each person can only see their details and nobody else's (even as everybody moves around). Everybody outside of the rectangle sees generic information.

I'm generally pretty good with figuring out how things work. I could figure out the tracking piece, but I definitely didn't figure out how they could so accurately make sure that I could read my info everywhere within that box. There are some other comments here that describe how it works -- pretty cool!

I was definitely amazed at how well this actually worked with about 10 other people also testing it out. Privacy issues aside, this is an amazing experience to be able to be on-the-move and see a giant arrow that points you to exactly where you need to go in an airport you're unfamiliar with.

Why not just send the info to the phone? You know / the device I had to scan to start this whole thing? The big screen seems superfluous given the personalization capabilities of the cellphone including helping you navigate after you’ve walked away from the display.

You can also scan a paper boarding pass. Whether from a kiosk or printed out.

Not everyone uses mobile boarding passes. Some airports also don't have good (or any, although that's increasingly rarer) free wifi and not everyone has roaming. Some people don't have smart phones at all.

For people wondering about eye-ball tracking on an ad-focused implementation of this, I’m curious how long it’ll be till glasses wearers can get a coating to block it.

My glasses already come with coatings for various other things (UV, anti-reflective, scratch resistance, anti-fog, blue-blocking, mirroring, etc)

Some already cause issues with eye-scanning. Eg FaceID on iOS doesn’t always work with polarizing lenses.

I’d love an extra privacy-focused “screw up facial recognition/eye scanning tech” option.

The underlying tech is pretty cool: https://www.misappliedsciences.com/home/technology.html

Those concerned about privacy should consider that you’re already on camera being captured and having algorithms applied to your likeness. The only change with this implementation is that you’re aware of it, and directly benefit from facial recognition and location tracking.

The old adage that "what you don't know can't hurt you" refers only to problems of the mind. For all that I do believe you have no expectation of privacy in public, I believe that enables undirected actions, like you being photographed in the back of someone's photo, or even some amount of directed action, like someone taking a picture of you because you look funny and they're gonna laugh at you. I do believe that omnidirectional actions like "Have map of what everyone is doing in the public space" are actually quite different and open for debate.

I don't have a problem with this technology being applied at Amazon Go stores - a specific contract exists between you and Amazon that they're tracking you inside their private space. I don't have a problem with Walmart installing the same technology, but I would choose not to patronize Walmart because of it. I do have a problem with Walmart installing it looking out onto the street and then selling the data to anyone who wants to know positions of passerbys in New York.

Ultimately, there is some power imbalance here, and technology should act as agents for humanity, not as it's overlord.

Gotta love the name of the company

> and directly benefit from facial recognition and location tracking.

A fixed board in a fixed location with fixed information inside of a giant terminal? While I'm walking around with a computer in my pocket that also doubles as a telephone? And in the video, this is apparently the same phone I just used to check in?

This feels like there's zero actual benefit to me. It's maybe a great benefit to whoever makes the boards and whoever at the airport is getting the kickback.

Exactly this. Why should anyone be able to potentially see any of my personal info? (I doubt whatever parallax effect or whatnot magic tech is perfect - it's gonna eventually leak).

I'm already glued to my phone at the airport because that's where my flight info is, and it's not a static location, it's always with me.

Who is this for? The subset of people without smartphones but comfortable with Minority Report-esque targeted display boards?

They already have normal info screens at the terminal, might as well make it fancy

Yeah I would much rather use the new live notifications that auto-update in iOS than something like this

> While I'm walking around with a computer in my pocket that also doubles as a telephone? And in the video, this is apparently the same phone I just used to check in?

This indeed seems like a glaring oversight

> It's maybe a great benefit to whoever makes the boards and whoever at the airport is getting the kickback.

Bingo :) Follow the money.

It'd be great for trains in countries where they only announce the platform shortly before boarding.

It's such a hassle to find the departure on a giant board and monitor it closely among a sea of boarding times.

This is especially bad when you're running late and suddenly you have to stop your frantic race to the gate to methodically peruse the board.

I'd easily pay $20 more on each trip to the airport if every screen just told me "Mr. Wiltord, head to gate A10, this way" with the appropriate arrow.

Sure, we shouldn’t expect privacy from cameras and biometrics.

But doesn’t this mean that 20 people behind you see where you are going, your flier points, etc?

I’d find that embarrassing, personally.

Isn’t the idea of the tech that only the intended person sees it? When I’ve walked by I haven’t caught a glimpse of anyone’s info. I haven’t walked up close to a person viewing it though. It must have some FOV that allows “spying”.

The point of this technology is that the 20 people behind cannot see the same thing you do. This isn't just "Jane is walking past, let's display Jane's information on the TV now". The point is that this technology has pixels that selectively beam Jane's information to Jane and only Jane, while simultaneously beaming OtherPerson's information to OtherPerson and only OtherPerson.

It's very cool technology. The one thing I don't see any information on is how precise it can be (like if I'm standing directly next to Jane rather than 15 feet away, will I see Jane's info?).

Interesting, thanks. I wonder how narrow the angle of personalized viewing is.

This is me just completely guessing, but I would assume it's probably pretty close to how close someone would need to be standing next to you to see the same information on the phone.

Since we don’t see any details on the precision, it’s hard to make the statement that others can’t see your information. If this is a lenticular display, then anyone standing in your line of sight will see what you see.

I’m more concerned about protecting my privacy from organizations, but I think privacy concerns regarding other viewers can be addressed by not displaying anything personally tied to you. The name is cute for a demo, but I don’t need to see my name, just my flight. I’ll know it’s mine.

In fairness people can already see where you're going at an airport. Almost everyone sits at the gate for their flight if they're not waiting in a lounge. And it's not points but frequent flyer status. Minor distinction sure.

>frequent flyer status

Which they also already more or less see (modulo credit cards and other ways you can board early).

Exactly. This isn't privacy preserving but it's also opt-in and shows stuff that's already fairly obvious to people at the airport.

I know there are privacy concerns with this kind of thing but I think it's a nice use of technology.

I recently came back into the US as a Global Entry member and didn't even have to get my passport out of my pocket. I'm not even a US national. Face scan as the e-gate and straight through. The scanner didn't even have a lag, it probably already predicted I was walking up before I did. No awkwardly scanning to get the right angle, or putting my passport in multiple times to scan. No human in the loop. Are there terrifying ways that could be bad? Absolutely. Technically impressive and convenient? Yep.

Helped assemble the lenses and lcd’s for these. Currently working on the next version which will have bigger lenses and LCD’s. Better pixel resolution.

What's your price to sabotage development?

Asking ... for a friend.

This seems like the first step to implementing personalized ads everywhere.

Opt out? You get the most annoying ones.

At this point any personalized ads I see are effectively ads for a competing product (possibly the always competitive nothing product). I'm personally already pissed off by Internet surveillance capitalism; if tone deaf ad firms want to try and bring personalized psychological manipulation into public spaces as well, I doubt it will have quite the reaction that they expect.

Cool tech, I have to say.

But... Clearly it opens up a big can of privacy worms. I suppose at an airport this will work because nobody really has any expectation of privacy there anymore.

The question is more about what's next. I'm walking through the local high street and the signs try to point me to the local Ecco shop because I bought my shoes more than a year ago?

What I’d be concerned isn’t improved ads, but lack of such tech in healthcare and civil services.

All these cameras should be able to predict heart attack, let alone calling ambulance and immediately knowing your entire health history and next best action…

Even if it's used 'for good' I'd have a problem with that.

And not just me, in the Netherlands we had a huge public discussion about a central health register, and the end result was an opt-in which many people didn't do.

As far as I know it's still opt-in. I never opted in, though I don't live there anymore. And here in Spain I don't have a choice, they're not as privacy-conscious here.

Go to a private clinic and you’ll have your privacy

If healthcare is socialise IMO it’s worth contributing your data, not only taxes.

Oddlly enough, private clinics mandate signing over data to be shared with "parners" on a regular basis in non-negotiable patient service "agreements".

But at least you’re not selling out to big brother, only to big corp!

Surveillance capitalism feeds the surveillance state, and vice versa.

I personally think privacy is a fundamental human right that trumps this. But it's an opinion of course.

And private healthcare is also socialised. Just among a smaller group of contributors (those subscribing to the private health insurance) and someone is grabbing profit from it. It's not all that different.

Mixing up private health insurance vs going to private clinic and paying out of pocket.

I don’t see how digitising and centralising your medical info into a useful form is any different vs keeping everything in paper in terms for privacy. Do you argue we have no medical records in any form?

I traveled internationally for the first time since 2019 recently. Coming back to Seattle, I was prepared for an hour of queuing up at kiosks, getting body scanned, getting facially recognized, etc. to get back into the country. To my surprise, I just had one guy ask me 3 questions and point what looked like a cheap webcam at my face. On the one hand, that's convenient. On the other hand it probably means they've gotten so good in the last couple of years they can know everything about you by pointing a cheap webcam at your face, and all that other stuff is just redundant now.

Yeah it makes you wonder...

I think a lot of efforts have been refocused on Corona prevention over the last two years. And a lot of security workers were laid off during this time. In the Netherlands (and several other EU countries) the airports are in total chaos now because they are so understaffed.

I wouldn't be surprised if some formalities that were always of questionable effectiveness (often known as security theater) were just toned down a bit.

Also, your passport photo is probably in a database somewhere already :) They're supposed to delete it after issuing the passport, but there have been several incidents noted by privacy watchdogs where the government 'forgot' to actually do this (and the fingerprints too).

So... someone watched Minority Report and didn't get that it was intended to be dystopian...

Or didn't care

> after more than five years in what he described as “stealth mode,” the company worked out a propriety [sic] method of getting the pixels of a display board to send different content to each viewer.

Um, lenticular lenses? Those aren't proprietary. Children's toys have lenticular lenses on them. They were patented in 1912. The idea of using them to display different images to different viewers is also not remotely new.

Cool concept to use it for personalized airport signage, but the face recognition required for it to work well is going to be hard to swallow in the current privacy climate. Better not install one of these in Illinois!

> Um, lenticular lenses? Those aren't proprietary. Children's toys have lenticular lenses on them. They were patented in 1912. The idea of using them to display different images to different viewers is also not remotely new.

That's absolutely not what this is.

Imagine each pixel is a high-resolution projector.

> Imagine each pixel is a high-resolution projector.

... that describes a lenticular lens array. Each lens takes a section of the screen and projects it out just as a projector does. A lenticular array of cylindrical lenses does it in only one dimension. It's possible they are using a microlens array to do it in two dimensions instead of one, but the concept is very similar and also not unique.

I can get that info by glancing at my watch, which already provides a private, personalized experience.

Far more useful would be making the effort to have the watch guide me to the proper gate than personalizing the public display of something I probably already know.

It’s like the punchline of a joke about management consultants.

Because of course everyone who goes through every airport knows which app to get for each airport, and thinks to install it in advance. My mother can barely use her phone as it is, just as a phone. Not everyone lives in the smart phone/watch power user tech bubble.

She probably carries a paper boarding pass with all the info she needs, and probably hasn’t registered her face with the airline either.

Start with the early adopters and then broaden into the early majority…your mum will be at the other end of that bell curve. This is classic Crossing the Chasm stuff.

A paper pass won’t tell her when the plane is ready to board, or whether to go left or right. Registering for the display board is done at the airport, they offer you the option and you scan your pass and look at the camera. That’s it.

I’m not saying don’t offer an app, but it baffles me that you think they should not offer this.

Your mother has a workflow that she’s presumably used for many decades. (I used to use it too): paper boarding pass and look up your flight(/train whatever) on the schedule board. That system will continue to work (for her and for me).

So when introducing a new feature set consider who your adopter audience will be. When think of my own mother she wouldn’t bother to register her face (but does demand a paper BP). She doesn’t want to change her work flow, though she does use her phone for more than calling.

I on the other hand, am willing (even interested) in changing to make my life simpler. Im not saying “make gumby’s life better” specifically, but that effort would be better spent on infrastructure.

BTW though I wasn’t clear, I wasn’t thinking of an airline-specific app, but on in-terminal localization that would interact with my map software in a privacy-protecting way. Delta’s gimmick is not privacy protecting (what happens to that face registration?)

In reality my mothers work flow at an airport is, do what the nice airport staff say. If that’s scan your pass here and look at the camera there, that’s what she’ll do. These are familiar things to do anyway, you have to scan passports and passes already, and immigration control takes your camera, so they’re things she already knows how to do and there are people right there to help.

In any case Delta’s gonna do what they want, as will our respective mums, but at least we had a good discussion of product design and marketing criteria which actually is kind of HN-appropriate.

> Because of course everyone who goes through every airport knows which app to get for each airport, and thinks to install it in advance.

Which would easily be solved by having actual standards rather than even considering that 'which app to get for each airport' should be a phrase we'd consider uttering. Then you could use a phone or watch or laptop or tablet or a kiosk.

"Customers enrolled in Delta’s biometric digital identity program need only show their faces to a camera at the kiosk."

That sentence reminds me of sci-fi way more than the actual board. Could be "straight out" of a 90ies Neal Stephenson novel like Snow Crash, and kinda reads equally dystopian.

The photo and initial description are more dystopian than reality. I found this video showing the screen at the airport.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ECXBi2w9kZU

People who are concerned about things like privacy should remember that humans are incredibly adaptable socially. We quickly learn and socialize norms around new technology. For example, people will learn to avoid crowding when viewing screens like this. The amount of space and privacy people give one another will depend on the customs and personal boundaries that already exist in the local culture.

It's already culturally unacceptable in some places to read a newspaper over a stranger's shoulder. People will learn the same behaviors for this.

Also, it's opt-in.

And here comes the politically incorrect angle-- the US has a lot of immigrants coming from cultures where personal boundaries aren't quite respected and don't make an effort to adopt US norms around it. Granted, a subset of Americans don't respect personal space either.

This is a tricky problem to tackle because, fundamentally, things that rely on particular social behavior to work may not work as intended. It's analogous to how in certain parts of the country you could leave your door unlocked and farm stands would have boxes you could put money in and no one would steal it. Try doing that in San Francisco...

In all likelihood, that will be the crux of making something like this viable everywhere.

Painting every immigrant in the US with one broad brush? And somehow connecting bad behavior (or behavior you don't like) with their immigration status? Can you provide any evidence for this incredible claim?

I regularly interact with many immigrants from many cultures, and have for many years in many places. I've been to the countries many immigrants come from. I see none of this. They aren't animals, they are people as smart as you and me; even when they are used to different norms, they are intelligent social human beings, they can see what's going on, and they adjust - just like you do. Perhaps the cultures where they come from are better behaved than what you were raised in.

Everyone in the US, with few exceptions, comes from immigrants. There is no one 'culture' in the US; it changes by space and time, even from me to my housemate to my neighbor. Drive across the country and see. Look how US culture has changed in just the last 6 years.

> Try doing that in San Francisco...

What on earth does that have to do with immigrants?

I don't really agree with this. I think immigrants to the US integrate surprisingly well in all the ways that matter. Nearly all invasions of my personal space that happen in San Francisco are from people who are clearly not immigrants. If anything I think immigrants tend to be more cautious when interacting with non-immigrants.

You'll find plenty of violation of personal boundaries within citizens, voters, and at least one of the two principle national political parties.

No need to stoop to maligning foreigners.

Straight from the Minority Report 2002 movie. Add a beamforming loudspeaker array for personalized audio and that's it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDMlFycNrw

I’m not sure people are getting that the display is tracking your position, recognizing you, and displaying in such a way that you see something different and customized from people to your left and to your right. They see their own customized info, or the default.

This seems more like a dystopian technology demo than a useful advancement in airport signage.

Disagree, I think it's incredibly cool.

How is it adding utility vs the usual ways that you can access this information? (Paper boarding pass, mobile phone, public flights board)

It adds the utility of normalizing controversial uses of technology and tracking that are usually hidden behind the scenes out of fear of upsetting people.

Now, if laws on facial recognition are proposeded that keep this from working, there will be an army of millions of commenters protesting the government overreach that is restraining innovation.

I'm not arguing that it's crucial, but I think it's a neat convenience. Everyone has spent time scanning through that list trying to find their flight to see what gate it's at and whether it's leaving on time, information that can change and may not be up to date on the boarding pass.

A technology demo can be both incredibly cool, while still having significant negative implications. 16-year old me dreamed about this sort of tech. Current me has seen Minority Report and is not comfortable with faceless corporations unilaterally deciding they want an intimate, personal relationship with me.

Technology is a tool, neither intrinsically good nor evil. Unfortunately the tech industry has, as a whole, shown a stark disrespect for the needs or desires of individuals. Tech culture values monetization over individual autonomy, and that shows little sign of changing. Unfortunately, without a dramatic culture shift, it will continue to be the case that otherwise amazingly incredibly cool tech like this gets subverted to force more "personal" interactions.

Once a customer logs in, they are identified by the motion sensors as a specific moving object tied to a specific customer record

Dislike. Also, I think this will have deleterious effects on the general level of mental health.

Misapplied science, indeed.

Don't worry. It won't be limited to airports for long.

Many malls and supermarkets are already blanketed with facial recognition, and there have been several attempts already to make beamformed audio ads more common.

I guess these are the relevant patents: https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Albert+Han+Ng

It is a neat idea.

Privacy is important, but at the airport we assume we've basically signed up to be poked, prodded, probed, scanned, and tracked, right? Might as well do some neat magic tricks as a side effect. For me at least, this will remain novel and impressive, because try to minimize the amount of time I spend at the airport (I don't actually want to be poked, prodded, scanned, and tracked).

This makes me think of the Nintendo 3Ds. It tracks your head and makes the image 3D. Only this is much more of a privacy screen style 3D. Nifty.

I assume that somewhere in the fine print, you are agreeing to have your location data shared with their commercial "partners"?

Well of course, but if you have nothing to hide why would that bother you?

Does this use holographic displays similar to Looking Glass to show a different image to people in differnet spots?

> CEO of Misapplied Sciences, the company that created the product

Name is spot on. Facial recognition is too creepy to live.

How is this better than looking at my phone (which shows me up-to-date flight info right on my lock screen)? Sure the big screen can be a more passive experience, but it’s also spatially limited. I can look at my phone regardless where I am in the terminal.

It’s out of sci-fi, in the sense sci-fi’s job is to prevent the future more than predict it.

Nice job everyone.

interesting. kinda like 5g beam forming for light rays.

i wonder what the pixels are? something that looks like repurposed mems projector elements maybe? one hundred rays per pixel is pretty impressive.

it would be fun to try and confuse the head tracking/labeling.

I remember as a kid reading Foundation by Asimov, when you arrived in Trantor, you had a boarding pass with a glowing arrow pointing which way to go. Almost there now.

I wonder if this could be used on smaller devices to correct vision issues? Maybe it could recognize I don't have my glasses and adjust accordingly.

Did they ever stop to consider that everyone is already carrying a screen that only they can see in their pockets?

The next North Korean binary-agent "meet you at the gate" assassination team will greatly appreciate this added convenience. Particularly the enabled-by-default opt-out version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam

Can’t I just scan a boarding pass and get the info and not do a bunch of biometric stuff?

They could just text me with the flight info, and ping me when it's time to board.

I cant imaging anyone actually wants this

How do I point something out to my wife?

What exactly problem does it solve?

I need one of those displays.

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