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The New York Times published an article about toilet paper theft and the use of technology to prevent it:
The toilet paper thieves of the Temple of Heaven Park were an elusive bunch.
They looked like most park visitors, practicing tai chi, dancing in the courtyards and stopping to take in the scent of ancient cypress and juniper trees. But hidden in their oversize shopping bags and backpacks was a secret: sheet upon sheet of crumpled toilet paper, plucked surreptitiously from public restrooms.
Now the authorities in Beijing are fighting back, going so far as to install high-tech toilet paper dispensers equipped with facial recognition software in several restrooms.
Before entering restrooms in the park, visitors must now stare into a computer mounted on the wall for three seconds before a machine dispenses a sheet of toilet paper, precisely two feet in length. If visitors require more, they are out of luck. The machine will not dispense a second roll to the same person for nine minutes.
This seems to be too funny to be real, but the article has an animated GIF that demonstrates this device's operation.
(Score: 3, Funny) by sgleysti on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:11AM (2 children)
I have been to that park, and if I recall correctly, they had a sign in the men's room which could be translated:
One small step toward the urinal, one giant leap for civility.
I couldn't help but laugh and think of Neil Armstrong's famous quote.
(Score: 2, Funny) by ShadowSystems on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:26AM
I once owned a sign from a German public bathroom that instructed gentlemen to "sit before you pee".
It depicted a man with his pants down around his ankles, sitting on the floor, urinating in a high arc to piddle into the bowl.
It always made me wonder if he wiped down the floor before landing.
=-Jp
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:51PM
A great leap forward, perhaps?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:28AM (2 children)
based on what i know about Chinese culture, this is certainly real. there is no such thing as too much of a good deal.. Chinese love getting a 'bargan'. Even if that bargan is shoveling shrimp from a buffet into their purse or stealing all the toilet paper in a public bathroom.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:28PM
I had some friends in California who did that. They'd go to Howard Johnson's, order the all-you-can eat fried clams, ans she'd bring a big purse lined with a plastic bag...
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:15PM
Oh man how my mother would fit right into their culture is scary. (No she was not Chinese, not even Asian)
(Score: 4, Funny) by ShadowSystems on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:22AM (4 children)
Do they store the feca... errr, FACIAL data permanently or do they wipe it after a short period?
Do they log everything or am I taking the piss in thinking you have any privacy left anymore?
Should I flush this crappy line of attrocious punnery or can I try floating another one past you?
Nah, nevermind, this whole thing stinks to high heaven.
*Runs away before this plunges any deeper into the toilet*
=-)p
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:50AM (3 children)
I think savvy western tourists travelling in asia generally just carry a roll of TP with them... then they aren't screwed when they're at a toilet limits you to x squares, or that sells it by by the square, or is simply lacking completely.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:46AM (1 child)
Well, now you better also carry the sales slip with you, to prove that is is indeed your own paper. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:05PM
I'm sure any roll you personally bought and carry yourself, would be far better quality than what they have in the facilities themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:36PM
Until reading this story I never heard of a public WC in China that had toilet paper.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:22AM (1 child)
Bandit [oxforddictionaries.com]: A robber or outlaw belonging to a gang and typically operating in an isolated or lawless area.
Staring in a computer is a band aid solution against bandits.
The proper solution: they need to make their toilets congregated and legalize them.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:27PM
Band-aid or not, the cops have nothing to go on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by varsix on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:32AM (6 children)
What happens if you show the camera a picture of someone else's face? What if you have a bag of people's pictures with you?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:46AM (1 child)
Ahhh... finally a use for old political campaign posters....
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:10PM
If you're a known politician, you get triple the amount.
You think it's a privilege scheme, when in fact it's engineers hinting you're full of...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:57PM (2 children)
I have a solution for that problem.
Don't use facial recognition. The toilets should have computerized recognition of the other end of the human anatomy.
It is far less likely that you have this kind of picture of another person in order to steal toilet paper by showing another person's picture.
The other advantage of this is TP is not even dispensed unless you actually sat on the toilet to be recognized by the system first.
The AI should use supervised learning. Human operators will look at all of the training data set of photos and signify which photos are are positives to provide feedback for the learning. These jobs would increase employment.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:19PM
Don't use facial recognition. The toilets should have computerized recognition of the other end of the human anatomy.
Ahhh... finally a use for old goatse links....
(with apologies to anubi [soylentnews.org])
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:52PM
It is far less likely that you have this kind of picture of another person in order to steal toilet paper by showing another person's picture.
Oh to be so young and innocent again. I think there's a whole subreddit for that kind of picture. But if you didn't know that, you probably shouldn't go there until you're older.
Now the real hack would be pranking my friends and coworkers and knowing that they're going to use those, um, interesting image collections, I'd purposefully go there and "use up" all the hot 10/10 pictures and then flush the TP just to force them to use pictures of, you know, blown out medical conditions, really ugly people, you get the idea. Just to mess with my "buddies". Because I know they'd be doing the same thing to me for a laugh.
"You bastards know I went to taco bell for dinner last night and you're making be look up goatse today just to get some TP? Fuuuuuu...." (note to kids, do not look up goatse. When you gaze into the goatse, the goatse gazes back into you...)
The AI should use supervised learning. Human operators
Oh god the horror the horror... You can imagine the shock pix people are going to hold up to the screen when they really need to wipe and its the only way they can get TP. Those human trainers are going to need serious psychological counseling. "Wait, is that a bowling ball up there? he's earned his TP!"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:42PM
... someone else's face ... what if you have a bag ...
A bag of faces sounds like a creepypasta story. Hmm how about a book instead of a bag... a book of faces... facebook?
Personally I think it would be funny to try and frame your friends and coworkers by holding up their linkedin/facebook picture to get TP such that they are locked out of TP for awhile. "Damnnit VLM you used my picture you son of a ... now I gotta find someone elses picture" Union activists will make sure the CEO never gets to wipe.
Another option which I think would be hilarious if a human periodically checks the scanned photos, I'd go on 4chan or reddit and show pr0n pix to the camera. I'm pretty sure theres a whole subreddit just for facials making this whole issue rather trivial.
One option to consider is shock pix. Or memes. I can totally imagine getting drunk and saying stuff in the stall like "Tub girl commands you, squirt out some more tp or else you're not gonna like the cleanup" "Jean Luc Picard says, number two, make it so" "help me obi wan kenobi, I need TP!" "hal, open the toilet paper bay door, hal" I wonder if pedo bear would recognize as a face and issue TP.
Imagine the fivver. "For $5 I'll draw you 10 hand drawn faces guaranteed to get you TP"
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:27AM (5 children)
A Canadian friend vacationed in Cuba some years ago. They had attendants in the public restrooms who would hand out the toilet paper.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:59AM (2 children)
They were probably there to keep an eye on foreigners more than help with amenities. Amenities just gave them an alibi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:53AM (1 child)
Sounds to me like government employment in lieu of welfare.
I wonder how much cleaner the toilets at our parks, and the train station, would be if instead of mailing out welfare checks, the government offered jobs doing stuff like this and made the people responsible for maintaining the public facilities in lieu of a simple mailed check or EBT transfer.
So far, our political response has been to limit sales of spray paint to try to minimize access to substances known to be used for defacing public works. Now, I can imagine the spray-can wielder coming up across the guy whose gonna have to clean up his mess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:53PM
Get rid of minimum wage and implement UBI. Then we could hire people who are willing to voluntarily do those jobs for $1 or $2 per hour. Requiring work as part of welfare in a system that has 5% unemployment built in is just violently imposed slavery.
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:33PM (1 child)
Attended restrooms are a thing in numerous places, including some high-end Stateside restaurants. At least in France, attendants in men's rooms are often female...Yank tourists get used to it after a bit.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:15PM
It's easy to spot Americans who recoil in public European bathrooms when the cleaning lady is just doing her job a few feet away.
Get over it guys. She doesn't give a darn about your junk.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:10AM (6 children)
Invent toilet paper that dissolves ten minutes after it is dispensed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:27AM (2 children)
They have. It is called "toilet paper". Unlike baby wipes this flimsy paper dissolves in water quickly.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:42AM (1 child)
Yeah, nice one smart-arse. I meant, toilet paper that dissolves ten minutes after being dispensed whether it's used or not.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:17PM
"nice one smart-arse"
Is that the name of the system? :D
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:38PM (2 children)
Give out pre-1930's toilet paper [thevintagenews.com] that nobody will want to steal.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)
Or even toilet paper from later dates. After all, Albert Speer wrote large amounts of his Spandau diary on toilet paper. And habeas corpus petitions from California prisons have been written on toilet paper for lack of anything better available. (Some of those petitions were successful BTW.)
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:09PM
Toilet paper is perfectly good as a communications medium. Even some president's faces have been printed on toilet paper, no doubt as an endorsement and statement of support.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:20PM
More fake news from the New York Times.
In China they call toilet paper the China Daily [chinadaily.com.cn].
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:08PM (1 child)
Don't the larger cities at least have a bidet or just a hose hanging on the wall nearby? Personally I'd much prefer an actual jet of water than paper. I mean if you get shit on your hands, you don't wipe it off with paper, you wash them with soap and water. Why should any other part of you be different? I may be a little paranoid about this, but I try to only take a dump at home so I can shower afterwards...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:28PM
I carry cleaning wipes. Regular TP is kind of gross.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anne Nonymous on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:29PM (1 child)
In my experience, the vast majority of public toilets in the developing world are BYOTP.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:02PM
Had to go all the way to the bottom to get some truth :)
I've been to over 20 different cities in China, just as many places to stay and eat too. Along with some nice tourist spots. My orientation with the people I went along with explained the importance of bringing your own tissues with you, your own napkins with you, and your own TP with you.
Almost no restaurants had napkins out. It was expected that customers would bring their own. Only high end establishments gave them out, and it wasn't abnormal for people to pick them up. I think that was even Hong Kong and not the mainland. No napkin dispensers like there are ubiquitously in Western establishments are found throughout China, or at least the China I experienced.
In the bathrooms there was always a sink, and some soap in many cases, but you brought your own napkins to wipe your hands with, and you brought your own TP. One of the "bathrooms" I experienced in a rural factory was no more than 1 foot by 5 foot rectangular holes in concrete to a huge retaining area below. No stalls, no rails, nothing to keep a small person from falling in below. There was a sink with running water along with it, but nothing else.
I can absolutely imagine Chinese people going to a park and seeing the TP dispensers and going apeshit on them. It's reasonable to me that it would be interpreted as an amenity included in the park price and they can take what they want. At a minimum, it would be an oddity to them, and no social expectations are in place yet.
Banditry is just the interpretation of non-Chinese journalists after experiencing it. Spend a few weeks throughout China and one might understand the real deal with TP.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.