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posted by martyb on Saturday October 22 2016, @11:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the convenience-vs.-privacy dept.

A drive-through for your groceries: According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, that's one of Amazon's many ambitions for the next version of its grocery-delivery service, Fresh. The company will set up a series of "convenience stores," the Journal reports, where it will sell basic goods like milk, produce, and meat.

Some locations will also allow people to pick up orders they placed online. Here's how the Journal described that feature:

For customers seeking a quicker checkout, Amazon will soon begin rolling out designated drive-in locations where online grocery orders will be brought to the car, the people said. The company is developing license-plate reading technology to speed wait times.

That detail about the license-plate readers caught my attention. Scanning the license plates of incoming cars makes sense: If your plate is connected to your Amazon account, the system could alert employees working in the store that you've arrived to pick up your grocery order before you even have a chance to park. If someone met you at the curb with your order in hand, you could be in and out of the lot in less than a minute.

But that's not the only reason implementing a license-plate system would be a smart move for Amazon. If the company can convince you to tell it which car is yours, it could link your license plate number to your Amazon account. Then, if it bought data from another company that shows where else your car has traveled, it could potentially use that information to develop an even more complete picture of your habits, preferences, and personality.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/amazon-wants-to-scan-your-license-plate/503747/

My state has a variety of specialty license places available for an extra ~$35 year, one of them has black text on a dark purple background. I picked that plate in order to reduce the accuracy of scanners trying to read my license plate. What other methods have people come up with?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:29AM (#417707)

    Except they would know you have a plate with black text on a purple background and the color of your car if not the make and model. So, that's gonna narrow it down a lot right there.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @01:37AM (#417710)

    Also color is not going to stop the scanner. I worked on a project like this. I would just drop it into 8 different colors and let the alg vote it out.

    What usually messes with a scanner is poor angle or distance to the plate (so low pixel count). Dirt and poor contrast can hurt char recognition. Usually that can be correct by having the DMV pick a slightly different font. They are totally willing to do it too. No real biggie for them and they get lots of information.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @03:37AM (#417734)

      Black text on purple equals low contrast.

      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:43AM

        by deimtee (3272) on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:43AM (#417797) Journal

        I would like to place money on that purple being very bright in near-infrared.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @06:34PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @06:34PM (#417914)

          Easy enough to test with a camera phone and a black-and-white photoshop filter since most camera phones see infra-red too.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:58AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @09:58AM (#417802)

        Black text on purple equals low contrast to human eyes.

        FTFY