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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: 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!"