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Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”
- northhnbesthn 1y agoOh yeah I have one of these installed at my place. Every time I walk in I hear a cha-ching from their mobile app. Another $250! It’s like free money in my pocket.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 1y agohttps://www.restsensor.com/ https://www.restsensor.com/
- consp 1y agoIronic they have plenty of "hotel bad because smoke smell" and none of the "hotel bad because of fake smoke detection fine" testemonials on the site.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alanfranz 1y agoThey also cover vaping. While smoking harms are clear and its impact on room smell is evident, the connection is pretty weak for vaping. Unless it’s a crowded bar with lots of vaping people, I can’t tell if somebody has previously used an e-cigarette or vaporized anything in a room, and generally speaking I don’t find such vapor disturbing (altough the smell can be not great).
- yonatan8070 1y agoI found that people vaping around me causes minor irritation in my eyes, and I also find the smell rather annoying, despite my sense of smell being rather weak. I haven't noticed any long-term effects on rooms with frequent vaping though
- CoastalCoder 1y agoI'm curious how various court systems would handle a person suing nearby vape users for (documented) minor irritation of eyes and airways. If such suits were successful, would the newly tested liability set larger changes in motion? I'm similarly curious about being around Amazon Alexa, etc. devices in circumstances that require two-party consent for recording audio.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- windows2020 1y agoA colleague experienced this but I don't recall where. But they were furious about it and it was a challenge to get resolved.
- octo888 1y agoLooks like hotels looked at the car rental industry and took a lot of inspiration.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoAirlines: "Hold my beer!"
- walterbell 1y ago"Delta moves to eliminate set prices, use AI to set your personal ticket price", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44596355
- scarface_74 1y agoDelta has never had set prices and this is fake outrage. Airlines have used algorithms since deregulation in the 70s to set prices. The “algorithm” use to be simpler based on “fair classes”. A fair class is not a simple - Main, C+ and FC. Two people sitting in main can have different fair classes. https://www.alternativeairlines.com/fare-basis-codes-explained https://www.alternativeairlines.com/fare-basis-codes-explain... Of course as computers have gotten more sophisticated, the machine learning/revenue optimization rules have too. For instance it costs less for me to fly Delta from MCO (Orlando) -> ATL -> SJO (San Jose Costa Rica) than it does our friends to fly from ATL -> SJO when we are both flying the same second leg. There are other tricks to like booking a Delta flight via AirFrance or Virgin Airlines domestically cheaper.
- GuB-42 1y agoThis is not the same, the airline can set whatever price they want, AI or not, but I see the prices and then can decide whether I want to buy or not. Maybe more relevant would be oversize/overweight baggage fees. Where there is some fine print about baggage policy and you may find yourself paying expensive fees at the gate because you didn't realize the weight limit included your handbag or that the allowed dimensions are nonstandard. A hotel charging $500 for smoking that didn't happen is worse than all of that, it is just fraud. Personal ticket prices is just business, controversial, but they are not trying to trick you. The fine print is bad, but at least, you can avoid the fees by being careful. Here, you have no choice but to pay and maybe hope to get your money back by filing a complain.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y agoSynopsis and excerpt: [Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream" with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking. Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels. The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong. And errors reliably favor the institution that manages (and profits from) them.
- spondylosaurus 1y agoI scoured their website to look for any clues about how it might (allegedly) work and got a fat lot of nothing. > Rest constantly monitors room air quality, using a proprietary algorithm to pinpoint any tobacco, marijuana, or nicotine presence. So a smoke detector with an "algorithm" attached. Uh huh. How does that algorithm work? > By analyzing various factors and patterns[...] Some cutting edge shit here! And as for accuracy, they don't even pretend to make promises about "99.99% success rates" or anything. This is the most detailed they get: > Q: Is it accurate? > A: Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested for accuracy in real-world scenarios, backed by years of development, and tens of thousands of hours of rigorous testing and validation.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago> Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested Okay, but what were the results? https://xkcd.com/1096/ https://xkcd.com/1096/
- thephotonsphere 1y agoSmokin'! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KONoeHwu2pg&t=50s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KONoeHwu2pg&t=50s
- kotaKat 1y agoIt's going to be similar bullshit to what Halo uses in the highschool vape sensors. A bunch of particulate sensors for like PM1, PM2.5, PM10, sniffing out VOCs, and then they consider any tripping of any of that to be a "smoke" sesh. Edit: Oh. Rest is just NoiseAware. They're just reselling NoiseAware sensors which are just - yes - a bunch of particulate sensors hooked up to an ESP32 hooked to a web dashboard.
- hotboxin 1y agoLooks like nothing a little duct tape couldn't handle.
- nielsbot 1y agoWhy should I have to waste my time and duct tape on their shitty scam? :) Easier to just never stay at a Hyatt.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoDuct tape adhesives (including polyterpene resin) might register as VOCs. Now, if you duct taped a piece of absolutely clean aluminum foil to it, then that could be fine.
- gblargg 1y agoI'd take the opposite approach, put something in the room that continually triggers it so they keep coming up and then just ignore it eventually.
- octo888 1y ago"Fire Safety Device Interference Fee: $1,000"
- bell-cot 1y agoIANAL - but might doing that sift the burden of proof, and force Hyatt to show that the Rest device met regulatory standards as a fire detector?
- ungreased0675 1y agoI bet there are standards about this, and I’d also bet Rest has optimized their product for stealing money, not safety.
- anthonyeden 1y agoI have seen tradies attempt to ‘disable’ smoke particle detectors by putting tape or a rubber glove over the sensor. This technique often triggers the alarm almost immediately. Commercial fire sensors do have plastic caps which block airflow without triggering an alarm. They’re designed to be kept on during construction until each sensor is commissioned.
- dawnerd 1y agoI bet Rest just uses a cheap voc sensor and triggers when a set threshold is hit. I doubt there's any algorithm involved.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoYep. And these things trigger from things including hairspray, nail polish remover, nail polish, microwaved food, and more. I'm constantly watching "VOCs" on a cheapo Amazon AQM change whenever I cook.
- ekidd 1y agoYeah, stovetop cooking makes your VOC and particulate numbers look like a bad day on an LA freeway. The other thing that's surprisingly nasty for air quality is incense. You might live in the woods with excellent air quality, but burn some incense and suddenly all the VOC and particulate numbers look like downtown Manhattan. It's ironic that incense is a massive air pollutant, but not really surprising.
- amluto 1y agoHaving played with an SGP41 (a current-gen VOC sensor), you cannot correctly do anything involving a threshold. The sensor has a couple of nasty properties, all well documented in the datasheet: - It has a lot of low frequency noise (timescale of hours to days), so you need to do some sort of high pass filter. - The responses to different VOC compounds don’t even necessarily have the same sign. So the sensor gives you a “raw” reading that you are supposed to post-process with a specific algorithm to produce a “VOC index” that, under steady state conditions, is a constant irrespective of the actual VOC level. And then you look at it over time and it will go to a higher value to indicate something like “it’s probably stinkier now than it was half an hour ago”. This, of course, cannot distinguish smoking from perfume or from anything else, nor is it even particularly reliable at indicating anything at all. Modern PM2.5 meters are actually pretty good, although they struggle in high humidity conditions. But they still can’t distinguish smoking from other sources on fine particles.
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- rdtsc 1y ago> I asked Erik if the room needed to be cleaned [...] And he said it wasn't needing special cleaning so he offered me $250 Well that sort of says everything we'd want to know. They charged the customer $500, like they'll need to tear up the room and bring in a large team to clean everything. But they never bothered with that because they know it's a scam, and the company selling these knows exactly how their customers will use these. Unsurprisingly, the customers just love this new technology and can't get enough of it: (review from https://www.restsensor.com https://www.restsensor.com) > "Rest’s in-room smoking detection service has helped us capture a lucrative ancillary revenue stream while also improving our guest experience." Kirsten Snyder, Asset Manager, Woodbine
- madaxe_again 1y agoWait, woodbine? A hotel literally owned by/named after a cigarette brand? You literally couldn’t make this up.
- clort 1y agoLargely a property development company, named after a geological feature "Woodbine Sand", in Texas [1] https://woodbinedevelopment.com/woodbinedevelopment.com/our-story https://woodbinedevelopment.com/woodbinedevelopment.com/our-...
- userbinator 1y agoWhile we're on that topic of "things that aren't actually named after cigarettes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_(disambiguation)
- southernplaces7 1y ago>> "Rest’s in-room smoking detection service has helped us capture a lucrative ancillary revenue stream while also improving our guest experience." Kirsten Snyder, Asset Manager, Woodbine At least this chain mentions using lubrication while shafting its customers.
- Animats 1y agoHere's a "vape detector" with more explaination.[1] It contains an air particulates detector and a CO2 detector, plus humidity, temperature, and noise and light sensors. They're probably looking for particulates and CO2 ramp up, hence the "algorithm". It's not clear how accurate this is, but it's not mysterious. There's a version sold to schools that adds "bullying detector" capability. This adds detection of "keyword calls for help, loud sounds, and gunshots." [1] https://fobsin.com/products/mountable-air-quality-vape-detector https://fobsin.com/products/mountable-air-quality-vape-detec...
- laborcontract 1y agoIt sounds ludicrous to say out loud, but if you're staying in a Hyatt hotel, it's best not to take a hot shower until this issue is resolved. The steam from the showers tend to make these types of particle sensors go wild.
- amluto 1y agoEven outdoors, humidity is a problem. Humidity turns little particles into bigger, soggier particles that give higher readings on optical sensors, which can rather inflate readings on cheap sensors in humid or foggy conditions. There’s a reason that the actual EPA particle counting standards involve drying the particles before measurement. (RIP, EPA.)
- MiddleEndian 1y agoThe smoke detector in my previous condo used to go off all the time when I showered. Had to remove it shortly after moving in lol
- SoftTalker 1y agoMust have been placed improperly. They should not be installed in kitchens or in or near bathrooms. But also, you should run the exhaust fan in the bathroom when you shower, this removes at least some of the moist air and cuts down on the chance for moisture damage and mold to develop.
- whycome 1y ago(Smoking) computer says no.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 4b11b4 1y agoThis reminds me of Hertz new "AI" camera based damage detection... Although much less effort... This is the end. May progress have mercy on our souls.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoHertz is a running joke meme on Steve Lehto's channel, an automotive Lemon Law lawyer Youtuber.
- octo888 1y agoKnowing Hertz, the 360 degree camera scan still won't be proof that you didn't steal the vehicle from them
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y agoI think both of these "innovations" will be short lived once companies recognize that reputation is still a thing, and once you build a reputation of scamming your customers, it's very hard to recover from it and the revenue from the scams isn't enough to make up for the revenue lost because nobody wants to deal with your company anymore.
- kayodelycaon 1y agoPeople still use Hertz despite them reporting cars as stolen and having their customers arrested.
- tcoff91 1y agoAt this point if you still use Hertz you are just a dumbass straight up.
- jdenning 1y agoThis seems like outright fraud - how can they charge a cleaning fee and then perform no cleaning?
- octo888 1y agoJust like how car rental companies can charge damage fees and not repair it (thus charging it multiple times for multiple customers!)
- deanc 1y agoTime for the EU to legislate on this. Car rental companies should be required to provide a detailed report to the customer on the damage allowing the customer to challenge any potential cost estimation (with reason) that the rental car company provides. Then the rental companies should be required to prove to the customer the damage was fixed and provide the invoice.
- octo888 1y agoCareful what you wish for. What you may get in one hand they'll take in another. They're pulling other crap like cleaning fees for a grain or two of sand too. Should the EU our saviour protect us against that? Plenty alternatives to renting a car in Europe. Hit them where it hertz. Take a punt on smaller companies that are competing with eg total all inclusive insurance. Yup they're a bit more expensive sometimes but can result in an better overall experience (there are lots of scammy local companies too)
- deanc 1y agoThis could all be covered under legislation. If the EU can finally get airlines to agree on hand luggage standardisation I’m fairly sure they could agree that any additional cleaning or repairs must come with receipts. This makes it a lot easier for CC disputes at that point.
- deleted 1y ago
- chneu 1y agoTire shops do this by siping your tires and then offering you a refund if you complain that you never wanted it. But they do it without asking to everyone and then charge $60 hoping nobody notices.
- BlackFly 1y agoI'd refuse to pay the charge on check out. If they charged my card anyways I would demand a refund and inform the consumer protection agency, wait 30 days and issue the chargeback. Luckily these things work well in my nation.
- sneak 1y agoAmEx used to be good about doing chargebacks generally, but they once sided with the merchant during covid when I was sold an impossible itinerary and cost me $2k. Since then I realized that I won’t always be able to do a chargeback, and I am much more cautious with vendors.
- wombat-man 1y agoChase was really weird about doing a chargeback for me when a restaurant charged me a second time under a different name a month after my visit. It took several phone calls and they eventually credited my account but they would not do a chargeback. Two identical charges a month apart. I could show that I wasn't even in the same state for the second one.
- giraffe_lady 1y agoYeah the frequent advice to just do a chargeback as a consumer protection action is out of date. It is quite hard to get a bank or CC company to do one now even if you have solid evidence you're in the right. I don't really know when this changed, I guess over the last 5-8 years.
- csomar 1y agoI think there are exceptions about "exigent circumstances" and COVID was considered one. My EU flight was not refunded as well despite the EU having strong protections. The airlines, at the time, were given a life-line. I think these once in-a-decade or more events can be swallowed. But wouldn't be happy with a regular occurrence.
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- jzwinck 1y agoNot about smoking but I recently stayed at a W hotel and was woken in the middle of the night by the room lights turning on. They used electronic push buttons and I turned them off. Seconds later they turned on again. This repeated several times until I was fully awake and called the front desk. "We can come put tape on the sensors." "What sensors?" "There are sensors under the bed." "Oh, so you already know about this problem but haven't fixed it. Thanks, please don't send anyone." I then looked under the bed and sure enough there was a motion detector on each side. I removed these from their brackets and let them dangle facing the floor instead of outward. This blinded them and solved the problem. I guess they were malfunctioning or they were able to detect motion above the bed via reflections. The next day I reported this to the front desk, who were unsympathetic and unhelpful. They told me it was for my own safety. Apparently at other hotels I have just been incredibly lucky not to have fallen down when getting out of bed. I will not stay at a W hotel again unless I can confirm in advance that they do not have motion detectors under the bed which spuriously turn the lights on at night. Maybe I'll add Hyatt to the no-go list.
- em-bee 1y agothere was a monster under your bed...
- tehwebguy 1y agoStayed at a Hilton owned property recently and the fan / light used a wireless controller and someone else’s room was controlling mine!
- netsharc 1y agoAll these gadgetry.. seems like we'll need to bring an EMP blaster to hotels to "sanitize" the room..
- card_zero 1y agoStrange choice, fitting rooms with a novel device to annoy guests. Do you suppose it's because somebody fell out of bed and sued? And then maybe some other people thought that was a good idea, and they fell out of bed too, and now the hotels have to have the annoying thing.
- abbadadda 1y agoThis is a microcosm for enshittification writ large. If no one cares about your individual complaint you’re fucked. Only in numbers do consumers wield any power. The 48 Laws of Power says, “what is unseen counts for nothing.” So make it seen. Make bullshit like this visible. And vote with your dollars. Better yet sue the smoke detector company. Make them demonstrate their flawless false positive rate in court. Bullshit, grifting companies keep getting away with stuff like this because there are no consequences. Make them feel it where it hurts the most: their bank account.
- datahack 1y agoI have a startup idea for you my friend…
- walterbell 1y agoPaging DoNotPay.com bots..
- ddingus 1y ago"enshittification writ large." Good grief! We are actually going to have a shit list now: Hertz, Hyatt are the first two entries in this historic development..
- neonate 1y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1945959030851035223.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1945959030851035223.html
- cpard 1y agoFrom their FAQ: "Is it worth the investment? Absolutely. Hotels equipped with Rest have seen an 84x increase in smoking fine collection. Plus, our smoking detection technology helps prevent damage to rooms and reduce a number of future violations." Apparently there are way more people smoking than we thought there are or the sensor just generates a lot of false positives. The language they are using all over the site is very interesting though, see here an example: From how it works: "Automatically charge If smoking is detected, your staff gets notified, simplifying the process of charging smoking fees." With a system with false positives, it makes total sense to use real time notifications to staff to go and check what's going on, that would be legit, but then on top saying that you automatically charge? It almost feels like they are selling a way to fraud to their customers while covering themselves against any litigation by using the right copy in there to support that it's the responsibility of the Hotel staff to go and check in real time that the violation is actually happening.
- jfengel 1y agoIs there that much smoking in hotels? Do they charge more for smoking rooms? A number like 84x suggests that it's basically zero now. That kinda makes sense. The only one who would notice is the cleaning staff, and relying on their word for "it smelled like smoke" sounds like a way to get a chargeback. They'd call you on it only if they were forced to take the room out of rotation to air it out. So maybe there are a lot of people smoking just a little (perhaps a joint), and getting away with it. That might make a number like 84x work.
- BeFlatXIII 1y agoI can't imagine people getting charged by this system not doing chargebacks.
- vkou 1y agoA number like 84x implies that it's almost entirely false positives.
- gpm 1y ago
- UltraSane 1y agoThis is Fraud as a Service.
- palmfacehn 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
- webgames 1y ago[dead]
- amelius 1y agoHanlon's razor doesn't cut it anymore.
- hiatus 1y agoI personally believe Hanlon's razor should never be applied to corporations. A solitary person, sure, but when multiple people are involved it tends more to malice than ignorance.
- xnx 1y agoNext step: Hertz installs these in their cars.
- justlikereddit 1y agoThe MBA way to earn money of AI and automation. "Computer says pay me $$$" "Why" "AI demands it!"
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoSo someone does not smoke in their room but they’re charged for cleaning anyway because a third party (Rest) told the hotel that they smoked in their room. What sort of evidence should one gather during their stay to make the strongest possible (defamation? fraud?) case against Rest? (Not that anyone wants to do that on their trip, just curious about the legal implications.)
- jfengel 1y agoWould it work if it were real time? You light up, and five minutes later a manager knocks. Dunno about the legality of refusing to open the door, but it does sound like a way to get banned from a hotel chain.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y agoYeah, that’s totally fair. At least they’ll have testimony that the smoking was actually witnessed. Most people aren’t going to even bother fighting that since it actually happened. I just worry about abuse cases and the most obvious one here is false positives being assumed true by everyone who profits from them. Edit: Sorry, that’s from the wrong point of view but I don’t think the answer changes. It seems Rest will have to change a lot of their marketing language to really avoid liability but if someone is actually caught smoking then it’s not likely to manifest.
- jfengel 1y agoThe great thing about that kind of human validation is that if they get a lot of false positives, the managers will start ignoring all of the alerts. It would be unfair to charge people with just a black box algorithm. But a few door knocks could fix that, one way or the other.
- zeroonetwothree 1y agoGenerally you have no rights in a hotel to prevent entry.
- goopypoop 1y ago
- DudeOpotomus 1y agoIf I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain. In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know. Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses that loyalty is not only a boon, but a necessity for survival. Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer.
- vintermann 1y agoOften I wonder if some scammers (and this is totally a scam) basically pay a premium to feel like they've outsmarted people, or for the smirking satisfaction that their victims can't do anything about it. Some scams are so much work for so little gain, or so obviously counterproductive in anything but the short term, that it seems like that.
- DudeOpotomus 1y agoNo, it's just stupidity and myopia. Like those screens that replaced glass beverage cases in liquor stores a few years ago. Not one customer liked them. Not one customer wanted them and the results were beyond terrible. People literally stopped buying. But people actually invested millions into that company and other people actually bought their products and thought "gee this is great". Imagine how disconnected you have to be from your customers to make such an investment and/or installation for a few bucks? Stupid is as stupid does...
- egypturnash 1y agoI seem to recall hearing that there was a person high up in the management of at least one of the store chains that did this who had a ton of financial interest in the company that made those door-screens.
- kirubakaran 1y ago
- dangus 1y agoI saw a little quote about the modern business landscape that seems to apply here: “Save a few pennies by destroying trust.” The Hyatt franchise needs to shut this down ASAP. Most hotels are independently operated or operated by franchise groups. Not many hotel brands actually own the hotels and essentially act as marketing firms. If I were to give this the “never assign malice to that which can be adequately explained by incompetence” benefit of the doubt, I think some bozo hotel manager got sold this innovative “solution” and implemented it without thinking much about it. Then they got their revenue and probably thought to themselves “Wow I knew the smoking problem was bad but I didn’t know it was this bad!!” Meanwhile they are slow rolling the death of their location by tainting guest reviews, which are the lifeblood by which you justify your room rates.
- dreamcompiler 1y agoRemember when hotels charged outrageous fees to make a phone call from your room? That scam no longer works because everybody has a cell phone. Then they tried charging high fees for watching movies on the room's TV, and high fees for wifi. Those no longer work because everybody expects hotel wifi to be free and unlimited LTE is a thing now and nobody uses the TV in a hotel room any more. Obviously this is just the latest such scam. Accuse people of smoking, refuse to show them the evidence, and charge them $500 to be split between the hotel and the sensor company. Reminds me of the UK post office scandal where hundreds of innocent people went to prison because of software errors when the powers that be insisted the software was perfect and no auditing was possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Yet again we have normies believing marketing bullshit that says "our proprietary algorithms are foolproof." We need laws that say any algorithm that can accuse a person of wrongdoing must be auditable and if it harms innocent people, the CEO of the company is both civilly and criminally liable.
- jasonjayr 1y ago“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”
- CamperBob2 1y agoI've never understood this old saw. The computer is just a tool. Somebody owns the computer, somebody installed it, somebody loaded software onto it. That's who should be held accountable. Taken at face value, you couldn't even use a pocket calculator to back up a management decision.
- EliRivers 1y ago"Taken at face value, you couldn't even use a pocket calculator to back up a management decision." That makes no sense. I am the manager. I make the decision. The calculator gives me some numbers but I am still the manager, still the decision maker, and I can use any tools appropriate to inform my decisions. Even a calculator. Taken at face value, that's what it says. That the calculator doesn't make the management decision; a person does.
- blantonl 1y agoBetween this and Hertz's new AI damage detection models, we're seeing the enshitification of business travel reaching a new level, and also doing a great job of really ticking off a group of customers (business travelers) who are already irritated enough. Rest markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream" Leave it to the bean counters to see this as an opportunity to generate new revenue streams from customers while simultaneously pissing them off.
- washadjeffmad 1y agoThere have always been attempts to launder fraud through intermediaries - computerized, bureaucratic, or otherwise. They think (well, know) if they abstract or obfuscate things in a novel way, that they'll have enough time to hit markets across states without sophisticated legislation before the legal immune systems can respond, potentially years later. This type of algorithmic grift is transparent to judges and people with common sense, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest at or outside of the federal level through regulators like the FTC to prevent it, just curtail certain circumstances.
- Havoc 1y ago> “unlock a new revenue stream” Monetizing fire safety. Lovely. Appears this company rebranded from NoiseAware. More tech to monitor "valued" guests...this time on noise levels
- andrepd 1y agoIt's the consequence of growth capitalism. When it's not enough to make money, you have to make more money this quarter than you did last, then it's really only a matter of time until everything is monetised under the exclusive logic of greed, devoid of any other considerations of a moral or human order. Public goods, water fountains, libraries, beaches, forests. Basic state functions. Your attention, at every moment. On it marches.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoThe stock market grows by 10% a year. Worker income only grows 2% a year. Those aren’t sustainable.
- rsync 1y ago"It's the consequence of growth capitalism. When it's not enough to make money, you have to make more money this quarter than you did last, then it's really only a matter of time ..." Agreed. An environment of increasing interest rates exacerbates this.
- quickthrowman 1y agoVape and smoke detection is not fire safety. Hotel rooms have 2-4 hour fire rated partitions (unsure on duration), typically have their own HVAC not linked to outside the room (and if there is central HVAC the supply and return ducts have fire smoke dampers), and are usually sprinkled.
- toast0 1y agoI guess there's some aspect of fire safety, because cigarettes are smoldering and can start fires. But I've been in hotel rooms where a previous occupant was smoking enough that the room smells, and it's not pleasant. It doesn't happen often now that most hotels are declared non-smoking, at least in my experience. I don't think I'm in favor of black box smoking detectors either. I'd guess housekeeping reporting the room for smoking during cleaning and a 2nd person verifying would be enough to bill a smoking fee and that would drive compliance. Sometimes you miss a room, and customers complain, and you deal with it then. Better than the sensors said X and we didn't follow up with our noses.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kittikitti 1y agoI don't understand why so many commentators are acting surprised at this morally dubious company. Many if not most companies coming out of YCombinator are just as bad. Just one case is uBiome. In fact, I would argue that YCombinator and the startup culture they create directly enabled companies to do exactly this.
- lxgr 1y agoThere has got to be a way to penalize companies for attempting this kind of thing. Even just removing the charge without discussion isn't enough, as some people will be traveling on a corporate card they don't necessarily monitor closely, will confuse the charge for something else etc. Otherwise, I'd love to be able to preemptively and without any prior communication charge (way in excess of the room rate, of course!) hotels for broken appliances, poor cleanliness etc., and put the burden of proof that everything was fine on them.
- hansvm 1y agoThe big problem is the power imbalance. There's a reason they start your stay by putting a hold on a credit card. And even if you could charge them, they can afford a legal battle better than you.
- lxgr 1y agoOh, that's a common misunderstanding, but they can't sue me in court – by accepting me as a customer, they accepted my binding arbitration agreement! It clearly said so on my luggage tag their authorized agent (i.e. the bellboy) handled as part of check-in.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoThis is exactly the kind of subversive stuff I live for.
- refulgentis 1y agoLive for? Or fantasize about? :) It's a fun fantasy, but the fact we're happy to see it highlights our impotency - even a line worker sympathetic to the power imbalance would be left at "Anyways, we'll charge the fee to your card on file"
- lxgr 1y agoI wonder if there's a business model for a "robo-lawyer" paired with a travel agency here: "Stay at one of these hotels using this credit card issued by us, sign this contract promising that you won't smoke there, and if the hotel tries anything funny, we'll reward you with the room rate back and a bonus" :)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- heisenbit 1y agoLooking at one of these pictures it seems the device is not fitted to the ceiling but 30cm above ground. So not the best place to pick up CO or to detect fire.
- toast0 1y agoCO disperses well, so there's no need for a CO detector to be mounted at any particular height. They're now commonly sold as combination smoke and CO detectors, so placing them at ceiling height is appropriate. I don't think this thing has a smoke detector though?
- blackhaj7 1y agoIn the US, it feels like there is little recourse for these sorts of changes. Consumer protections are not like in other places
- Zigurd 1y agoHotels don't want to be left out of the enshittification that Airbnb seems to have turned into an artform. In the travel industry, your customers are nearly captives to your whims. And if your whims are not profitable enough, the tech bros are here to make you the money while saving you the effort. I predict that Rest will merge with Axon so that after they get a false positive in your room, a cop can barge in and taser you on body cam.
- Drunk_Engineer 1y agohttps://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/marietta-hotel-fined-women-hundreds-smoking-they-say-other-activities-tripped-sensors/WPFWFT7INFGOLHR4HSQK7YIOKY/ https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/marietta-hotel-...
- hinkley 1y agoReminds me of cities shortening yellow lights to make money off of red light cameras. The thing is that the cameras are supposed to make the public safer. That’s what they are meant to do. But they’re so expensive that you need a certain number of tickets to offset them (but whoever heard of public safety being a profit center instead of a loss leader?). It’s a proven fact that short yellows lead to more accidents. So these red light cameras make everyone less safe. Public endangerment to try to balance a budget.
- Eisenstein 1y agoMarkets are efficient at extracting value from things, but what that value is needs to be determined before we blindly create a market for it. In the traffic light case you mention the value is money, when it should be safety. Traffic lights are installed to ensure traffic flow and safety, so getting a monetary return on a safety device should be non-sensical, but here we are. We should not be involving private market players as partners in 'investments' with public organizations tasked with public good, or else we get misaligned incentives since the partners both expect different types of returns.
- lblume 1y agoHow do you actually create aligned incentives though? Goodhard's law, cobra effects and generalized coordination problems really do seem pervasive.
- asdff 1y agoI don't think it can be done without a sort of benevolent authoritarian which is sort of scary because of how much power and implicit trust is behind that. I wish we had a better signal to actually identify these people and elevate them into positions of power. They are readily identifiable in our own life ironically, I can think if plenty of people I know who I would say are trustworthy to do the right thing and not be blinded by profit. Just that for the subset of people who do want to make a buck on bad ideas saddled on top of people, incentives are very strong for them to get into influence, and there is no such mechanism to incentivize your good natured friend with no big profit seeking aspirations to that level. You need significant access to capital just to play in this league of getting elected or getting your company into the bidding process. I think it comes down to the fact that we still don't have a meritocracy. It is still very much who you know from you getting a job to a company securing a contract with government, vs anything based on actual merit or ideas that are collectively beneficial vs selectively beneficial. Same old roman republic today: making favors to enrich the senators, making spectacles to distract the masses from the senators picking the public pocket. We haven't really changed the paradigm since it was established thousands of years ago with our first chieftans and shamans and their friends elevated above the rest of the tribe.
- RainyDayTmrw 1y agoWhat's that famous quote? First as tragedy, and then as farce? If the British Post Office Horizon was the tragedy, this may be the farce.
- dbg31415 1y agoMan, I hate when companies do this kind of thing. Also... Man, I really hate checking into a hotel room and getting hit with that unmistakable “someone vaped in here” smell. It was so nice traveling in parts of Asia where vaping is banned. I’d honestly rather deal with cigarette smoke outside, where I expect it, than that overly sweet, plasticky vape air inside. It’s like someone boiled a Jolly Rancher in a humidifier.
- bjt12345 1y agoI kept finding my balcony door ajar in my hotel room - an employee was smoking on my balcony.
- pknomad 1y agoI wonder if this is an actual Hyatt owned and managed property or is it a hotel brand associated with Hyatt. I also wonder what category of hotel it is. Before we call it enshittification of the Hyatt brand as a whole, I am kinda curious for more details. I would be very surprised if this happened on places like the Andaz or Park Hyatt but would not be surprised if it was like at a House or Place.
- schneems 1y agoAs a FYI: This is unreadable by me and anyone without an X account. I see the first post and that’s it.
- agent327 1y agoSince we are talking about hotel-related scams, I might as well mention getaroom.com and hotelreservations.com. These scum duplicate entire hotel websites (including logos and everything), and will claim to reserve a room, but when you click on the "go to confirmation page" link, they will quickly up-charge you by hundreds or even thousands of dollars - and they will charge that before you have a chance to confirm. And while some people apparently managed to get a reservation this way, there are also reports of people ending up without any reservation. In other words, they are a full-on scum. Check trustpilot if you don't believe me. So to summarize: - Massive unexpected up-charge. - Credit card gets charged before you even click the final confirmation button. - Doubtful if you even get a reservation. Stay away from these sites, and others like them, at all cost. In case you wonder how my adventure ended: they added $800 to a $1600 reservation. I complained, and was eventually told that they would refund me, _if_ I did not do a charge-back on my credit card. A few days later they, amazingly, kept their word, so I didn't lose any money.
- crmd 1y agoIn a healthy marketplace, customers stop using merchants that abuse customers, until they change their practices or go out of business and are replaced by more customer-responsive competitors. Here in the US, however, 5 hotel brands have been allowed to control over 70% of hotel rooms nationwide. This means a dispute with even one will cause big problems for business travelers. Same thing with Ticketmaster/Live Nation, Google, Amazon, etc. This extreme consolidation of market power seems to me like a degenerate form of capitalism that breaks my libertarian idealism.
- dv_dt 1y agoIf there is a fire in the building does every single guest get a smoking fine? Or if there is a prolific smoking guest can they set off detections in neighboring rooms? Hmm Also this seems like any excuse for hotel management to avoid having real interactions conversations with the cleaning staff who are perfectly competent to discover if a room has been contaminated by smoke.
- spauldo 1y agoCleaning staff are weekly in every hotel I've spent more than one night in for the last several years. It's "eco friendly," they say. I'm sure getting to fire most of the cleaning staff has nothing to do with it... I could probably get away with smoking in the room for the day or two after they clean. Not that I would - I stay at hotels that have covered smoking areas outside and I enjoy the company I meet.
- breppp 1y agothis is going to be a bad decade for the 1% false positives of a 99% accurate neural net
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- recipe19 1y agoIt reminds me of a hotel I stayed at that had a stocked mini-fridge. Removing any item from the fridge resulted in an automatic, silent charge. Putting it back did not remove the charge. So if you simply took something out to check it in, or if you wanted to chill your own beverage, they counted that as consuming the item. They removed the charges if you checked the bill and objected at checkout. But how many people don't look? I'm sure it generated enough revenue to pay for the sensors. No one is going to say it out loud, but false positives are the point.
- nickdothutton 1y agoGot billed (via corporate) for this because I put my own coke in a beer can slot and found myself in an interview with HR about it later, very strict no alcohol policy on company expenses. At the time I was tea total.
- mr_toad 1y agoteetotal.
- hackyhacky 1y ago> tea total. If it was totally tea, why were you drinking coke?
- orochimaaru 1y agoMost hotels that have this will tell you this at check in. That’s the refrigerator is the mini bar/snack bar and don’t use it for personal items.
- breakingcups 1y agoWhat they don't tell you is that you can request/demand a second fridge for medical reasons and don't have to explain any further. Take that for what you want.
- WWLink 1y agoThose things should just be illegal. I can't even imagine how much energy and plastic/paper/food goes to waste in those damn things.
- bloomingeek 1y agoOutrageous! We always stay, if we don't pull our travel trailer, in $100 a night hotels when on the road in the states. They will take cash for the room, but require a debit or credit card in case there's damage or fridge items usage. Neither of us smoke and always ask for a non-smoking room. To think this could happen is other worldly.
- tushar-r 1y agoI'll probably pay 10 - 20% more for an "old school" hotel room with a clock radio and standard phone to call the front desk. No other "non-essential" electronics other than multiple well-placed power points. No TV, Coffee Machine either. The number of bright screens on random "smart" controls that I'm trying very hard to hide before sleeping are too much.
- userbinator 1y agoA traditional motel may be suitable, and even cheaper.
- spuz 1y agoAnd you will because "entrepreneurial" chains like Hyatt will lower their prices thanks to the additional revenue they get from this and other unexpected charges in order to attract more customers.
- mgraczyk 1y agoThe reality is that most people who smoke/vape indoors will lie about it. I've witnessed this hundreds of times from hundreds of people. In every place I have lived I had neighbors who smoked (illegally) and lied about it to my face until I saw them doing it. I would bet that the system is 98%+ accurate and we are seeing the (many) false positives. Obviously hotels should not use these unless there is some higher accuracy appeals process, but as a nonsmoker I do wish that there were universal and near certain fines for smoking indoors.
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y agoVery scummy behavior from Hyatt hotels. I'd always check out the negative reviews of hotels before booking, and this might have caught it
- siliconc0w 1y agoAlways check the bill, there are a slew of bullshit dark park-patterns here like charging you for stuff in the mini-bar you didn't take or pay-per-view you didn't watch. In a normal market system, you'd think a business that routines tries to fraudulently charge their guests would be punished but either by the government or the customer but due to consolidation or just the total acquiescence of customers to this kind of abuse it's just business as usual.
- pnw 1y agohttps://www.restsensor.com/ https://www.restsensor.com/ is the new name for https://noiseaware.com https://noiseaware.com. They got started making a 'noisy party' sensor that is monitoring the audio in your hotel room or AirBNB. You can see the Noiseaware branding on the sensor in that X thread. So it's not just a $500 scam, it's also a privacy issue. I had no idea these audio sensors were even a thing.
- strathmeyer 1y agoWhenever someone charges me a smoking fee I assume they are just saying they don't want me staying there. I'll find some place either much better or much shittier that is appreciative of my business. The Hilton Garden Inn in Princeton NJ has charged both my and my wife a smoking fee on different dates because we were hiking. In Denver you aren't allowed to smoke on the streets, there's no terraces in the hotel, so we were charged a smoking fee after hot boxing our car. They aren't cleaning the room. It's ten cents of spray and an open window at most. I've stayed at hotels where they Febreeze every room daily. What a scumbag thing to do to your customers.
- Mistletoe 1y agoAll I can say is I will never stay at a Hyatt from reading this, so Hyatt and Rest and whoever owns that hotel can sort it all out. I don't smoke.
- mmmpetrichor 1y agoIt would be cool if we had real journalism these days instead of having to find these type of reports on social media.
- fortran77 1y agoI see in Yelp reviews from other hotels that this is a very common problem now. https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g60763-d93520-r950875325-Park_Central_Hotel_New_York-New_York_City_New_York.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g60763-d93520-r9... Look at this review from the "Park Central" in NY. The Management responded that the person agreed to this policy so it's tough luck: > Thank you for sharing your feedback. It's concerning to hear about the experience you described. Park Central Hotel New York is dedicated to maintaining a smoke-free environment for all our guests. As per our website, smoking tobacco, pipes, vapes, e-cigarettes and marijuana are strictly prohibited within the hotel. NoiseAware is a smart device that allows hotel management to respond to smoking events without disrupting your stay. You hereby agree and consent to the use of such sensor in your room and acknowledge and agree that it is 100% privacy compliant and required by the hotel. By acknowledging the foregoing, you agree to waive any future claims related to the presence of the sensor in a room you may book. Tampering with the sensor is strictly prohibited. A non-refundable $500 smoking fee will apply should a smoking event occur inside the hotel guestroom. We regret that this policy did not meet your expectations. The consistency in handling such situations is important to us, and your experience will be reviewed to improve our protocols.
- wlonkly 1y agoBased on the thread and the replies to the thread, it sounds like this is a particular (franchised) hotel, and there are other (franchised) hotels in other brands that are using the same revenue stream. So boycotting Hyatt will not let you avoid ending up at a hotel with these things.
- missingcolours 1y agoYes, I feel like it's important to clarify that this is one specific hotel which happens to be associated with Hyatt, not a general program instituted by Hyatt or any specific chain. If Hyatt refuses to address this scam after being made aware of it, that's a different story, but for now this is a story about specific hotel properties' wrongdoing.
- 1oooqooq 1y agoBtw, this is exactly what palantir sells. Pseudo technology to justify whatever you pay it to justify.
- calmbonsai 1y agoWJW. Yeah, this definitely seems like a scam. 1) Always, always look over the receipts of your expenses. 2) When possible, use a dedicated 'travel' credit card for these sorts of things to minimize impact on other accounts. 3) Line out that charge, photograph the receipt, and offer to pay only for the rest of the bill. If that's not acceptable, you can walk away or pay it and then immediately issue a fraud alert on the account. Not a dispute, but a fraud alert. 4) With few exceptions, credit card providers is the U.S. will not process a dispute on the account until the transaction is no longer "pending". That usually takes 2-3 business days. 5) Use that 2-3 day window to communicate with hotel management regarding this issue. 6) If the hotel will not budge, flag the charge as 'fraud'. Upload a photograph of your lined-out receipt to your credit card provider. Never use that particular hotel again. 7) If you don't have privacy concerns, share it on social media.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- MaintenanceMode 1y agoThis is in line with Hertz rental car rolling out car scanners to detect any small ding or whatever, to "unlock a new revenue stream." Every single cent will soon be extracted from our pockets. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a65176049/hertz-ai-scan-rental-car-damage/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a65176049/hertz-ai-scan-re...
- unixfox 1y agohttps://xcancel.com/_ZachGriff/status/1945959030851035223 https://xcancel.com/_ZachGriff/status/1945959030851035223
- pardner 1y agoCan we talk about hacking, this being hackernews? A few comments claim the sensors can be triggers by non-smoking events such as hairspray, nail polish remover, perfume... If that is accurate it seems to me one could exploit that sensor flaw by purposefully triggering a false positives with some benign action - and video record doing so - perhaps a couple of times. Then if and when smoking is alleged, obtain a log of the alleged event times, then provide video evidence that debunks at least one alleged smoking event. A relatively small number of activists could probably create a viral nightmare for Hyatt and anyone else implementing this system.
- nedt 1y ago„Smoke detectors don‘t lie“ might be true, but not everything they detect is always smoke. In my building all flats have one. It gets triggered by workers cutting a hole in the wall or people cooking. We covered it when we had the fog machine for Halloween because that surely would have triggered it. Almost every time it went off it was a false alarm. Which is also the second thing. It should never be silent. If it detects it needs to report audible and someone should come to your room. What happens if there is smoke because of a fire? We always had FD coming to our flat. Algorithmic might sound smart but in the end it might just a boy that cries wolf.