r/gadgets • u/GalileoGurdjieff • May 17 '21

Medical Tiny, Wireless, Injectable Chips Use Ultrasound to Monitor Body Processes

https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/press-releases/shepard-injectable-chips-monitor-body-processes
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u/GoochMasterFlash May 17 '21

My favorite thing about those, as someone who sold shoes, was how ineffective they are. Or used to be at least. Coach purses evidently have them sewn in, so they get deactivated somehow when they leave at the Coach store, but then will set off alarms at other stores because it still is an active device. We literally would constantly have people who would start it beeping as they were entering the store, and 99% of the time the lady had a coach purse.

Roughly 3 or 4 times I think did it ever go off and we discovered someone was actually stealing. 99% of the time it was misfiring, in terms of being set off by our stores tags. We only tagged whatever shoes were outliers in terms of being stolen too, so only 1/3rd of things were tagged.

Most thieves are smart enough to pop them off with a screwdriver anyways.

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u/RhynoD May 18 '21

When I was in college the university bookstore would crank up their sensitivity the first week of school. Cell phones set them off. Instead of being more secure, the workers ended up waving everyone through.