Shamelessly hijacking this story to recommend The Private Eye digital comic [0]. Set in a future where everyone has normalised the wearing of masks in public to preserve their anonymity. The protagonist refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.
Ever since Covid, people are obscuring their faces in public more often. I especially see gig workers wearing balaclavas. Partially for sun and wind protection, but potentially for anonymity
Thanks for that! Vaughan is great. It's funny that it's a digital release considering the topic. That small sense of unease I feel each time I feed my personal and credit card data into yet another website should only enhance the experience.
The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly. We keep fighting it technologically which is an arms race. A cultural solution is the only path forward that will see meaningful success.
I don’t think it will happen for at least a couple of reasons. The “deep state” in the US and elsewhere will not allow it and would find workarounds ala five eyes. And two, the right wants to spy on the left and the lady wants to spy on the right. Only a small sliver of libertarians are strongly against spying “the domestic baddies.” So there is no chance.
Not surprising at all. It's a form of dazzle camouflage that has previously been shown to confuse facial recognition[0]. It's probably possible to design it to be more effective yet less intrusive than juggalo makeup.
I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
It's so funny when a member of the younger generation comments. Younger generations are always trying to kill off the older generations. Both physically and metaphorically, too!
It makes sense in a way. If you were actually successful in doing that, you could finally make the world in your image instead of having to work around all those pesky "legacy" viewpoints that hold back the True Progress of the Younger Generation. But alas, the older generation still exists, because the younger can't do it.
But do continue with the passive aggressive comments. While it keeps me spry, you still get paid entry-level wages when you should be kings.
We cannot afford a gen X leader. We have to skip straight to a millennial socialist with contempt for the rule of law ("I welcome their hatred"), to even begin to fix the damage that's been done.
Because people in the former group don't criticize those countries, they criticize Islam, and tend to categorize all Muslims (specifically Muslim immigrants) as ontologically evil.
Meanwhile people in the latter group tend to be very specific that their criticism is of a state and its policies, rather than the religion of Judaism or Jews in general, even though their efforts tend to fall on deaf ears.
Indeed, it both feels like the same type of pro-theocratic propaganda. Its a way to disingenuously claim "you hate everyone of our group", when thats demonstrably not true. You likely hate the actions a country masquerading as the group inflicts against others.
My disdain is for all theocratic countries. I dont particularly care for any religion that takes over a government.
And I do include the USA in that, as theocratic fundamentalist christanity. Ive done so since changing the pledge of allegience and adding "in god we trust" on the currency.
They're getting old, and with that enough of them are getting rich. And that makes them worth pandering to so they can be parted from their money. See for example all the commercials that feature 90s crap and political talking points intended to appeal to them.
It would be interesting to first create a taxonomy of juggalo face paint patterns a la aruco markers/April tags, then see if a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos could be used to calibrate cameras
So maybe they may be smarter then they get credited for being. Probably not. But now anyone feeling uncomfortable about facial recognition tech now know what they can do to combat it if they chose. One question. Can you get thru the airport and onto a plan wearing the makeup?
Here's the thing about "fucking magnets; how do they work?" How do magnets work? No less a science communicator than Richard Feynman—he of the rubber sheet gravity spacetime analogy—had no analogy to communicate why ferromagnetism creates attraction and repulsion. Here's his incredibly shaggy dog non-answer to the question about how magnets work wherein he says that there are no pat answers to "why" questions. He gets to the money line: "I cannot explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
So I will defend that line in the song. I will only accept answers from people who can explain why ferromagnetism works to me assuming I know how electromagnets create magnetic fields.
I'll make sure to wear my Juggalo makeup the next time I visit China to avoid their face scanning technology. That'll surely help me blend into the background.
In 2018 it was already common knowledge that gait analysis was more accurate than facial recognition at the time. This would have been defeatable then.
I think dazzle camouflage is best understood as having limited scope of application as pertains to face recognition. It shouldn't be regarded as failing within its intended scope on account of gait analysis. Everyone knows you have to learn the juggalo dance moves to go along with the face paint.
DARPA projects from more than a decade ago (VSAM/WAMI for arial platforms like Gorgon Stare) used arial imagery to capture ground shadows for gait tracking purposes.
From chatting with some of the researchers many years ago my understanding is that it usually wasn't accurate enough for unique identification and the gait shadow was dependent on shoe type and clothing, so a persistent gait shadow database wouldn't have been useful. But it could be correlated with ground-based surveillance for identification, for example person A and B were identified on a ground-based security camera entering a building, then gait tracking could be used to monitor where they went after they left the building even if they avoided ground-based security cameras after that point.
We only have discussions of the Chinese rolling out gait tracking widely. Basically you use existing facial databases to match ids to people in observed areas and capture their gait as they pass observed areas. Then it goes into the database. Using partial matching (non ideal observation of gait or face) allows for greater positive matching in non-ideal circumstances.
This feels like the real-life equivalent of that old Family Guy joke where Peter is with a squad of dudes in Vietnam but is dressed like a clown. He says something to the effect of "You guys are stupid. They're going to be looking for army guys." Outside of the absurdity of the situation, the joke is that the guy dressed as a clown obviously stands out even more.
Juggalo makeup might block some facial recognition tech, but you also paint a huge target on yourself.
I genuinely believe there's an xkcd for everything. I was only reading about the creator, Randall Munroe a few days ago and he's clearly very talented.
"By the time Presidents Jay and Dope were elected, western civilization had officially fucked itself over forever, and I think everyone knew it."
https://homestuck.com/006765
I’m more curious about how robust this is against modern systems.
A lot of newer facial recognition models are trained on occlusions, masks, and heavy makeup — so this might be less effective than people assume.
It's not actually an oversight or training failure; as one of the six societies which secretly rule the world, the Juggalos simply demand to be exempt from facial recognition.
In _Inside Job_, it was Juggalos, the Illuminati, the Catholic Church, Cognito Inc [the main feature of the show, kind of the Deep State], the Atlanteans, and the Reptoids.
Faygo is unironically delicious. They used to sell them for $1 a pop (Midwestern pun intended) on the East Coast in gas stations. Diet varieties of Orange, Moon Mist, and Root Beer were personal favorites.
No idea whether this is still the case as I haven't been in a Sheetz in years.
Most grocery stores still sell Faygo in Michigan. But you rarely see more than the most popular 3 or so (boring) flavors. I remember there being at least a half-dozen different Faygo flavors at every kid's birthday party in the 80's.
Shamelessly hijacking this story to recommend The Private Eye digital comic [0]. Set in a future where everyone has normalised the wearing of masks in public to preserve their anonymity. The protagonist refuses to get a driving license because he wouldn't want a photo of himself in a database.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Eye
Ever since Covid, people are obscuring their faces in public more often. I especially see gig workers wearing balaclavas. Partially for sun and wind protection, but potentially for anonymity
Thanks for that! Vaughan is great. It's funny that it's a digital release considering the topic. That small sense of unease I feel each time I feed my personal and credit card data into yet another website should only enhance the experience.
You got any other comics to recommend in this style/genre? Cyberpunk, dystopia, etc
Transmetropolitan was pretty good.
The only way to meaningfully defeat surveillance technology is to make a constitutional amendment that limits its use privately and publicly. We keep fighting it technologically which is an arms race. A cultural solution is the only path forward that will see meaningful success.
I don’t think it will happen for at least a couple of reasons. The “deep state” in the US and elsewhere will not allow it and would find workarounds ala five eyes. And two, the right wants to spy on the left and the lady wants to spy on the right. Only a small sliver of libertarians are strongly against spying “the domestic baddies.” So there is no chance.
Not surprising at all. It's a form of dazzle camouflage that has previously been shown to confuse facial recognition[0]. It's probably possible to design it to be more effective yet less intrusive than juggalo makeup.
I would have actually expected it to be more popular by now.
[0] https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle/
Did I accidentally sleep in a time machine? Front page of HN right now has articles on Juggalos and Afroman.
The Millennials are getting nostalgic
It's so funny when a member of the younger generation comments. Younger generations are always trying to kill off the older generations. Both physically and metaphorically, too!
It makes sense in a way. If you were actually successful in doing that, you could finally make the world in your image instead of having to work around all those pesky "legacy" viewpoints that hold back the True Progress of the Younger Generation. But alas, the older generation still exists, because the younger can't do it.
But do continue with the passive aggressive comments. While it keeps me spry, you still get paid entry-level wages when you should be kings.
As a xennial I wish we had successfully “killed” the boomers, but instead we have 3 septuagenarians blowing shit up all over the world
We failed so hard
Yeah, great anticipation for the undoubtedly forward-looking xennial Mojtaba Khamenei in Iran.
We cannot afford a gen X leader. We have to skip straight to a millennial socialist with contempt for the rule of law ("I welcome their hatred"), to even begin to fix the damage that's been done.
Gotta really "love" the fact that extremist Islamic country treats a whole host of people horribly (women, gays, non-muslims).
But if you say anything about it, you're an islamophobe.
Same way if you criticize Israel's actions, youre lambasted as a jew-hater. But at least now thats starting to change.
Because people in the former group don't criticize those countries, they criticize Islam, and tend to categorize all Muslims (specifically Muslim immigrants) as ontologically evil.
Meanwhile people in the latter group tend to be very specific that their criticism is of a state and its policies, rather than the religion of Judaism or Jews in general, even though their efforts tend to fall on deaf ears.
Indeed, it both feels like the same type of pro-theocratic propaganda. Its a way to disingenuously claim "you hate everyone of our group", when thats demonstrably not true. You likely hate the actions a country masquerading as the group inflicts against others.
My disdain is for all theocratic countries. I dont particularly care for any religion that takes over a government.
And I do include the USA in that, as theocratic fundamentalist christanity. Ive done so since changing the pledge of allegience and adding "in god we trust" on the currency.
They're getting old, and with that enough of them are getting rich. And that makes them worth pandering to so they can be parted from their money. See for example all the commercials that feature 90s crap and political talking points intended to appeal to them.
On a side note, sleep is indistinguishable from time travel.
The early 2000s are back baby
Let's not bring back Windows ME
Compared to 11?
I'm thinking...give me a minute....
It would be interesting to first create a taxonomy of juggalo face paint patterns a la aruco markers/April tags, then see if a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos could be used to calibrate cameras
> a sufficiently large crowd of juggalos
Some kind of gathering of the Juggalos?
I wonder if I'm more likely to get denied entry wearing juggalo face or classic camo paint
Depends. Are you attending an ICP concert, or a military reenactment convention, or something else entirely?
So maybe they may be smarter then they get credited for being. Probably not. But now anyone feeling uncomfortable about facial recognition tech now know what they can do to combat it if they chose. One question. Can you get thru the airport and onto a plan wearing the makeup?
I guess LiveNation won't be running ICP concerts, then...
They'll just charge an additional makeup fee...
Miracles all around us
Here's the thing about "fucking magnets; how do they work?" How do magnets work? No less a science communicator than Richard Feynman—he of the rubber sheet gravity spacetime analogy—had no analogy to communicate why ferromagnetism creates attraction and repulsion. Here's his incredibly shaggy dog non-answer to the question about how magnets work wherein he says that there are no pat answers to "why" questions. He gets to the money line: "I cannot explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
So I will defend that line in the song. I will only accept answers from people who can explain why ferromagnetism works to me assuming I know how electromagnets create magnetic fields.
You could throw on the SNL skit or the real video and frankly I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference
I'll make sure to wear my Juggalo makeup the next time I visit China to avoid their face scanning technology. That'll surely help me blend into the background.
In 2018 it was already common knowledge that gait analysis was more accurate than facial recognition at the time. This would have been defeatable then.
Gait recognition is also easier to defeat. All you need is to put something like a few pebbles or coins in one of your shoes
I think dazzle camouflage is best understood as having limited scope of application as pertains to face recognition. It shouldn't be regarded as failing within its intended scope on account of gait analysis. Everyone knows you have to learn the juggalo dance moves to go along with the face paint.
How are everyone's gaits being collected? Is there gait databases at the NSA? Not being skeptical! Honestly very interesting.
DARPA projects from more than a decade ago (VSAM/WAMI for arial platforms like Gorgon Stare) used arial imagery to capture ground shadows for gait tracking purposes.
From chatting with some of the researchers many years ago my understanding is that it usually wasn't accurate enough for unique identification and the gait shadow was dependent on shoe type and clothing, so a persistent gait shadow database wouldn't have been useful. But it could be correlated with ground-based surveillance for identification, for example person A and B were identified on a ground-based security camera entering a building, then gait tracking could be used to monitor where they went after they left the building even if they avoided ground-based security cameras after that point.
We only have discussions of the Chinese rolling out gait tracking widely. Basically you use existing facial databases to match ids to people in observed areas and capture their gait as they pass observed areas. Then it goes into the database. Using partial matching (non ideal observation of gait or face) allows for greater positive matching in non-ideal circumstances.
You could compare gaits between footage of a crime and footage of you in another public place, probably?
I don't think I've heard of it being used though.
Clickbait, it’s a couple tweets microwaved and the 3rd paragraph is “well, except for modern facial recognition”
This feels like the real-life equivalent of that old Family Guy joke where Peter is with a squad of dudes in Vietnam but is dressed like a clown. He says something to the effect of "You guys are stupid. They're going to be looking for army guys." Outside of the absurdity of the situation, the joke is that the guy dressed as a clown obviously stands out even more.
Juggalo makeup might block some facial recognition tech, but you also paint a huge target on yourself.
There’s an xkcd: <https://www.xkcd.com/1105/>
I genuinely believe there's an xkcd for everything. I was only reading about the creator, Randall Munroe a few days ago and he's clearly very talented.
>covering features impacts accuracy of feature-based classifiers
More new at 9. Plus it's from 2019.
Where my Juggalos at??
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, sitting behind the resolute desk. That person wears more makeup than some of the performers on RuPaul's Drag Race.
"By the time Presidents Jay and Dope were elected, western civilization had officially fucked itself over forever, and I think everyone knew it." https://homestuck.com/006765
Don't sully the good name of Juggalos this way.
Whoop whoop
I’m more curious about how robust this is against modern systems. A lot of newer facial recognition models are trained on occlusions, masks, and heavy makeup — so this might be less effective than people assume.
It's not actually an oversight or training failure; as one of the six societies which secretly rule the world, the Juggalos simply demand to be exempt from facial recognition.
Juggalos, bronies, 9th doctor fans, billionaires, royals (baseball team), and royals (landed nobility)?
In _Inside Job_, it was Juggalos, the Illuminati, the Catholic Church, Cognito Inc [the main feature of the show, kind of the Deep State], the Atlanteans, and the Reptoids.
I'm wondering how well the Zenni optical ID guard coatings actually work.
It's likely that e.g. wifi-based gait analysis can be deployed to defeat this.
The only saving grace is you can't run that against video surveillance footage.
But you can run video-based gait analysis against video surveillance footage. You can also index physical fingerprints other than the face.
Maybe I should start wearing a hazmat suit with an opaque faceplate whenever I leave the house.
(2019) ... but sadly increasingly relevant.
Also blocks magnets.
counterpoint: this assumes everyone has the same constraints. not always true
Fucking magnets and shit, how do they even work?
maybe it's just from being covered in Faygo?
Faygo is unironically delicious. They used to sell them for $1 a pop (Midwestern pun intended) on the East Coast in gas stations. Diet varieties of Orange, Moon Mist, and Root Beer were personal favorites.
No idea whether this is still the case as I haven't been in a Sheetz in years.
Most grocery stores still sell Faygo in Michigan. But you rarely see more than the most popular 3 or so (boring) flavors. I remember there being at least a half-dozen different Faygo flavors at every kid's birthday party in the 80's.