Hacker news

  • Top
  • New
  • Past
  • Ask
  • Show
  • Jobs

Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology (2019) (https://consequence.net)

262 points by speckx 2 days ago | 153 comments | View on ycombinator

throwway120385 2 days ago |

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.

echelon_musk 2 days ago |

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

mcv 2 days ago |

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/

deltoidmaximus 2 days ago |

In Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson one of the characters happens by a group of young women wearing devices that project constantly changing colored light patterns onto their faces to prevent facial recognition tracking. It's barely even mentioned in the book but I wondered how viable that was of an idea. The character's only thought on the devices IIRC was that most people only occasionally wore them.

soopypoos 2 days ago |

I wonder if I'm more likely to get denied entry wearing juggalo face or classic camo paint

throwawaypath 2 days ago |

Did I accidentally sleep in a time machine? Front page of HN right now has articles on Juggalos and Afroman.

ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago |

I guess LiveNation won't be running ICP concerts, then...

Larrikin 2 days ago |

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.

adamsmark 1 day ago |

Whoop! Whoop!

Need to disappear? Just go to the Gathering and find your new family. Pay for protection with Faygo.

undefined 2 days ago |

undefined

bigfishrunning 2 days ago |

Miracles all around us

gcr 1 day ago |

Hey I wrote a paper about this exactly ten years ago! https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04504

I focused on facebook’s detector (not recognizer) for reasons explained in the intro, but face rec has come a long way since then.

beau_g 2 days ago |

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

hackitup7 2 days ago |

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.

pgporada 2 days ago |

Whoop whoop

refulgentis 2 days ago |

Clickbait, it’s a couple tweets microwaved and the 3rd paragraph is “well, except for modern facial recognition”

vondur 1 day ago |

I was hoping my corpse paint would also be effective at blocking facial recognition too.

wr639 2 days ago |

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?

schmeichel 2 days ago |

Where my Juggalos at??

lucasay 2 days ago |

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.

Findecanor 2 days ago |

(2019) ... but sadly increasingly relevant.

mixmastamyk 2 days ago |

Sounds like a lot of work. Are Groucho glasses effective, perhaps with obscured lenses?

dsiegel2275 2 days ago |

Also blocks magnets.

yacin 2 days ago |

maybe it's just from being covered in Faygo?

PaulHoule 2 days ago |

... reminds me of the time I was in Quebec and there was a Montréal Canadiens game near my hotel and there was a fan taking up most of the elevator because he was dressed up like a player, mask and all!

dyauspitr 1 day ago |

It will probably fool video only face recognition but it’s harder to fool LIDAR.

FrustratedMonky 2 days ago |

With facial recognition camaras everywhere.

Might be time become a juggalo.

general_reveal 2 days ago |

Fucking magnets and shit, how do they even work?

tinfoilhatter 2 days ago |

Remember kids - don't pick up any currency lying on the ground at an ICP concert. It most likely has poop on it.

undefined 2 days ago |

undefined

87TomTomTom80 1 day ago |

[dead]

RatrektLabs82 1 day ago |

[dead]

Iamkkdasari74 1 day ago |

[dead]

stotemoat 2 days ago |

[dead]

gethwhunter34 2 days ago |

[flagged]

dvinciyuri89 2 days ago |

[flagged]