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Personally I’m not bothered, and while the image isn’t pornographic, it is from Playboy which does make it at least porn adjacent. I see it’s use less as a matt

Personally I’m not bothered, and while the image isn’t pornographic, it is from Playboy which does make it at least porn adjacent. I see it’s use less as a matter of offensiveness or some headfuck of “intersectionality” and more as just immature and unprofessional. Sexuality is great, it’s everywhere, and I think it has literally nothing to do with this issue. I can understand not wanting a Playboy model to be the standard image in a professional setting, especially a setting that is overwhelmingly full of guys.

qubex 8y ago
I’m a nudist (meaning I have no problem being naked or seeing people without clothes on when it is comfortable, publicly or privately). What on earth is wrong with a nude photograph? What does it say about humankind that we deny our baseline state?
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  Fair play to you on the nudism. My question would be whether you’d show up starkers at work? If not, then I’m not sure how it applies.
  - qubex 8y ago
    No I wouldn’t. Firstly because shocking unexpected people is streaking and/or (in some jurisdictions at least) some kind of offence. Secondly because I’m willing to see people undressed doesn’t mean it’s universal (everybody has there preferences, prejudices, and ingrained values). Thirdly because I’m the managing director and enthusiastic or not or not one of my duties is to set the tone for the workplace by example not by demanding that others do what I tell them to but by leading by example, and that includes conservative dress. Then again I’m in Italy where somewhat different social norms apply: people ask each other out on dates after they meet in the workplace and even if it’s unappreciated nobody dreams of kicking up a stink for sexual harassment because they consider it a normal form of human interaction. It’s also normal to compliment people on their looks and choice of attire. Both genders do it. Nobody gets offended. It’s more like “yeah, I put a ton of effort into choosing and matching this outfit this morning, and nobody noticed?! WTF??”
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
I would have expected something more algorithmic out of experimentation, to easily compare compression errors and otherwise interesting issues. Nope. They chose porn from Playboy. And this trend continues on to today with "brogrammers". No wonder why women feel inferior in tech.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  > I would have expected something more algorithmic out of experimentation Faces are a great test case. They represent a large fraction of the images we need to compress, and humans are very good at picking out issues with faces.
- wyoh 8y ago
  They chose Playboy because it was one of the rare publication to have high quality pictures. Stop listening to feminist propaganda and you'll be OK.
- pferde 8y ago
  That is how you end up with results which perform great in artificial benchmarks, but fall hard on their face in real world use. They were working on a compression algorithm that would be used primarily on real photos that people take. ...although I have no idea why I'm bothering to reply to someone for whom Playboy pictures is "porn".
olalonde 8y ago
I guess most people using it have no idea it's a picture from Playboy, nor a nude picture, nor a controversial picture. I used it a lot myself when I was working on content based image retrieval simply because all the literature was using it. It never even occurred to me I was being controversial or sexist. Now that I'm aware of the picture's history, I agree that it was a poor choice back then but I disagree that using it today is somehow an endorsement of sexism. Using it today only means you are using the standard image processing image.
- bcOpus 8y ago
  Not the person you’re replying to, and fuck me if I’m wading into the question of sexism, but professionalism and maturity are things. We get paid the big bucks now, we’re not snotty kids in our parent’s garage; a whole world of acceptable professional behavior goes along with that.

qubex 8y ago

I’m a nudist (meaning I have no problem being naked or seeing people without clothes on when it is comfortable, publicly or privately). What on earth is wrong with a nude photograph? What does it say about humankind that we deny our baseline state?

Pharmakon 8y ago
Fair play to you on the nudism. My question would be whether you’d show up starkers at work? If not, then I’m not sure how it applies.
- qubex 8y ago
  No I wouldn’t. Firstly because shocking unexpected people is streaking and/or (in some jurisdictions at least) some kind of offence. Secondly because I’m willing to see people undressed doesn’t mean it’s universal (everybody has there preferences, prejudices, and ingrained values). Thirdly because I’m the managing director and enthusiastic or not or not one of my duties is to set the tone for the workplace by example not by demanding that others do what I tell them to but by leading by example, and that includes conservative dress. Then again I’m in Italy where somewhat different social norms apply: people ask each other out on dates after they meet in the workplace and even if it’s unappreciated nobody dreams of kicking up a stink for sexual harassment because they consider it a normal form of human interaction. It’s also normal to compliment people on their looks and choice of attire. Both genders do it. Nobody gets offended. It’s more like “yeah, I put a ton of effort into choosing and matching this outfit this morning, and nobody noticed?! WTF??”

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

I would have expected something more algorithmic out of experimentation, to easily compare compression errors and otherwise interesting issues. Nope. They chose porn from Playboy. And this trend continues on to today with "brogrammers". No wonder why women feel inferior in tech.

Dylan16807 8y ago
> I would have expected something more algorithmic out of experimentation Faces are a great test case. They represent a large fraction of the images we need to compress, and humans are very good at picking out issues with faces.
wyoh 8y ago
They chose Playboy because it was one of the rare publication to have high quality pictures. Stop listening to feminist propaganda and you'll be OK.
pferde 8y ago
That is how you end up with results which perform great in artificial benchmarks, but fall hard on their face in real world use. They were working on a compression algorithm that would be used primarily on real photos that people take. ...although I have no idea why I'm bothering to reply to someone for whom Playboy pictures is "porn".

olalonde 8y ago

I guess most people using it have no idea it's a picture from Playboy, nor a nude picture, nor a controversial picture. I used it a lot myself when I was working on content based image retrieval simply because all the literature was using it. It never even occurred to me I was being controversial or sexist. Now that I'm aware of the picture's history, I agree that it was a poor choice back then but I disagree that using it today is somehow an endorsement of sexism. Using it today only means you are using the standard image processing image.

bcOpus 8y ago
Not the person you’re replying to, and fuck me if I’m wading into the question of sexism, but professionalism and maturity are things. We get paid the big bucks now, we’re not snotty kids in our parent’s garage; a whole world of acceptable professional behavior goes along with that.