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The Boombox Incident: removing bald people from photos
- dsr_ 8y agoI wonder how well it works on people who have a skin color closer to their hair color.
- swish_bob 8y agoI was about to suggest it really needs to at least be tried on people with darker skin tones.
- Double_a_92 8y agoOr old white people.
- sandworm101 8y agoOr blonde white people.
- swish_bob 8y agoPeople who aren't in Seinfeld.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 8y agoThis comment is outrageous, egregious, preposterous!
- ovi256 8y agoYeah, his baldness detector is not robust as it just checks the average color of the area above the forehead, but you could make a robust one through transfer learning a deep model trained on ImageNet further finetuned on a small dataset of a few dozen images of bald and non-bald. Something like this: https://www.kaggle.com/dansbecker/transfer-learning https://www.kaggle.com/dansbecker/transfer-learning This method gets good, robust performance with just a few minutes of training.
- cyborgx7 8y agoSince trained classifiers are already being used, and therefore fair game, a trained baldness classifier would be a better choice, I think. Of course you would need a dataset for that.
- benj111 8y agoI was thinking this is a potentially racist algorithm. Worked well for Amazon! https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...
- phjesusthatguy3 8y agoI don't have enough HN points to downvote yet but this is clearly a joke.
- philipov 8y agoWhy do you need to downvote a joke? It made me laugh out loud. Do you hate fun?
- jedimastert 8y agoFor the actual removal, you could try using conent-aware resizing[1] along with blob detection to give the person to be removed a negative weight. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk&t=3m43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk&t=3m43s
- amelius 8y agoWhen they apply this to the DVD cover of Die Hard 4, what would the result be?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- birdiesanders 8y agoAs a bald man, I approve!
- thih9 8y agoLoosely related video, Star Trek actor talks about being bald: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqm_Iq8rFeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqm_Iq8rFeg . I'm linking it to remind that perceiving baldness as something negative (here: a criterion for removal from a photo) can be a cause of distress and loss of confidence.
- djhworld 8y agoI know this article is trying to be tongue in cheek but I definitely think it's worth highlighting this issue.
- MRD85 8y agoMy issue is most people won't find it in bad taste to make this tongue in cheek article. If someone made an article "Remove Mexicans from a photo" most people would realise it's harmful. Baldness is mostly genetic and I think it's horrible to pick on people for it, especially when it can be a huge issue for them.
- throwaway8879 8y agoI do understand why people would feel insecure about baldness. Is it changing for the better though? Loads of "cool" bald people, think Vin Diesel etc. I still have a head full of hair and just turned 30. Not sure how I'd feel as I've had long hair all my life. I do feel that the volume isn't as high as it was in my early 20s.. I hope we make some progress in a cure either way.
- adrianN 8y agoThere is medication that can prevent baldness. It has very rare, but very scary side-effects though. Eventually we might have something that fixes the genes responsible for baldness.
- scott_s 8y agoIt also, as far as I know, requires taking indefinitely. Once you stop, if you were going bald before, that process will continue.
- cantcomplain 8y agoI know this was a joke but I still wanted to see more examples
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoGeorge is by far my favorite sitcom character. His schizo-nuances and paranoia and hilarious! I can relate.
- throwaway8879 8y agoVery much agreed. That character is so memorable that it's difficult for me to think of him playing a non-George role. I think the actor had trouble with post-Seinfeld roles too.
- Insanity 8y agoFor me it's the same with characters from Friends. I can't see them in another role (except Jennifer, it's kind of odd to see her in other things but not as much as the others). That being said, George is an absolutely great character and one of my favourites in sitcoms :) Just reading these comments makes me want to rewatch Seinfeld.
- ujhmi6 8y agoGeorge Costanza is Jason Alexander + Larry David. I recommend you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm if you enjoyed Seinfeld.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoI would also recommend Curb Your Enthusiasm, but there is a difference: Larry David is neurotic, but even in his fictional Curb Your Enthusiasm persona he is extremely wealthy and successful. That is a big difference from George Constanza, who combined being neurotic with constantly being adrift employment-wise and has little to recommend himself.
- smashingfiasco 8y agoI really like that you explained the algorithm and decisions you were making instead of just ploping code some on the page. Well done!
- mkagenius 8y agoDeep learning with a 100 samples can do this completely with the body too. This is a similar project I did: https://comic2gif.com https://comic2gif.com where I remove the speech written on the images, the same technology can be used here.
- nacs 8y agoBut edge detection is a lot easier on comics than on photos I would think. The background on a comic would also have a mostly solid color background which makes it easier.
- mkagenius 8y ago> But edge detection is a lot easier on comics than on photos I would think That should be true. But deep learning based models work quite good on natural images as Vgg dataset is mostly natural. This is perhaps one-off usage/application on comics.
- scrp 8y agoSo close!
- thebladerunner 8y agoTechnical aspects aside, this post is in a really bad taste. Next time you're itching to show off your chops, maybe pick a project that does not involve airbrushing people somehow deemed unworthy of being remembered, based on their looks? During world war II, the Nazis had the laborious task of detecting Jews among the occupied populations, at scale. Is that also a task worthy of being automated and then writing a post about it?
- partiallypro 8y agoNow show how to add back a cartoon character drawing of the boss (bald man,) like in the show.
- Grustaf 8y agoAs a photo store clerk I can confirm that this is indeed one of the most frequent requests we get, so this could be a huge timesaver. But you really need to work on the removal part, it’s practically unusable as it is!
- mbil 8y agohey, author here, thanks for the attention on this post, especially the feedback regarding CV techniques. i wanted to write about some basic computer vision tools in the context of a Seinfeld reference. it was intended as a joke, but i realize it could be hurtful. i'm sorry if i hurt anybody's feelings.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]