21 ms·
Viral 'I'm not a cat' filter is decades-old software
- tyingq 6y agoSomeone needs to make this the other kind of viral and make it the default webcam device via a viral vector.
- wyxuan 6y agoDang. I was leafing through Zoom settings to find this filter...
- michaelmior 6y agoIf you actually want to have some interesting filters, I've found Snap Camera[0] is the easiest. It just presents itself as a virtual webcam and sends over the processed video so you can use it with pretty much any application. [0] https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/ https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/
- matsemann 6y agoSame. Couldn't find anything similar on snapchat either (snap camera can be selected as a camera in most software). The video has been all the rage in work discussions today, would have liked to be a cat in some meeting tomorrow.
- jacobzweig 6y agoYou search this on snapcam to add it: https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=3b99ac6d7e8249799d13c88e37db270b&metadata=01 https://www.snapchat.com/unlock/?type=SNAPCODE&uuid=3b99ac6d...
- matsemann 6y agoIt was a success, thank you!
- bombela 6y agoA cute but still very real example of greed. Dell is paid to advertise a product. The product is on by default. Such that the clueless user can learn about how much it would improve their life.
- donatj 6y agoI'm pretty sure the software was free.
- dylan604 6y agoFree to the user, but these "free" apps were usually sponsored where the software developer paid Dell to include on all of their laptops
- donatj 6y agoThat seems pretty charitable in that case. I don't see where greed is involved here?
- toss1 6y agoThe greed is the advertising forced upon the user, at the expense of their computer resources and their time, in order to provoke them to buy more stuff that they otherwise would not ever think existed or that they would need. The only charitable bit is that this popped up yesterday and gave millions of people a very much-needed laugh, but that was entirely unintentional.
- dylan604 6y agoYou replied to a statement that had less than 25 words in it, and not one of them was "greed". The statement I replied to also did not include the word "greed".
- donatj 6y agoYou replied to my reply to OP who said: > A cute but still very real example of greed. Everything I said on my reply is in the context of that.
- purephase 6y agoBBC hijacks the back button? Weird choice, that.
- CodesInChaos 6y agoIt's redirects international visitors to bbc.com
- ChrisKnott 6y agoI think it's because they have ads internationally but aren't allowed to have ads in the UK
- emayljames 6y agoYou have to wonder why that was a choice, when they could serve/not serve ads based on location, instead of hard redirecting.
- matham 6y agoThis is very annoying. I sometimes want to see how BBC is covering events from a UK perspective, but it always redirects to bbc.com. I could switch my VPN to UK, but it never seems worth the effort.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
- brink 6y ago"Recording of this hearing or livestream is prohibited."
- JadeNB 6y agoIt was apparently posted by the judge himself: > Seeing the moment as an educational opportunity, Ferguson posted the video and it was shared by Texas attorney Kendyl Hanks and Reuters U.S. Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley. By Tuesday evening, one version on Twitter had been viewed more than 18 million times. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/09/cat-lawyer-zoom-filter/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/09/cat-law...
- dylan604 6y agoDid the judge get consent from the parties involved?
- maest 6y agoCats can't consent.
- bena 6y agoBut, but, I'm here live. I'm not a cat.
- mywittyname 6y agoCan you cite purrcedent?
- ars 6y agoOriginal source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlPGPupdd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlPGPupdd8
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fossuser 6y agoThis makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user. The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell computer with this software and hasn't used video chat on it before this. This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video chat application they were using - so it would have been harder to know about and turn off. As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago>Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware. That is a pretty strange conclusion to draw. I would say this is a reason computers should ship with no software installed whatsoever. Hardware vendors using software as a differentiator is what started this mess. All PCs are pretty much interchangeable and should be treated like it. (If they aren't interchangeable, that's because someone is selling broken hardware. Looking at you, Nvidia.)
- jbjbjbjb 6y agoThat was really only the case in the last decade and now no longer the case with M1 chips. Before that we had a wonderful plethora of different personal computers.
- duxup 6y agoIt's old software, it's not like there was much of a standard on how to apply filters and etc decades ago. Everything was a one off attempt to get the job done. And even today everything about audio / video chat is wonky. I'm always trying to figure out what application is using what audio or video device. Is the OS messing it up or the application or what is any given conference app choosing to use today .... It's bad when Lego Star Wars is onto it: https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191 https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- NDizzle 6y agoSeems fishy. I would say that there is a non-zero percent chance that he is a cat.
- jspash 6y agoAnd 50/50 that he's alive.
- cutemonster 6y agoHmm. "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck", then it is a duck, probably. (As the Ruby people know.) But if looks like a cat, and talks like a human? > non-zero percent A cat, + these new deep learning speech generation neutral nets?
- vijayr02 6y agoWell, we won’t know till we check [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
- hakanito 6y agoHe was there live, not a cat, but died inside.
- kbelder 6y agoWe need a filter to make a cat look like a human. (I meant this as a joke comment, but now I'm thinking... those filters aren't that hard to make, and I've been wanting a project... this one would have my wife's support.)
- brokencode 6y agoOkay, while I feel bad for the guy because some half-baked software on his laptop made him look silly, it was legitimately delightful to see a cute kitten appearing before a judge. I hope the guy isn’t too embarrassed by this and sees the humor in the situation.
- maxerickson 6y agoI saw a journalist tweet that he had spoken with him and that he was enjoying the reaction.
- FAANG_dream 6y agoYeah I shared it with a lot of people but I was feeling bad at the same time :-) But good to know what guy enjoyed it in the end.
- qwertay 6y agoHe and the judge are currently doing rounds of morning news tv including an interview with Sunrise in Australia so I assume he sees the humor in it.
- floren 6y agoUsing filters like this reminds me of the discussion in Infinite Jest, where people used masks and tiny dioramas to present a more attractive appearance over video calls before eventually abandoning it all and going back to audio-only. Personally, I keep my webcam off at all times. Constantly mugging for the camera to show that I'm following along gets old.
- vlunkr 6y agoI have not read that yet, but it seems very accurate. If you look up "Zoom fatigue" there are lots of people writing about why video calls can be so stressful. When you've got a webcam on you're way more aware of what you're doing with your body and face than you would be in an in-person meeting. Most people at my company have their webcams off at this point.
- jedimastert 6y agoI haven't really noticed it personally. It might be because my meeting load didn't really increase during quarantine. We have like one extra "watercooler" meeting and I actually don't mind chatting with my coworkers. I will say that I generally keep my camera and mic muted if I'm in a meeting where I'm not actively part of the discussion. Maybe it's my performance background, but if I'm talking (and especially if I'm presenting) it really important to me to be able to read the room, and it's really hard for me to present if I can't.
- rodgerd 6y agoAs someone with mild autism, I welcome the neurotypicals to literally every day of my life.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- honkdaddy 6y agoShhh - I'm working on a blog post about this very idea after finishing Jest a couple months ago. :) Happy to see I'm not the only one who made the connection!
- wincy 6y agoI'm curious if the person who recorded this is going to get fined $500 and a jail term of 180 days. Speaking of which, does anyone know why the jail terms are always far more onerous than the fine? Even back when I worked at Target making $9 an hour, it'd take me maybe two weeks to come up with $500, why are the jail time sentences so disproportionately long compared to the maximum fine that can be levied? Is this because of inflation? Or to encourage you to pay the fine rather than serve jail time?
- pain_perdu 6y agoThe judge in the case appears to have been the one to release the footage. https://twitter.com/JudgeFergusonTX https://twitter.com/JudgeFergusonTX
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jackpirate 6y agoI've always assumed that whenever the law was originally passed, the fine and jail time were more sensibly related, but inflation has caused the fine's impact to plummet without reducing the jail time in a similar way. I'd love to know if anyone has a more detailed explanation.
- interestica 6y agoWhere does this software exist in the 'stack' from webcam to videoconference software? Does it let you use the filters on any videoconf software? Seems like a vulnerability...
- joombaga 6y agoIt takes the hardware webcam feed, adds its effects, and pushes to a feed via a virtual webcam device. So yeah, you could use it with most videoconf software.
- delecti 6y agoIt's possible to install programs like this (for example there's one by Snapchat) which take the feed of one video source, and outputs a virtual webcam source. Early in the lockdown last year my manager was very amused he could be a potato in meetings.
- netsharc 6y agoThere are also virtual webcam devices that don't take their input from a USB webcam, but from a smartphone app. Vulnerability? Luckily we're still free to install these kinds of software on our computers.
- 725686 6y agoOn a side note... why are they called filters? They are not filtering anything.
- sharx 6y agoMost likely it derives from Instagram filters, which derives from lens filters.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- davidf560 6y agoDirectShow (the API for video capture and other things in Windows) has long had the concept of a filter which can be plugged into the video pipeline[0]. I'm not certain if that's the reason that the term is commonly used for effects such as the one discussed here, but this "cat filter" certainly might have been implemented as a DirectShow filter, so it's very plausible the terminology comes from that. I'm pretty sure apps like this were called filters long before Instagram even existed. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directshow/directshow-filters https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directshow/di...
- justwalt 6y agoI thought it started in Snapchat, where they were just filters at first, but then the AR stuff started getting added and you’d access them the same way you would the plain filters. The name just stuck due to people not caring to call them something else. What else would they be called? Lenses, maybe?
- tokai 6y agoI don't follow. How are they not filtering? edit: I see other comments point to instagram. I think that is giving insta way to much credit. This is filtering as in signal processing. It's a common term in audio, image, and video processing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_(signal_processing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_(signal_processing)
- moonbug 6y agohttp://ftp.dell.com/monitors/Dell_SX2210-Monitor_Webcam%20SW%20RC1.1_%20R230103.exe http://ftp.dell.com/monitors/Dell_SX2210-Monitor_Webcam%20SW... enjoy
- ryan-allen 6y agoI have been trying to find this, thank you!
- plausibledeny 6y agoJust tried the filter feature, click on the cat and the filter goes on, click on the cat again and you'd think it would go off, but it doesn't. You actually have to scroll to the top and pick 'none' to make it turn off. Non-ideal UI which explains why they were struggling so much.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoIn this vein, I found it somewhat funny at the beginning of the pandemic how everyone was discovering Zoom's Virtual Backgrounds—a feature which Apple added to Photo Booth and iChat all the way back in Leopard. Presumably they took it out due to lack of use. To be fair, Zoom's backgrounds seem to work in more types of lighting conditions, although the overall effect is less convincing IMO.
- gbear605 6y agoZoom backgrounds work by some sort of machine learning to identify humans while the Photo Booth backgrounds just did a diff between an initial image and the current image, and displayed anything that was different. The plus side to Zoom is that you can move a chair or even the camera without messing everything up. The plus side to Photo Booth is that it had cleaner edges.
- jlv2 6y ago11 years is "decades-old".
- nate_meurer 6y agoTangentially, the cat laywer is a piece of shit: https://reason.com/2021/02/10/zoom-cat-lawyer-rod-ponton-used-federal-agents-to-torment-former-lover-drug-raids-bogus-charges/ https://reason.com/2021/02/10/zoom-cat-lawyer-rod-ponton-use...
- doubleunplussed 6y ago"The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the duck is racist"
- Mengkudulangsat 6y agoThanks for ruining it for us :( Why can't we have our 50 seconds of lighthearted internet tidbit without some journalist trying to force a story about it? A random dude working as a kitten is all I want to remember about this episode.
- oars 6y agoI disagree. If you liked Chris Brown's music but finding out about what he did to Rihanna makes you feel sick, would you actually want to be his fan?
- allarm 6y agoThere’s a huge difference between being his fan and being a fan of his music.
- scrollaway 6y agoI think GP's point is that if finding out about this does indeed ruin it for you, then it's probably a good thing you did find out about it. If you put importance on not separating the art from the artist, you can't then go around complaining that you're finding out about how shitty your favourite artist is. I personally do separate the two, but in either case I would want to know if someone who has influence on me via their art is a piece of shit; so i may make sure not to let them have influence on me any other way than via their art (or make the decision that I'm too turned off to continue enjoying their art).
- hodgesrm 6y agoHumans degrade gracefully, don't they? The BBC story does not say happens next but I'm guessing they proceeded with the case.
- jere 6y agoI can't open this link in any browser, mobile or desktop. Seems to be some sort of ad loop redirect ending in a white screen. Anyone else?
- gm 6y agoSame here. Seems to be a paywall. Try http://outline.com/https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56010156 http://outline.com/https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56010...
- transitivebs 6y agoIf you want a more legit solution: https://xpressioncamera.com https://xpressioncamera.com
- userbinator 6y agoSome asked if it was utilising deepfake technology because the filter seemed sophisticated What I find amusing are the comments here calling it "crapware" when it's probably far more efficient than average software today. It likely uses only a few dozen MB to do its work, while the -- text and pictures only -- instant messaging client I'm forced to use for work takes several hundred MB of RAM and lags noticeably when typing.
- sellyme 6y agoUnder some definition of "efficiency" that isn't too fussed about whether the work was actually desired, sure. Crapware isn't really about the quality of the code, though. This could be the most pristine and elegant piece of software ever written under the hood, but that doesn't mean anyone wants it to come preinstalled on their laptop.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoThe most pristine and elegant piece of software ever written won't get in your way in the first place, people notice software only when it fails.
- effingwewt 6y agoThe term crap/shovel-ware usually denotes pre-installed garbage no one ever asked for or used except the completely uninitiated. So it's not so much an indictment of the software itself but the way in which it was installed, which in turn made anyone with with any knowledge remove them ASAP without ever testing them like HP Games, which is still around today. I remember this bonzii buddy my ex-fiancée's mother would keep installing on her computer and then complain it was infected and acting crazy. I would inform her about the toolbar she kept installing and how it would in turn install heaps of other garbage. Her response? 'But I like it, he stays, just fix it.' I still hate that stupid purple mokey to this day. Check this[1] out ,this is extreme but it would definitely take up half or more of screen real estate. [1] https://rent-a-nerd.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ie-toolbar-hell.jpg https://rent-a-nerd.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ie-toolba...
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThe best part of the video was the clarification "I am not a cat".
- lynguist 6y ago“Decades old” means the software must be at least 20 years old, thus from 2001 or older. According to the BBC, this came preinstalled on some Dell laptops in 2010. How can it be “decades old”??
- dragonwriter 6y agoUm, it's quite possible that software released in 2001 or earlier was part of shovelware still being dumped on laptops in 2010.
- lynguist 6y agoEspecially the screenshot is a giveaway that the software is less than 19.5 years old. It shows Windows XP which was released only 19.5 years ago. The BBC heading is unfortunately lurid and not factual.
- strogonoff 6y agoIt’s hard to find out why this feature exists from a quick search, but I suspect default avatar (on webcam level, no less) could be an interesting safety measure rather than just a gimmick. If properly implemented, this makes it impossible for the user to reveal their face by accident or from inexperience. Even if laptop operator ends up with some shady app that allows strangers to video call, mucking with system avatar settings would be required before their actual appearance can be seen.
- sdfjkl 6y agoDell's default installation was so full of junk that it lead to the rise of the "Dell Decrapifier", a script specifically written to remove all the junk from the default install and turn a Dell into a usable computer. https://web.archive.org/web/20070108044336/http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38 https://web.archive.org/web/20070108044336/http://www.yorksp... [2006]
- effingwewt 6y agoIndeed, back in the early days if you bought a PC it was known you either had to decrapify or do a complete new install. Problem with a new (legit) install was your key only worked for that specific OEM brand- ie Dell key for dell install disc, then hiding the drivers behind more crapware exe's. Not everyone at that time had multiple OEM install CDs, and I think this right here led to the massive spike in cracked copies between win 98-win xp. Or everyone using the infamous ms key FCKGW RHQQ2 YXRKT 8TG6W 2B7Q8. Now here we are facing the same bullshit with cellphones, and their solution is to prevent rooting and bootloader unlocking to remove our only way to combat this shit. How is this not only still happening 20+ years later, but getting worse?