14 ms·

I'm the opposite. In movies (and real life to an extent) I have trouble telling people apart. I'd love a closed caption like service that just put name tags ove

I'm the opposite. In movies (and real life to an extent) I have trouble telling people apart. I'd love a closed caption like service that just put name tags over everyone.

ryandrake 3y ago
That's one of the perpetually-SciFi use cases of Augmented Reality: You're walking around with AR glasses and whenever someone comes into your field of view, your display hovers over them their name, their job, when you last talked to them, what their hobbies are, and so on. A huge privacy nightmare, but useful for people who can't recall names and details about people they've met.
- visarga 3y ago
  Basically the Slack experience. You don't need to remember people, you can see your past interactions right there.
- egeozcan 3y ago
  I don't think it'd be a privacy nightmare if it used private databases created by the user. Like a personal CRM, something like Monica, but with a real-time touch.
  - avarun 3y ago
    Wouldn't be from a legal sense, but the societal implications of technology like that becoming commonplace are still immense. The limitations of human memory provide safety in a way today that would quickly erode if everybody could remember exactly everything that's ever been said or seen around them.
    - Breza 3y ago
      I agree with you. I had a bit of a falling out with a friend and wanted to check in on her a few years later. The immediately preceding messages in Messenger were the largely-forgotten unpleasantness. Quite awkward. It really drove home how much of a blessing forgetting every little slight is.
    - chambored 3y ago
      Safety from what exactly?
      - avarun 3y ago
        "You said X 3 years ago, but now you said, which is the opposite of X. How dare you?" is one class of problems. Another is that you can learn quite a bit more about a person than they wished to actually divulge to you if you're able to capture and study their exact behaviors over a long enough stretch of time.
        twerkmonsta 3y ago
        Wait, why are people not allowed to change their mind on something? If anything this would make it more explicit and understandable when people did change their mind on something.
        ziddoap 3y ago
        >Wait, why are people not allowed to change their mind on something I don't think parent comment is suggesting that people aren't allowed to change their mind. They are pointing out that many people yell "hypocrite!" when someone does change their mind. It's already a phenomenon on social media where people will dig through someone's post history and drag them through the coals, using previous stances on a topic in an attempt to discredit the current stance. Parent is suggesting that this problem would be exacerbated.
        int_19h 3y ago
        I think that people will stop yelling "hypocrite!" once they themselves get repeatedly get called out on the same by others. Our reactions to stuff like that are defined largely by our cultural expectations, but those are in turn constantly shaped by what is made possible or impossible by technology. Back in the pre-voicemail phone era, for example, people would routinely call someone and expect them to be available for a half-hour chat - you could turn it down, sure, but in many cases it would be considered impolite to do so as a matter of social convention. Then voicemail appeared, and SMS was the final nail in that coffin. So I think that this problem will exist for a while, but if the tech that enables it persists long enough, it will eventually go on as conventions change to adapt to it.
    - Cyph0n 3y ago
      For an interesting exploration of this, I suggest watching the Black Mirror episode “The Entire History of You” (S1E3).
      - nindalf 3y ago
        Honestly one of the best episodes of TV I’ve seen, simply because it challenged one of my core beliefs. I’ve always struggled with a poor memory and I’ve tried all kinds of systems to improve retention and recall. This episode challenged the benefits of remembering everything pretty well and made me reconsider.
  - groggo 3y ago
    Still privacy nightmare and creepy. There's plenty of public info on people, that once collected and assembled into one place is basically stalking. Not saying it's not a cool idea though :)
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      This is no different from my photo’s app automatically labelling faces right? I’m fairly certain the vision pro could do it right now.
  - rasz 3y ago
    Install our virtual keyboard/virtual screen saver/dancing baby/flashlight app /small print: requires read all, send all permissions
- pmarreck 3y ago
  I had a product idea for an AR app that would do this for everyone who's opted into it. So for real-world networking events, you might choose to disclose some things about yourself but only for that venue and only for some window of time for example. I never built it, but it's perfectly possible to do. The genius idea IMHO was the business model- If you were into certain things you wanted to keep private from most but only wanted to disclose to other people who were into those same things, you could pay a fee, and it would then show you others who were in that "market" (of ideas, drugs, sex, whatever). (It might only ask you to pay it if it found someone nearby who matched. And then it would automatically notify the other person unless you paid an ADDITIONAL fee... Not sure about the latter idea, but it was an idea.) The only issue is everyone holding their phone up in front of their faces.
  - HKH2 3y ago
    How would you stop spies or undercover cops trying to infiltrate the "market"?
    - pmarreck 3y ago
      Or people who want to "out" gay people. I know. That would be a good argument over not permitting a unilateral notification of a match (which, at the very least, I wanted to make very expensive and thus profitable, if it's allowed at all). If it notified both people 100% of the time, and one of you was a possible impostor, you could report them. And from a legal standpoint, showing interest in a market doesn't make you guilty. And, you could possibly also build "cred" in one of these tagged "markets" by getting cred from others who say you're legit, and that information would be revealed at the same time (possibly at your discretion).
      - HKH2 3y ago
        Makes sense. You still might get honeypots though; could you make cred work more generally with trust between friends, friends of friends etc. without compromising the markets?
- HKH2 3y ago
  And instead of just shrugging it off, you could tag strangers that annoy you and end up with a giant list of grudges against a whole host of people. The false positives (e.g. twins and doppelgangers) should make it interesting.
  - EwanG 3y ago
    Which feeds into Saint Motel's song "You're Nobody Til Somebody Wants You Dead" which has a bit about how the list just grows and grows until it's everyone you've ever known...
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Take it to the next step towards Black Mirror where the AR shadows out people you've blocked and then mutes their voice so you can't hear them
    - earthnail 3y ago
      That would make for fantastic comedic situations when you then physically bump into them after you erased them from your AR vision xD.
BurningFrog 3y ago
I've seen scenes in movies where assistants of heads of state will discreetly whisper to them who the people in the room are. With a service like this we could all live like Kings!
- avarun 3y ago
  This features distinctively in the show Veep, where one of the main characters provides exactly this for the Vice President.
- eesmith 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file > A Farley file is a set of records kept by politicians on people whom they have met. > The term is named for James Farley, Franklin Roosevelt's campaign manager. Farley, who went on to become Postmaster General and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, kept a file on everyone he or Roosevelt met. > Whenever people were scheduled to meet again with Roosevelt, Farley would review their files. That allowed Roosevelt to meet them again while knowing their spouse, their children's names and ages, and anything else that had come out of earlier meetings or any other intelligence that Farley had added to the file. The effect was powerful and intimate. > Farley files are now commonly kept by other politicians and businesspeople.
  - Viliam1234 3y ago
    The business version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_manageme...
- dboreham 3y ago
  The sad truth is that technology isn't much used to help people. Instead it's used to make money. E.g. there's all this amazing AI, buy my phone keyboard autocorrect has the intelligence of a slug.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
gniv 3y ago
Amazon already does some of this (they identify actors in a scene iirc), so they could "easily" extend it to what you're suggesting.
- esafak 3y ago
  Xray, they call it. It's a great feature! https://www.amazon.com/salp/xray https://www.amazon.com/salp/xray
  - hn_user82179 3y ago
    I adore X-Ray. It's great for finding songs I like that are played in a video, or figuring out some actor who looks familiar but I can't tell. And of course for remembering character names. I'm honestly so surprised no other streaming services offer a similar feature.
mncharity 3y ago
Many years ago there was an MIT startup based on the idea, IIRC, that subliminally flashed names increased recall among cognitively impaired elderly when the flashed names were correct, but didn't negatively impact recall when the flashed names were incorrect. So even quite poor face recognition could be worthwhile.
golergka 3y ago
When I first watched Departed, I didn't realise that Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio's characters are different people until the third act. It was very confusing.
- neltnerb 3y ago
  Hah, I thought I was the only one. I'm not particularly face blind either... something about the era I guess.
- antifa 3y ago
  Loudest thing online is people complaining about minorities existing in TV shows. A much bigger, real problem, is when they regularly cast 3 characters with almost exactly the same skin tone, skin texture, hair color, hair length, hair style, eye color, clothing style, face shape, voice, body type. Then the character's name is given once (if given) and you see several scenes without the character. Several scenes with the clones. Sudden scene with 2 clones in the same scene. You really couldn't give these three white people a different hair style? Make one wear glasses?

I'm the opposite. In movies (and real life to an extent) I have trouble telling people apart. I'd love a closed caption like service that just put name tags over everyone.

ryandrake 3y ago

That's one of the perpetually-SciFi use cases of Augmented Reality: You're walking around with AR glasses and whenever someone comes into your field of view, your display hovers over them their name, their job, when you last talked to them, what their hobbies are, and so on. A huge privacy nightmare, but useful for people who can't recall names and details about people they've met.

visarga 3y ago
Basically the Slack experience. You don't need to remember people, you can see your past interactions right there.
egeozcan 3y ago
I don't think it'd be a privacy nightmare if it used private databases created by the user. Like a personal CRM, something like Monica, but with a real-time touch.
- avarun 3y ago
  Wouldn't be from a legal sense, but the societal implications of technology like that becoming commonplace are still immense. The limitations of human memory provide safety in a way today that would quickly erode if everybody could remember exactly everything that's ever been said or seen around them.
  - Breza 3y ago
    I agree with you. I had a bit of a falling out with a friend and wanted to check in on her a few years later. The immediately preceding messages in Messenger were the largely-forgotten unpleasantness. Quite awkward. It really drove home how much of a blessing forgetting every little slight is.
  - chambored 3y ago
    Safety from what exactly?
    - avarun 3y ago
      "You said X 3 years ago, but now you said, which is the opposite of X. How dare you?" is one class of problems. Another is that you can learn quite a bit more about a person than they wished to actually divulge to you if you're able to capture and study their exact behaviors over a long enough stretch of time.
      - twerkmonsta 3y ago
        Wait, why are people not allowed to change their mind on something? If anything this would make it more explicit and understandable when people did change their mind on something.
        ziddoap 3y ago
        >Wait, why are people not allowed to change their mind on something I don't think parent comment is suggesting that people aren't allowed to change their mind. They are pointing out that many people yell "hypocrite!" when someone does change their mind. It's already a phenomenon on social media where people will dig through someone's post history and drag them through the coals, using previous stances on a topic in an attempt to discredit the current stance. Parent is suggesting that this problem would be exacerbated.
        int_19h 3y ago
        I think that people will stop yelling "hypocrite!" once they themselves get repeatedly get called out on the same by others. Our reactions to stuff like that are defined largely by our cultural expectations, but those are in turn constantly shaped by what is made possible or impossible by technology. Back in the pre-voicemail phone era, for example, people would routinely call someone and expect them to be available for a half-hour chat - you could turn it down, sure, but in many cases it would be considered impolite to do so as a matter of social convention. Then voicemail appeared, and SMS was the final nail in that coffin. So I think that this problem will exist for a while, but if the tech that enables it persists long enough, it will eventually go on as conventions change to adapt to it.
  - Cyph0n 3y ago
    For an interesting exploration of this, I suggest watching the Black Mirror episode “The Entire History of You” (S1E3).
    - nindalf 3y ago
      Honestly one of the best episodes of TV I’ve seen, simply because it challenged one of my core beliefs. I’ve always struggled with a poor memory and I’ve tried all kinds of systems to improve retention and recall. This episode challenged the benefits of remembering everything pretty well and made me reconsider.
- groggo 3y ago
  Still privacy nightmare and creepy. There's plenty of public info on people, that once collected and assembled into one place is basically stalking. Not saying it's not a cool idea though :)
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    This is no different from my photo’s app automatically labelling faces right? I’m fairly certain the vision pro could do it right now.
- rasz 3y ago
  Install our virtual keyboard/virtual screen saver/dancing baby/flashlight app /small print: requires read all, send all permissions
pmarreck 3y ago
I had a product idea for an AR app that would do this for everyone who's opted into it. So for real-world networking events, you might choose to disclose some things about yourself but only for that venue and only for some window of time for example. I never built it, but it's perfectly possible to do. The genius idea IMHO was the business model- If you were into certain things you wanted to keep private from most but only wanted to disclose to other people who were into those same things, you could pay a fee, and it would then show you others who were in that "market" (of ideas, drugs, sex, whatever). (It might only ask you to pay it if it found someone nearby who matched. And then it would automatically notify the other person unless you paid an ADDITIONAL fee... Not sure about the latter idea, but it was an idea.) The only issue is everyone holding their phone up in front of their faces.
- HKH2 3y ago
  How would you stop spies or undercover cops trying to infiltrate the "market"?
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    Or people who want to "out" gay people. I know. That would be a good argument over not permitting a unilateral notification of a match (which, at the very least, I wanted to make very expensive and thus profitable, if it's allowed at all). If it notified both people 100% of the time, and one of you was a possible impostor, you could report them. And from a legal standpoint, showing interest in a market doesn't make you guilty. And, you could possibly also build "cred" in one of these tagged "markets" by getting cred from others who say you're legit, and that information would be revealed at the same time (possibly at your discretion).
    - HKH2 3y ago
      Makes sense. You still might get honeypots though; could you make cred work more generally with trust between friends, friends of friends etc. without compromising the markets?
HKH2 3y ago
And instead of just shrugging it off, you could tag strangers that annoy you and end up with a giant list of grudges against a whole host of people. The false positives (e.g. twins and doppelgangers) should make it interesting.
- EwanG 3y ago
  Which feeds into Saint Motel's song "You're Nobody Til Somebody Wants You Dead" which has a bit about how the list just grows and grows until it's everyone you've ever known...
- dylan604 3y ago
  Take it to the next step towards Black Mirror where the AR shadows out people you've blocked and then mutes their voice so you can't hear them
  - earthnail 3y ago
    That would make for fantastic comedic situations when you then physically bump into them after you erased them from your AR vision xD.

BurningFrog 3y ago

I've seen scenes in movies where assistants of heads of state will discreetly whisper to them who the people in the room are. With a service like this we could all live like Kings!

avarun 3y ago
This features distinctively in the show Veep, where one of the main characters provides exactly this for the Vice President.
eesmith 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file > A Farley file is a set of records kept by politicians on people whom they have met. > The term is named for James Farley, Franklin Roosevelt's campaign manager. Farley, who went on to become Postmaster General and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, kept a file on everyone he or Roosevelt met. > Whenever people were scheduled to meet again with Roosevelt, Farley would review their files. That allowed Roosevelt to meet them again while knowing their spouse, their children's names and ages, and anything else that had come out of earlier meetings or any other intelligence that Farley had added to the file. The effect was powerful and intimate. > Farley files are now commonly kept by other politicians and businesspeople.
- Viliam1234 3y ago
  The business version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_manageme...
dboreham 3y ago
The sad truth is that technology isn't much used to help people. Instead it's used to make money. E.g. there's all this amazing AI, buy my phone keyboard autocorrect has the intelligence of a slug.
- crooked-v 3y ago

gniv 3y ago

Amazon already does some of this (they identify actors in a scene iirc), so they could "easily" extend it to what you're suggesting.

esafak 3y ago
Xray, they call it. It's a great feature! https://www.amazon.com/salp/xray https://www.amazon.com/salp/xray
- hn_user82179 3y ago
  I adore X-Ray. It's great for finding songs I like that are played in a video, or figuring out some actor who looks familiar but I can't tell. And of course for remembering character names. I'm honestly so surprised no other streaming services offer a similar feature.

mncharity 3y ago

Many years ago there was an MIT startup based on the idea, IIRC, that subliminally flashed names increased recall among cognitively impaired elderly when the flashed names were correct, but didn't negatively impact recall when the flashed names were incorrect. So even quite poor face recognition could be worthwhile.

golergka 3y ago

When I first watched Departed, I didn't realise that Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio's characters are different people until the third act. It was very confusing.

neltnerb 3y ago
Hah, I thought I was the only one. I'm not particularly face blind either... something about the era I guess.
antifa 3y ago
Loudest thing online is people complaining about minorities existing in TV shows. A much bigger, real problem, is when they regularly cast 3 characters with almost exactly the same skin tone, skin texture, hair color, hair length, hair style, eye color, clothing style, face shape, voice, body type. Then the character's name is given once (if given) and you see several scenes without the character. Several scenes with the clones. Sudden scene with 2 clones in the same scene. You really couldn't give these three white people a different hair style? Make one wear glasses?