4 ms·

I wish something like this existed that was completely offline. I'm face blind (prosopagnosia) so being able to feed an offline database photos of friends so i

I wish something like this existed that was completely offline. I'm face blind (prosopagnosia) so being able to feed an offline database photos of friends so it can recognise them would be great. Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.

jjice 4mo ago
Honestly, if any big tech would implement it this way, it's likely Apple. Their image face recognition in Photos currently is fully on device from what I understand and it is set by who you associate it with locally.
- true_religion 4mo ago
  I’m not sure why they don’t do it this way already with the meta glasses. Online comparison just adds latency.
  - qsxfthnkp2322 4mo ago
    Meta is clearly harvesting all the data.
- polio 4mo ago
  Apple will create a comparable device; it'll just take them five more years to get the product experience down.
Gooblebrai 4mo ago
Sorry that you have to deal with this condition. What method do you use currently to help with recognising them?
- joshred 4mo ago
  Usually you talk to them and then you remember who they are or where you know them from. It's not like you can't tell your wife apart from your orthodontist.
  - freedomben 4mo ago
    > It's not like you can't tell your wife apart from your orthodontist. I got a personal kick out of that example, because one of my good friend's wife is his orthodontist :-D
    - PlunderBunny 4mo ago
      "open wide..."
  - NobodyNada 4mo ago
    I recently learned that I have some level of face-blindness (I took the CFMT online and scored 43). It's something I've had my whole life but only recently realized wasn't "normal". It's not like I can't recognize people at all, but rather that faces aren't very distinctive to me compared to other identifying characteristics (such as hair color/style/length, clothing, skin tone, height, voice, gait, mannerisms, etc.) It takes me a while to learn to distinguish everyone in a group of people (especially people who are similar along all of those attributes), but once I know someone well I will usually recognize them without problems. The only real issues are when someone changes their appearance (e.g. getting glasses or shaving a beard), or when I run into someone in an unexpected context (like randomly meeting someone I know on the street). A few months ago I ran into my cousin at an event in another city, and didn't recognize her until after 20 or 30 seconds of conversation. It's also not usually too hard to mask. I realized I have a subconscious habit of never greeting people by name because I'm always afraid of getting it wrong, and it's easy enough to bluff through "oh hi, how are you, good to see you, what have you been up to" pleasantries until I figure out who I'm talking to. The most awkward situations are when I'm unsure whether or not I know someone and have to risk either mistaking a stranger for a friend, or accidentally ignoring/reintroducing myself to an acquaintance. Also, starting a new TV show sucks. Now that I know it's an actual condition with a name, I'm not sure yet whether it makes things better or worse if I try to explain it to people to excuse my mistakes. If any other face blind people have useful tips or experiences, I'm all ears :)
    - majiy 4mo ago
- caturopath 4mo ago
  Like the poster, I'm faceblind. It isn't the worst thing: I'm not voice blind, height blind, age blind, hairstyle blind, gender blind, features associated with race and ethnicity blind, attractiveness blind, affect blind, context blind, etc., so I'm mostly good at figuring out who someone is. Within one encounter with a bunch of people, I try to note what someone is wearing. Every once in a while I don't recognize someone and I go through this whole thing of bringing up every biographical detail about them I remember and all the things we've talked about to show that I'm not an asshole who wasn't paying attention in the past. Fortunately, I have a decent memory for such things.
  - noman-land 4mo ago
    This is fascinating. So you know that you've met someone before. You know things about them. But you don't recognize them? What does this mean? You don't remember their name? You don't know why or how you know them?
    - soco 4mo ago
      I'm not the OP neither have their problem, but I can't remember names. I know who the person in front of me is, we can talk pleasantly about everything - I have a good memory otherwise - but I can't remember their name to save my life. Luckily they very seldom notice that, if ever. And I won't tell, obviously.
      - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
        I'm similar, and yes, there are easy options to replace person's name with, as long as you're putting a bit of thought into what you're saying so as not to paint yourself into a name corner. Ironically, I'm insanely good at remembering faces. But it's kinda useless because of the name thing (and equally, the face context is also difficult).
        soco 4mo ago
        A trick helping momentarily is introducing them to another person. Then I pick up their name from the conversation and can use it myself - at least for 10 minutes until I forget it again.
ryandrake 4mo ago
I find myself asking this every time a new software product is released. "Nice, but why can't this be usable without an account and a tether to the developer's cloud?"
- salawat 4mo ago
  And the answer is monetization. We can't just solve a problem. It has to have a business model built around it. No exceptions.
  - Brusco_RF 4mo ago
    Feel free to solve a problem and release it for free. People do that every day.
    - ryandrake 4mo ago
      OR just sell me a widget. I don't want a relationship with the software developer or device manufacturer. I just want to buy something and forget about you.
    - hungryhobbit 4mo ago
      And people give donations to homeless people every day ... but it doesn't mean we have a systemic solution to homelessness. As said above, if you do want a systemic solution, it needs a business plan. That's just the reality of a world with scarce resources.
      - selfhoster1312 4mo ago
        Well i mean there is an obvious solution to homelessness: requisition the empty dwellings. That's not exactly a business plan for maintenance in the long term, but that's certainly much better than the current situation.
- fennecbutt 4mo ago
  Late stage capitalism.
majiy 4mo ago
Literally my thoughts. That would be so helpful, but I will not give any data-hungy company access to people around me. I recently heard the best way to explain faceblindness: Apples. Can you tell apples apart? Yes, sure, if you put two apples next to each other, they look similar, but there are differences. But could you recognize that specific apple among 50 similar ones? If an apple addressed you on the street, could you remember where you've seen it before? That is how it feels to be faceblind. There are workarounds, but they are context-dependent and error-prone. That apple with red hair and a beard? Sure, that's the colleague from the office next door. But was that the same apple that waved to you in the city yesterday? The only green apple among red ones? Easy to recognize. But only after some awkward misunderstandings you realize that there are two of them. And changes of hairstyle are a real problem. I once wondered who that new colleague was during lunchbreak. I was about to ask her, when she said something (unrelated) and I recognized her voice. I had worked with her for 10 years, she had colored her hair.
- riffraff 4mo ago
  Thank you so much for sharing this, I had no idea this condition existed and you provided a perfect explanation.
- malfist 4mo ago
  Thats exactly how I describe it. I recognize most people by their hair and voice, but its error prone. My other half, who I've been with for a decade and a half, put on a wig the other day and walked by me at a bar and the only thing I thought about was "that guy was good looking". He got a good laugh out of that.
- eterm 4mo ago
  I'm saving this comment, thank you for a great explanation of what it is like. I was in my late 20s when I realised I was "face-blind", but I should have realised a lot earlier, I remember reading in a book as a child about how "people can recognise a person by their face from a long distance, but find it difficult to recognise a voice", and I could not relate whatsoever to that passage. I thought I regularly struggle to recognise someone until they start speaking, but it wasn't until a decade or two later that I read about prosopagnosia and then suddenly a lot of things made sense. Your explanation is so much better than the rubbish illustrations of blanked or blurred faces, because it isn't like that at all, indeed sometimes I might rely on a detail about their face to recognise someone. It's why face-blind isn't a great term either, because it's not a kind of blindness, I can see just as well as anyone, it just doesn't trip the automatic and instinctual recognition that I understand most people have.
sureglymop 4mo ago
Probably quite feasible. Immich on my little raspberry pi is able to do facial recognition for 50k images over night.
cortesoft 4mo ago
This shouldn't be hard to do, facial recognition is pretty easy to run locally.
Stagnant 4mo ago
What ever model digiKam is using for face detection seems to be very accurate in my experience. It is open source and works fully offline.
Andrex 4mo ago
Meta has to release the hardware, then we can get started on alternate OSes. It's a shame open source hardware isn't a thing in this area, but we've been here before. (Buying locked down devices and installing alt OSes.)
- godelski 4mo ago
  All hardware is open if you're willing to open it up ;) But reverse engineering isn't as easy as my snarky response implies. But I do think more of us should get into hardware hacking. It's the only way we have to fight back. I'm tired of this "own nothing" paradigm and being forced into whatever dumb thing they want is to do. And it's so dumb too. There's not many power users but there's a disproportionate amount of resources dedicated to fucking us over
jabedude 4mo ago
Apple is the only company doing this sort of processing
- e12e 4mo ago
  And Google?
slicktux 4mo ago
It’s possible to make it offline but one would still need a phone for the object recognition software…that software would have to be what stays offline. Definitely doable.
dado3212 4mo ago
Isn’t this offline? Where do you see that it’s online?
- eska 4mo ago
  Does meta have any offline products? Their business model is to connect everything to the cloud (e.g. multiverse with ar glasses before)
gherkinnn 4mo ago
How do people around you react to your face blindness? Do they consider not being remembered rude? Do you get incredulous reactions like people with aphantasia?

jjice 4mo ago

Honestly, if any big tech would implement it this way, it's likely Apple. Their image face recognition in Photos currently is fully on device from what I understand and it is set by who you associate it with locally.

true_religion 4mo ago
I’m not sure why they don’t do it this way already with the meta glasses. Online comparison just adds latency.
- qsxfthnkp2322 4mo ago
  Meta is clearly harvesting all the data.
polio 4mo ago
Apple will create a comparable device; it'll just take them five more years to get the product experience down.

Gooblebrai 4mo ago

Sorry that you have to deal with this condition. What method do you use currently to help with recognising them?

joshred 4mo ago
Usually you talk to them and then you remember who they are or where you know them from. It's not like you can't tell your wife apart from your orthodontist.
- freedomben 4mo ago
  > It's not like you can't tell your wife apart from your orthodontist. I got a personal kick out of that example, because one of my good friend's wife is his orthodontist :-D
  - PlunderBunny 4mo ago
    "open wide..."
- NobodyNada 4mo ago
  I recently learned that I have some level of face-blindness (I took the CFMT online and scored 43). It's something I've had my whole life but only recently realized wasn't "normal". It's not like I can't recognize people at all, but rather that faces aren't very distinctive to me compared to other identifying characteristics (such as hair color/style/length, clothing, skin tone, height, voice, gait, mannerisms, etc.) It takes me a while to learn to distinguish everyone in a group of people (especially people who are similar along all of those attributes), but once I know someone well I will usually recognize them without problems. The only real issues are when someone changes their appearance (e.g. getting glasses or shaving a beard), or when I run into someone in an unexpected context (like randomly meeting someone I know on the street). A few months ago I ran into my cousin at an event in another city, and didn't recognize her until after 20 or 30 seconds of conversation. It's also not usually too hard to mask. I realized I have a subconscious habit of never greeting people by name because I'm always afraid of getting it wrong, and it's easy enough to bluff through "oh hi, how are you, good to see you, what have you been up to" pleasantries until I figure out who I'm talking to. The most awkward situations are when I'm unsure whether or not I know someone and have to risk either mistaking a stranger for a friend, or accidentally ignoring/reintroducing myself to an acquaintance. Also, starting a new TV show sucks. Now that I know it's an actual condition with a name, I'm not sure yet whether it makes things better or worse if I try to explain it to people to excuse my mistakes. If any other face blind people have useful tips or experiences, I'm all ears :)
  - majiy 4mo ago
caturopath 4mo ago
Like the poster, I'm faceblind. It isn't the worst thing: I'm not voice blind, height blind, age blind, hairstyle blind, gender blind, features associated with race and ethnicity blind, attractiveness blind, affect blind, context blind, etc., so I'm mostly good at figuring out who someone is. Within one encounter with a bunch of people, I try to note what someone is wearing. Every once in a while I don't recognize someone and I go through this whole thing of bringing up every biographical detail about them I remember and all the things we've talked about to show that I'm not an asshole who wasn't paying attention in the past. Fortunately, I have a decent memory for such things.
- noman-land 4mo ago
  This is fascinating. So you know that you've met someone before. You know things about them. But you don't recognize them? What does this mean? You don't remember their name? You don't know why or how you know them?
  - soco 4mo ago
    I'm not the OP neither have their problem, but I can't remember names. I know who the person in front of me is, we can talk pleasantly about everything - I have a good memory otherwise - but I can't remember their name to save my life. Luckily they very seldom notice that, if ever. And I won't tell, obviously.
    - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
      I'm similar, and yes, there are easy options to replace person's name with, as long as you're putting a bit of thought into what you're saying so as not to paint yourself into a name corner. Ironically, I'm insanely good at remembering faces. But it's kinda useless because of the name thing (and equally, the face context is also difficult).
      - soco 4mo ago
        A trick helping momentarily is introducing them to another person. Then I pick up their name from the conversation and can use it myself - at least for 10 minutes until I forget it again.

ryandrake 4mo ago

I find myself asking this every time a new software product is released. "Nice, but why can't this be usable without an account and a tether to the developer's cloud?"

salawat 4mo ago
And the answer is monetization. We can't just solve a problem. It has to have a business model built around it. No exceptions.
- Brusco_RF 4mo ago
  Feel free to solve a problem and release it for free. People do that every day.
  - ryandrake 4mo ago
    OR just sell me a widget. I don't want a relationship with the software developer or device manufacturer. I just want to buy something and forget about you.
  - hungryhobbit 4mo ago
    And people give donations to homeless people every day ... but it doesn't mean we have a systemic solution to homelessness. As said above, if you do want a systemic solution, it needs a business plan. That's just the reality of a world with scarce resources.
    - selfhoster1312 4mo ago
      Well i mean there is an obvious solution to homelessness: requisition the empty dwellings. That's not exactly a business plan for maintenance in the long term, but that's certainly much better than the current situation.
fennecbutt 4mo ago
Late stage capitalism.

majiy 4mo ago

Literally my thoughts. That would be so helpful, but I will not give any data-hungy company access to people around me. I recently heard the best way to explain faceblindness: Apples. Can you tell apples apart? Yes, sure, if you put two apples next to each other, they look similar, but there are differences. But could you recognize that specific apple among 50 similar ones? If an apple addressed you on the street, could you remember where you've seen it before? That is how it feels to be faceblind. There are workarounds, but they are context-dependent and error-prone. That apple with red hair and a beard? Sure, that's the colleague from the office next door. But was that the same apple that waved to you in the city yesterday? The only green apple among red ones? Easy to recognize. But only after some awkward misunderstandings you realize that there are two of them. And changes of hairstyle are a real problem. I once wondered who that new colleague was during lunchbreak. I was about to ask her, when she said something (unrelated) and I recognized her voice. I had worked with her for 10 years, she had colored her hair.

riffraff 4mo ago
Thank you so much for sharing this, I had no idea this condition existed and you provided a perfect explanation.
malfist 4mo ago
Thats exactly how I describe it. I recognize most people by their hair and voice, but its error prone. My other half, who I've been with for a decade and a half, put on a wig the other day and walked by me at a bar and the only thing I thought about was "that guy was good looking". He got a good laugh out of that.
eterm 4mo ago
I'm saving this comment, thank you for a great explanation of what it is like. I was in my late 20s when I realised I was "face-blind", but I should have realised a lot earlier, I remember reading in a book as a child about how "people can recognise a person by their face from a long distance, but find it difficult to recognise a voice", and I could not relate whatsoever to that passage. I thought I regularly struggle to recognise someone until they start speaking, but it wasn't until a decade or two later that I read about prosopagnosia and then suddenly a lot of things made sense. Your explanation is so much better than the rubbish illustrations of blanked or blurred faces, because it isn't like that at all, indeed sometimes I might rely on a detail about their face to recognise someone. It's why face-blind isn't a great term either, because it's not a kind of blindness, I can see just as well as anyone, it just doesn't trip the automatic and instinctual recognition that I understand most people have.

sureglymop 4mo ago

Probably quite feasible. Immich on my little raspberry pi is able to do facial recognition for 50k images over night.

cortesoft 4mo ago

This shouldn't be hard to do, facial recognition is pretty easy to run locally.

Stagnant 4mo ago

What ever model digiKam is using for face detection seems to be very accurate in my experience. It is open source and works fully offline.

Andrex 4mo ago

Meta has to release the hardware, then we can get started on alternate OSes. It's a shame open source hardware isn't a thing in this area, but we've been here before. (Buying locked down devices and installing alt OSes.)

godelski 4mo ago
All hardware is open if you're willing to open it up ;) But reverse engineering isn't as easy as my snarky response implies. But I do think more of us should get into hardware hacking. It's the only way we have to fight back. I'm tired of this "own nothing" paradigm and being forced into whatever dumb thing they want is to do. And it's so dumb too. There's not many power users but there's a disproportionate amount of resources dedicated to fucking us over

jabedude 4mo ago

Apple is the only company doing this sort of processing

e12e 4mo ago
And Google?

slicktux 4mo ago

It’s possible to make it offline but one would still need a phone for the object recognition software…that software would have to be what stays offline. Definitely doable.

dado3212 4mo ago

Isn’t this offline? Where do you see that it’s online?

eska 4mo ago
Does meta have any offline products? Their business model is to connect everything to the cloud (e.g. multiverse with ar glasses before)

gherkinnn 4mo ago

How do people around you react to your face blindness? Do they consider not being remembered rude? Do you get incredulous reactions like people with aphantasia?