More Racist Electronics

[Dimmauk]

Face-Detection Cameras: Users' Racism Charges Explained
Time.com


When Joz Wang and her brother bought their mom a Nikon Coolpix S630 digital camera for Mother's Day last year, they discovered what seemed to be a malfunction. Every time they took a portrait of each other smiling, a message flashed across the screen asking, "Did someone blink?" No one had. "I thought the camera was broken!" Wang, 33, recalls. But when her brother posed with his eyes open so wide that he looked "bug-eyed," the messages stopped.

Wang, a Taiwanese-American strategy consultant who goes by the Web handle "jozjozjoz," thought it was funny that the camera had difficulties figuring out when her family had their eyes open. So she posted a photo of the blink warning on her blog under the title, "Racist Camera! No, I did not blink... I'm just Asian!" The post was picked up by Gizmodo and Boing Boing, and prompted at least one commenter to note, "You would think that Nikon, being a Japanese company, would have designed this with Asian eyes in mind." (See Techland's top 10 gadgets of 2009.)

Nikon isn't the only big brand whose consumer cameras have displayed an occasional - though clearly unintentional - bias toward Caucasian faces. Face detection, which is one of the latest "intelligent" technologies to trickle down to consumer cameras, is supposed to make photography more convenient. Some cameras with face detection are designed to warn you when someone blinks; others are programmed to automatically take a picture when somebody smiles - a feature that, theoretically, makes the whole problem of timing your shot to catch the brief glimpse of a grin obsolete. Face detection has also found its way into computer webcams, where it can track a person's face during a video conference or enable face-recognition software to prevent unauthorized access.

The principle behind face detection is relatively simple, even if the math involved can be complex. Most people have two eyes, eyebrows, a nose and lips - and an algorithm can be trained to look for those common features, or more specifically, their shadows. (For instance, when you take a normal image and heighten the contrast, eye sockets can look like two dark circles.) But even if face detection seems pretty straightforward, the execution isn't always smooth.

Indeed, just last month, a white employee at an RV dealership in Texas posted a YouTube video showing a black co-worker trying to get the built-in webcam on an HP Pavilion laptop to detect his face and track his movements. The camera zoomed in on the white employee and panned to follow her, but whenever the black employee came into the frame, the webcam stopped dead in its tracks. "I think my blackness is interfering with the computer's ability to follow me," the black employee jokingly concludes in the video. "Hewlett-Packard computers are racist."

[Qalbert]

i shall post here what I posted there, although it is less relevant
http://static.tvguide.com/MediaBin/G...terOffTed5.jpg

[QuePsiXI]

Fuck you whale, fuck you dolphin?

[Pirian]

Fuck you wrare, fuck you dorprin?

ftfy

[QuePsiXI]

Yeah yeah thanks, I didn't want to do that myself.
Now here's a corresponding picture:
http://hillslearning.files.wordpress...rk_dolphin.jpg
As a bonus, all of those beautiful white people are appropriately looking into the camera according to Nikon's standards.

[Binkie]

http://pix.motivatedphotos.com/2009/...cistcamera.jpg

[Tajin]

That is one ugly bitch if I were a camera I wouldnt want to take a picture either.

[Narol]

Maybe if she didn't blink so much, it'd take proper pictures of her.

[Fievel]

That is one ugly bitch if I were a camera I wouldnt want to take a picture either.

^

[Blarg]

I'm not racist but if asians didn't walk and drive so slowly they could get home quicker and be able to get more sleep so their eyes aren't so heavy. It's not the cameras fault at all.

[Demisses]

I'm not racist but if asians didn't walk and drive so slowly they could get home quicker and be able to get more sleep so their eyes aren't so heavy. It's not the cameras fault at all.

Sounds logical to me

[Fhqwghads]

I thought the article was pretty fucking funny. It was a refreshing change of pace, I was 100% expecting outrage and lawsuits being filed against the companies, and instead the people in the story were joking about it. It'll all be fun and games until Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton get into the picture though (and of course the HP camera will promptly ignore them due to their blackness.)

[Tankjr]

(and of course the HP camera will promptly ignore them due to their blackness.)

Not ignore, no. It will avoid eye contact and cross to the other side of the street.

[QuePsiXI]

What asians do you know that walk slow? All the ones I see walk fast or even jog.

[AoE]

What asians do you know that walk slow? All the ones I see walk fast or even jog.

Shit cracks me up everytime I see an asian chick do that awkward run when she needs to excuse herself or when crossing the street to beat the light. Can't really describe it but anyone who's seen it knows what I'm talking about.

[QuePsiXI]

Bunch of Asian's in graduate school with me, I got to see it all of the time. Good show.

[archibaldcrane]

I generally find Asian men have a pretty good sense of humor about how slanty they are.

[Despain]

Asians that go to McDonald's always get chicken nuggets. True story.

EDIT: Sweet and Sour sauce.

[Dimmauk]

What asians do you know that walk slow? All the ones I see walk fast or even jog.

All the Asians I see are super fast, jump super high, and can run on trees.

[Takedown3]

this camera is very similar to me