Face-recognising spy drone tech tapped up by... Quantum Quantum's StorNext file system could be used in the hunt for terrorist suspects in the near future. The storage giant has invested in video search tech biz NerVve so images and footage - such as material recorded from military surveillance drones - can be indexed and retrieved from StorNext vaults. StorNext is a suite of …
Don't shave off your beard! Try trimming it into different styles over time instead.
One thing I've found is that my beard (which I've had for more than 15 years) seems to fuck up Facebook's face-recognition software. This is because my beard keeps changing shape, altering the shape of my face as perceived by such software. As it grows, it "puffs out" around my lower cheeks and jowls, making my jawline look more square than when I trim it back. I also vary the style - sometimes I go for a professorial look, sometimes squaring the cheek line, sometimes letting it blow out to a "full bikie beard" look.
And when my mother posts photos of me on Facebook (she's a prolific Facebooker and has posted dozens of photos of me on there) it almost never auto-tags me (but it does my sister, mother and father, who doesn't have a beard) because in every new photo, my beard is a different shape to the last time.
I've noticed it mis-tags my brother as well, most likely because he also has a beard and varies his between muttonchops and goatee, among other styles. The one occasion I recall Facebook successfully auto-tagging me after Mum uploaded a new photo was when I had kept the exact same beard style for several months, with Mum uploading multiple photos of me in that time. After that I changed my style again, and for the next photo Mum uploaded it did not "recognise" me.
But if you shave off your beard, you'll give the software a chance to recognise the actual shape of your face, after which you won't be able to change it again (resculpting your jaw is a LOT harder than resculpting a beard!) and it could give the system a baseline. I don't know if that would affect the software's ability to recognise you if you grew the beard back at a later date, since I've had my beard continuously since the mid 90s and thus haven't tested it for this effect.
So keep your beard, but change the style every few weeks. Let it grow, trim it back, crop it to a goatee, grow it to a "professor" look, and so on. I've found this works a treat for fucking up Facebook's auto-recognition software and I can assume this'll hold true for police/surveillance software as well.
I wonder how long it'll be before the Western police states realise that face-recognition software can be thwarted this way, and start banning beards as being "unlawful disguises"?
Should not there be a comma after items in a series (total greater than two items that clearly are not composing a pair or group best served without a comma, or when words chosen clearly are to be separated for effective distinction) preceding 'and'?
I suspect that the company in the story supplied the lists and buzzwords....
"Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance"
should read as:
”Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance” the way I was taught in the 80's. Today, even journos commit this flagrant error, and numerous of them have for decades. Just as bad, teachers of English as a second language also commit this offense.
Before anyone downmods me, note that I readily state that my posts have typos and will in the future. But, I am not a journalist, news reporter, or any other authoritative source.
I just have a pet peeve with lists lacking proper comma delimiting. (I suspect that i will regret having posted this...)
Optional, until a lawyer or a case clerk bungles a case. Or, a company weasels out of a contract because two options are deemed mandatory, or because two must-have triggers are declared optional. Making the comma use an option in lists and clauses can prove to be and probably has been dangerous on occasion.
Segue/anectode ("seguedote", to coin a phrase): It is almost as annoying as actors and actresses who have a verbal run-on speaking style. Granted, it sounds "natural", but it has a distraction/distracting quality in that it sometimes seems the actor or actress wants to be pretentious, or that the dialog writer is cramming as much speech per minute as possible, leading to a dizzying experience for some viewers. ST Voyager's Captain Janeway gave me that impression. But, I liked Kate Mulgrew as an actress, and, I was happy to see Trek finally air a regular, multi-season female ship driver in the multi-years series.
Anyway, cheers!
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