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Comment by trog | Hacker News Reader

I pay about $30 every 3-4 months for a haircut and most of my clothes are 10+ years old (one of my favourite shirts, that I regularly wear in the home office, is the Australian team's football jersey from the 2006 World Cup).

I cheerfully use Google Meet with it's poor blurring that constantly pops things in and out of the background without giving it a second thought.

I judge people by the content of their words and the merit of their actions, not what they look like or how much effort they've gone to in order to have a perfect webcam production.

This tool looks super awesome and I can absolutely see myself using it. I've tried greenscreen in OBS before and decided it wasn't worth the effort for my purposes; something that is roughly decent as this looks at a glance will be really useful.

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Blurring the background is different than putting some other sort of background there. That doesn't bother me nearly as much.

Regardless, I am someone who never pays for a haircut and has very casual clothes. But this is something that, to me, indicates a complete lack of sensitivity to aesthetics, and in a large number of jobs/roles, that's a really bad sign.

There's also a bit of the "what is so important to hide?" question.

It's great if you can ignore such things, but not everyone can or does. This is almost like someone who has poor hygiene, who has dirty hair or a bit of a smell to them. Anyone would advise such a person to put in a bit of effort if they want career success. Same thing.

Nah, the blurring is just as bad. In the best of cases I find it to be firmly in the uncanny valley, as I also do of what little I’ve seen of software-based depth of field manipulation or artificial blurring in smartphone photography. In the typical case, it suffers from exactly the same issues as background replacement because it’s doing exactly the same thing, estimating a mask for the areas of interest and altering the rest. Half the hair will be blurred one moment, then one shoulder, then half the chair will flicker between being blurred and not blurred—it’s just as disconcerting and unpleasant.

> There's also a bit of the "what is so important to hide?" question.

It's a principal thing for me. My space is mine and work doesn't have a right to see into that. They aren't welcome in my home. Maybe I have a good office setup or maybe not. Maybe my home is clean today or not. It wasn't anybody's business pre-covid, and it remains nobody's business today.

Is it so hard to have just one portion of wall with a neutral color in one's home office setup?

I work in different part of my home, but I dedicate one small space for video calls, where I stand, not sit. It is designed to provide a plain background. If I didn't have a wall at my disposal I would have installed a white ikea roller window blind on the ceiling. It is much more effective than any blurring/background replacement algorithm.

You choose to work from home, you choose to welcome work in your home. The good thing is you still have the liberty to limit and design the small part of the home you are welcoming your coworker's in.

Assuming that you have a home office setup. Me, I have been working for 2 years from my dining table.

And people might see that as that you are working from home, but not willing or able to allocate a dedicated space for it so you can actually be as effective as possible. Nor are you willing to purchase or make a simple backdrop.

Which seems to be accurate, and in my opinion rightfully creates a negative impression in their minds.

A green screen also doesn't have to be expensive. Go to a fabric shop with a laptop running OBS (or maybe even a mobile phone that has an app that can do chroma keying), and find a roll of fabric with a color that works well. You should be able to find something that works, and it should not be more than one haircut worth to buy a few square meters of that. I did this myself at the start of the pandemic to be able to record some lectures at home, and it works just as well as a professional green screen (which I got later, its main advantage being easier to set up).

How did you get your job to pay for for the fabric and the time to set this all up?

I didn't. While the lectures were related to my job, I wanted to be able to keep using this equipment privately, and in such cases I prefer paying for it myself to avoid any conflicts of interest and the possibility of me having to return the equipment.

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