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Comment by jcuenod | Hacker News Reader

That's why I also rotate license plates and repaint my car twice a year.

you're joking, but there's a whole genre of "adversarial fashion"[0][1] dedicated to making clothing that spams these sort of public data recognition services. Hoodies with license plates, face masks with weird facial features, etc. Often optimized against actual neural networks too

[0] https://adversarialfashion.com/

[1] https://www.capable.design/

That’s really cool, I wonder effective these designs really are! This reminds me of a font that came out 10 years ago ZXX [1] that was presumably designed to hide from OCRs.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/zxx-fonts-that-google-cant-r...

This is awesome, and thanks for posting this. I had no idea.

Gait detection renders any of this obsolute sadly.

Something something silly walks

You beat me to it:)

Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCLp7zodUiI

Luckily my gait is not in an adtech company's database and sold to the government, like my face probably is.

How do you know?

ID phone Bluetooth on passing, or even facial rec, then it gets tied to gait, and it's forever tied.

Just keep your phone down in your third pant leg instead of using a rock.

If you're willing to go to the lengths of adversarial fashion, you're probably also willing to walk around with a stone in your shoe, or in high heels.

Pfft. Stilts, 10 footers, that's the key.

Or dance like you've never danced before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R46cX0AjzT4

And cost at scale renders gait detection detection and most face detection at scale useless. The sexy movie detection methods all suck.

Go with what works. Just id people via their phones with a dirtbox.

A third pant leg sown on one side with a rock on the bottom will (probably) throw off some algos.

This is a good idea! https://youtu.be/BNhriA2xq9E

And set off hella red flags for everything else (probably wouldn't be too much of a problem if you just say "it's to foil gait detection" when you get interrogated about your third leg. people tend to be cool with all kinds of weird shit as long as it's for a reason). Could maybe work if gait detection is the only adversary in your life for sure.

Put different insoles in your shoe every day

gait analysis is up there with bite marks(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/28/forensics-bi... )/jeans wear marks(https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1917222117) and other FBI post hoc ergo propter hoc fraud.

If it worked this would be a solved case https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/washingtondc/ne...

snake oil

I wonder how effective that is considering storage costs are very cheap and an AI can easily filter out images that are either “car” or “not car”

Not hotdog?

This made me realize that recent openAI tech is able to cut through misleading or confusing images, even finding the potentially inferred humour or absurdity layered in the images. I wonder how we’ll find a way to trick that kind of technology as well.

This is really cool. Though the Capable Design site with its animations is a bit adversarial to me browsing it.

That's why my license plate is shaped like 3 different light bulbs, and is hidden in a grid of light bulb shaped objects.

Oh hey, I just did your license plate as a CAPTCHA!

This is actually a common practice. Thieves will jack someone’s plates (prefer that they don’t notice) after stealing a car. It is pretty effective, since most people don’t realize their plates have been swapped until they have been pulled over for vehicle theft, so the cops aren’t even looking for the right plate for a few days, and by then they’ve already swapped again.

Better put an apple tag in your car just in case.

You use license plates? pleb!

Why Steve Jobs Never Had License Plates on His Car https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-l...

I also change my facial hair style 4 times a year. Will start getting plastic surgery twice a year starting next year.

I just inked an adversarial CV tattoo onto my face, worked great until that image leaked into the training data.

Should have tattooed a QR code that auto downloads a malware that bricks A100s.

Against face recognition you could use CV dazzle makeup [1] to look less like a face. However I wouldn't recommend using that approach for your vehicle

1 https://dangerousminds.net/comments/foil_facebooks_facial_re...

I think that's actually quite common on new car models. The dazzle paint job makes it harder for the press to see the shape.

E.g.: https://www.bmw.com/en/automotive-life/prototype-cars.html

I don't want my car "harder to see" going at 100 miles down the highway.

Oh no, it's super easy to see, just harder to tell if it's a coupe or a sedan or whatever. New lines in the body panels get drowned out by the pattern, etc.

I always wondered if this still worked with a IR/UV camera too...?

I vaguely recall reading (probably in the book All Corvettes Are Red) that the C5 Corvette was driven around with Camaro body panels to fool the media.

I wonder how the face painting antics of Death Metal bands would hold up to face recognition software?

Sorry for being pedantic, but it's usually Black Metal bands that wear the face paint that you're thinking of :)

sounds like a slippery slope to voluntary hip surgery for gait correction

I always wondered if this could be beat by putting a pebble in your shoe or something.

It’s been a long time since I read it but I think that’s exactly how it was beat in Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother.

Not sure if it's changed now, but just wearing flip flops used to defeat gait recognition...

That's why I wear an rpi connected to four lcd's on my face that display randomly chosen beard tiles.

It's also why I started Our Lady of the Anonymity Pool where we gather for music and fellowship, and to recharge and distribute beard screens to our congregants and visitors.

Phillip K Dick imagined a "scramble suit" that did just that in a Scanner Darkly, continuously randomizing the users facial features.

This is currently possible in real time on consumer mobile hardware, looks neat

The film has a good representation of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aS4xhTaIPc

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