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Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API

chirag64.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API

#7

Post by captainmuon »

At the risk of sounding grumpy, this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities that only a few giants can maintain, by including everything and the kitchen sink.

Face detection is a perfect example of what should be a plugin. I'm not saying it has to be a horrible old school NPAPI plugin. It could be a sandboxed app, it could be a WebAssembly library, and so on.

Edit: nothing against the OP's post, it's probably cool although I cannot test it on this PC :-)

Re: Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API

#8

Post by squarefoot »

captainmuon wrote: post #7

At the risk of sounding grumpy, this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities that only a few giants can maintain, by including everything and the kitchen sink. Face detection is a perfect example of what should be a plugin. I'm not saying it has to be a horrible old school NPAPI plugin. It could be a sandboxed app, it could be a WebAssembly library, and so on. Edit: nothing…

"this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities"

Totally agree on the technical side, let alone the privacy violation issues when Joe User leaves it running with the camera facing his bed, or someone asks me to do some maintenance to his pc/browser/whatever and after 5seconds a server somewhere knows I was there. I'm free to avoid that stuff, but I can't force users to do the same, and unfortunately most users will leave it on. If the technology phones home uploading associations between captured images, then we're back to Facebook square one, just without Facebook. Want to make it safer? Leave it outside the browser, off by default at every session, and keep all data local. Contrary to popular belief, writing software that does not go online is not a crime.

Disclaimer: I could not try it because my browser luckily isn't supported, however to me it's pretty easy to foresee possible abusive/malicious uses of face recognition should it come as a standardized always on asset in a browser. Just think of Flash.

Re: Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API

#9

Post by captainmuon »

squarefoot wrote: post #8
captainmuon wrote: post #7

At the risk of sounding grumpy, this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities that only a few giants can maintain, by including everything and the kitchen sink. Face detection is a perfect example of what should be a plugin. I'm not saying it has to be a horrible old school NPAPI plugin. It could be a sandboxed app, it could be a WebAssembly library, and so on. Edit: nothing…

"this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities" Totally agree on the technical side, let alone the privacy violation issues when Joe User leaves it running with the camera facing his bed, or someone asks me to do some maintenance to his pc/browser/whatever and after 5seconds a server somewhere knows I was there. I'm free to avoid that stuff, but I can't force users to do the…

Thankfully, this is about face detection I think, not face recognition which indeed would be a privacy nightmare.

OTOH, face detection can be trivially done with OpenCV, and probably in WebAssembly, so there is no need to ship this in the browser core.

Re: Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API

#10

Post by ameliaquining »

captainmuon wrote: post #7

At the risk of sounding grumpy, this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities that only a few giants can maintain, by including everything and the kitchen sink. Face detection is a perfect example of what should be a plugin. I'm not saying it has to be a horrible old school NPAPI plugin. It could be a sandboxed app, it could be a WebAssembly library, and so on. Edit: nothing…

This can't be a WebAssembly library. Its purpose is to provide access to hardware implementations of face-detection algorithms (with a software fallback). Many phones these days ship with this.
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