[HN Gopher] Viral 'I'm not a cat' filter is decades-old software
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Viral 'I'm not a cat' filter is decades-old software
Author : beermonster
Score : 318 points
Date : 2021-02-10 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| wyxuan wrote:
| Dang. I was leafing through Zoom settings to find this filter...
| michaelmior wrote:
| If you actually want to have some interesting filters, I've
| found Snap Camera[0] is the easiest. It just presents itself as
| a virtual webcam and sends over the processed video so you can
| use it with pretty much any application.
|
| [0] https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/
| dylan604 wrote:
| Oh great, now more people are going to find out about this
| cancer on society.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Can't let people have any fun now, can we?
| matsemann wrote:
| Same. Couldn't find anything similar on snapchat either (snap
| camera can be selected as a camera in most software). The video
| has been all the rage in work discussions today, would have
| liked to be a cat in some meeting tomorrow.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Seems fishy. I would say that there is a non-zero percent chance
| that he is a cat.
| danaliv wrote:
| He said he isn't--but that's exactly what a cat would say.
| sorenjan wrote:
| I'd say he's almost surely not a cat.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely
| [deleted]
| jspash wrote:
| And 50/50 that he's alive.
| vijayr02 wrote:
| Well, we won't know till we check [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
| mhh__ wrote:
| Is he in a box with poison?
| vijayr02 wrote:
| Well, we won't know till we check [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
| cutemonster wrote:
| Hmm. "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck", then
| it is a duck, probably. (As the Ruby people know.)
|
| But if looks like a cat, and talks like a human?
|
| > non-zero percent
|
| A cat, + these new deep learning speech generation neutral
| nets?
| hakanito wrote:
| He was there live, not a cat, but died inside.
| Terretta wrote:
| As Rod Ponton awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found
| himself transformed in his video into a gigantic kitten.
| martincmartin wrote:
| For those who don't get the reference: it's a projection of
| the first line of The Metamorphosis by Kafka.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis
| kbelder wrote:
| We need a filter to make a cat look like a human.
|
| (I meant this as a joke comment, but now I'm thinking... those
| filters aren't that hard to make, and I've been wanting a
| project... this one would have my wife's support.)
| cutemonster wrote:
| But what about the voice? If there was a miaaou to speech
| converter too
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Just pick a random word to start with and let GPT-3 do the
| rest maybe?
| brokencode wrote:
| Okay, while I feel bad for the guy because some half-baked
| software on his laptop made him look silly, it was legitimately
| delightful to see a cute kitten appearing before a judge. I hope
| the guy isn't too embarrassed by this and sees the humor in the
| situation.
| qwertay wrote:
| He and the judge are currently doing rounds of morning news tv
| including an interview with Sunrise in Australia so I assume he
| sees the humor in it.
| FAANG_dream wrote:
| Yeah I shared it with a lot of people but I was feeling bad at
| the same time :-)
|
| But good to know what guy enjoyed it in the end.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I saw a journalist tweet that he had spoken with him and that
| he was enjoying the reaction.
| jlv2 wrote:
| 11 years is "decades-old".
| floren wrote:
| Using filters like this reminds me of the discussion in Infinite
| Jest, where people used masks and tiny dioramas to present a more
| attractive appearance over video calls before eventually
| abandoning it all and going back to audio-only.
|
| Personally, I keep my webcam off at all times. Constantly mugging
| for the camera to show that I'm following along gets old.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Shhh - I'm working on a blog post about this very idea after
| finishing Jest a couple months ago. :) Happy to see I'm not the
| only one who made the connection!
| floren wrote:
| Wait til you hear my groundbreaking, never-before-voiced
| comparison between AirPods and the Seashells from Fahrenheit
| 451 ;)
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I like being face to face for small conversations with
| coworkers, but the bigger the group the less likely I am to use
| camera, also if someone is sharing or presenting there's no
| reason to use camera.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I have not read that yet, but it seems very accurate. If you
| look up "Zoom fatigue" there are lots of people writing about
| why video calls can be so stressful. When you've got a webcam
| on you're way more aware of what you're doing with your body
| and face than you would be in an in-person meeting. Most people
| at my company have their webcams off at this point.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I haven't really noticed it personally. It might be because
| my meeting load didn't really increase during quarantine. We
| have like one extra "watercooler" meeting and I actually
| don't mind chatting with my coworkers. I will say that I
| generally keep my camera and mic muted if I'm in a meeting
| where I'm not actively part of the discussion.
|
| Maybe it's my performance background, but if I'm talking (and
| especially if I'm presenting) it really important to me to be
| able to read the room, and it's really hard for me to present
| if I can't.
| rodgerd wrote:
| As someone with mild autism, I welcome the neurotypicals to
| _literally every day of my life_.
| [deleted]
| qwertay wrote:
| I had my camera on for the first week of WFH but I live with
| other people and having to constantly indicate to them whether
| my camera is on or not gets old fast.
| S_Bear wrote:
| I keep my Nintendo Switch positioned near my camera. Makes it
| look like I'm really into the meeting.
| tyingq wrote:
| Someone needs to make this the other kind of viral and make it
| the default webcam device via a viral vector.
| bombela wrote:
| A cute but still very real example of greed.
|
| Dell is paid to advertise a product. The product is on by
| default. Such that the clueless user can learn about how much it
| would improve their life.
| donatj wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the software was free.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Free to the user, but these "free" apps were usually
| sponsored where the software developer paid Dell to include
| on all of their laptops
| donatj wrote:
| That seems pretty charitable in that case. I don't see
| where greed is involved here?
| toss1 wrote:
| The greed is the advertising forced upon the user, at the
| expense of their computer resources and their time, in
| order to provoke them to buy more stuff that they
| otherwise would not ever think existed or that they would
| need.
|
| The only charitable bit is that this popped up yesterday
| and gave millions of people a very much-needed laugh, but
| that was entirely unintentional.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You replied to a statement that had less than 25 words in
| it, and not one of them was "greed". The statement I
| replied to also did not include the word "greed".
| donatj wrote:
| You replied to my reply to OP who said:
|
| > A cute but still very real example of greed.
|
| Everything I said on my reply is in the context of that.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Humans degrade gracefully, don't they? The BBC story does not say
| happens next but I'm guessing they proceeded with the case.
| purephase wrote:
| BBC hijacks the back button? Weird choice, that.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Seems like they're redirecting me from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com
| with history, so the back button only changes my country unless
| I hit it fast enough.
| bovine3dom wrote:
| I wonder why they don't use `location.replace` [1]. It isn't
| exactly new.
|
| Edit: ah, I see, it doesn't work for changing domains. Still,
| they could use e.g. bbc.co.uk/[country-code]/ as many other
| sites do.
|
| [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/Location/re...
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| It's redirects international visitors to bbc.com
| matham wrote:
| This is very annoying. I sometimes want to see how BBC is
| covering events from a UK perspective, but it always
| redirects to bbc.com.
|
| I could switch my VPN to UK, but it never seems worth the
| effort.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| It works for me
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I think it's because they have ads internationally but aren't
| allowed to have ads in the UK
| emayljames wrote:
| You have to wonder why that was a choice, when they could
| serve/not serve ads based on location, instead of hard
| redirecting.
| wmil wrote:
| Could be a legal issue. If they have a legal requirement
| to not serve ads in the UK it's good to have a clean
| separation where they can see if the redirect is broken.
| jayflux wrote:
| SEO mainly. They prefer to use .com for international
| stuff and keep uk users on .co.uk
| wincy wrote:
| I'm curious if the person who recorded this is going to get fined
| $500 and a jail term of 180 days.
|
| Speaking of which, does anyone know why the jail terms are always
| far more onerous than the fine? Even back when I worked at Target
| making $9 an hour, it'd take me maybe two weeks to come up with
| $500, why are the jail time sentences so disproportionately long
| compared to the maximum fine that can be levied? Is this because
| of inflation? Or to encourage you to pay the fine rather than
| serve jail time?
| jackpirate wrote:
| I've always assumed that whenever the law was originally
| passed, the fine and jail time were more sensibly related, but
| inflation has caused the fine's impact to plummet without
| reducing the jail time in a similar way. I'd love to know if
| anyone has a more detailed explanation.
| pain_perdu wrote:
| The judge in the case appears to have been the one to release
| the footage. https://twitter.com/JudgeFergusonTX
| [deleted]
| interestica wrote:
| Where does this software exist in the 'stack' from webcam to
| videoconference software? Does it let you use the filters on any
| videoconf software? Seems like a vulnerability...
| joombaga wrote:
| It takes the hardware webcam feed, adds its effects, and pushes
| to a feed via a virtual webcam device. So yeah, you could use
| it with most videoconf software.
| netsharc wrote:
| There are also virtual webcam devices that don't take their
| input from a USB webcam, but from a smartphone app.
| Vulnerability? Luckily we're still free to install these kinds
| of software on our computers.
| delecti wrote:
| It's possible to install programs like this (for example
| there's one by Snapchat) which take the feed of one video
| source, and outputs a virtual webcam source. Early in the
| lockdown last year my manager was very amused he could be a
| potato in meetings.
| brink wrote:
| "Recording of this hearing or livestream is prohibited."
| JadeNB wrote:
| It was apparently posted by the judge himself:
|
| > Seeing the moment as an educational opportunity, Ferguson
| posted the video and it was shared by Texas attorney Kendyl
| Hanks and Reuters U.S. Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley.
| By Tuesday evening, one version on Twitter had been viewed more
| than 18 million times.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/09/cat-law...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Did the judge get consent from the parties involved?
| maest wrote:
| Cats can't consent.
| bena wrote:
| But, but, I'm here live. I'm not a cat.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Can you cite purrcedent?
| [deleted]
| ars wrote:
| Original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlPGPupdd8
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Tangentially, the cat laywer is a piece of shit:
|
| https://reason.com/2021/02/10/zoom-cat-lawyer-rod-ponton-use...
| fossuser wrote:
| This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have
| gotten set by a clueless user.
|
| The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some
| shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that
| defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell
| computer with this software and hasn't used video chat on it
| before this.
|
| This is extra hostile, because it's separate from whatever video
| chat application they were using - so it would have been harder
| to know about and turn off.
|
| As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not
| install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was
| damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but
| they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for
| users. OS companies should make their own hardware.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not
| install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was
| damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but
| they lost.
|
| One of the greatest losses from the retail Microsoft Store
| shutdown was the loss of Microsoft's "Signature Edition" PC
| program. They only sold in their Stores PCs with clean Windows
| installs, which they labeled "Signature Edition". Many of the
| OEMS participated (Dell, Lenovo, others), and generally when
| you could directly compare Signature Edition models to their
| regular direct from the OEM counterparts (which the companies
| model naming/numbering schemes often intentionally tried to
| make hard to do) it was often about a $50 premium over the
| "full of junk installed" PC (showing about how much all that
| bloatware is valuable to the OEMs if it subsidizes machines by
| about $50).
|
| For a brief period it even looked like other retailers might
| adopt Signature Edition sales and you could even walk into a
| Staples or a Best Buy and find sales people that could source
| Signature Edition machines, for the people that still liked to
| try to deal shop between multiple retail stores.
|
| I miss being able to give the advice "buy whatever computer you
| want from Microsoft Store, or if you go to Staples/Best Buy
| keep asking sales people until you meet the person that knows
| what Signature Edition means and you generally won't have any
| problems with the machine".
|
| Now the advice is back to "buy a Surface from Microsoft or be
| prepared to spend a couple hours using the Windows Fresh Start
| tool from Microsoft first".
| neves wrote:
| Nice, I never heard about Fresh Start Tool:
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-
| a-f...
|
| Would I miss the updated drivers from Dell or other vendor?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| WHQL standards _should_ mean that for any PC purchase today
| (and many in the last decade or so) Windows Update will
| always have the most up-to-date "basic driver" on its
| servers.
|
| There's some controversy (linked elsewhere in this thread)
| that those basic drivers are allowed by Microsoft to
| advertise their "full bloat" versions in notifications and
| launch time popups. The flipside to that controversy is
| that if you want the "full bloat" versions (such as the
| Geforce Experience if you are a game player), that makes it
| easy to acquire them as it is general a case of go through
| the notifications and popups on first launch, from what
| I've seen.
| FooHentai wrote:
| I don't believe you would, drivers come in via windows
| update in modern windows. You should at worst miss cutting
| edge versions made available on the manufacturers website
| prior to arriving on windows update.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Unfortunately many of the driver packages Microsoft itself
| distributes come with the worst bloatware imaginable.
|
| Quality control on Microsofts driver database is really poor.
| r00fus wrote:
| It seems that Microsoft learned that advertising (and
| crapware pre-installs) is so profitable, they just bake it
| right into the Start menu as of Windows 10. Oh and let's add
| telemetry as well.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Telemetry in Windows has been out of the box since Windows
| XP. Whether you are correct or not to be antagonistic about
| it, that ship sailed a long time before Windows 10 and
| current HN hysteria about it is almost funny (especially
| given how often articles about telemetry driven development
| and A/B testing get upvoted on HN when a startup is doing
| it).
|
| You can turn off the advertising ("Suggestions") and as
| long as the bundled "crapware" remains UWP sandboxed, it is
| a far cry from most of what the OEMs have been accused of.
| technofiend wrote:
| The best thing about Windows now is that once you've
| registered your machine via their online tool, reregistering
| after a clean install is the click of a button.
|
| They have a windows 10 builder tool that downloads the ISO
| and burns it to USB or DVD. So there's not much stopping a
| customer from registering and then doing a crapware-free
| clean install. The downside (besides needing the skill and
| time to do it) is you'll lose any baked in freeware but the
| line between freeware, trialware and crapware is so thin now
| I'm not sure that's a concern.
|
| Finally you can rein in the data collection and remove much
| of the microsoft freeware by using
| https://old.reddit.com/r/tronscript.
| reificator wrote:
| > _The best thing about Windows now is that once you 've
| registered your machine via their online tool,
| reregistering after a clean install is the click of a
| button._
|
| > _They have a windows 10 builder tool that downloads the
| ISO and burns it to USB or DVD. So there 's not much
| stopping a customer from registering and then doing a
| crapware-free clean install. The downside (besides needing
| the skill and time to do it) is you'll lose any baked in
| freeware but the line between freeware, trialware and
| crapware is so thin now I'm not sure that's a concern._
|
| And the best thing about your computer is that it's so
| complicated that a determined manufacturer like Lenovo can
| hide their crapware installers in, say, the UEFI. Which
| will then automatically install them on a fresh OS install.
|
| You make the mistake of thinking that you own your
| computer. You do not.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870
| [deleted]
| craftinator wrote:
| Have you tried Linux?
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| I found this out with my ASUS motherboard on my desktop.
| There's a UEFI option which bootstraps an automatic
| installation of their own software called Armory Crate
| which then invokes itself to install a load of "junk".
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| >Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS
| companies should make their own hardware.
|
| That is a pretty strange conclusion to draw. I would say this
| is a reason computers should ship with no software installed
| whatsoever. Hardware vendors using software as a differentiator
| is what started this mess. All PCs are pretty much
| interchangeable and should be treated like it.
|
| (If they aren't interchangeable, that's because someone is
| selling broken hardware. Looking at you, Nvidia.)
| kawsper wrote:
| > As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not
| install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was
| damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but
| they lost.
|
| And now they are actively distributing it through Windows
| Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24502768
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| These manufacturer "drivers" are so incredibly obnoxious. How
| can Microsoft be powerless against this? I managed to reverse
| engineer's most of my laptop's features and replace the slow
| manufacturer software with my own. Surely Microsoft can pay
| professionals to do the same thing...
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Not exactly. The popup in that example is an installer for
| companion software which provides functionality for the
| hardware that was listed on the box. The installer appears
| when you first plug in the device. If you close it, nothing
| is installed and it never appears again.
| duxup wrote:
| It's old software, it's not like there was much of a standard
| on how to apply filters and etc decades ago. Everything was a
| one off attempt to get the job done.
|
| And even today everything about audio / video chat is wonky.
|
| I'm always trying to figure out what application is using what
| audio or video device. Is the OS messing it up or the
| application or what is any given conference app choosing to use
| today ....
|
| It's bad when Lego Star Wars is onto it:
|
| https://youtu.be/dwNWTmN-x4s?t=191
| cjohansson wrote:
| Same here, even if Google Meet, Skype, Teams, Slack et. al
| worked last week will it work now after latest firmware- and
| software update? Many times it doesn't without tweaks and the
| UI might have changed as well. I would like a external
| physical device I can use for video meetings that guarantee
| 100% working without needing to tweak anything, I think a lot
| of companies would be willing to pay for that
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Facebook is trying (tried?) that with the Portal, but it
| was only limited to Facebook Messenger IIRC
| politelemon wrote:
| Hard disagree, it's a very selective (and unnecessary)
| reasoning that completely ignores the dangerous mindset and
| harm to users that closed ecosystems promote.
| echelon wrote:
| > Another reason why the macOS model is better for users.
|
| This makes it possible for the OS companies to bilk the entire
| industry while they protect their ecosystem with an infinitely
| deep moat.
|
| There's a spectrum here. On one end, we have completely a
| completely open OS. Less knowledgable people can certainly be
| harmed. On the other, the OS is a protected fiefdom. An entire
| industry is protected and taxed, and the execution model held
| hostage. You can't run or distribute software freely.
|
| There's good reason Microsoft lost their case. The requirements
| for openness are better for competition and innovation, even if
| it sometimes hurts the little guy.
|
| A better, targeted solution for this exact case might be
| regulation requiring that OEMs offer a zero-bloat option to
| consumers. They could add a price markup to make back their
| margin. (Hardware, other than luxury hardware, can have razor
| thin margins.) Zero regulation (maintaining the status quo)
| isn't really the end of the world, either.
|
| All giants should have weak points. Microsoft, Google, Apple,
| etc. If they don't, we get trampled.
| yardie wrote:
| > Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this
| crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their
| brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost.
|
| This is only part of the story but functionally it was the
| same. Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure. And they didn't
| take security seriously until it started getting really bad
| mid-2000s.
| jcadam wrote:
| > Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure.
|
| To be (somewhat) fair, those Operating Systems were intended
| to run on standalone consumer machines that weren't
| permanently attached to a network. The most likely means of
| getting infected with a virus/malware back in the Win95 days
| was via the floppy drive.
|
| Though always-on internet connections was clearly the
| direction things were moving toward the end of the 90s -
| there was no excuse for going back to the trough with WinME
| rather than pushing everyone to NT.
| markdown wrote:
| > Also 95/98/Me were woefully insecure.
|
| Who could forget the login bypass "hack":
| https://i.imgur.com/rG0p0b2.gif
| gibolt wrote:
| Would have been amazing if their QA team had this as
| something to test for
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Something similar works with the Windows 7 recovery
| partition; it pretends you have to login to one of the
| administrator accounts to get control, but one of the
| dialog has a link to a privacy policy that opens in Notepad
| and from its file open dialog you can start command
| prompts, explorer etc.
| kemotep wrote:
| You can do a trick on Windows 10 too (if the disk isn't
| encrypted and secure boot enabled).
|
| Boot a Linux usb live boot of choice, mount the Windows
| C: parition. Rename the Command Prompt exe to be the
| accessibility or sticky keys exe (something roughly along
| those lines). Save and reboot into Windows. Hit the on
| screen keyboard button on the login screen and an
| administrator level command prompt opens allowing you to
| reset the local admin password to be able to log in or do
| anything else that you would like to do.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Sounds more like a legal problem than a problem with the model.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not
| install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was
| damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but
| they lost._
|
| This was actually central to the DOJ antitrust case against
| Microsoft. As part of the settlement, Microsoft had to agree to
| allow OEMs to keep installing crapware [1].
|
| It's things like this that make me a little nervous when people
| say that going after big tech with antitrust law will
| necessarily be good for the consumer.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1274453172665253890
| Razengan wrote:
| > _It 's things like this that make me a little suspicious
| when people say that going after big tech with antitrust law
| will necessarily be good for the consumer._
|
| Yes. This is what we see coming from a mile away when people
| (usually user-hostile devs) clamor for the App Store to be
| broken up etc.
| haram_masala wrote:
| Matt Stoller's "Big" includes an interesting (though flawed)
| history of how anti-monopoly efforts have often been
| sacrificed for the good of the consumer. Which arguably was a
| short-term good.
| mav3rick wrote:
| Yes, a bunch of DOJ lawyers who barely know tech will
| decide the good of tech.
| kibwen wrote:
| It's a bit naive to think that Microsoft's argument there
| wasn't just them grasping at straws at any attempt to avoid
| anti-trust regulation. History has shown that Microsoft
| themselves would happily jump at the chance to stuff their
| own pockets by pre-installing crapware on your computer, as
| evidenced by all the junk and ads on even fresh installs of
| modern Windows. Remember the Candy Crush auto-install
| debacle? https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-steer-clear-of-
| windows-...
| fossuser wrote:
| If I had to guess (without reading the case specifically),
| it's probably because Microsoft screwed up by forcing OEMs to
| not install netscape in order to crush them.
|
| It's hard to differentiate 'crapware' from competition,
| particularly given the context where Microsoft had just
| leveraged their power over OEMs to crush a competitor.
|
| This still sucks though, a better outcome for users would
| have been Microsoft being able to require the machines to
| sell with a clean OS and then allowing OEMs to install
| software for the user at their request (rather than the OEMs
| being able to bundle crap for kickbacks).
|
| Somewhat related, apparently the netscape guys went to
| Redmond and hung up signs around Microsoft's campus mocking
| them for ignoring the internet. Legend has it Gates saw these
| and pivoted teams to IE with a focus on crushing Netscape.
|
| Startup talk often discusses how most startups fail not due
| to competition, but because of internal collapse. Big
| companies can't compete, innovator's dilemma, etc. There's a
| lot of truth to that but this is a counter example (and
| others exist too).
|
| Wildly stupid to antagonize the elephant that's focused on
| other things to direct all of their resources to destroying
| you.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| You're making a mountain out of a hill. The threat level here
| is purrrrple at most
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Step one, back in the day when computers shipped with cd drives
| and a windows cd, was to format c:, and then re-install windows
| from scratch to eliminate the crap ware. I haven't used windows
| in many years. I assume that's still the way to go.
| pickle-wizard wrote:
| Back in the early 2000s I worked in a small Mom and Pop
| computer store. One of big selling points was that our custom
| built PCs were not full of the crud you got from the big
| OEMs. If you didn't buy it, we didn't install it.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| Download ISO, burn to USB, boot from USB and install is the
| modern equivalent.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Doing this for MacOS is surprising hard. Fortunately
| crapware isn't a thing, although a few of the built in apps
| seem to try and drive me demented (looking at you Siri,
| Stock, Music, auto update).
| pronoiac wrote:
| I've bookmarked directions for it. For the admittedly
| out-of-date High Sierra, for instance:
| https://www.howtogeek.com/285922/how-to-create-a-
| bootable-us...
| bhj wrote:
| It's quite easy and well-documented:
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
| Lammy wrote:
| > Plug the bootable installer into a Mac that is
| connected to the internet and compatible with the version
| of macOS you're installing.
|
| Why does it have to be connected to the Internet? The
| point of using a USB installer is for it to work offline.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The presence of bundled apps which I don't use _realy_
| bother me, and always have. On old versions of macOS, I
| wiped all of them out with a post-installation script.
| sudo -rm did the trick, and never broke anything else.
| (They sometimes came back after major updates, but I had
| a "post-upgrade" script for that.)
|
| Big Sur makes this incredibly painful though, with its
| root filesystem stuff. Not sure what I'll do if I ever
| need to use that version. It may or may not be worth it
| to modify the snapshot...
| rzimmerman wrote:
| You can (on most MacBooks at least) restart in recovery
| mode and do a partition wipe + fresh install with a WiFi
| connection.
| gcatalfamo wrote:
| If you think the average user understands a single word of
| what you just said, you're in for a rude awakening. Not meant
| to diss you the slightest.
| [deleted]
| nawgz wrote:
| Oh no, that's not the way to go at all. Windows itself is the
| crapware. Integrated ads in the windows menu, telemetry
| beyond Facebook's wildest dreams, a dumb search that goes to
| the internet for things that are on your machine...
|
| Fortunately it is great for gaming and I have macOS for
| everything else.
| tedunangst wrote:
| This works until you plug in a Razer mouse. Then Windows will
| autodownload and run the Synapse installer. You can exit, and
| the mouse works fine (it's just USB), but the installer will
| run again after every boot.
| glenneroo wrote:
| I'm fairly sure the Synapse software is also cloud-based
| and requires a login to even use.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Microsoft now have branding around "hardware that ships with
| vanilla Windows" to try and mitigate the problem; likewise
| you can download a USB key image and use it to reset to a
| blank Windows install.
|
| This sort of crapware feeds off the folks who aren't aware of
| the options, or comfortable performing them.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Microsoft's branding was called "Signature Edition" and
| seems to have been quietly killed with the shutdown of
| retail Microsoft Stores.
| Igelau wrote:
| It's probably "on" in the sense that it creates a virtual
| webcam device. When Zoom pulls up the list of cameras, it
| probably doesn't know "Actual Camera" from "Cat Mode Virtual
| Camera" whatever heuristic it uses to decide which one is going
| to be the default picks Cat Mode.
| zelon88 wrote:
| > Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS
| companies should make their own hardware.
|
| Yeah, I personally love vendor lock in, price gouging, and
| having no aftermarket parts support whatsoever.</sarcasm>
| iso1631 wrote:
| > As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not
| install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was
| damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but
| they lost
|
| Haven't heard that, but haven't paid much attention to windows
| since c. 2000 - I believe it's more stable and secure now than
| it was in the windows 98 days.
|
| Why not have a "reset to clean install" option in windows,
| which resets everything to just the installed state? Why not
| distribute the windows CD with the machine so the user can
| reinstall?
| ohazi wrote:
| Because you want the drivers and hardware quirk fixes that
| the oem included, just not the bloatware/malware that they
| were paid to include.
|
| Not all hardware is as friendly as Linux on a Thinkpad...
| Sometimes a clean install would leave you without a display,
| or would put some bizarre peripheral in an unusable state.
| xirbeosbwo1234 wrote:
| A big green 'Accept Windows Defaults' button on the first
| boot that bricks the computer would be a pretty big
| incentive for vendors to sort out their drivers.
| notriddle wrote:
| But they wouldn't sort out their drivers. They'd just
| tell the user not to click it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| My father asked me to "fix his laptop", I looked at it and
| wasn't able to tell if it was windows 10 or 8 or Vista. It
| has become some strange hybrid somehow with telling different
| things in the different parts of the OS. Also the styling
| would be different at the different parts of the OS(The
| windows menu looks like 10 but the window decorations are
| like Vista etc.). He had some professional software that
| wants to keep so I didn't dare to do a fresh install or clean
| up, left it as is. He is still using it just like that.
| notriddle wrote:
| I think he's running with DWM turned off:
| https://superuser.com/questions/1016170/temporarily-
| disable-...
| ygjb wrote:
| Windows has that feature now. It's surprisingly effective,
| and is smart enough to preserve, for the most part, user
| files as well.
|
| A major reason that CD's stopped being used is the straight
| up lack of optical drives on modern computers. In most cases
| these days you specifically need to look for a device that
| includes optical or other physical media that is not USB.
|
| Given the ubiquity of internet access in most markets where
| computers are sold (even in developing countries), it is very
| reasonable to expect that even as a last ditch, the user will
| be able to connect to the internet on a tethered cell phone,
| and this is reflected by the fact that on consumer OS you can
| specify that a connection is metered.
| moftz wrote:
| The restore CDs that the OEM included with the computer
| still had all the crap baked into it. You needed a retail
| copy of Windows and hopefully someone hadn't ripped the OEM
| key sticker off the computer.
| thrusong wrote:
| I could be wrong because, like you, I haven't used Windows in
| quite some time (jumped ship when Windows 8 came along and
| never used it), but I think Windows 10 does include some sort
| of clean install/reset setting.
| elicash wrote:
| I think in the NYT story about this incident, it said that he
| was using his assistant's computer.
| moonbug wrote:
| http://ftp.dell.com/monitors/Dell_SX2210-Monitor_Webcam%20SW...
|
| enjoy
| [deleted]
| 725686 wrote:
| On a side note... why are they called filters? They are not
| filtering anything.
| sharx wrote:
| Most likely it derives from Instagram filters, which derives
| from lens filters.
| davidf560 wrote:
| DirectShow (the API for video capture and other things in
| Windows) has long had the concept of a filter which can be
| plugged into the video pipeline[0]. I'm not certain if that's
| the reason that the term is commonly used for effects such as
| the one discussed here, but this "cat filter" certainly might
| have been implemented as a DirectShow filter, so it's very
| plausible the terminology comes from that.
|
| I'm pretty sure apps like this were called filters long
| before Instagram even existed.
|
| [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/win32/directshow/di...
| justwalt wrote:
| I thought it started in Snapchat, where they were just
| filters at first, but then the AR stuff started getting added
| and you'd access them the same way you would the plain
| filters. The name just stuck due to people not caring to call
| them something else. What else would they be called? Lenses,
| maybe?
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| I don't follow. How are they not filtering?
|
| edit: I see other comments point to instagram. I think that is
| giving insta way to much credit. This is filtering as in signal
| processing. It's a common term in audio, image, and video
| processing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_(signal_processing)
| siltpotato wrote:
| Filter means to remove, not to add. Like `filter()` in Python
| or Swift being given a condition and a list and returning
| everything that meets the condition.
| Sharlin wrote:
| In image processing "filtering" has for over 30 years meant
| any algorithmic manipulation of an image as a whole
| (exhibit A: Photoshop's "Filters" menu). Simplest filters
| are also filters in the signal processing sense, but the
| meaning in this context is considerably broader than that.
| palencharizard wrote:
| So we should be calling these "face mappers" then >:D
| csours wrote:
| I ran into something similar with maven builds today.
| Filtering resources with maven means replacing text in the
| resource with text from maven properties.
| contravariant wrote:
| I reckon filters were initially intended to remove specific
| frequencies/noise and the term grew from there. Which is
| how ffmpeg and other software ended up with video filters
| that don't actually remove anything.
|
| Someone else mentioned lens filters as a possible source
| for the term but I'm pretty sure the signal processing term
| is at least partially responsible for the current usage.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| To expand on the other comment about signal processing filters
| and lens:
|
| Analogue signals often have noise or other factors you want to
| get rid of. Maybe there's a low frequency drift you want out,
| or a high frequency noise you want out. From there, it goes to
| enhancing and more generally modifying the signal, as in edge
| detection, but the math is generally the same and so is the
| name "filtering." Or in position estimation from a signal, like
| a kalman filter or particle filter.
|
| At that point filters are a hugely broad thing, and if you want
| to smooth an image, you might filter out the high frequency
| components (instant automatic airbrush) or maybe you want to
| remove all the blue (like a lens filter you might physically
| put in front of your camera) or even enhance all the blue. Then
| it's a small step to keeping the filtering name (yet again) for
| all sorts of signal/image/video auto-manipulations.
|
| You start with wanting to get rid of noise or get rid of blue
| light and end up turning people's videos into cats. That's
| language for ya.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Instagram started as imitation of photographic filters, then
| from the same UI they started offering the face modifying
| "filters" and everyone kept calling it as. Maybe Snapchat was
| before instagram?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It comes from signal processing terminology.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Only in the sense that physical photographic filters are
| "signal processing technology".
| mrtksn wrote:
| How so?
| rriepe wrote:
| Perception?
| [deleted]
| lalos wrote:
| It is filtering, the input (video) is filtered down to specific
| features. i.e. in the cat filter it is filtering everything
| except eye position, mouth and maybe chin position relative to
| eyes.
| jfk13 wrote:
| "A filter is a computer program or subroutine to process a
| stream, producing another stream."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_(software)
| plausibledeny wrote:
| Just tried the filter feature, click on the cat and the filter
| goes on, click on the cat again and you'd think it would go off,
| but it doesn't.
|
| You actually have to scroll to the top and pick 'none' to make it
| turn off. Non-ideal UI which explains why they were struggling so
| much.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| In this vein, I found it somewhat funny at the beginning of the
| pandemic how everyone was discovering Zoom's Virtual Backgrounds
| --a feature which Apple added to Photo Booth and iChat all the
| way back in _Leopard_ but took out, presumably due to lack of
| use.
|
| To be fair, Zoom's backgrounds seem to work in more types of
| lighting conditions, although the overall effect is less
| convincing IMO.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Zoom backgrounds work by some sort of machine learning to
| identify humans while the Photo Booth backgrounds just did a
| diff between an initial image and the current image, and
| displayed anything that was different. The plus side to Zoom is
| that you can move a chair or even the camera without messing
| everything up. The plus side to Photo Booth is that it had
| cleaner edges.
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