_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Roc Camera
garfieldnate wrote 17 hours 39 min ago:
At some point I think it will be required for police bodycams and any
security footage used in court to have this technology built in.
r2b2 wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
This camera's attestation and zero-knowledge proof cannot verify that a
photo is not AI generated. Worse, those "verifications" may trick
people into believing photos are trustworthy or authentic that are not.
Similar to ad-clicks or product reviews, if this were to catch on, Roc
cameras (and Roc camera farms) will be used to take photos of
inauthentic photos.
Ultimately, the only useful authenticity test is human reputation.
If someone (or an organization) wants to be trusted as authentic, the
best they can do is stake their identity on the authenticity of things
they do and share, over and over.
elif wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
Who's really going to check if I spoofed the camera sensor data, and
why?
Also does this mean I can't adjust colors or make any changes to my
photos?
I could see this being neat in the context of a digital detox photo
competition or something, but I don't see any real place for this in
Art world
joelthelion wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Possibly some serious media looking to authenticate news pictures?
shocks wrote 1 day ago:
Just shoot film.
maieuticagent wrote 1 day ago:
Consider pivoting from hardware sales to verification-as-a-service.
Your camera could be the universal input device for identity
verification (less creepy than Worldcoin's Orb), insurance claims, real
estate documentation, and legal evidence. Think transaction fees per
verification, not one-time camera sales.
The consumer angle is weak - most people won't buy specialized hardware
to prove their vacation photos are real. But enterprises would
absolutely pay for a solution that reduces fraud, accelerates claims
processing, or enables compliant remote verification. Dating apps would
pay for "verified real person" badges. Banks would pay for remote
account opening. Stop trying to create a problem and start solving the
expensive problems that already exist:
Identity verification for financial services, social platforms, and gig
economy (KYC/AML compliance)
Professional tools for insurance, real estate, law enforcement, and
healthcare documentation
Enterprise authentication-as-a-service model
zalusio wrote 1 day ago:
Obviously, this has the vulnerability that you can take a picture of a
computer monitor with it, showing whatever you want to.
Apple could really make an interesting product here where they combine
the LIDAR data with the camera data, cryptographically sign it, and
attest to it as unmodified straight from the camera. Can it still be
faked? Yes, but it's much harder to do.
kfarr wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
> Obviously, this has the vulnerability that you can take a picture
of a computer monitor with it, showing whatever you want to.
Is this a reverse analog loophole?
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
fitsumbelay wrote 1 day ago:
Lots of cool ideas here - crypto first/crypto everything, IPFS and soon
Farcaster integration. But the price is a big negative.
I also believe that whatever they're aiming at with verifiably real
photos will either be commodified or end up not being valued very
highly.
It's not quite the Rabbit R1 (at least the presentation here seems more
honest) but I don't see it generating more than niche-of-niche
interest.
Also, and maybe more to the previous point about commodification (or
within-reach tech), this is the kind of project I can imagine hardware
hacker/AI and crypto enthusiast doing on their own ( and I guess
selling to friends and neighbors for $400 ... )
I_dream_of_Geni wrote 1 day ago:
This sounds cool. But why so freaking expensive??
yieldcrv wrote 1 day ago:
no moat
this is one of those things you shouldn't buy aside from novelty, but
this idea wouldnt reach the light of day now without doing it this way
the real goal would be integration into more popular camera systems
I hope the founders and this concept gets all the support they are
looking for
BeFlatXIII wrote 1 day ago:
The custom scolling is janky on Safari.
perdomon wrote 1 day ago:
This is a cool idea, but why is it $400? This feels more like an
open-source passion project than a legitimate business venture.
vzaliva wrote 1 day ago:
This is the right direction - the only way to go about fake images and
video is digital signatures. Phone camera should be able to do this as
well. Then we can have signatures of software used for processing them
(on top) cerityfing what changes have been done: e.g. contract
correction filter applied, signed by Adobe Photoshop.
cawksuwcka wrote 1 day ago:
NFT camera! sick!
napolux wrote 1 day ago:
This is so "silicon valley", like the juicero thing.
kingnothing wrote 1 day ago:
This page cannot be scrolled in Safari or Firefox.
Devs -- stop hijacking native scrolling functionality. Why? You had one
shot to sell me on this product. I can't see the page, so I can't
consider it for purchase. That's a lost sale.
tantalor wrote 1 day ago:
How to defeat this:
Step 1: Create an AI image and display it.
Step 2: Use this camera to take a picture of it.
Now you have "attested" proof of "verifiably real" image.
knowaveragejoe wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't the broader idea here valid? Will news agencies have
cryptographic attestation in their cameras?
TeeMassive wrote 1 day ago:
Indeed it can't authenticate photons.
Security isn't about making things perfectly safe, but to make it
harder for the bad guys.
ch_fr wrote 1 day ago:
> How are my photos stored?
>> We store the photos generated by the Roc Camera on IPFS (by
default). We'll have more information on this soon, so check back for
more details in the future.
> How do I get my photos off the camera?
>> Coming soon. We're working on export functionality to get your
photos off the camera.
> Where is the ZKP generated?
>> The zero-knowledge proofs are generated on-device using the
Raspberry Pi 4.
I am a bit puzzled as to why IPFS was used as the "primary" storage
medium there, it's a Pi so wouldn't it be pretty easy to make it have a
micro-sd port? Wouldn't it be able to work fully locally then?
When I look at their socials, it seems like they primarily engage with
a crypto-focused audience, all of this leads me to believe that IPFS
and ZKP are the actual main appeal of this product... not that there's
anything overtly wrong with this.
christopherwxyz wrote 1 day ago:
I was part of the presale. I own one and am using it daily.
Invested in it because of the emerging opportunities from crypto and
ZKPs.
jvanderbot wrote 1 day ago:
Well, its more likely they just don't know. They haven't figured that
out. So, they'll hire a hardware guy and it'll all change.
didacusc wrote 1 day ago:
What a silly idea, a whole Raspberry Pi for basic photography! Just the
boot-up alone would drive someone nuts, you'd miss the moment every
time and I'd drain your battery if you left it on. So silly.
bdcravens wrote 1 day ago:
Are they releasing the STL to let people print their own shell? If not,
seems odd to advertise the fact that it's 3d printed with standard
(Bambu Lab) printers.
Rickasaurus wrote 1 day ago:
Seems like this could be a great product for law enforcement no?
Verifiable pictures of evidence.
fallat wrote 1 day ago:
399 for a sensor and rpi. I'm out.
harddrivereque wrote 1 day ago:
But why does the case look like it is made out of garbage?
RankingMember wrote 1 day ago:
It looks 3d-printed (edit: confirmed- there's footage of it being 3d
printed on the FAQ page). I'd expect a process with a better finish
for the final product, but who knows with products like this that are
in beta.
Found this sort of funny too, from the FAQ:
> Is this production ready?
> No. The Roc Camera is currently in beta and we suggest you do not
use it for anything important at the moment. We're open to feedback
and suggestions. Please reach out to us at support@roc.camera.
rfl890 wrote 1 day ago:
First Roc Vodka, now this?
micromacrofoot wrote 1 day ago:
I find that most people who want to ground things in reality, that is
at least "reality" without AI or whatever filters are put on photos by
phones these days, don't have much interest in any sort of
cryptographic proof of reality... this is in the same realm of
technology they're trying to avoid.
cesaref wrote 1 day ago:
There's the C2PA standard which has picked up momentum recently to I
guess help resolve some of the issues. [1] I believe various cameras
support this, e.g. [2] `C2PA Authenticity: Integrated support for the
C2PA standard for photo authenticity verification â initially
available exclusively for registered news agencies.`
Sounds like it's limited to some users for now, I guess this will
change in the future.
Going too far won't really help, since the scene being photographed can
be manipulated or staged, which sounds more likely to be a concern
rather than the hardware being hacked.
HTML [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-03-c2pa-verification-news-j...
HTML [2]: https://www.canon-europe.com/press-centre/press-releases/2025/...
jonah wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
Yup, Canon as you mention, also Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, etc. The
membership is pretty extensive. [1] [2] [3]
HTML [1]: https://c2pa.org/membership/
HTML [2]: https://www.nikonusa.com/content/nikon-authenticity-service
HTML [3]: https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/
HTML [4]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/panasonic-is-th...
amelius wrote 1 day ago:
> Capture verifiably real moments
What if I make a photo of my screen?
n1c wrote 1 day ago:
If you like the idea of a small "dumbish" camera but aren't fussed
about all the ZK proof stuff these are quite fun: [1] I have a few and
letting my small kid have a blast while not getting "screen time" is
great.
Side effect is I get a small little window into what he "sees" and his
lived experience. Going through some of the pics recently was quite
beautiful.
HTML [1]: https://www.campsnapphoto.com/collections/camp-snap-screen-fre...
globular-toast wrote 1 day ago:
Has anyone else found themselves becoming hyper-attuned to "AI"
trickery in photographs?
Just the other day I stumbled across this picture on Wikipedia: [1] Can
anyone explain what's going on with the front tyre of the white car? To
me it looks like the actual picture was ingested by a model then spat
back out again with a weird artifact.
The worrying thing is when it becomes too hard to spot the artifacts we
won't know how much of our history has been altered subtly, either
unintentionally or not, by "AI".
HTML [1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_AT%26T_wireless_ret...
byyoung3 wrote 1 day ago:
399 hahahahahahahahahahahahhahaqhahaha cool idea tho
anon191928 wrote 1 day ago:
this all assumes nobody will make editing ???? what am I missing
sfjailbird wrote 1 day ago:
There was a time when web pages were like regular documents, that could
easily be scrolled through.
seasongs wrote 1 day ago:
Cool idea, could be implemented in future professional cameras but as
of right now, I canât think of a single reason that someone into
photography would buy this
alyxya wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs a cool idea, but I donât know how much people care about a
photo provably being real. I take pictures with my phone because itâs
simple and convenient. I get the vibe that itâs kinda like NFTs,
where maybe some people would care if certain NFTs are unique and
permanently on some blockchain, but most people donât. Most people
wonât understand the technical details behind the proof so at most
they can only trust the claim that a picture is provably real.
captainmuon wrote 1 day ago:
Nooo... I don't want something to exist that can absolutely prove that
a photo is real. This only serves to enforce social norms more rigidly.
These include reasonable norms like against committing crimes or
behaving abusingly but it also includes stupid norms like behaving
uncool or doing something embarrasing. The problem is, where do you
draw the line? I think if somebody does something stupid or even
morally dubious there should always be a way of forgetting it.
That you can't believe everything you see in the age of AI is a
feature, not a bug. We are so used to photographs being hard facts that
we'll have to go through a hard transition, but we'll be fine
afterwards, just as we were before the invention of photography. Our
norms will adapt. And photographs will become mere heresay and
illustration, but that's OK.
I think here the same dynamic is at play as with music/videos and DRM.
Our society is so used to doing it the old way - selling physical
records - that when new technology comes along, which allows free
copying, we can't go where the technology leads us (because we don't
know how to feed the artists, and because the record industry has too
much power), so we invent a mechanism to turn back the wheel and make
music into a scarce good again. Similar here: we can't ban Photoshop
and AI, but we invent a technology to try to turn back time and make
photos "evidence" again.
self_awareness wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting, but this is a software project. Camera sensor is being
bought from Aliexpress in bulk. Competition from companies
manufacturing cameras, or smartphones, is huge. How this project is not
a cash grab?
throawayonthe wrote 1 day ago:
i don't get how the attestation works? from the FAQ, the proofs are
generated on the rpi, which AFAIK doesn't have anything like a modern
HSM/vault which would allow them to 1. not allow user access to the
secret or 2. not allow user to put ai-generated imagery onto the device
for 'attestation'
realharo wrote 1 day ago:
How does this compare to the content credentials added by the Pixel
10's camera?
flanbybleue69 wrote 1 day ago:
If you do photography for your own pleasure and not for the sake of
likes, gratification or public opinion you can use whatever hardware or
software itâs alright.
frouge wrote 1 day ago:
To me it sounds like someone is trying to create a problem and sell it
to me.
Who needs to create images with proof of reality?
astrange wrote 1 day ago:
I think it'd be more interesting if you made a camera that took
verifiably fake photos that were guaranteed to be nothing like what you
pointed it at.
dwardu wrote 1 day ago:
So once the company shuts down its servers we've got a lemon?
computersuck wrote 1 day ago:
What if they take a photo of an AI generated photo
boo-ga-ga wrote 1 day ago:
Fantastic idea, I'm sure there will be more such devices and a big
market for them.
Note to the company: please check the scrolling on Firefox (macOS),
it's a little weird.
donaldihunter wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think ZK proofs help to establish trust in a photo's
authenticity at all. C2PA is a well thought out solution to this
problem. [1] > The C2PA information comprises a series of statements
that cover areas such as asset creation, edit actions, capture device
details, bindings to content and many other subjects. These statements,
called assertions, make up the provenance of a given asset and
represent a series of trust signals that can be used by a human to
improve their view of trustworthiness concerning the asset. Assertions
are wrapped up with additional information into a digitally signed
entity called a claim.
HTML [1]: https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.2/specs/...
gnyman wrote 1 day ago:
Neal Krawetz of fotoforensics (and others probably) disagree that
C2PA "is a well thought out solution" [1] (search his blog if you
want more of his thoughts on it)
I don't have a know enough bout this but I've been reading his blog
for other topics a while and he does seem to know a lot about photo
authenticity.
HTML [1]: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?%2Farchives%2F10...
brokensegue wrote 1 day ago:
I don't get how this is the only comment that doubts how their proofs
work. There is zero detail or explanation of what they are proving
doctorpangloss wrote 1 day ago:
This is true, there is no detail.
The idea with zero knowledge proofs is that typically, photography
metadata is stripped when itâs posted on Facebook. The proof
would be a piece of metadata that COULD be safe to share in the
SPECIFICS of what it proves. For example there is a circuit that
can show that the photo was taken in the United States without
leaking the specific location the photo was taken.
Presumably the authenticity scheme here is supposed to be, it
answers it was taken on a real camera in a real place, without
leaking any of the metadata. They are vague because probably that
circuit (proving program and scheme) hasnât been designed yet.
I also donât know if it is possible to make useful assertions at
all in such a scheme, since authenticity is a collection of facts
(for example) and ZK is usually used to specifically make
association of related facts harder.
gherard5555 wrote 1 day ago:
400$ for a phone camera stuck on a raspberry pi ?
I will pass this one...
spaceman_2020 wrote 1 day ago:
I fail to see the hand wringing about media forms that didnât exist
150 years ago.
Even worse when I see people saying âitâs overâ for slop content
posted on social media
We lived fine and well before social media or photography or videos.
pharos92 wrote 1 day ago:
$399 USD. L.O.L.
4gotunameagain wrote 1 day ago:
$400 for a raspberry pi in an ugly 3d printed case ?
I love the idea, but the product execution is simply horrendous. It
looks more like a money grab gimmick. The sensor selection is also bad,
the image quality will be terrible.
novoreorx wrote 1 day ago:
This kinda like a PoC for ZK Proof used in digital devices, however, I
don't think a Raspberry Pi in a 3D printed case should be made a real
product, it lacks actualy use cases. Honestly, I like this concept, but
I think it should belong to a personal art exhibition or DIY
competitionâ¦
abricq wrote 1 day ago:
What I am waiting for is something similar to this (proof of image
ownership / authenticity) embedded in smartphones cameras.
Not sure if ZK is the right way of achieving this. Even if the
cryptographic guarantees are strong, generating these proofs is very
expensive.
realharo wrote 1 day ago:
Some smartphone cameras already have this. Samsung tried it on the
S25 but apparently did it wrong ( [1] ). Google has it on the Pixel
10 line.
I think it's very likely the next iPhone will have some form of
authenticity proof too, I just hope Apple doesn't go with its own
standard again that's incompatible with everything else.
HTML [1]: https://petapixel.com/2025/02/13/samsungs-image-authenticity...
bnreed wrote 1 day ago:
Samsung were also the ones who demonstrated a fatal flaw in C2PA:
device manufacturers are explicitly trusted in implementation.
C2PA requires trust that manufacturers would not be materially
modifying the scene using convolutional neural networks to detect
objects and add/remove details[1]
1)
HTML [1]: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-gala...
jonathanstrange wrote 1 day ago:
That's tricky because it needs to store and verify metadata that the
user cannot edit and that allows one to distinguish a "normal" photo
from a professional photography of a photo. The only place where this
can happen are the camera settings but these are limited on smart
phones and it's not easy to discern the two cases. I'm sure someone
would print a 10x10 meter fake image, put it at just the right
distance, and wait for the best indirect light to prove that the Yeti
exists.
realharo wrote 1 day ago:
Just include a depth sensor, lidar, etc. I'm sure over time that
will become increasingly easy to defeat too, but then we can just
keep improving the sensors too.
blitzar wrote 1 day ago:
Even a pivot to "its not Ai" has the same bandwagon feel as "pivoting
to Ai".
qwertytyyuu wrote 1 day ago:
Is this nfts again?
esaym wrote 1 day ago:
I'm going to buy this just to take a picture of my Kodak mining rig...
Tepix wrote 1 day ago:
Remember, Nikon's image authentication was hacked back in 2011 [1] The
ACLU is sceptical regarding the whole concept: [2] The root causes
podcast discusses this topic in its episode 336: [3] I strongly believe
this should be an open source project.
HTML [1]: https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2011/04/nikon-image-authentication-...
HTML [2]: https://www.aclu-or.org/en/news/attempts-technological-solutio...
HTML [3]: https://www.sectigo.com/resource-library/root-causes-336-digit...
vlan121 wrote 1 day ago:
Security 101:
* Kerckhoff Principle of Open Design
Security of a mechanism should not depend on the secrecy of its
design or implementation.
dschuetz wrote 1 day ago:
$400 lul what
monooso wrote 1 day ago:
There is something deeply dystopian about the phrase "verifiably real
moments."
anigbrowl wrote 1 day ago:
HTML [1]: https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/We%20Can%2...
skeptrune wrote 1 day ago:
I like the spirit of this, but not the implementation. It feels very
performative to create a ZK proof to show that a photo is real. And not
really in the spirit of capturing magic moments on film.
I think that a disposable camera, or even something fancier, like a
Mamiya C330, are better and more gratifying bets for the money.
anigbrowl wrote 1 day ago:
I like the concept (because I was proposing such a couple of years
back) and the software implementation seems good. But holy shit that
thing is ugly. They could(should) have worked with a cheap camera maker
like Lomokino to make a bare-bones rangefinder or twin lens reflex.
This is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. Sorry.
hermitcrab wrote 1 day ago:
It is seriously ugly. Especially for $399. Was that intentional?
flyinglizard wrote 1 day ago:
Good thinking, but the problem here is that in order to make a good
camera which takes verifiable photos you first need to make a good
camera, and that's quite hard.
ajdlinux wrote 1 day ago:
My initial reactions:
- I hope they succeed and eventually deliver a solid version of this
product - verifiable photography is going to become important, and it's
good to see startups working on this
- While I'm sure some artists will like the idea of verifiable
photography, the applications that matter to me are any kind of
photography that has the potential to end up in a news article or in
court
- Selling what is essentially a prototype is fine, it's extremely
obvious that's what it is, they explicitly say it! Who cares if it's
not very good as a camera?
- The almost complete lack of information on their site about their
security model or how their ZKPs work is not particularly encouraging
- It follows that my faith that either the cryptography or the hardware
anti-tamper measures in this beta device would stand up to even some
decent amateurs, given a couple of weeks to have a crack at it, is not
high. I'm almost tempted to buy one just to see how far I, a random
kernel engineer who gets modestly decent scores at my local hacker con
CTF, could get. But I may well be completely underestimating them! Hard
to tell with the fairly scarce information
- Why did they pick a name that's similar to a) AMD's GPU stack, and b)
the law enforcement/natsec computer vision business, ROC ( [1] )?
HTML [1]: https://roc.ai
dimas_codes wrote 1 day ago:
I am sorry if I missed something or someone already asked it, but:
If I generate image with AI, print it, then take a photo of it with Roc
Camera so that you can't tell that this is actually a printed image, I
will then have an AI image with ZKP of its authenticity?
dbdr wrote 1 day ago:
Sony has this on their related page:
> A digital signature alone cannot determine whether the captured
image is of an actual 3D subject, or of an image or video projected
on a high-definition monitor. However, by using metadata including 3D
depth information, it is possible to verify the authenticity of
images with a high degree of accuracy. By using cameras from Sony,
both the image and the 3D depth information can be captured on the
sensor along the single light axis, providing information of high
authenticity.
That 3D depth data could presumably be used to detect this. In
principle, you could also train an AI to generate realistic 3D data.
It's just not available yet, and probably harder to train (in
general, and also since you would need to collect new massive amount
of training data first).
No idea if this specific device has a 3D sensor, addressing the
general question.
zipy124 wrote 1 day ago:
The depth information that sony cameras collect is almost certainly
low-res enough that even with a simple image->depthmap model[0] you
could fool it. Also they don't say anything about the sensor itself
being secure, no need to print something if you can just emulate
the sensor with an FPGA or other.
[0]:
HTML [1]: https://github.com/CompVis/depth-fm
keiferski wrote 1 day ago:
Presumably you could stop this by requiring GPS data for the image,
and match that against a library of other images in the location?
efskap wrote 1 day ago:
I suspect the EXIF data won't make sense, and the faq says the ZKP
applies to the metadata as well. But yeah, inherent flaw.
ludicrousdispla wrote 1 day ago:
Does anyone know if the camera sensor includes depth map information?
Otherwise what is stopping someone from photographing a large
high-resolution print of an AI generated image.
zipy124 wrote 1 day ago:
this one does not. Other cameras do include one, or can make a depth
sensor via the real sensor since autofocus/focus stacking allows
depth extraction, especially if using a low aperature number.
grey-area wrote 1 day ago:
This looks interesting. I love the retro styling and transparent case.
The proofs and selling it as some sort of fight-back against AI seems
tenuous and as the user controls the hardware - going to be hard to
keep that system hermetically sealed due to giving the user the keys on
device. Also though almost nobody actually cares very much about
attesting that their photos are somehow real and untouched by AI.
There are larger problems when you consider this question. What is real
and not in photography is a long and storied debate - any photograph is
ultimately a curation of a small part of the real world - what is just
out of frame could completely change the interpretation of the viewer
if they saw it, regardless of whether the picture is unaltered after
taking. The choice of framing, colours, subject etc etc can radically
alter meaning. There is no getting away from this.
So ultimately I don't think the biggest problem facing photography is
attested reality. I actually think the democratisation of photography
offers a better way out - we have so many views on each event now that
it's actually harder to fake because there are usually hundreds of
pictures of the same thing.
PS for the site author, there is a typo in the sentence beginning -
remove the an 'By combining sensors, an on-device zero-knowledge
proofs'.
Bengalilol wrote 1 day ago:
The main argument of this product is to "capture verifiably real
moments". Though I find it interesting (and am quite liking the
object), I do not tend to think this is a strong argument for this
product: capturing a picture of a unreal picture would make it real (as
discussed in this thread), moreover what would prevent any phone
manufacturer from integrating the same type of "validation" into their
hardware?
t43562 wrote 1 day ago:
They are already doing it e.g. Sony. [1] It needs a certificate
issuance and validation system
HTML [1]: https://amateurphotographer.com/latest/photo-news/sony-annou...
HTML [2]: https://c2pa.org/
russellbeattie wrote 1 day ago:
This shouldn't be a product, but a licensed patented technology like
Dolby or CDMA, sold to OEMs and directly integrated into cameras and
phones.
It should be an industry standard system for guaranteeing authenticity
by coordinating hardware and software to be as tamper proof as possible
and saved in a cryptographically verifiable way.
No system like this would be perfect, but that's the enemy of the good.
dsrtslnd23 wrote 1 day ago:
I remember reading in some Qualcomm Snapdragon document that Qualcomm
integrated some image authenticity method. Not sure if this ever landed
in an end-product?
defraudbah wrote 1 day ago:
lol, faq is funny
how long does the batter last
> Currently, the battery will last estimated 2~3 hours on constant use
on a full charge. It can last much longer if it is off.
dandanua wrote 1 day ago:
Any device like this is useless, because you can print an AI generated
picture and then take a photo of it. It's like NFTs in the crypto
world, which have proofs that prove essentially nothing.
ArcherGorgonite wrote 1 day ago:
It has to be a joke...
ninetyninenine wrote 1 day ago:
This has it all wrong.
The truth is worse than anyone wants to face. It was never about
authenticity or creativity. Those words are just bullshit armor for
fragile egos. Proofs and certificates do not mean a damn thing.
AI tore the mask off. It showed that everything we worship, art, music,
poetry, beauty, all of it runs on patterns. Patterns so simple and
predictable that a lifeless algorithm can spit them out while we sit
here calling ourselves special. The magic we swore was human turns out
to be math wearing makeup.
Strip away the label and no one can tell who made it. The human touch
we brag about dissolves into noise. The line between creator and
creation never existed. We were just too arrogant to admit it.
Love, happiness, beauty, meaning, all of it is chemistry and physics.
Neurons firing, hormones leaking, atoms slamming into each other. That
is what we are when we fall in love, when we cry, when we write a song
we think no machine could ever match. It is all the same damn pattern.
Give a machine enough data and it will mimic our souls so well we will
start to feel stupid for ever thinking we had one.
This is not the future. It is already moving beneath us. The trendline
is clear. AI will make films that crush Hollywood. Maybe not today,
maybe not next year, but that is where the graph is pointing. And
artists who refuse to use it, who cling to the old ways out of pride or
fear, are just holding on to stupidity. The tools have changed.
Pretending they have not is the fastest way to become irrelevant.
Yes, maybe right now you can still tell the difference. Maybe it is
obvious. But look at the rate. Look at the slope of that goddamn line.
The speed of progress is unmistakable. Every year the gap closes. Every
year the boundary between man and machine blurs a little more. Anyone
who cannot see where this is going, anyone who cannot admit that this
is a realistic possibility, is in total denial. The projection of that
line into the future cannot be ignored. It is not speculation anymore.
It is math, and it is happening right in front of us.
People will still scoff, call it soulless, call it fake. But put them
in a blind test and they will swear it was human. The applause will
sound exactly the same.
And one day a masterpiece will explode across the world. Everyone will
lose their minds over it. Critics will write essays about its beauty
and depth. People will cry, saying it touched something pure in them.
Then the creator will step forward and say it was AI. And the whole
fucking world will go quiet.
Because in that silence we will understand. There was never anything
special about us. No divine spark. No secret soul. Just patterns
pretending to mean something.
We are noise that learned to imitate order. Equations wrapped in skin.
Puppets jerking to the pull of chemistry, pretending it is choice.
liqilin1567 wrote 1 day ago:
But I feel like some creativity comes from breaking existing patterns
quailfarmer wrote 1 day ago:
Kudos for making this exist, it was an inevitable place for the
conversation to lead, and Iâm actually glad it was âhackedâ
together as a project rather than forced into a consumer product.
The camera specs donât really matter here, this is about having the
conversation. If this catches on, it will be a feature of every
smartphone SoC.
On one hand, itâs a cool application of cryptography as a power tool
to balance AI, but on the other, itâs a real hit to free and open
systems. Thereâs a risk that concern over AI spirals into a
justification for mandatory attestation that undermines digital
freedom. See: online banking apps that refuse to operate on free
devices.
merelysounds wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm a photographer in my spare time; looks like this product isnât
about what images are being produced, or about the shooting experience
- and this discourages me.
When the goal is having a proof that the photo hasnât been edited or
ai generated, using an analog camera and shooting on film seems more
practical to me than using a device like this.
blharr wrote 1 day ago:
Could an AI not be trained to emulate the look of analog film and its
artifacts?
merelysounds wrote 1 day ago:
I meant that there is a proof of the photo being taken and a record
of what the photo looked like before any edits (a photo negative).
ollybee wrote 1 day ago:
I always assumed high end CCTV cameras already did something like this?
silcoon wrote 1 day ago:
Looks like a weekend project, done with a third of the cost as a
budget.
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Heh, few years ago I built myself a RPi Zero based camera.
I wonder how have they made the boot up fast enough to not be annoying.
I used non-real time eInk display to cut down on the battery life so I
could just keep it on in my pocket while out taking pictures since it
took good minute to get ready from cold boot.
blauditore wrote 1 day ago:
It's not like questioning the authenticity of a photo is a new thing
"in the age of AI". Manipulating photos has always been a thing, long
before photoshop even.
feketegy wrote 1 day ago:
Is this another cash grab? The founders who made this don't seem to
know what real photography is.
jeswin wrote 1 day ago:
I am actually willing to support DIY camera efforts, but if you're
semi-serious about taking pictures, this just wouldn't work. First,
Raspberry Pi (I'm guessing this is a CM4/CM5) is a disaster for a
camera board. Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a
picture, cameras need to be near instantaneous. And you can't keep it
on either, because the RPi can't really sleep. There are boards that
can actually sleep, but with fewer sensor options.
Now moving on to the sensor (IMX 519 - Arducam?) - it's tinier than the
tiniest sensor found on phones. If you really want to have decent image
quality, you should look at Will Whang's OneInchEye and Four-thirds eye
( [1] ). 4/3 Eye uses IMX294 which is currently the only large sensor
which has Linux support (I think he upstreamed it) and MIPI. All the
other larger sensors use interfaces like SLVS which are impossible to
connect to.
If anyone's going to attempt a serious camera, they need to do two
things. Use at least a 1 inch sensor, and a board which can actually
sleep (which means it can't be the RPi). This would mean a bunch of
difficult work, such as drivers to get these sensors to work with those
boards. The Alice Camera ( [2] ) is a better attempt and probably uses
the IMX294 as well. The most impressive attempt however is Wenting
Zhang's Sitina S1 - ( [3] ). He used a full frame Kodak CCD Sensor.
There is a market for a well made camera like the Fuji X-Half. It
doesn't need to have a lot of features, just needs to have ergonomics
and take decent pictures. Stuff like proofs are secondary to what
actually matters - first it needs to take good pictures, which the IMX
519 is going to struggle with.
HTML [1]: https://www.willwhang.dev/
HTML [2]: https://www.alice.camera/
HTML [3]: https://rangefinderforum.com/threads/diy-full-frame-digital-ca...
mochomocha wrote 1 day ago:
I know nothing about photography, but I'll just comment on this
point:
> (I'm guessing this is a CM4/CM5) is a disaster for a camera board.
Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture,
cameras need to be near instantaneous.
You can boot an RPI in a couple hundred milliseconds.
jvanderbot wrote 1 day ago:
Another thread mentioned that this camera was made by crypto
enthusiasts from a software/ZKP starting point, and not a photography
starting point. If true, it will have a lot of maturation to do, but
most likely they will either be incorporated into a "real" camera
design, or they will just fold.
Nextgrid wrote 1 day ago:
> Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture
But that's less due to the RPi and more due to lots of amateur
projects that ship the RPi with a desktop Linux distribution like
Raspbian (itself based on a very conservative one - Debian - that
loves preserving decades of legacy crap).
You can absolutely get quick boot times on an RPi (or on an x86
machine for that matter, although you are limited by the time the
firmware itself takes to boot) if you build your own read-only image
with Buildroot/Yocto like any embedded shop would.
But I agree with the rest of the comment - an RPi is a terrible
device for this (and for most purposes besides prototyping in fact).
But not because of boot time reasons.
ACCount37 wrote 1 day ago:
I think some of the modern iPhone cameras use SLVS, so non-iPhone
Apple Silicon might have a way of connecting to that natively too.
Good luck using that though.
Without a native connection option, what remains to you is probably
an FPGA converter (to MIPI CSI-2 D-PHY), which is going to be
expensive of course. But still not as expensive as the sensor itself
and the associated optics.
Mistletoe wrote 1 day ago:
I think almost everyone here is missing the point of this camera. In
the post truth AI future, this is the camera you want when you
photograph the billionaire or President or your spouse doing
something awful. Any other photo proof wonât work because it can
always be called fake. And yes Iâm being serious. You are missing
the point if you say the quality isnât good enough or itâs too
slow or bulky. The idea is the provable authenticity, which is going
to be very important in the coming decades.
JohnKemeny wrote 1 day ago:
You can just AI generate a photo and snap a picture of that.
There's no such thing as provable authenticity.
macNchz wrote 1 day ago:
I imagine that, if attested cameras like this come into any sort
of regular use, you'll see additional layers of metadata mixed
into the signatureâa depth map, GPS, accelerometers, operator
biometrics etc, none of which are necessarily infallible, but
which certainly create considerable barriers to faking things.
SubiculumCode wrote 1 day ago:
That's likely to be easily detected.
HelloUsername wrote 1 day ago:
> There is a market for a well made camera like the Fuji X-Half.
That product has for its specs a ridiculous price point of â¬750..
jeswin wrote 1 day ago:
But you don't buy it for the specs, you buy it for the experience.
It topped sales charts when it was launched. If I had more time to
spend on photography, or if I was younger, or if it was a little
cheaper I'd have bought it myself.
I suspect more will follow the X-Half, because it gets orientation
right. Most images are viewed today in portrait mode, and
half-frame is the right format for that.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
The people who buy these cameras would probably be better served
by upgrading their phones. Phones are good enough cameras for
this use and they are infinitely better at processing.
As a long time hobbyist photographer I can understand buying
cameras because they have a certain appeal. But I have to say
that I honestly do not understand why someone would spend lots of
money and then not want to take advantage of the technology
offered.
I think shooting to JPEG and using film profiles is kind of
pointless. If you want to shoot film, shoot film. Imagine you
have taken a really good picture, but itâll always look worse
than it could because you threw away most of the data and applied
some look to it that will date it.
I do understand that a lot of people think these cameras are
worth buying. And that they are selling well. But I canât
understand why.
glaucon wrote 18 hours 24 min ago:
> The people who buy these cameras would probably be better
served by upgrading their phones.
I'm sorry if this too far off topic but I routinely go to use
my phone's camera and the ambient light level is so high I can
barely see what I'm intending to photograph, and I certainly
can't see the on-screen controls.
I've seen hoods intended to over your head and into which the
phone fits and this would, I assume, resolve the issue but by
comparison a point and click with a 'proper' viewfinder
(perhaps with the rubber surround some used to have) would be a
very good solution by comparison.
gavinmckenzie wrote 1 day ago:
There are many motivations for shooting jpeg with film sims,
from just not wanting to expend the effort editing photos to my
motivation as a colour-blind person who simply cannot see
colour well enough to manually adjust photos. For me, itâs
incredible being able to choose a film simulation and be happy
with the result even if I know that the colours Iâm seeing
arenât quite the same that others will see. Itâs the entire
reason I bought into the FujiFilm system.
HelloUsername wrote 1 day ago:
> if it was a little cheaper I'd have bought it myself.
Same here. Even for the experience it's overpriced.
ugh123 wrote 1 day ago:
From these pics it actually looks like a whole PI4 board is used
HTML [1]: https://farcaster.xyz/faust
jeswin wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting. I'm curious why they would do that.
amne wrote 1 day ago:
1. buy stuff for $50
2. 3d print a couple of cases for $10
3. repurpose highschool summer break crypto project .. free?
(excluding time spent)
4. ???
5. profit from selling it for $400 a pop
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 day ago:
All the stuff is off the shelf. Makes it way easier to develop.
There is no reason to actually use RPi, compute module or not, as
a base camera board (talking from experience) other than it is
super easy to start with.
jeswin wrote 1 day ago:
I disagree. If CM5 had the ability to sleep at tiny fractions
of a watt, there are really practical and usable cameras you
can pull off today, even when it's not the most efficient. For
all the downsides, it would more than make up in the
ease-of-development department.
I believe if RPi6 adds sleep, you'd see a flurry of portable
gadgets built on the platform.
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
Speed of development is fine for a prototype, but for an
actual product it is just sloppy and wasteful. Problem
isnât even battery hungriness, but boot time. Users donât
want to wait 20-60 seconds for their camera to load an entire
Linux kernel and drivers and then all the software you have
gobbled together on top when you could be up and running
almost instantly if you used microcontroller instead of cpu
swores wrote 1 day ago:
You're agreeing with them, not disagreeing! :)
The person who you replied to said they only reason to choose
them is easiness, and you've replied saying you disagree
because for all the downsides the easiness makes up for it.
edf13 wrote 1 day ago:
Canât I just photo a printed AI generated pic? What use is the proof?
boobsbr wrote 1 day ago:
Stop hijacking the scrolling.
allthetime wrote 1 day ago:
hijacking is one thing,
but this completely ruins native scroll function.
It's actually just broken garbage front-end
dusted wrote 1 day ago:
I don't understand how the "proof" part works, like, what part of the
input to the "proof generation" algorithm is so inherently tied to the
real world that one cannot feed it "fake" data ?
ellenhp wrote 1 day ago:
If someone cared enough to spend money on this I think it would be an
easy to medium difficulty project to use an FPGA and a CSI-2 IP to
pretend to be the sensor. Good luck fixing that without baking a
secure element into your sensor.
ajdlinux wrote 1 day ago:
I'd be shocked if the major sensor vendors don't already have
engineers working on exactly that, though.
johnmaguire wrote 1 day ago:
Sony has this -
HTML [1]: https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/index.html
ConorSheehan1 wrote 1 day ago:
My understanding is it can't. The proof is "this photo was taken with
this real camera and is unmodified". There's no way to know if the
photo subject is another image generated by AI, or a painting made by
a human etc.
ija wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if a 360 degree image in addition to the 'main' photo
could show that the photo was part of a real scene and not just a
photo of an image? Not proof exactly but getting closer to it.
exodust wrote 1 day ago:
Perhaps if it measured depth it could detect "flat surface" and
flag that in the recorded data. Cameras already "know" what is near
or far simply by focusing.
_carbyau_ wrote 1 day ago:
^^This so much.
I remember when snapchat were touting "send picture that delete
within timeframes set by you!" and all that would happen is you'd
turn to your friend and have them take a picture of your phone.
In the above case, the outcome was messy. But with some effort,
people could make reasonable quality "certified" pictures of damn
near anything by taking a picture of a picture. Then there is the
more technical approach of cracking a system physically in your
hands so you can sign whatever you want anyway...
I think the aim should be less on the camera hardware attestation
and more on the user. "It is signed with their key! They take
responsibility for it!"
But then we need:
1. fully active and scaled public/private key encryption for all
users for whatever they want to do
2. a world where people are held responsible for their actions...
I'm not sure which is more unrealistic.
Razengan wrote 1 day ago:
3. Tech that can directly read memories from our brains.
condiment wrote 1 day ago:
I donât disagree with including user attestation in addition to
hardware attestation.
The notion of their being a âanalog holeâ for devices that
attest that their content is real is correct on the face, but is
a very flawed criticism. Right now, anybody on earth can open up
an LLM and generate an image. Anybody on earth can open up
Photoshop and manipulate an image. And thereâs no
accountability for where that content came from. But not
everybody on earth is capable of projecting an image and
photographing it in a way that is in distinguishable from taking
a photo of reality. Especially when youâve taken into
consideration that these cameras are capturing depths of field
information, location information, and other metadata.
I think itâs a mistake to demand perfection. This is about
trust in media and creating foundational technologies that allow
for that trust to be restored. Imagine if every camera and every
piece of editing software had the ability to sign its output with
a description of any mutations. That is a chain of metadata where
each link in the chain can be assigned to trust score. If, an
addition to technology signatures, human signatures are included,
that just builds additional trust. At some point, it would be
inappropriate for news or social media not to use this
information when presenting content.
As others have mentioned, C2PA is a reasonable step in this
direction.
whatsupdog wrote 1 day ago:
I would also love to know this. Where can I read how it works?
m00x wrote 1 day ago:
The Pi4 is extremely overpowered for this application. This looks like
a rushed product from an SF brainfart with no engineering behind it.
asimpleusecase wrote 1 day ago:
Kinda interesting- of course until it hacked. But honestly it does not
look like something I would want to carry around.
colordrops wrote 1 day ago:
I predicted something similar a while back:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31092225
m00x wrote 1 day ago:
and it has existed for a while already
colordrops wrote 1 day ago:
Could you share some examples?
noduerme wrote 1 day ago:
It's wild that it's already come to this: The camera itself becomes
more important as the instrument to provide zero-trust proof.
This is a brilliant solution to one of the most critical emergent
problems. I can see a world where no digital image can be trusted if it
doesn't come with a hash.
There is also something called "film" which might be a retro answer to
this problem.
xg15 wrote 1 day ago:
Until people start to make AI images, print them out and then make a
"real" photo of the printout to get the hash.
noduerme wrote 1 day ago:
I think there would be ways to detect that from the final image.
Also if the hash contains date/time/location info.
matt_daemon wrote 1 day ago:
Why do websites like this always try to be too clever? Let me scroll!
efreak wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
Scrolling is broken on mobile, it scrolls right past entire sections,
like there's too much inertia. The last section is also wider than
the screen and horizontal scrolling disabled.
broguinn wrote 1 day ago:
+1. To all of the marketing site developers out there: never mess
with scrolling defaults.
prmoustache wrote 1 day ago:
If you are taking the photo yourself, you know where they come from.
While would you need signed pictures to prove that?
rendaw wrote 1 day ago:
Instagram could have a "real" filter that only shows you photos with
proofs, for instance. So not your own photos, but other people's
photos.
injidup wrote 1 day ago:
When rocking your Meta, Ray Ban, MacDonalds, Tesla XR AR 0009fNG plus
Reality engine contact lense inplants it will be important to cross
reference your experiences with what really happened.
sciencejerk wrote 1 day ago:
Yep this is coming soon. You'll be required to own and operate
wearables to participate in the social web, or post photos
anywhere.
LeoPanthera wrote 1 day ago:
Oh no! You've discovered that the product is completely pointless! If
only they had asked you first!
peteforde wrote 1 day ago:
I used to be really (really really) into photography. I respect anyone
working hard on a physical product, but this misses the mark on every
front I can think of.
The real issue that photographers grapple with, emotionally and
financially, is that pictures have become so thoroughly commodified
that nobody assigns them cultural value anymore. They are the thumbnail
you see before the short video clip starts playing.
Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its
digital authenticity hash. This is especially funny to me because I
used to struggle with the fact that people looking at your work don't
know or care what kind of camera or process was involved. They don't
know if I spent two hours zoomed in removing microscopic dust particles
from the scanning process after a long hike to get a single shot at
5:30am, or if it was just the 32nd of 122 shots taken in a burst by
someone holding up an iPad Pro Max at a U2 concert.
This all made me sad for a long time, but I ultimately came to terms
with the fact that my own incentives were perverse; I was seeking the
external gratification of getting likes just like everyone else. If you
can get back to a place where you're taking photographs or making music
or doing 5 minute daily synth drills for your own happiness with no
expectation of external validity, you will be far happier taking that
$399 and buying a Mamiya C330.
This video is about music, but it's also about everything worth doing
for the right reasons.
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvQF4YIvxwE
mcdeltat wrote 20 hours 4 min ago:
Agreed, the issue is more that the average person doesn't care about
photos. Even now you can tell what is real vs fake in photography and
people don't care, they eat it all up. The good, the bad, the fake,
doesn't matter because no one gives a fuck. If you actually
appreciate the art of photography then you already do and will
continue to regardless of AI or whatever.
marssaxman wrote 1 day ago:
Funny you mention the C330. I have not done any photography in well
over a decade, and long ago sold all my gear, but just a week ago
decided to take my grandfather's old Rolleicord in for cleaning &
service. I am looking forward to shooting with it again, just for
the sake of practicing the art. I might even learn to develop my own
film this time around!
dcchambers wrote 1 day ago:
The value here is not in a product used to make art.
The value is for documenting history and being able to *prove*
something happened (eg for lawsuits, criminal cases, security, etc).
wvlia5 wrote 1 day ago:
> this misses the mark on every front I can think of.
YOU are missing the mark on every front I can think of.
angelgonzales wrote 1 day ago:
Yep, I make many pictures but donât feel like I need to share them
with others. Sometimes I show my girlfriend and sometimes I frame
them or put them on my fridge. I actually donât really want to show
strangers my work because I make photographs for myself and Iâm not
looking for critique because Iâm developing my own style and
exploring what interests me. I donât need to prove my photographs
are authentic because I know I took them!
lgleason wrote 1 day ago:
Back before digital became really high res I was into small, medium
and large format silver halide cameras balancing cost with high
quality optics. You could get Exackta's, Speed Graphics and
Roleiflexes relatively inexpensively and take amazing high quality
photos with them.
The larger you went though, the more you had to be mindful about the
cost of eash shot both in terms of time and cost for film and
developing. There is something to be said about the curation that
happened when taking photos like that. You put a lot more though
upfront into composition and had to think about your shutter speed,
aperture etc..
One thing I learned about during that time was how the old time press
photographers would use a Speed Graphic on 4x5 negative, grab a wide
angled shot and then crop it. Also, press conferences used to create
a lot of broken glass as photographers would snap a shot, shoot out
the one time use flash bulb on the ground and then quickly put in
another bulb to get another shot.
cush wrote 1 day ago:
I think this kind of tech is designed for journalists and
professionals, not enthusiasts and social media folk
doctorpangloss wrote 1 day ago:
On the other hand, if taking a picture on a Canon dSLR instantly
uploaded it to Apple Photos the same way your iPhone does, when
youâre outside, that would be a really popular product.
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
I read your comment this morning and it resonated with me.
A few hours later, YouTube suggested me this video: Psychology of
People Who Don't Post their Photos on Social Media
Not some big revelations, but an interesting perspective
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGx_cmEH8Lw
elil17 wrote 1 day ago:
I view this as something that could be more useful in a journalistic,
legal, or governmental context rather than in a creative or artistic
one.
mfer wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think about this as much for professional or amateur
photography.
I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes. So much
is easily made up with AI. Having verifiable real photos (and
eventually video) can be a benefit for things like legal proceedings.
scottlamb wrote 1 day ago:
> I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes.
That makes sense to me, but who is this particular $399 camera made
for? Can you imagine someone choosing it for a photo they intend to
be used in legal proceedings? The specs and appearance do not
scream high-quality professional tool to me. The price is lower
than a professional would be willing to spend (on something
high-quality), higher than someone would drop on a whim.
It looks kinda like a designer's school assignment that they're
trying to sell.
SubiculumCode wrote 1 day ago:
That's not the point. The point is trying to make a device that can
help capture evidence of events that can be verified as not AI
generated.
Kiboneu wrote 1 day ago:
I am still really (really really) into photography! Nothing has
changed that, the pictures are just as beautiful as they always were.
My friends are touched when they see pictures of themselves spending
time together. There is still plenty of things to see and take
pictures of, and not enough time to worry about whether someone will
appreciate my "work".
You can definitely get back into it. Just have fun, don't do it for
anyone (that goes with any art).
toobulkeh wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe itâs not for common use? I could see this betting important
in the intelligence community, for example.
wvlia5 wrote 1 day ago:
This is not about photographers.
Imagine the president wants to deliver a video message. Was it
authentic or AI generated? If it was filmed with this camera, the
population can verify.
SubiculumCode wrote 1 day ago:
Yes. I am surprised by off the rails this conversation went. It's
not about art. It's about verifiable evidence in these crazy times.
wvlia5 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, 1st he misunderstands the product and then he believes he
is qualified to valuate it negatively (due to him being a great
photographer ): "this misses the mark on every front I can think
of"
cassepipe wrote 1 day ago:
Photography is when the image is not moving right ?
MontyCarloHall wrote 1 day ago:
>Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect
its digital authenticity hash.
This has rapidly changed over the last few months. As more and more
pictures/videos going viral on social media are AI-generated [0, 1],
real pictures/videos of remarkable things are increasingly falsely
called out as AI-generated [2]. People are definitely starting to
care, and while the toy camera in the linked article is merely an
artistic statement, having some ubiquitously standardized way of
unambiguously validating content generated by a real recording device
is going to become paramount.
[0] [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://www.today.com/news/bunnies-jumping-trampoline-viral-...
HTML [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O-8kAnBL2s
HTML [3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/1oeda67/my_highligh...
divan wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve been (really, really) into photography since I was six, and
Iâm still (really, really) at it three decades later. I never felt
much appeal toward photography as an art form â itâs always been
a way to capture moments and share them with people I care about.
These days I play with both AI photography and ânormalâ
photography. My main camera is the A9 III with a global shutter â a
machine gun that fires 120fps RAW files. I shoot a lot of sports, and
the people I photograph are thrilled to get such high-quality shots
of moments that mattered to them. It doesnât really matter how much
cultural value society attaches to photos â those captured moments
will always be meaningful to them, and they feel joy when they see
them. Thatâs the whole point of photography for me.
AI photography is a bit different. I take 15â20 photos of a
friendâs face with my camera, train a LoRA model to use with
Flux1.dev, and upload it to network storage on RunPod. Then I spin up
a serverless worker on an H100 that runs the ComfyUI API, and use my
own Flutter-based frontend to play with prompts and generate new
photos of that person. I can make far better headshots this way than
in a real studio. For some friends, itâs even been a therapeutic
experience â seeing so many high-quality images of themselves
looking confident, happy, and fully alive helped them feel that way,
even if just for a moment. One friend told me, âYou did more with
these AI photos of me than therapy did in the past year.â
LaGrange wrote 1 day ago:
Wow thatâs bleak. âLook at that fake photo of you but
better.â
Brendinooo wrote 17 hours 29 min ago:
Portraiture has always, always, always idealized its subjects,
long before photography was a thing.
divan wrote 1 day ago:
That's actually working technique in sports psychology â one
version of it called VSM (Video Self-Modelling), where edited
video shows athlete performing correct/advanced technique. It
tricks brain to belive in "future self". I'm not surprised it
works with photos that well, but I think it's not studied yet.
These AI photos I make a very different from, say, photoshopped
faced. I tried it on myself too, and can confirm that it does
have psychological effect.
igouy wrote 1 day ago:
Fascinating!
LaGrange wrote 1 day ago:
Anything has an "psychological effect," and tricking a person
into thinking any old junk is "better than therapy" is trivial
- look at all the people who spend time and money on AI
chatbots. It's also pretty clear it's not actually _good for
them_.
And there's zero surprise here it would be used to manipulate
potential athletes.
Brendinooo wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
When I was in grade school I got the whole pitch on
visualization: picture yourself making the free throw and
you're more likely to make the free throw.
Again, this stuff didn't start with AI.
nuancebydefault wrote 1 day ago:
The words 'external gratification' popped out. I only recently found
out that my sensitivity to it is the biggest flaw/weakness in my and
many other's personality.
Jean-Papoulos wrote 1 day ago:
>Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect
its digital authenticity hash.
Some will once AI is ubiquitous. Especially of the art &
entertainment sectors
fidotron wrote 1 day ago:
> Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect
its digital authenticity hash
Nit, but there are reasons Canon and Nikon will sell you cameras that
sign the pictures with their keys already. Even if they have been
shown insecure in specific implementations the market is very much
there.
Ten years ago in the NYC art market this was also true in a niche but
very real audience. I think the NFT wave burnt that out completely.
Cthulhu_ wrote 1 day ago:
Commoditization is a good way to phrase it; first with affordable
digital cameras, then with smartphones, photos have become more
content than art. With smart filters and digital enhancement,
mistakes and imperfect conditions have been fixed.
AI won't replace that, just creates an alternative way to generate
content without needing to be physically present somewhere.
kristo wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not sure this is targeting you, but possibly rather journalistic
photos where being able to prove authenticity is important
kybernetyk wrote 1 day ago:
How did you get out of your photography obsession? Because currently
Iâm really really into photography as well and it gets unhealthy.
(Both time and money wise).
huimang wrote 1 day ago:
> Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect
its digital authenticity hash
That the average person hasn't thought about this doesn't mean it
couldn't become a thing in the future. People do value authenticity
and genuine things, though I agree the particulars aren't relevant in
a lot of cases.
This is a (very expensive!) toy camera, but I could see traditional
camera companies like Fujifilm, Canon, etc, incorporating this tech
later down the line.
bambax wrote 1 day ago:
Agreed. This product seems pointless because nobody's interested in a
proof of authenticity (except maybe in certain legal niches?)
I take pics for me and my friends and family, and AI has almost zero
impact on this (although, face swaping is lots of fun, and everyone
understands it's fake and a joke).
Edit: also, and more importantly, the question of authenticity is
moot. The point of art in general is to say something / make a
statement, and certainly not to produce a faithful representation of
the world. Anything that's not an exact copy (which is hard to do if
you're not God), has a point of view, which gives it value.
SubiculumCode wrote 1 day ago:
Taking pics and videos of events with political ramifications and
being able to show that it isn't AI generated or tampered with has
HUGE utility, not the least of which by reporters and restablishing
trust with disaffected.
clifdweller wrote 1 day ago:
The idea isn't a bad one in some cases like travel photography.
Between background people removal and lightroom a good chunk of
travel pictures are not a good representation of what you can
expect. on Instagram there are plenty of pictures of people
standing alone in front of the Eifel tower or at inari gates in
afternoon lighting that is unrealistic outside the pandemic or a
6am shot. Or take cherry blossom viewing in tokyo. More trees are
white or very light pink but you would not know that looking at
what people post often the camera auto balancing to make them more
pink because if it doesn't people think there is a problem with the
camera; that incentivizes sony, canon etc to build that in.
maurits wrote 1 day ago:
I'm cynical and don't fear a world in which people can't verify
photos for their authenticity.
I fear (channeling a brave new world) that they simply will not care.
patates wrote 1 day ago:
> I was seeking the external gratification of getting likes just like
everyone else.
âYou will be happy to look okay. You will be happy to turn heads.
You will be happy with smoother skin. You will be happy with a flat
stomach. You will be happy with a six-pack. You will be happy with an
eight-pack. You will be happy when every photo of yourself gets
10,000 likes on Instagram. You will be happy when you have
transcended earthly woes. You will be happy when you are at one with
the universe. You will be happy when you are the universe. You will
be happy when you are a god. You will be happy when you are the god
to rule all gods. You will be happy when you are Zeus. In the clouds
above Mount Olympus, commanding the sky. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.â
â Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet , Shortened version of the
many-paragraphs-long quote found on:
HTML [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10913632-you-will-be-happy-...
ludicrousdispla wrote 1 day ago:
This might have immediate application in certain business sectors,
such as real estate and insurance.
Theodores wrote 1 day ago:
Yes but it is a hard sell, arguably too hard, and the product
pitch, which is away from these applications, is the right one.
They are not promising to be 'blockchain two' with hypothetical
business use cases.
Imagine going to the solicitors with lots of documents that they
need copies of. If they are making scans themselves then that is
all the proof they need. If an assistant has copied that important
certificate, then that copy is all that is needed for normal legal
services. The Roc Camera would not be helpful in this regard, even
if it had some magic means of scanning A4 pages.
In a serious solicitor interaction there will be forms that need to
be signed and witnessed. These important documents then need to go
in the post. In theory, the client could just whip out their Roc
Camera and... But who is going to buy a Roc Camera when a stamp
will do the job?
Maybe you might if you have a lot of photos to take for 'evidence',
for example, of the condition of a house before work is done, or
after it is done. However, nobody is asking for this so there is no
compulsion to get the Roc Camera when the camera on your phone
suffices for the needs of the real world.
ludicrousdispla wrote 1 day ago:
I agree with your points, but your argument is so rational and
well supported that I believe the opposite is likely to happen.
Does that make me a pessimist or an optimist?
oxalorg wrote 1 day ago:
I have clicked about ~20,000 photographs on a Sony camera in the last
year and a half. And I have published exactly 0 of those photos on
social media.
Whenever I meet my friends and family, I show them the pictures
myself and the story behind them.
I love the thrill of street photography and it gives me immense
pleasure to capture candid moments of humans. It's a great creative
outlet for me and helps me think about life and philosophy through my
pictures.
Maybe one day I will care enough about publishing these pictures,
maybe one day I will care about AI. But right now, I don't. This is
the closest I've been to my "kid"-like self, just enjoying something
for the heck for it.
LandR wrote 1 day ago:
As someone who would love to get into street photography, and has
an old NIkdon D7100, what would you recommend is a good lense (not
model, but focal length, zoom, etc) for street photography ?
k3nx wrote 1 day ago:
You should try to rent a lens to see what works for you. I used
lensrentals.com just to try out the 85/1.4 that "everyone" said
was awesome. I loved it, but couldn't justify the price for a
hobby, so I settled on the 85/1.8. I bought it years ago (4+) and
I think I've taken less than 20 pictures with it. My "nifty 50"
is still a favorite 50/1.8, but I also love the 70-300/4.5-5.6.
Those two are my most used, and both were less than $600 US
total.
bentcorner wrote 1 day ago:
It all depends on what you want to do. If you want to get
started cheaply the kit lens is more than enough.
Prime lenses will have larger apertures that can give you more
creative options.
How close do you want to stand? Indoor/outdoors? What are you
planning on taking pictures of? D7100 is APS-C, I find that 50mm
(~75mm ff) on APS-C doesn't give you quite enough room indoors to
take photos. So you might want a 35mm prime or a zoom that goes
down there. If you're planning on taking portraits you don't
want something too wide (~20mm and below can be good for real
estate/architecture) because it makes people look weird.
Most everything else is dictated by how much you want to spend
and how large/heavy you want your camera to be.
Personally I have a 35mm f1.8 on my camera and am happy with it,
I use it for family outings, a lot of portrait-level shots and
just general "hey we're at the museum" kind of photos.
jonah wrote 1 day ago:
I have a D7100 as well and a 35mm 1.8 and 20mm. Both are great.
35mm on APA-C is about 50mm on full frame and is the "natural"
view. Generally too narrow for landscapes and streetscapes, the
20mm starts to be good for those.
nuancebydefault wrote 1 day ago:
The pictures go with a story, that's the interesting part.
quietfox wrote 1 day ago:
I really need to get back to that mindset. I keep catching myself
unconsciously checking my hobbies and abilities for marketability.
I've been playing guitar for almost three decades, one of them spent
in a touring metal band. When I started, I used to enjoy making music
so much that I played and composed so often an album would just come
together naturally. And then another one and another one, I just
couldn't stop.
These days, I no longer sit down to play just for myself and the
moment â instead, I catch myself thinking, âCan I sell sample
packs from this? Record a course? Should I code a VST plugin for it
and sell that?â And after weeks of moments like this, all I have
are three random riffs and frustration.
pards wrote 1 day ago:
I try to look at my music as something that I do because I enjoy
it. I play in a casual/amateur band and I regularly have to remind
the guys that I do it for no other reason than because I enjoy it;
I'm not interested in playing gigs. Not everyone sees it the same
way.
I know a few musicians that tried to make a living out of music
similar to your story. Most have now stopped making music and are
both frustrated with the music industry, and angry at listeners for
not valuing their work.
BrokenCogs wrote 1 day ago:
Which band, may I ask?
foxglacier wrote 1 day ago:
People absolutely care that photos are real. There was somebody on
here recently who had to read the photographer's story of how he
planned it all to be comfortable it was real. Especially for those
bird-in-front-of-sun type photos.
barrell wrote 1 day ago:
I also used to be really (really really) into photography.
Personally, Iâve stopped taking pictures because of the stigma
around a camera.
Everyone, me more than most, doesnât want their picture taken, or
to be in the background of other photos. When someone can take
thousands of pictures an hour, and upload them all to some social
media site to be permanently stored⦠idk itâs shifted from a way
to capture a moment to feeling like youâre being survieled.
A bit hyperbolic, but itâs the best way to describe what Iâm
feeling
starky wrote 1 day ago:
Really? I don't go out and photograph near as much as I used to,
but nobody has ever reacted with anything other than interest at
what I'm doing. I was recently traveling to a couple cities I had
last been to 5-10 years ago and was shocked at how packed places
were with people getting their photos taken, I have photos that
would be impossible to take again because there would be people in
the way.
rdiddly wrote 1 day ago:
The quantities are what changed. Taking a photo used to be
relatively difficult and rare, so it was mainly reserved for
relatively meaningful subjects. Which meant that having your
picture taken was also relatively rare, and was something of a
validation that you were interesting enough to merit being
photographed. For that photograph to be published, even more so.
Now cameras are plentiful and cheap, "publishing" opportunities are
plentiful and cheap, and being photographed is commonplace and not
appreciated as much. You can read all the meanings into my choice
of the word cheap, by the way - as a price (increased supply made
the price go down) or as a value (there's an abundance, so it
becomes meaningless), or even as an implication about quality (low
stakes means not as much attention or care for composing a shot).
barrell wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
100%
sneak wrote 1 day ago:
This is a you thing. Most people have no issue whatsoever with
their faces appearing on social media. They âhave nothing to
hideâ.
exasperaited wrote 1 day ago:
The contemporary âickâ about street photography is the ick of
non-consensual capture. Everyone feels it to some degree; I stopped
doing street photography work and even most social photography
(including paid work) because I felt it and I wasnât ready to
navigate those feelings.
This âickâ is real and itâs good that you feel it, because
you can build on it for a sense of ethics about photos and the use
of the camera, about how its gaze affects subjects, about how to
reduce that impact.
A solution for you is to focus on photography with people posing
for photos who want the photos, or people posing for photos who
want money. Try art nude, even: it is fascinating, liberating, has
a very strong historical and creative through line, and will teach
you a lot.
I have developed a much stronger sense of the ethics around my
photography and a little more personal confidence, so I might yet
give street photography a go again in future, if I think I have
something specific to say.
angelgonzales wrote 1 day ago:
About a decade ago some guy thought I was taking a picture of him
and his girlfriend, they were very uninteresting subjects and I
didnât take any pictures of them but he followed me and sucker
punched me. He was caught quickly and I pressed charges and since
he had priors he didnât make bail and was sentenced to 2 years
in prison which I donât think was enough because even a soft
punch could kill someone. After that I began carrying non-lethal
and lethal tools for self defense and stopped worrying about
hurting peopleâs feelings when I take pictures. If people tell
me off I tell them off because ultimately our conflict is based
off of differing arbitrary opinions. I concluded that art is a
human right and I should never feel guilty or bad about making
it. Art is noble and itâs a high pleasure and part of being
human. I have a short time in this life to create art so I should
just do what I feel is pure and what I want. Iâve also
concluded that if I did what everyone told me to do (or what they
told me not to do) Iâd be eating ten pounds of spinach a day,
waking up a 5 AM, drinking a gallon of milk a day, buying
timeshares and joining the Marines! Obviously I wouldnât be
doing what I want, my point is that artists need to listen to
their inner voice and follow wherever that takes them.
assimpleaspossi wrote 1 day ago:
People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking
at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
A friend of mine delivers for Amazon. They have to take pictures of
every package delivered. Sometimes the customer is there when they
arrive and he asks them to hold the package for him while he takes
the photo of the package.
Most of them turn away or hold the package far away so they aren't
in the image. Some will pose with the package in some amusing way.
tpxl wrote 1 day ago:
> People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere
looking at each and every image posted everywhere with evil
intent.
Yeah when there's precedent for people doing exactly that the
feeling is justified. How many times have we heard of [facebook
employees/police/...] abusing their powers to stalk their
[exes/wives/love interests/'enemies'/...]. With the amount of
face detection and cataloguing being done today, it's never been
easier on a technical level. The only protection we have is
'trust us we aren't doing it bro', which doesn't get you very
far.
assimpleaspossi wrote 1 day ago:
In today's world, you can find one of anything. In the normal
everyday world, no one is bothered.
I_dream_of_Geni wrote 1 day ago:
This is exactly the point: "one of anything".
People use that "one thing" and make a giant case out of it,
sometimes affecting millions of people. I have two (of
hundreds of) examples: 1) the Tylenol poisonings in 1982
Chicago, had Johnson & Johnson recall 31 million bottles of
Tylenol, and arguably affected billions of people (with all
the tamperproof packaging that resulted worldwide). This was
a good thing. But one crazy man poisoning a few bottles of
Tylenol at one grocery store affected many people.
2) The next example is somewhat personal, but at Boeing back
around 1987 or so, one tech in our engineering group was on
the production floor, and a huge steel roller cart with a
tool on it, weighing probably 1000 lbs, ran over his toes.
From that single incident (even though 1000's of workers and
1000's of heavy carts were being used daily for dozens of
years), came an edict that ALL employees on or near these
facilities had to mandatorily wear huge plastic toe-caps over
their shoes if they didn't have steel-toed shoes on. This
meant that even secretaries in nearby offices would have to
wear these clunky caps all day, over their shoes even though
they never entered the production facilities. One person's
action affecting 50,000 nearby employees. This is a bad
thing. (because of the huge over-reaction).
So, these maybe don't fit the perfect example we are
discussing, but it shows how we can come to different
conclusions based on different inputs: "you can find one of
anything to use in an argument".
assimpleaspossi wrote 1 day ago:
People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking
at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
barrell wrote 1 day ago:
Not really. I think people rightfully feel that there are
algorithms online trying to identify every person and every
relation and store every bit of information about everyone. They
feel that everything now is so permanent and public, that if
youâre not at your best youâre at your worst, that that
moment will be immortalized, and that you have no control after
the picture is taken so itâs better to avoid it from the get
go.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
The concept of «public» has changed.
About 15-20 years ago I attended a lot of car events (races, shows)
where I took lots of photos. Mostly of moving cars, but also a lot
of closeups of race car drivers using a long lens. For about a year
more than half the photos published in a very niche car publication
were by me. The magazine had a few thousand subscribers. And to
this day I still see some drivers use my shots of them as profile
pictures etc. Nobody minded being photographed. In fact, they were
really happy about it.
Then social media happened. Thereâs a different «public» now.
Any picture taken and published now has the potential to go viral.
To get a global audience. And not least: to be put in unpleasant
contexts.
I can understand that peopleâs attitudes have changed.
I havenât actually given up taking photos in public. In part
because I think it is important that people do. I still take
pictures of strangers. Then again, I very rarely publish them
online out of respect for their privacy.
I understand how photos represent something else today. And that
people view the act of taking a picture differently. But if we stop
taking pictures, stop exercising our rights to take pictures, we
will lose them. Through a process of erosion.
I_dream_of_Geni wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe this comes to mind? : "Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and chief
people officer Kristin Cabot, who were caught on a Coldplay
concert jumbotron hugging each other and then quickly recoiling
when they realized they were on camera."
They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on them
without their permission, and yet, here we are....
TheCraiggers wrote 1 day ago:
> They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on
them without their permission, and yet, here we are....
The rule is: if you're in public you have no expectation of
privacy.
I think a debate on that rule would be interesting. My thought
is that if I can't take a picture unless there's absolutely
nobody else in the FOV, then that basically prohibits the vast
majority of photographs.
rstuart4133 wrote 22 hours 25 min ago:
I also am a fan of the "expectation of privacy" rule.
That's primarily because it makes it absolutely clear the
public always has the right to record officials doing their
job. So if you see a policeman murdering George Floyd in the
street, or fellow shopper pushing an old woman out of the
way, or a parent screaming abuse at an umpire, or even just
someone littering in a national park there is no doubt you
are allowed to record it.
Yes, this means towards more surveillance, but it's a counter
balance to the surveillance state. The state and large
corporations put cameras everywhere. It seems odd to me that
people get really upset by taking photos of them when there
are likely numerous CCTV cameras already doing that 24 hours
a day, in not so public places like offices. The "anyone can
take photos in a public place" rule means Joe Citizen gets
the same rights as the corporations and governments take for
themselves.
I'm in the minority though. The best illustration I've seen
of the was a man take a photo of the cheer leaders at a big
football game. He leaned over the fence and put his camera on
the ground, taking the photo as the girl kicked her leg into
the air. His actions where caught on the TV camera that was
broadcasting that same girls crouch around the nation. The
police prosecuted him because of the huge outcry. I'm can't
recall what the outcome in court was, but I couldn't see how
he could be breaking the photography rules given my country
has the "expectation of privacy" rule.
torginus wrote 1 day ago:
This gave me an idea - what if we made a stable diffusion based
AI that would replace unimportant faces (and possibly other
identifying details) with different ones - I have seen that AI
can do this and make the change unnoticeable.
That way people would be safe from having their personal likeness
and whereabouts accidentally plastered over the internet (except
when they want their photo to be taken), and the end result
wouldn't look so obviously modified as blurring faces or licence
plates.
nameless912 wrote 1 day ago:
Ah yes, because more AI will solve this problem.
No, what we need is for people to feel safe in public again,
for them to not feel like they're constantly one questionable
picture away from their lives being ruined. Kill social media,
kill gigantic public face tracking dragnets, kill
privacy-invading capitalism.
torginus wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
And here I was thinking AI would solve a problem in a way
people would appreciate just this once
perplex3d wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm with you. The dichotomy between public and private
needs to change. I should still have a degree of privacy even
when Iâm out in public. What has changed is the ability of
others to âseeâ everyone everywhere at every moment with
less and less friction, whether through pictures or videos
shared on social media, facial recognition cameras, or
location trackers like license plate readers. Historically,
no one has had this ability, and now we donât even know the
degree of that ability that some have.
vwcx wrote 1 day ago:
That's a solution that prioritizes privacy over reality, and
I'm not sure we collectively want that. Mutilation of truth in
the name of protection etc...
torginus wrote 1 day ago:
Yes that's a tradeoff - but I was thinking it would still be
better than stuff like Google street view's mess of blurs.
kelnos wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think that's better. For something like Street
View that's explicitly supposed to be capturing reality, I
want to know when that reality has been censored.
Realistic face replacement breaks that.
(And yes, I'm sure Street View imagery is edited in other
ways before it makes it to production, but I think it's
important that our view of reality remains as real as
possible.)
WD-42 wrote 1 day ago:
Is it better? At least you know itâs a real face under
the blur.
lynx97 wrote 1 day ago:
I find the combination of "pictures of strangers" and "our right
to take pictures" rather concerning. I have a different
perspective, as I am blind. But I was always uncomfortable with
having a picture taken of me by basically a stranger. And that
feeling didn't just come with social media. It always was there.
I disagree that you have a "right" to take pictures of
strangers. IMO, you shouldn't have that right. It is probably
different depending on what juristiction you are in. But my
personal opinion is, that this attitude is rather selfish. In my
perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without their consent
should be illegal.
cardanome wrote 1 day ago:
I find it strange how people consider taking pictures of
strangers as some basic right.
Here in Germany, people have a right to their own image. You
can't just photograph strangers. You can photograph a crowd at
a public event but you can't zoom in on one specific stranger.
Also you can photograph people that are of public interest.
Maybe it is me who is biased but I find these rules quite
reasonable. It protects both my privacy while allowing
photographers to do their job. If you want to photograph a
stranger, ask for consent.
kelnos wrote 1 day ago:
> Maybe it is me who is biased
Sure, and so am I. We're all biased toward what we are used
to, especially if it's something we grew up with through
childhood.
While I think it'd be creepy for someone to sit outside,
zooming in on strangers and taking photos of them, I don't
think that sort of thing should be illegal. (Aside from when
it might break other laws, like if it were to turn into
harassment.) I do think it we should require consent before
publishing a photo that focuses on individuals, at least for
most uses (I'm sure there are exceptions).
I don't think laws should try to spell out or enforce social
norms (for the most part; again I'm sure there are exceptions
I'd consider), and I think "don't be a creep with a camera"
is a social norm, not a legal issue.
> It protects [...] my privacy
I just don't see getting photographed in public as a privacy
issue, but I'll admit it depends on the "how". Dragnet
surveillance with cameras on every corner is a privacy issue,
but a single photographer with a manually-actuated camera is
not.
But really, what is it about someone having a photograph of
you while you're in public that violates your privacy? It
may "feel icky", but I don't see that as being a violation of
anyone's rights. (Again, publishing a photo is IMO another
matter.)
At the risk of diving into whataboutism, it seems weird to me
to object to public photography -- something that has many
legitimate artistic and historical uses and benefits -- when
many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of
the governmental and capitalist kind.
cardanome wrote 1 day ago:
> Again, publishing a photo is IMO another matter.
With analog photography this might be a useful distinction
but with digital it is easy to leak that photo even without
explicit intention to do so.
Even if the intention was to never share my photo, it is
likely to be automatically uploaded to Google Cloud or
similar services. It can be hacked, it will end up as
training data for some LLM and so on. It is more practical
to stop the taking of the photo in the first place.
> it seems weird to me to object to public photography
No one does. Lots of people practice public photography in
Germany. You just have to ask for consent if you want to
photograph strangers.
That is the point where I am lost an why this is even such
a big deal for you. You can photograph the environment, you
can photograph your friends, you can photograph anyone who
wants to be photographed. Why would you even want to
photograph someone why doesn't want their photo taken? Why
not take a photo of the many people that would love to have
their picture taken?
> when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance,
both of the governmental and capitalist kind.
Germany has also much better laws in that regard as well.
Sure it could be better enforced but the GDPR is super
strong.
As for surveillance, this is also more restricted here as
well. There is definitely a push to make widespread
surveillance more a thing but we are still far away from US
levels.
So yeah, both is bad.
thegrimmest wrote 23 hours 4 min ago:
Iâm not sure I agree that consent should be a
requirement for photographing people in public. You have
a right to observe people in public. You have a right to
take notes about these people and publish them. You have
a right to hire a person to sit in a public place and
record their observations, and to publish these to your
heartâs content.
Technologically augmenting these rights does not change
them. A pen and paper to record observations is a
technological augmentation to memory and recall. A
newspaper is an augmentation to a gossip corner. A camera
is just the same. A person should be able to record and
retransmit any information they come across in public,
regardless of technology, since ownership of an
observation is fundamentally the observerâs.
cardanome wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
> You have a right to observe people in public. You
have a right to take notes about these people and
publish them.
Not completely. If you keep staring at me, following me
around and taking notes I am going to call the police
even if you keep to public spaces.
While it is not illegal to stare at people I would
strongly advice you to not do so. You will find that
some people will react quite badly to it.
> You have a right to hire a person to sit in a public
place and record their observations, and to publish
these to your heartâs content.
No, you can't. They can write about the people they saw
in general terms but once you publish information that
directly identifies me and contains personal
information about me, I am gonna sue you. Might vary
depending on country though.
People are making such high level philosophical
argument about why they should be allowed to photograph
strangers but no one answers why. It is hard for me to
come up with any non malicious reason. Sure, maybe you
just like photography but then again photograph people
that consent to it.
Not to mention even if you legally can, I doubt that
running around photographing strangers will gain you
any positive reputation. In practice you are well
advised to ask for consent anyway.
thegrimmest wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
> You will find that some people will react quite
badly to it
Itâs a good thing we have laws, courts, and prisons
for people who canât control themselves.
> once you publish information that directly
identifies me and contains personal information about
me, I am gonna sue you
For what? What right of yours have I violated by
retransmitting publicly available information about
you? Presumably this right of yours would also be
infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree itâs not
a polite thing to do, but rights only count when they
protect contentious actions.
> It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious
reason
Free people donât need to justify their actions.
Your country may infringe on your rights, but that
doesnât invalidate the assertion they exist.
Freedom of speech and the consequential freedom of
the press are fundamental to a free society. Having
to justify yourself when youâre not harming anyone
is tyrannical.
cardanome wrote 19 hours 0 min ago:
> For what? What right of yours have I violated by
retransmitting publicly available information about
you? Presumably this right of yours would also be
infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree itâs
not a polite thing to do, but rights only count
when they protect contentious actions.
Information that you gained from observing me is
not necessarily publicly available information. You
can't camp in front of an abortion clinic and write
down everyone who went in and publish that on the
internet, at least not in Germany.
Generally, if there is not a legitimate public
interest, you can not publish information that
would direct identify me, like my name, in a
newspaper.
> Free people donât need to justify their
actions.
Well if you answered that questions, we could have
an actual discussion.
Currently everyone that responded to me here said a
variation of "everyone should have the right to
photograph strangers without their consent because
everyone should have the right to photograph
strangers without their consent" with a bit of
fancy works.
Like yeah this might be true and self evident
because of some axioms that you have but that I
don't necessary share and that you don't make
explicit so this looks completely pointless to me.
I genuinely don't even understand the passion for
photographing strangers without their consent and
why it needs to be defended with such a lofty
rhetoric.
My best attempt to steelman this is that you think
restricting your god given right to photograph
strangers without their consent is some slippery
slop towards having more rights taken away which
is... a very weak point.
> Your country may infringe on your rights, but
that doesnât invalidate the assertion they exist.
This makes no sense to me. There is not right to
photograph strangers without their consent in the
declaration of human right and never has such right
existed in my country so how can that be my right?
What the hell has photographing strangers without
their consent to do with free speech?
thegrimmest wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
Observing and publishing a list of who goes into
the abortion clinic is a perfect example of the
exercise of free speech. You donât need a
public interest to do so. Restricting what I can
publish is a violation of that exact idea. Free
speech means you can say very nearly anything
without criminal penalty (libel is a civil
matter).
My point is that the free people can do whatever
they want, as long as they are not directly
harming someone else. My right to waive my fists
around ends where your nose begins. I donât
need to justify why Iâm waiving my arms around.
I donât need to justify why Iâm camped
outside the abortion clinic. Maybe I hate
abortions and am engaged in civil protest. These
are all protected activities in a free country.
My assertion is that as a consequence of German
policy with regards to speech, Germany is a
fundamentally less free place. Who gets to decide
whether something is in the public interest? Why
is shaming abortion seekers not in that category?
cardanome wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
Germany has historical experienced how fascists
can weaponize free speech to gain power. One of
the core tenants of modern Germany is to let
this happen again.
Now, we might not be doing well but certainly
the US is currently doing much worse. You are
already at the building camps stage and it is
unclear whether you will have free elections
for long.
What is the point of theoretically having free
speech for a migrant worker that might deported
without any trial by the ICE, for a women that
might die during pregnancy because abortion was
banned? Those that allow fascists to speak
freely will end up with no one but fascists
speaking.
People that want to murder me should not be
allowed to speak.
> My point is that the free people can do
whatever they want, as long as they are not
directly harming someone else.
And yes, someone writing that I visited an
abortion clinic can do me harm. Same as someone
making lists of practicing Jews by camping
outside a synagogue can get those people hurt.
Your free speech ends where it can hurt me and
certain information about me being public can
and will hurt me.
volemo wrote 1 day ago:
While I agree with you that publishing a picture of a person
without their consent ought to be illegal, I as an individual
with very unreliable memory and one whoâs always doubting my
perception of reality, I heavily rely on modern technology and
strongly believe that personal recording of any kind is my
right, it being simple augmentation of my senses that allows me
to live happier and more fulfilled life.
bornfreddy wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
What is "publishing"? Is posting on FB also publishing?
buellerbueller wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
yes
exasperaited wrote 1 day ago:
It should not be illegal. It should be ethical.
The GDPR provides a pretty good framework for media
organisations and journalists to shoot people without
consent.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
Well, in many parts of the world it is a legal right. You can
take pictures of people in public. There are some restrictions,
and thereâs of course the question of how you go about it,
but it is a right.
I can understand people donât like this. Which is why
actually doing it requires a good deal of sensitivity and
common sense. But that doesnât mean it would be a good idea
to outlaw it.
However taking a picture is not the same as publishing it. This
is the critical point.
The rules for what you can publish tend to be stricter. For
instance where I live you canât generally publish a picture
of a person without consent. (It is a bit more complicated than
that in practice, with lots of complicated exceptions that are
not always spelled out in law. For instance if someone is
making a public speech they have no expectation of privacy).
As for making it illegal: that comes with far greater problems
than you might think. From losing the right to document abuses
of power to robbing people of the freedom to take pictures in
public.
In fact, years ago a law was passed here making it illegal to
photograph arrests. A well intentioned law meant to protect
suspects who have not been convicted of anything. However it
has never been enacted because it was deemed dangerous. It
would have made it illegal to document police misconduct, for
instance. And since the press here is generally very
disciplined about not publishing photos of the majority of
suspects, it didnât actually solve a problem. (In Norway
identities are usually withheld in the press until someone is
convicted. But sometimes identities are already known to the
public. For instance in high profile cases. This, of course,
varies by country)
jstimpfle wrote 1 day ago:
There are people who can "take a picture of you" just by
looking at you for a second. They have you memorized after
that.
I believe the usual approach is that in general, if you're in a
public space, you accept pictures may be taken of you. But it
depends on the context. If you're a bystander in your city
while tourists are fotographing places of interest for example,
and you make it into the picture, then that will hardly be a
problem in any practical legislation. Most legislations
probably allow for pictures taken of you even without you being
asked explicitly, as long as certain rights are not violated.
lynx97 wrote 1 day ago:
People with photographic memory can't just upload their
memories to the Internet. So that comparison is pretty much
worthless.
jstimpfle wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
Just taking a photo using a digital device doesn't imply
uploading it either. I'm sure most jurisdictions clearly
differentiate between these.
volemo wrote 1 day ago:
Artists with photographic memory can. And in the modern
world of computational photography and gen AI what even is
the difference between a photo and drawing?
v9v wrote 1 day ago:
The difference is time, effort and scalability. There are
many things that humans can do that society doesn't
strictly regulate, because as human activities they are
done in limited volumes. When it becomes possible to
automate some of these activities at scale, different
sorts of risks and consequences may become a part of the
activity.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
> But my personal opinion is, that this attitude is rather
selfish.
Public photography is cultural preservation and anthropological
ethnography. Asking folks to stop is selfish. You are free to
have an opinion that differs, and your jurisdiction may even
forbid public photography, but in those places Iâm familiar
with, street photography is as legitimate an art as music
played for free on the sidewalk. I wouldnât argue against
public concerts if I were deaf, as it doesnât concern me,
because it isnât for me, were I unhearing, and the gathering
that such public displays engender benefits one and all,
regardless of differences of senses or sensibilities amongst
those who choose to freely associate.
> In my perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without
their consent should be illegal.
Capturing an image of another without their consent is a bit
more nuanced, and I would agree that one is entitled to decide
how they are portrayed to a degree, but public spaces arenât
considered private by virtue of them being shared and
nonexclusive. All the same, though we may disagree, you have
given me some food for thought. I appreciate your unique
perspective on this issue, and I thank you sincerely for
sharing your point of view.
lynx97 wrote 1 day ago:
I find the comparison with deaf people re concerts is pretty
inappropriate. If you take a picture of me without me
knowing/my consent, you carry that picture "home" and maybe
even upload it to some public site. Heck, you could even
upload it to 4chan and make a ton of fun of me. "Look at
that stupid disabled guy", or whatever you and your friends
end up doing. That is a complete different game.
Disabilities are pretty different from eachother, and
throwing deaf and blind people into a pot just because both
are disabled is a very cheap and mindless act.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
I didnât make fun of you, though. Iâm saying itâs not
your right to complain about things you donât know about
if you donât suffer harm, even and especially if you come
to know about them. People make fun of other people for
reasons or in the absence of them. For you to make a
logical leap to imply Iâm saying itâs okay to make fun
of people, or saying that having a disability is a slight,
or blameworthy, or deserving scorn or mockery, is to put
words in my mouth.
Iâve known deaf people who love going to concerts. They
perceive the thrumming of the bass and the stomp of the
crowd. They see the smiles and throw up their hands, and
deaf folks are able to carry on a conversation by signing
better than most folks who are hearing, especially when the
music is turned up to 11.
Iâm more concerned with what might happen to assistive
technologies meant to be used in public by low-vision and
(legally or fully) blind users if public photography bans
are passed than I am about any other passing concerns about
being photographed in public, to be honest.
lynx97 wrote 1 day ago:
The "you" in my writing was refering to any photographer
who takes a picture of me without my consent. I should
probably mave made that clearer. IOW, I am not
suggesting that you in particular are making fun of me or
anyone you photograph. But since we were talking about
strangers, I have no way of knowing how that
photoographer will act. Sure, you in particular probably
have a morale compass. However, in the general case,
there is no way for me to know if the stranger taking a
photo of me is a bad actor or not. And therefore, I
oppose the "right" for anyone to do that, simply because
I can never know what they will end up doing with that
photo.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
> And therefore, I oppose the "right" for anyone to do
that, simply because I can never know what they will
end up doing with that photo.
Jurisprudence in my country canât preempt legal
activities because they might lead to wrongdoing in the
future. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I donât know what you think folks are likely to do,
but there are likely already laws against doing most
things you would take umbrage with.
Thereâs no need to winnow our rights out of concern
for your âmights.â
nandomrumber wrote 1 day ago:
Just because itâs legal doesnât mean you arenât
being a rude cunt.
Which are here too.
People can complain about whatever they want. Itâs
entirely legal to have an opinion, since you seem so
preoccupied with laws.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
as a non-militant bicyclist I see this every day.
People who insist on their right to ride where they
are legally allowed to while at the same time being
a nuisance. Yes, you can ride on the sidewalk, but
it'd be really nice if you didn't. Yes, you can
ride in the road, but do you really need to? In all
cities where I've rode a bicycle, a tiny bit of
planning and attention can usually result in routes
that result in minimal opportunities for conflict.
You can certainly photograph street scenes without
being a rude cunt.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
> Just because itâs legal doesnât mean you
arenât being a rude cunt.
I canât top that as a âhow do you do,â and
yet, itâs both of our birthright to be âa rude
cuntâ or worse, within the bounds of the law.
nandomrumber wrote 1 day ago:
Excellent response, you made me laugh.
I was getting enduly riled up over anonymous
internet comments and was going to say something
much more obnoxious, but not everyone gets
Australian humour so I figured Iâd tone it
down.
If I saw you take an unasked photo of our blind
friend here, Iâd let them know so theyâd have
an opportunity to approach you and ask you to
deleted it, if they happen to feel motivated to
do so, and offer to take care of it myself ;)
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve spent some time down under myself, and I
would hope if you were to ever find me lacking,
to the degree that you needed to take care of
me, that you have the foresight to have that
moment on camera, because such a photograph
ought to go straight to the pool room.[0]
[0] (For those who haven't seen The Castle
(1997), you really owe it to the Australians in
your life to make an appointment with yourself
to do so at your earliest convenience. Here's
the scene from the film in question which
originated one of my favorite bits of Aussie
slang: [1] [2] )
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCtMTb...
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cast...
nandomrumber wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
Sorry, was going to reply but in rate limited
in replying, probably because Iâm a bit of
a rude cunt.
â-
Iâm in to that! Itâd be a photo of me
falling flat on my face / generally making a
fool of myself. Perfect pool room photo.
Have a lovely day.
aspenmayer wrote 15 hours 34 min ago:
Good on ya, mate. Cheers.
krior wrote 1 day ago:
> public spaces arenât considered private by virtue of them
being shared and nonexclusive.
I live in a country where photographing people in public is
highly restricted. The reason is that 99% of people cannot
avoid public places in their day-to-day lives, therefore
public places cannot be a free-for-all.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
> therefore public places cannot be a free-for-all.
They canât in those places with the restrictions you are
familiar with and are subject to, but that is no argument
against the norms of other places and the denizens thereof.
I can, and do see public spaces as a free-for-all, and that
is neither better nor worse, but simply the way we do
things here.
If you donât like it, it doesnât affect you. Most folks
are aware, and make a mental note of such things from a
young age. If we donât like it that way, we have avenues
to change the way we relate to each other in public by
changing the laws and regulations that govern public
photography. That society hasnât reached a consensus on
this and other issues is fine. Variety is the spice of
life, and the spice must flow.
rkomorn wrote 1 day ago:
> public spaces arenât considered private by virtue of them
being shared and nonexclusive
The problem is that "public" 20 years ago (before cell phone
cameras, photo rolls, social media, growth/engagement
algorithms, attention economy, virality, etc) vs now just
doesn't mean the same thing anymore.
There's a difference between "no expectation of privacy" and
"no expectation of having every moment of your life in public
be liable to be published".
And at that point, the only thing left is the "well if you're
not doing anything wrong, you don't care if your life is
published" type of logic, and I don't love that.
I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public"
that doesn't account for how much things have changed.
Edit: and I use "published" as a direct reference to the
"publish" or "post" buttons on various social media apps.
rocqua wrote 1 day ago:
There's legally usually quite a big gap between what
pictures you can take of people, and how you can publish
them.
In places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of
privacy, you can generally be photographed. But there are
significant limits to how such pictures can be published
(including social media).
sbarre wrote 1 day ago:
The law doesn't matter much if someone is convicted in
the public square by intentionally misrepresented (or
even just context-collapsed) images of them going viral
to a global audience at Internet speed.
By the time the law, or the terms and conditions of
social networks, catches up, the damage is already done.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you
will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the
time, without you being aware of it. By law enforcement,
security cameras (private and otherwise), cars etc. on top
of that you carry around a phone that streams intimate
information about your location, behavior, preferences to a
bunch of data aggregators.
And then there are the signal surveillance networks that
are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts
traceable signals to your surroundings.
(Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up
to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks
phones scan for and create a map of where people come from
by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it
easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network
names. And from there you can figure out things like
«someone living at address X is at location Y. People who
live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a
competitor». And thatâs just by collecting one kind of
wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available
information)
Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even
registers.
rkomorn wrote 1 day ago:
I agree we're already in a bad place but I don't find the
"ship has sailed" take particularly engaging.
Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed
isn't a great strategy for change.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
I wasn't trying to make a "ship has sailed"-argument,
but rather the argument that going after photography is
odd given how little we care about surveillance and
data collection that is far more invasive, complete and
dangerous. If this were an optimization problem
(optimizing for privacy and reducing criminal
behavior), going after people who take pictures in
public wouldn't even be on the radar. It isn't even a
rounding error.
Sure, I understand that most people are barely aware of
the insane amounts of data various data brokers
aggregate, curate and sell of ordinary people's highly
sensitive data. But most of us are. Or should be. And
many of us are also part of the problem.
I do think this should be addressed. Especially since
it is hard to address and it is not going to get any
easier. In a well functioning legal system, every
single one of the large data brokers that trade in
sensitive personal information should be in existential
peril. And people associated with them should be at
very real risk of ending up in prison.
It seems ... peculiar to argue about taking away rights
that private citizens have had for more than a century
and at the same time not do anything about, for
instance, private parties raiding sensitive government
data and essentially nobody caring or showing any
willingness to do anything about it.
You are right in that we do have a "the ship has
sailed" attitude. But rather than focus on fixing what
is most important we'd rather risk infringing on the
rights of private citizens further because that is
"being seen as doing something".
(I'm not accusing you of thinking this -- I am just
finishing that line of reasoning to show what absurd
conclusions this might lead us to)
rkomorn wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think we have anything close to diametrically
opposed views, for the most part.
When it comes to following lines of reasoning to
absurd conclusions though, in the other direction,
don't we end up in a world where it is everyone's
right (private or public for that matter) to surveil
everyone at all times the moment they step outside?
Isn't that something you have an issue with? An
extension of the existing problem with data brokers,
including ones that record data from interactions on
their private space (eg our access to their products
in their stores, etc)?
You're definitely right that there are worse
offenders out there than "randos taking pictures",
but it doesn't have to be an either-or thing.
Plus, I'd suspect that almost anyone who thinks it's
not great that every other person on the street can
now record them and post it on social media for
engagement also doesn't like the other bits of
tracking and surveillance you bring up, so if
anything, they are probably your overzealous allies.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
> Addressing nothing because everything can't be
addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
Presupposing that some strategies for change are less
suitable than others is no argument against the status
quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the
way folks in a given time and place do things, and is
simply contingent as much as itâs worthwhile.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you
donât like the way things are done here, you either
care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or
you donât. If you arenât from here, that might be
an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and
going.
Itâs a kind of double standard to judge folks for
their customs without wanting to do the work to
disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not
to let the door hit you on your way out, especially
after it was opened unto you in the first place.
Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special
pleading.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
> I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of
"public" that doesn't account for how much things have
changed.
I think itâs a mistake for others in different
jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they
ought to live.
The times may have changed, and we didnât start the fire.
We could put it out if we wanted, or if the lick of the
flames brought us undue harm. Perhaps most folks just
donât want to change as much as the times, and thatâs
okay. The future is not yet written, and justice is a
living thing. We can always go a different way if the
future we arrive upon necessitates it.
I donât mind if we have to change, but I do admire the
view. The camera can only capture whatâs inside the
frame, and it would be a shame to stop living, and the
greater loss would be to give up on life in pursuit of
capturing a fleeting moment. I think for many, like me, who
admire the hobby and have a love of photography as an art
form, itâs akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. If it
were outlawed or constrained, a true loss to society would
occur, as that would be a material change in living
conditions. Others are free to disagree, and I wouldnât
find fault with them for simply doing so.
When it comes to curtailing my rights to preserve history
and my place in it, I donât think Iâm the one who is
entitled, but those who would prevent me from freely
expressing myself through my chosen medium. If you see
something, you ought be free to say something or remain
silent. Forestalling my speech is not for you to say.
Freedom to photograph is a free speech issue, to my view.
rkomorn wrote 1 day ago:
Photography is my favorite art form to consume, so I'm
not in favor of any kind of ban of it.
I also agree that freedom to photograph is a free speech
issue. I just happen to think the ability to live your
life without having it being recorded everywhere is also
a freedom issue.
I think it's a challenge for us to solve and I don't
pretend to have a solution. I just don't agree with a
"change nothing" stance on grounds of "no expectation of
privacy" because I think things have changed to a point
that it needs to be addressed.
Side note:
> I think itâs a mistake for others in different
jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how
they ought to live.
If that's directed at me, then I think you're reading
something in my comment that I haven't expressed.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
I donât mean to direct anything at anyone, other than
my viewfinder. I believe in home rule, and not dictates
from bureaucrats. As a sort of journalist, Iâm going
to keep taking pictures, and to keep writing journals.
Anything less or different would be to be someone other
than myself the best and only way I know how, and that
isnât being true to myself or to others.
If you felt that I directed my comments at you, I
apologize; I almost certainly wasnât. If anything, I
am directing them at myself, as an affirmation of what
I believe and why. Freedom of expression is one of the
few issues that I will take a principled stance on, and
if you feel that I was directing my comment at you, I
donât mean to, though you are free to express
whatever you feel led to if you feel that I have given
you short shrift or unalloyed fire, friendly or
otherwise.
tasuki wrote 1 day ago:
> Everyone, me more than most, doesnât want their picture taken,
or to be in the background of other photos.
I used to be a little into photography. No one ever protested about
me taking a picture of them. Just recently I was photographing an
event and thought: I just come there, take photos of everyone,
upload them to the internet, and all I get is thanks. I haven't
asked anyone for permission. Yes I was invited by the event
organizer, but I'm sure they didn't ask permission either.
SoftTalker wrote 1 day ago:
Normally, somwhere in the long dense legalese they "agree" to
when spectators buy tickets to the event, is a release for
photography.
tasuki wrote 1 day ago:
This event had no tickets.
spython wrote 1 day ago:
Absolutely. Running around with a large format camera (Graflex)
with an Instax back (lomograflok) and making photos and immediately
giving results back to people changed a lot. Strangers were
basically lining up to ask about the camera and have their photo
taken. That was a really fun experience, and I noticed how much I
missed that excitement - before camera phones took over such
moments were much more common.
Now I build/3d print my own large and medium format cameras, and
that also makes it much more interesting, but the fun of instant
photography with an ancient looking camera is just incredible.
BeFlatXIII wrote 1 day ago:
Like a extra-fancy Polaroid?
spython wrote 23 hours 18 min ago:
Like a polaroid shot with an actually good lens. Also the whole
performative part of making a photograph is of course much
richer with an old, manual camera.
sjw987 wrote 1 day ago:
That's odd, and to reassure you I would say that I personally would
rather see somebody with a physical camera. That way I know I can
avoid the area they're photographing if I don't want to be shot or
just be aware I'm going to be in a photo otherwise. It also makes
me (rightly or wrongly) think the photo will be uploaded somewhere
a bit higher than an Instagram / Facebook feed (my wife used to put
DSLR photos on Instagram and for an image feed website I used to be
shocked at how poorly images were downscaled, maybe that's
changed).
I find something much more pervasive about any upright smartphone
being a camera at any given time, whether the person is being
obvious about it or not. A dedicated camera is actually more
reassuring to me, as its use-cases are probably more innocent than
a smartphone camera.
Smartphone cameras have given poor photography to the masses. I
reckon I'm probably in thousands of peoples photos that were taken
on a whim with a phone. And I've witnessed situations where it
appears people are trying to stealthily take photos of people with
phones on public transport and the like.
stavros wrote 1 day ago:
Instagram isn't for sharing photos, it's for sharing a curated,
artificial view into your life. Photos are just the medium, it's
not meant for art.
ben_ wrote 1 day ago:
> for an image feed website I used to be shocked at how poorly
images were downscaled, maybe that's changed
It has not, still garbage.
bborud wrote 1 day ago:
Which can be a blessing in disguise. It makes it less
attractive to steal images for commercial purposes.
sjw987 wrote 1 day ago:
I figured as much. Oh well, not like it's primary function is
an image sharing site :)
bambax wrote 1 day ago:
> That way I know I can avoid the area they're photographing
Not with 360 cameras! Which are super fun btw.
frereubu wrote 1 day ago:
I've managed to get around that by returning to my Nikon FM2.
People react quite differently when it's clearly a film camera -
even better if it's a medium format camera. That also gets around
the nagging feeling that you're being guided in what you're taking
by how it will appear online too. I don't have any social media
accounts aside from HN and a BlueSky account that tweets the diary
entries of an 18th century naturalist so I have no motivation to
think about that side of things. It's a lovely feeling of my work
being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a
photo online. It feels much healthier.
barrell wrote 1 day ago:
Heh Iâve often daydreamed of one day setting up a darkroom and
buying a couple medium format cameras, I wondered if that would
be disarming enough (I love medium format and TLRs).
Canât do it while Iâm renting, but maybe one day!
dghlsakjg wrote 1 day ago:
Consider doing a hybrid workflow. The equipment for developing
film is quite compact. I keep all of my film development
chemicals and equipment stored in a small tupperware under the
bathroom sink. You can also buy a lightproof bag, so you don't
even need a light tight room to load the film.
The second half of my process is to "scan" my film using a
macro lens and my DSLR. It takes about 2 hours to go from
exposed film to developed and scanned film. Only about 30
minutes of that time is active, most of it is waiting for the
film to dry since I don't have a drying a cabinet.
etrautmann wrote 1 day ago:
Go for it anyway! I have a small NYC apt and fit everything I
need for darkroom development into a small crate. I can scan
negatives with a small setup here, but do have to go to a
community darkroom for enlarger printing.
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
The best is making albums with numbered tissue paper silhouettes
and the peoples names written on the back with a blurb and the
date.
>It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't
be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much
healthier.
I find people like it a lot and even give me contact info to get
the picture I took of them which is cool.
spaqin wrote 1 day ago:
And yet, they're constantly captured by countless CCTV cameras all
around, without minding their business. I know the pain and don't
take as many portraits as I'd like to sometimes, even with people
close to me; but on few occasions that I do sneak in a shot and
show them the results later, they're surprised in two ways: "when
did you take it?!" and "that doesn't look half bad!". Maybe because
I don't overdo it.
Keep up the fight!
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
Can't you just not care and power through? Someones always going to
be miffed regardless. I keep a Rollei A110 on me at all times and a
tiny Minox EC that takes me hours to refill. When I bring it out
people love it. It's a throwback that people very much appreciate.
I can see people getting miffed at a big digital camera though.
barrell wrote 1 day ago:
Canât I just not care that Iâm making other people
uncomfortable and power through? I think for obvious reasons that
takes away a lot of the enjoyment, both of photography and
socializing.
YMMV, but every time Iâve brought out a camera in the last 5-10
years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped taking
it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.
Defenestresque wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
As someone who only occasionally takes photos of mature, or
empty streets (I just find them more aesthetically pleasing,
especially if they're empty at night, nothing to do with the
topic of discussion), I have no dog in this fight whatsoever,
May I ask where you are taking out your camera to experience
these results? By "where," I mean both what part of the
world/culture you are in and the specific location(s) (e.g.
weddings, streets, public transit, work, at a friend's whom you
know well, at an acquaintance's).. you get the point.
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
>YMMV, but every time Iâve brought out a camera in the last
5-10 years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped
taking it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.
Has to be a digital.
etrautmann wrote 1 day ago:
Really? I do this often and have never had any issues.
Tepix wrote 1 day ago:
Why do you think anyone is entitled to upload photographs showing
other people to the internet where they are completely out of
control of what happens next?
sneak wrote 1 day ago:
Because we in the global west generally have the right to
photograph anything we can see in public, save for pathological
places like Germany or France. You donât own your image. If
you go into public and I take a photograph of you, I hold the
copyright on that image, not you. You donât have any say in
what I do with my (legally obtained) image taken in public, nor
should you.
igouy wrote 1 day ago:
? "Model Release"
HTML [1]: https://contributors.gettyimages.com/img/articles/do...
oneeyedpigeon wrote 1 day ago:
Because that's what public space is? We've always held that
principle, and I don't think 'reach' should affect that. If
someone takes this to the extreme (i.e. follows you around in
public, taking thousands of pictures and uploading them in real
time) they can be charged with stalking, harassment, or a
similar offence.
To turn it on its head, if you cannot take photographs of
people in public without their permission, then we basically
lose the ability to take any photos of public space.
tasuki wrote 1 day ago:
Let me flip that on you: Why not? How do you decide what people
are entitled to? Am I entitled to have an opinion on the
internet?
Where lies the line? Would it be ok to paint a picture showing
other people and show it to a third person?
igouy wrote 1 day ago:
Non-commercial use is sometimes accepted when unlicensed
commercial use is not.
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
Man you would hate flickr. Also, never said anything about
that. I don't have any social media, so the photos die with me
and my friends. It's a nice break from modern technology to
spend hours on an analog process. If you're in a public place
you're probably getting photographed so I'm not sure what
you're trying to say.
mikepurvis wrote 1 day ago:
I have an entry level Sony Alpha that I picked up for a vacation
earlier this year. With the portrait lens on there it definitely
registers as âcameraâ far more than a phone. Between that
factor and the hassle of having to manually go through and upload
the photos afterward, I only take it on special occasions â
trips, hikes, etc. Itâs not worth all that hassle for trying to
get day to day stuff.
sneak wrote 1 day ago:
I have a top of the line Sony Alpha (7CR) with a large zoom
lens (24-70GM or 70-200GM) and I carry it almost everywhere,
every day. It is absolutely worth the hassle to get day to day
stuff.
BeFlatXIII wrote 1 day ago:
As they say in the audio world, âthere ain't no replacement
for displacement.â I love gigazoom lenses. For focal
lengths under 100mm, I can use my phone. My SLR is my
personal spy satellite.
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
Why not live a little and get a film camera? It's more time for
sure but are you not tired of optimizing everything in life?
foldr wrote 1 day ago:
I enjoy film photography in some contexts (I do a bit of
4x5), but film photography basically sucks. I think possibly
a lot of the people who find some kind of magic in it are
those young enough not to have grown up in the era where
shooting film was the only option.
I don't mind 4x5 so much because just taking the photo is so
much effort that the associated ordeal of developing and
scanning isn't out of proportion. But for 35mm and medium
format, there's a hugely disproportionate investment of time
and money for a small number of photos.
dugidugout wrote 1 day ago:
Curious how 4x5's inconvenience is "proportional" while
35mm's is "hugely disproportionate". I'm not familiar with
the specifics of these formats, but you seem to be
arbitrarily drawing the line for where the added friction
is still serving the "magic" I believe is very real if not
fragile. I think you recognize the value of photography
isn't solely in the product. I'm curious what you
personally find in 4x5 that saves you from these younger
artist's silliness.
foldr wrote 10 hours 48 min ago:
It takes about 10 minutes to take a single 4x5 photo, and
you have to carry around a tripod and a fairly bulky
camera to do it. So the time and effort invested in
taking the photo is similar to the time and effort
required to develop and scan the negative.
In contrast, a 35mm camera is very convenient and you can
expose an entire 30 frame roll of film in a few minutes.
But getting high quality scans of all those frames
requires either a lot of time or a lot of money.
(Consumer flatbeds give poor results for 35mm, so your
best bet is putting the negative on a light table and
using a digital camera and macro lens. But thatâs a
physically fiddly process, the âscanâ needs manual
spotting for dust, and if youâre shooting color
negatives you also have to do some work to get the colors
right.)
Back in the day, most users of 35mm cameras were
satisfied with waiting a week to get a set of prints with
absolutely no creative control over the printing process,
but thatâs not what most people want now.
etrautmann wrote 1 day ago:
Thatâs kind of the point though. The scarcity focuses
you n taking more deliberate and intentional photos.
BeFlatXIII wrote 1 day ago:
The parable of the pottery classes that were graded on
their best work and total volume of work springs to mind.
I never would've bothered with photography if I didn't
have the ability to be shameless with burst mode and pick
the winners later.
peteforde wrote 1 day ago:
What you are describing isn't photography.
foldr wrote 1 day ago:
It's what some people see as the point now. Back when
film was the only option, the cost and time per frame
were just negatives (if you'll excuse the pun). There was
no romance in deciding whether or not to use one of your
last three remaining frames; it was just annoying.
I don't deny that for a whole range of reasons, some
people might take better or more meaningful photos using
old cameras. Limitations can feed into the artistic
process. I just think it's a bit silly to romanticize the
cost and inconvenience of film, or to think that photos
taken using film are somehow inherently more interesting
or valuable.
asimovDev wrote 1 day ago:
I found our childhood film camera last year and I took it to
a couple trips. price of scanners/getting your film scanned
and needing to buy 10eur film rolls for like 20 photos turned
me off. I still haven't scanned my first and only roll I shot
last year.
MarcelOlsz wrote 1 day ago:
I bought a Gralab timer and hooked it up to an old shitty
enlarger in my tiny dark wine cellar, along with a red
bulb. A few chemicals and tools and you're golden. The only
thing that screws me is having to cut up film and spool it
but I can get more frames out of it that way since I use
mini spy cameras. Yes the film being expensive isn't great
but it also makes you choose your shots carefully. Get a
cheap darkroom film changing tent and start there.
keepamovin wrote 1 day ago:
I think real photography is sort of like archery, you know, in the
moment, feeling it, release at the right time, to capture that. I
think in a sense of the candid street, or Magnum photogs. That kind
of spirit. And that is innately satisfying and a fun way to engage
with the world around you. :)
danielbln wrote 1 day ago:
Even "unreal" photography can be like that . My phone may do all of
the mechanical work + post-processing, but framing, angle,
foreground/background and capturing just the right moment is just
as much fun (well, for me anyway).
Gigachad wrote 1 day ago:
There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.
People in general donât want the slop, but itâs seeping in
everywhere with no easy way to mass remove.
The problem with the linked product is itâs basically DRM with a
baked in encryption key. And we have seen time and time again that
with enough effort, itâs always been possible to extract that key.
fweimer wrote 1 day ago:
The problem about DRM in this context is not that it's going to get
broken (which is probably true if the product becomes sufficiently
mainstream). It will be used to target photographers and take away
their rights. With today's cameras, you have (at least in theory)
some choice how much of your rights you give away when you give the
pictures your took to someone else. With DRM in the camera, you'll
likely end up with some subscription service, ceding a lot of
control to the camera makers and their business partners.
muldvarp wrote 1 day ago:
> There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.
I fully agree, I just don't know how that could work.
I think GenAI will kill the internet as we know it. The smart thing
is (and always has been) to be online less and build real
connections to real people offline.
mig1 wrote 1 day ago:
Thereâs an assumption on HN that everyone can identify AI slop
because pretty much everyone here can. But my personal experience
and what I think might be more in line with reality is that the
majority of social media users canât tell or donât care.
vineyardmike wrote 1 day ago:
Respectfully, I completely disagree.
People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop, even if they
point and say eww when it's discussed. Some people care, and some
additional people pretend they care, but it just isn't a real issue
that is driving behavior. Putting aside (for now) the idea of
misinformation, slop is socially problematic when it puts artists
out of work, but social media slop is just a new, sadder, form of
entertainment that is generally not replacing the work of an
artist. People have been warning about the downfall of society with
each new mode of entertainment forever. Instagram or TikTok don't
need to remove slop, and people won't care after they acclimate.
Misinformation and "trickery" is a real and horrific threat to
society. It predates AI slop, but it's exponentially easier now.
This camera, or something else with the same goal, could maybe
provide some level of social or journalistic relief to that issue.
The problem, of course, is that this assumes that we're OK with
letting something be "real" only when someone can remember to bring
a specialty camera. The ability of average citizens to film some
injustice and share it globally with just their phone is a
remarkably important social power we've unlocked, and would risk
losing.
vanviegen wrote 1 day ago:
> The ability of average citizens to film some injustice and
share it globally with just their phone is a remarkably important
social power we've unlocked, and would risk losing.
I'd say we've already mostly lost that due to AI. We might gain
it back if cryptographic camera signatures become commonplace
(and aren't too easy too crack).
fsloth wrote 1 day ago:
"People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop"
I think this is true. In general I think enough population of the
market actually does not care about quality as long as it exceeds
a certain limited threshold.
There's always been market for sub-par product. That's one of the
features of the market I think. You can always find what is the
cheapest, lowest quality offering you can sell at a profit.
woodpanel wrote 1 day ago:
> People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop
I fear, your statement is impossible to be denied its validity,
when "Tung Tung Tung Sahur"-Trading-Cards and "Tralalero
Tralala"-T-Shirts are a thing.
bstsb wrote 1 day ago:
the majority of "Italian Brainrot" enjoyers are probably not
old enough to be on social media regardless
pjerem wrote 1 day ago:
Saying that there is a market for a sane social network does not
means it's a market as big as the other social networks. You
don't have to conquer the world to have a nice product.
Someone wrote 1 day ago:
> People in general donât want the slop
True.
> There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.
Thereâs a market for social media that bans slop, period. I
donât think it matters how it was made.
Also, that market may not be large. Yes, people prefer quality, but
(how much) are they willing to pay for it?
XorNot wrote 1 day ago:
Also the inversed incentive problem: the less people think it can
be done, the more value in doing it.
That said in theory TPMs are proof against this: putting that to
the test at scale, publicly, would be quite useful.
october8140 wrote 1 day ago:
The biggest lie capitalism tells us is that something only has value
if it can be sold.
mlrtime wrote 1 day ago:
Capitalism doesn't 'tell us' anything, it just like everything else
has pros and cons.
I don't know anyone who understand economics would say this, unless
you're talking about very specific meanings of 'value'. I'm not
trying to be pedantic, I know what you mean, but these comments are
not insightful or helpful.
numpad0 wrote 1 day ago:
And the most important lesson Internet taught it is that something
only has value when seller loses money on it.
beeflet wrote 1 day ago:
The desire to "make money" is generally a proxy for the desire to
provide value for others. It is easier to justify the investment of
labor and resources that went into the production a camera if you
can reciprocate the value for others.
grumpy-de-sre wrote 1 day ago:
Or just maybe free markets expose the bitter truth. That can take a
lot of self reflection to come to terms with. Applies to a lot of
aspects to life, eg. career planning, creative endeavors etc.
But at the same time it's true that some vital public activities
aren't rewarded by the system atm. Eg. quality journalism, family
rearing, open source, etc. Often that's an issue of privatized
costs and socialized rewards. Finding a way to correct for this is
a really big deal.
anigbrowl wrote 1 day ago:
I think this is only true when you abstract things away from
their spatiotemporal context and treat market information as a
snapshot. The art market thought Van Gogh was a weirdo with bad
brush technique until after he died and people began to recognize
how innovative his work was.
grumpy-de-sre wrote 1 day ago:
Naturally many a startup has also failed due to similar factors
(only for the core idea to be resurrected some years later to
great success).
fsloth wrote 1 day ago:
"Finding a way to correct for this is a really big deal."
But aren't you now feeding back to the system? Why would there
need to be a financial reward and incentive for everything?
I do realize "contributing free value" is perceived by some as
free value a third party can capture and financially profit from"
which might the reason for thinking of how to then cycle some of
that value back?
grumpy-de-sre wrote 1 day ago:
Thinking about the three examples I gave, I think it's more
that the externalities of not doing these activities aren't
priced in.
Tabloid press is fantastically profitable, but fake news over
time will erode a great deal of social trust.
Closed source software might be individually advantageous but
collectively holds back industrial progress. It's a similar
reason to why patents were first introduced for physical goods.
And yes people voluntarily without kids should have to pay
significantly more social contributions.
IlikeKitties wrote 1 day ago:
How could this possibly validate that the camera sensor that's attached
to it is actually a camera sensor and not just an FPGA sending raw
data?
TheDong wrote 1 day ago:
You have to push the signing as far out as possible.
The light sensor must have a key built into the hardware at the
factory, and that sensor must attest that it hasn't detected any
tampering, that gets input into the final signature.
We must petition God to start signing photons, and the camera sensor
must also incorporate the signature of every photon input to it, and
verify each photon was signed by God's private key.
God isn't currently signing photons, but if he could be convinced to
it would make this problem a lot easier so I'm sure he'll listen to
reason soon.
m00x wrote 1 day ago:
you can't
troupo wrote 1 day ago:
So it's a Raspberry Pi attaching a ZK Proof to an image to say that
this image was taken on this particular Raspberry Pi.
That's it. That's the verification?
So what happens when I use a Raspberry Pi to attach a ZK proof to an
AI- generated image?
alberth wrote 1 day ago:
How does this differ from a kids digital camera that costs only 1/10th
the cost.
Not trolling. Genuinely donât understand.
HTML [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Camera-Digital-Toddler-Christmas-Birthd...
geor9e wrote 1 day ago:
There is a movement to cryptographically sign images in order to
prove that they are real raw photographs, by selling hardware in
which the cryptographic key is placed close to the camera sensor to
prevent tampering.
This is one attempt.
noyesno wrote 1 day ago:
[1] already exists?
HTML [1]: https://www.nikonusa.com/content/nikon-authenticity-service
shayanbahal wrote 1 day ago:
this is a gem from the past I believe
ares623 wrote 1 day ago:
I donât know what this gives that a film camera with slide film
loaded doesnât.
Both cameras still allow âstagingâ a scene and taking a shot of
that. Both cameras will both say that the scene was shot in the
physical world, but thatâs it.
I would argue that slide film is more âverifiableâ in the ways that
matter: easier to explain to laypeople how slide film works, and itâs
them that you want to convince.
If I was a film or camera manufacturer I would try and go for this
angle in marketing.
rendaw wrote 1 day ago:
Are you saying the slide itself would be proof? I think the use cases
are different - this camera gives you a file and signature you can
transmit digitally.
geor9e wrote 1 day ago:
Can't find slide printing services easily put AI images onto slide
film for you?
I think the point of this movement toward cryptographically signing
image sensors is so people can confidently prove images are real on
the internet in a momentary click, without having to get hold of the
physical original and hiring a forensic lab to analyze it.
dghlsakjg wrote 1 day ago:
You can get things printed onto a transparency mounted in a slide
frame. Actual slide film, though, must be done by exposing light.
When you want another image put onto a slide, the easiest way to do
it is to just take a picture using a camera.
Thatâs beside the broader point that OP made: it doesnât matter
since you can just point a verifiable camera at a staged scene (or
reproduction of an AI image) and have an image of something that
doesnât represent reality. You can cryptographically sign, or
have an original slide, of an image that is faked outside the
camera.
geor9e wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
>You can just point a verifiable camera at a staged scene
It's an emerging field, and attack vectors like that are hurdles
to be solved. You can make faking more difficuly, for example,
with a depth sensor.
wilg wrote 1 day ago:
There's simply no technical solution to authenticating photographs as
far as I can tell.
The only real solution I can think of is just to have multiple
independent parties photograph the same event and use social trust.
Luckily this solution is getting easier now that almost everyone is
generally no further than 3 feet away from multiple cameras.
beeflet wrote 1 day ago:
you know what grinds my gears? The fact that it takes 2 seconds for
the android camera app to open, even when I use the shortcut on the
lock screen. It's a step backwards from point-and-shoot cameras.
I was trying to take a picture of a gecko the other day, and it
missed half of the event while the app was loading.
rukuu001 wrote 1 day ago:
Literally manufacturing trust eh?
d_silin wrote 1 day ago:
You can absolutely sign the image with the on-camera certificate, for
example, but that would too boring of a solution to hype.
nixpulvis wrote 1 day ago:
See that's what I'm saying.
nixpulvis wrote 1 day ago:
Am I just a crazy cynic or are ZK proofs here just a buzzword.
Like, how is this any different than having each camera equipped with a
vendor controlled key and then having it sign every photo?
If you can spoof the sensor enough to reuse the key, couldn't you spoof
the sensor enough to fool a verifier into believing your false proof?
Barbing wrote 1 day ago:
The technique you describe has seen some use by some major vendors
for 5 to 10 years right?
nixpulvis wrote 23 hours 49 min ago:
Not sure.
injidup wrote 1 day ago:
You take a photo of an AI generated photo. What's yr proof worth
then?
a3w wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
Yes, IIRC if you measure an image signal, i.e. here: image, that is
at twice the resolution of the sensor you use, there won't be any
artifacts.
NyquistâShannon sampling theorem.
But, if the sony sensor also measures depth information, this
attack vector will fall flat. Pun intended.
modeless wrote 1 day ago:
Seems to me that a camera like this is necessarily, at least in part, a
closed system that blocks you from controlling the software or hardware
on the device you supposedly own. It's hard for me to think this is a
good direction. And as others have pointed out, it can't prevent
attacks through the analog hole, e.g. photographing a display.
It's not feasible or desirable for our hardware devices to verify the
information they record autonomously. A real solution to the problem of
attribution in the age of AI must be based on reputation. People should
be able to vouch for information in verifiable ways with consequences
for being untrustworthy.
cush wrote 1 day ago:
> And as others have pointed out, it can't prevent attacks through
the analog hole, e.g. photographing a display
Are there systems that do prevent photographing a display? Like
accompanying the photo with an IR depth map?
cush wrote 1 day ago:
> A real solution to the problem of attribution in the age of AI must
be based on reputation
This is actually one of the theoretical predictions from Eliezer
Yudkowsky, who says that as information becomes less and less
verifiable, we're going to need to re-enter a pre-information-era -
where people will have to know and trust the sources of important
information they encounter, in some cases needing to hear it first
hand or in person.
7952 wrote 1 day ago:
Practically I think there are situations where it is not so black and
white. Like camera footage used as evidence in a court case.
Signing a video with a public key would give some way to verify the
source and chain of custody. Why wouldn't you in that situation? At
a minimum it makes tapering harder and weakens false claims that
something has been tampered with.
Gigachad wrote 1 day ago:
The analog hole can be mitigated by using more sensors. Store a depth
map, a time, gps location, and maybe more.
If youâve got a photo of a public figure, but it doesnât match
the records of where they were at that time, itâs now suspicious.
avidiax wrote 1 day ago:
I feel the trouble with this is two-fold:
It's not enough that the photograph is signed and has metadata.
Someone has to interpret that metadata to decide authentic versus
not. One can have an "authentic" photo of a rear projection screen.
It wouldn't be appropriate to have an "authentic" checkmark next to
this photo if it claims to not be a photo of a rear projection
screen. The context matters to authenticity.
Secondly, the existence of such "authentic" photos will be used to
call all non-authenticated photos into doubt.
So it doesn't even really solve any problem, but creates new
problems.
card_zero wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, that might make these fake-proof cameras popular, to the point
where people start putting in the necessary effort to defeat them
by monkeying around with the time server and the depth sensor and
the gps signal. Then you get a really well-supported fake image
that's very effective because it's authenticated.
echelon wrote 1 day ago:
This feels like pearl clutching.
We do not need "proof". We lived without it, and we'll live without
it again.
I grew up before broadband - we survived without photographing every
moment, too. It was actually kind of nice. Social media is the real
fluke of our era, not image generation.
And hypothetically if these cryptographic "non-AI really super
serious real" verification systems do become in vogue, what happens
if quantum supremacy beats crypto? What then?
You don't even need to beat all of crypto. Just beat the signing
algorithm. I'm sure it's going to happen all the time with such
systems, then none of the data can be "trusted" anyway.
I'm stretching a bit here, but this feels like "NFTs for life's
moments". Designed just to appease the haters.
You aren't going to need this stuff. Life will continue.
t43562 wrote 1 day ago:
Back to the time before photographs then - the 1800s.
Crime scene photographs won't be evidence anymore. You photograph
your flat (apartment) when you move in to prove that all the marks
on the walls were already there and that won't be evidence anymore.
The police mistreat you but your video of it won't be evidence
either. etc
echelon wrote 31 min ago:
> Crime scene photographs won't be evidence anymore.
Why wouldn't they be?
Testimony is evidence.
Gigachad wrote 1 day ago:
This worked because we also used to have significantly better and
more trustworthy news organisations that you could just trust did
the original research and verified the facts. Now they just copy
stories off Reddit and make up their own lies.
altairprime wrote 1 day ago:
> camera like this is necessarily, at least in part, a closed system
that blocks you from controlling the software or hardware on the
device you supposedly own
Attestation systems are not inherently in conflict with
repurposeability. If they let you install user firmware, then it
simply wonât produce attestations linked to their signed builds,
assuming you retain any of that functionality at all. If you want
attestations to their key instead of yours, you just reinstall their
signed OS, the HSM boot attests to whoeverâs OS signature it finds
using its unique hardware key, and everything works fine (even in a
dual boot scenario).
What this does do is prevent you from altering their
integrity-attested operating system to misrepresent that photos were
taken by their operating system. You can, technically, mod it all you
want â you just wonât have their signature on the attestation,
because you had to sign it with some sort of key to boot it, and
certainly that wonât be theirs.
They could even release their source code under BSD, GPL, or AGPL and
it would make no difference to any of this; no open source license
compels producing the crypto private keys you signed your build with,
and any such argument for that applying to a license would be
radioactive for it. Can you imagine trying to explain to your Legal
team that you canât extract a private key from an HSM to comply
with the license? So itâs never going to happen: open source is
about releasing code, not about letting you pass off your own work as
someone elseâs.
> must be based on reputation
But it is already. By example:
Is this vendor trusted in a court of law? Probably, I would imagine,
it would stand up to the courtâs inspection; given their
motivations they no doubt have an excellent paper trail.
Are your personal attestations, those generated by your modded
camera, trusted by a court of law? Well, thatâs an interesting
question: Did you create a fully reproducible build pipeline so that
the court can inspect your customizations and decide whether to trust
them? Did you keep record of your changes and the signatures of your
build? Are you willing to provide your source code and build process
to the court?
So, your desire for reputation is already satisfied, assuming that
they allow OS modding. If they do not, thatâs a voluntary-business
decision, not a mandatory-technical one! There is nothing justifiable
by cryptography or reputation in any theoretical plans that lock
users out of repurposing their device.
nixpulvis wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think reputation gets you that far alone, we already live in
a world where misinformation spreads like wildfire through follower
counts and page ranks.
The problem is quality takes time, and therefore loses relevance.
We need a way to break people out of their own human nature and
reward delayed gratification by teaching critical thinking skills and
promoting thoughtfulness.
I sadly don't see an exciting technological solution here. If
anything it's tweaks to the funding models that control the interests
of businesses like Instagram, Reddit, etc.
noduerme wrote 1 day ago:
Why can't posting a verifiably true image create as much or more
instant gratification as sending a fake one? It will probably be
more gratifying, once everyone is sending fake ones and yours is
the only real one (if people can know that).
7952 wrote 1 day ago:
Lies are just better at reproducing themselves than truth.
noduerme wrote 1 day ago:
Which makes truth more scarce, hence more valuable.
7952 wrote 1 day ago:
Sure, but you were asking why truth is less gratifying.
Also, "truth" is clearly something that requires more
resources. It is a lifelong endeavour of
art/science/learning. You can certainly luck into it on
occasion but most of us never will. And often something
fictional can project truth better than evidence or analysis
ever can. Almost everything turns into an abstraction.
noduerme wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
No, that is a nihilistic belief which does not get
buildings built or software written.
One may "luck" into truth by being born in a poor
neighborhood or by living in a warzone, and having eyes and
a camera. Or by being rich and invited to a club and having
a microphone.
Truth is everywhere, but capturing it is expensive. The tax
on truth is the easy spread and generation of lies. The
idea that the fictional can encapsulate truth is of course
true, but it doesn't mean everything is better an
abstraction. Losing a leg is more powerful as a reality
than as an abstraction. Peddlers of falsehoods, then, only
win when truth can be abstracted.
Moreover: People who read literature read it knowing it
stands in for truth. People who watch TikTok believe it is
true, and are disenchanted when shown otherwise. More power
resides in a grain of truth than a mountain of falsehood;
so any tool for proving veracity will always have an
outsized value against tools for generating fakes.
The last redoubt of propagandists when faced with the
threat of truth is to claim that no one cares anymore
what's true. But that's false. In fact, that's when they
begin to fool themselves. It's not that no one in China or
Russia values the truth, for instance. It's just that they
say what they're told to say, and don't believe a word of
it.
positus wrote 1 day ago:
It seems like one could just shoot film and make darkroom prints and
accomplish the same thing?
seemaze wrote 1 day ago:
pictorialists used the darkroom to distort reality more than a
century ago!
simultsop wrote 1 day ago:
For a moment I thought a software solution will be shared at the end.
Did not expect a camera marketing.
padolsey wrote 1 day ago:
What concerns me most in the era of gen AI irt photography is
journalism. We need truth, most especially when limited-means citizen
journalism is the only reliable source of that truth.
But I feel like the only way to accomplish fool-proof photos we can
trust in a trustless way (i.e. without relying on e.g. the Press
Association to vet) is to utterly PACK the hardware with sensors and
tamper-proof attestation so the capture canât be plausibly faked:
multi-spectral (RGB + IR + UV) imaging, depth/LiDAR, stereo cameras,
PRNU fingerprinting, IMU motion data, secure GPS with attested fix, a
hardware clock and secure element for signing, ambient audio, lens
telemetry, environmental sensors (temperature, barometer, humidity,
light spectrum) â all wrapped in cryptographic proofs that bind these
readings to the pixels.
In the meantime however, I'd trust a 360deg go-pro with some kind of
signature of manafacture. OR just a LOT of people taking photos in a
given vicinity. Hard to fake that.
esseph wrote 1 day ago:
Mine isn't journalism, it's the court system.
Before long, it might be somewhat "easy" to prove anything.
petesergeant wrote 1 day ago:
I wrote this about 7 years ago:
HTML [1]: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/multimedia-trust-and-certific...
Fade_Dance wrote 1 day ago:
This is probably one of those scenarios where if someone wants to
fake it they're going to fake it (or at least it will be a never
ending arms race, and I expect AI to keep close chase), while a basic
security solution will suffice for 99% of use cases, including
standard journalism. After all, skilled photoshop+computational tools
can already do expert fakery in journalism. (Just look at the last
Abroadinjapan video earlier today for a good callout of Photoshop
editing to increase engagement).
akersten wrote 1 day ago:
back in my day when we wanted to prove a picture was "real" (and not
Photoshopped), we just posted the .NEF file
bobertdowney wrote 1 day ago:
Could Apple or Google do this without updating their hardware? I see a
relevant patent (US20220294640A1) and it looks like one of the
inventors is at Google now.
sbinnee wrote 1 day ago:
I have been happily using fujifilm x100 for about 10 years now? I
bought a second hand one for about $300. You can buy a decent camera
cheaper than a smartphone, as it should be.
d--b wrote 1 day ago:
This looks like a hipster toy.
Itâs possible that this could have value in journalism or law
enforcement.
Just make it look the part. Make it black and put some decent lens on
it.
Gigachad wrote 1 day ago:
I'm pretty sure forensic cameras already exist for this purpose. And
as far as I can tell, there isn't really any bulletproof way to do
this other than embed a signing key in the camera and hope no one
manages to extract it, rendering the whole thing pointless.
I guess you could have a unique signing key per camera and blacklist
known leaked keys.
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 1 day ago:
Canon and Nikon both did this. You paid a premium for a
âsignature analysisâ app. The target was for things like law
enforcement, where authentication was important.
They got cracked with a year or two. Not sure if they still offer
the capability.
jeffamcgee wrote 1 day ago:
If you take this to ILM's The Volume, you can prove that The
Mandolorian is real.
cultofmetatron wrote 1 day ago:
put this in a durable rangefinder form factor and it would be great as
a journalism camera.
keyle wrote 1 day ago:
This is rather expensive for what looks like a home 3D printed toy with
some cute software.
Other than that it's a 16MP Sony CMOS, I'd expect a pretty noisy
picture...
How do I get my photos off the camera?
Coming soon. We're working on export functionality to get your
photos off the camera.
It would be more interesting if the software was open source.
moffkalast wrote 1 day ago:
Simple, you remove the sdcard and mount it on linux, the security of
a Pi is a joke.
I wouldn't mind if it was 3D printed if it wasn't done with like a
layer height of 0.28, half transparent so it looks weird, and
intended for outdoor use where 3D prints are porous and water will
seep through. The housing needs at the very least some spray painting
and a clearcoat.
What I do mind is the cheapest off the shelf diy button lmao. They
are like cents a piece, just add a fucking metal one that are like a
few cents more if you're selling a $400 camera, cheapass. I wouldn't
be surprised if the software side with the "proof" being a similarly
haphazardly brittle implementation as the construction.
hn_throwaway_99 wrote 1 day ago:
> This is rather expensive for what looks like a home 3D printed toy
with some cute software.
This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site
called Hacker News.
I think we absolutely should be supporting projects like this (if you
think they're worth supporting), else all we're left with is giant
corporation monoculture. Hardware startups are incredibly difficult,
and by their nature new hardware products from small companies will
always cost more than products produced by huge companies that have
economies of scale and can afford billions of losses on new products.
So yes, I'm all for people taking risks with new hardware, and even
if it doesn't have the most polished design, if it's doing something
new and interesting I think it's kinda shitty to just dismiss it as
looking like "a 3D printed toy with some cute software".
Workaccount2 wrote 1 day ago:
This isn't a hardware start-up, it's a software start-up using off
the shelf consumer hardware to give their software product a home.
If it was a hardware start-up, the camera would be $80 built with
custom purpose made hardware.
Once you decide to launch a hardware product composed of completed
consumer hardware products, you are already dead. All the margin is
already accounted for.
whywhywhywhy wrote 1 day ago:
>This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site
called Hacker News.
It's just that even in the realm of hardware by small teams built
upon Pi boards this is very overprice and poor construction and
cheap components for what it is.
Selling for $400 there are case solutions other than a cheap 3D
print, and button choices other than the cheapest button on the
market.
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 day ago:
It would be cool if this was open source because looking at the
pictured this is all off the shelf hardware. I am guessing only
bespoke thing here is the stl for the case
typpilol wrote 1 day ago:
You literally can't even export the photos...
deckar01 wrote 1 day ago:
The BoM is ~$150 MSRP. I doubt the ZKP Rube Goldberg contraption
will survive a day of reverse engineering once it gets into the
wild.
litlTucker wrote 1 day ago:
Check Ali for "shitty" minature key-ring C-thru packaged cameras
that look just like this "3D printed toy with some cute software",
going for $4.00, not $400!
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
Please, stop!
I've been strugling to fight the urge to by a "Kodak Charmera"
for a month now, don't tempt me again!
nehal3m wrote 1 day ago:
If you buy one, you won't be tempted anymore.
BoorishBears wrote 1 day ago:
This literally looks like someone made a closed source hardware kit
out of mostly open parts and software then shipped it preassembled.
I support it but I recognize it is a 3D printed toy with some cute
software... toys can be interesting too. Not everything needs to be
a startup.
keyle wrote 1 day ago:
Hey it's fine to make a 3d printed camera and cool stuff like that.
But it's another thing to make it a product, that isn't shipping
yet and asking $399 with a shiny website and with closed source
software.
I don't mean to disregard the technical feat, but I question the
intent.
didacusc wrote 1 day ago:
Couldn't agree more!
Gigachad wrote 1 day ago:
It wouldn't work at all as open source since you could just modify
the source to sign your AI generated pictures.
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Okay. What prevents you from printing out a AI generated picture
and taking a photo of that with the camera?
intrasight wrote 1 day ago:
Nothing. But I know it's you and not the New York Times
publishing that photo. Now you get it?
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
So why would I buy this if you still wouldnât trust my
photos? And why would NYT when you already trust them? Who is
the target audience?
timberland127 wrote 1 day ago:
46 chromosomes
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
You sure you are running the correct number yourself?
philipswood wrote 1 day ago:
One could design a toolchain that posts a hashed signed version of
the source used to produce a signed binary.
Build and deploy what you want and if you want people to trust it
and opt in then it is publicly available.
In this case you get the signature and it confirms the device and
links to a tamper proof snapshot of the code used to build its
firmware.
a-dub wrote 1 day ago:
it would. it would just require pki and a secure enclave that lives
directly on the imaging chip to support it.
_def wrote 1 day ago:
Is that possible with the chip used here?
> What are the camera's specs?
> The camera has a 16MP resolution, 4656 x 3496 pixels. It uses a
Sony IMX519 CMOS sensor.
Retr0id wrote 1 day ago:
Seems like a pretty generic part available as a module [1] Uses
the standard MIPI/CSI interface, which is not authenticated or
anything of the sort.
You can also buy HDMI-to-CSI adapters [2] - should be easy
enough to pipe your own video feed in as a substitute.
HTML [1]: https://thepihut.com/products/arducam-imx519-autofocus...
HTML [2]: https://thepihut.com/products/hdmi-to-csi-adapter-for-...
drdaeman wrote 1 day ago:
This is patently incorrect. Just remember the whole TiVo affair and
reasons why GPLv3 was born. Source code availability does not
guarantee ability to run it on the particular device.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
The Software Freedom Conservancy thinks the GPLv2 guarantees the
ability to modify existing GPLv2 software on a device, but does
not guarantee the ability to still use the proprietary software
running on top of that, and that the same applies with GPLv3.
Reading the preamble of the GPLv2, I'm inclined to agree with
them. Hasn't been tested in court yet though I think. [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2...
HTML [2]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-a...
HTML [3]: https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/...
vlmutolo wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder how this compares to similar initiatives by e.g. Sony [0] and
Leica [1].
[0]: [1]:
HTML [1]: https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/
HTML [2]: https://petapixel.com/2023/10/26/leica-m11-p-review-as-authent...
RockRobotRock wrote 1 day ago:
Compared to those, this is like a weekend project that a high school
student could accomplish.
nayuki wrote 1 day ago:
Canon gave users the option to sign their photographs with "add
original decision data". It got cracked.
* [1] *
HTML [1]: https://petapixel.com/2010/12/01/russian-software-firm-break...
HTML [2]: https://www.elcomsoft.com/presentations/Forging_Canon_Origin...
m00x wrote 1 day ago:
and you think this rushed product won't be?
swores wrote 1 day ago:
I would broadly expect software made by most camera brands to be
shit, while I would expect a developer who creates their own
hardware projects (generally, not talking specifically about
cameras) to range from idiots who have no idea what they're doing
(like me, though to be fair I also wouldn't release it believing
it to be good) to highly skilled coders who would get it right
despite being on their own.
So I wouldn't automatically assume that a product like this would
be better designed, but I would think there's a chance it might
have been!
spaqin wrote 1 day ago:
Probably won't be cracked, as there will be little to no interest
as such device will have no use in any professional setting.
sbinnee wrote 1 day ago:
I knew that Leica is generally expensive, but the model on the review
is insanely expensive (over 10K USD?). It is not even comparable.
bcraven wrote 1 day ago:
It's not the camera that is important though, but the technology:
HTML [1]: https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.2/in...
jppope wrote 1 day ago:
I can't tell does this have adversarial AI built in?
zitterbewegung wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm not seeing what this is product is trying to solve? A zero
knowledge proof to say it isnât AI ? I think you could do this with a
disposable camera or Polaroids and a photo scanner that makes the zero
knowledge proofs .
rendaw wrote 1 day ago:
A different thread mentions "what if you take a photo of an AI photo
with the Roc camera?" - I still think that would be hard due to
perspective, lighting, various other artifacts.
Scanning an image would be much easier to dupe though - scanners are
basically controlled perspective/lighting environments so scanning an
actual polaroid vs an ai generated polaroid printed on photo paper
would be pretty indistinguishable I think.
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe I am just naive, but I don't see why taking a photo of a
screen, projection, or print out would be hard. Wouldn't it just
need even lighting and tripod?
Adding something like a LIDAR and somehow baking that data into the
meta data could be fun
bux93 wrote 1 day ago:
Don't limit your thinking to taking photos - video also works
fine. It's how The Mandalorian is produced. Instead of green
screens, the actors are in front of floor-to-ceiling LED screens
with live rendered CGI.
In old movies, going back to the 1930s and 40s, back-projection
is usually seen when characters are driving in a car, and you can
usually spot it. These days, not so much.
jonathanstrange wrote 1 day ago:
Then people will connect their fake image and LIDAR feed to where
the CMOS is connected. Like always with half-baked digital
attestation chains, laypersons will argue "Oh, but who's gonna do
that?" and the reality is that even private modders and hackers
are perfectly willing and capable of doing this and will jump on
it right away, and if it's just for the fun to distribute a
certified picture of an alien giving everyone the finger. Of
course, tamper-proof designs would be possible, but they are
extremely expensive.
On a side note, the best way to attack this particular camera is
probably by attacking the software.
nextlevelwizard wrote 1 hour 6 min ago:
I didnât say adding extra sensors is some kind of magic
bullet. I said adding LIDAR would be fun.
ryanjshaw wrote 1 day ago:
> A zero knowledge proof to say it isnât AI
Seems like it.
> a photo scanner that makes the zero knowledge proofs
Presumably at some point the intention is to add other sensors to the
camera e.g. for depth information.
varenc wrote 1 day ago:
What proof is there that the photo scanner is scanning a genuine
photo and not something AI generated that looks like a Polaroid?
flomo wrote 1 day ago:
Recalling an old scandal about an office copier/scanner which was
doing some OCR cleanup and changing numbers.
bcraven wrote 1 day ago:
[1] (2013)
Interestingly it wasn't the OCR that was the problem but the
JBIG2 compression.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238
sodality2 wrote 1 day ago:
What proof is there that this camera is photographing a genuine
scene?
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
defrost wrote 1 day ago:
If Elsie and Frances had the technology we could have a digitally
signed zero knowledge proof that their photo's captured a genuine
scene that included cardboard cutouts of fairies.
It was a real moment with objects that Bishop Berkeley could have
kicked.
JKCalhoun wrote 1 day ago:
I love my medium format film cameras. I think everyone interested in
photography should try it. Yashicas (just as an example of a company
that made good medium format film cameras) are surprisingly
affordable on eBay. I've had good luck buying from Japan, FWIW.
seg_lol wrote 1 day ago:
With the tariffs this is no longer possible for US persons.
dghlsakjg wrote 1 day ago:
Huh?
Tariffs shouldnât prevent buying stuff, you just have to,
yâknow, pay a tariff on import.
In this case, a Japanese made camera will incur a 15% tariff.
anonymous908213 wrote 1 day ago:
Most countries, including Japan, India, Canada, and nearly the
entire EU, have completely stopped shipping packages to US
consumers. This is not because of the tariffs themselves, but
because the US apparently has no system in place for actually
handling the tariffs on goods that previously qualified for the
de minimis exemption. Two months and counting with no
information on when shipping might resume.
JKCalhoun wrote 1 day ago:
Talk to the seller. I just ordered a used light meter from
Japan. Shipper just wants the duties paid up-front.
dghlsakjg wrote 1 day ago:
Some merchants in those countries have stopped. There isnât
a general stoppage of everything.
I just checked and you can still send goods between Japan and
the US. There are still merchants selling the exact mentioned
camera on eBay that will ship to the US.
Here is the exact camera mentioned, offered by a Japanese
seller, that will ship to the United States: [1] Can you
source your claim that absolutely no courier is capable of
shipping goods into the US? I canât find anything using
google, or on any courier websites.
FedEx does have information about how to correctly fill out
the forms for the purposes of tariffs, but does not mention
that they will not accept shipments.
HTML [1]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/317445808304
anonymous908213 wrote 1 day ago:
I see, that was my mistake then. I was unaware that
services like FedEx were still accepting packages. My
personal experience was that I have been unable to ship to
the US for months because the carrier I use stopped
accepting packages, and was under the impression they all
had given the number of countries for which this was true
and the news coverage I had seen. I wonder why so many
countries' postal services have stopped while some couriers
like FedEx continue to operate.
dghlsakjg wrote 21 hours 22 min ago:
There were some temporary stops, but mostly they resolved
pretty quickly. I think an issue is that the US requested
that tariffs be paid upfront at the sending end and a
some couriers arenât set up for that. Or that they
needed time to set it up.
Many of the postal and courier systems that suspended
service have since set up the systems they need, and are
happily moving packages into the US, but it tends not to
make the news.
ekianjo wrote 1 day ago:
Do the tariffs apply on used items as well? In any case such
cameras are fairly cheap nowadays
JKCalhoun wrote 1 day ago:
They use to fall under de-minimus? But no longer. So there are
duties to pay.
scrps wrote 1 day ago:
I'll throw Mamiya 645 in there for a good medium format camera as
well. Yashica is great, I own a Yashica Electro 35 and it is
awesome no thought rangefinder.
cma wrote 1 day ago:
> Creates a Zero Knowledge (ZK) Proof of the camera sensor data and
other metadatas
How do you stop someone from taking a picture of an AI picture? It
will still come from the sensor.
c0balt wrote 1 day ago:
Probably look for display artifacts (pixel borders)?
But a fixture that takes a good enough screen + enough distance to
make the photographed pixels imperceptible is likely just a medium
hurdle for a motivated person.
You probably can't fully avoid it but adding more sensors (depth)
will make such a fixture quite a bit more expensive.
radicaldreamer wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe adding a depth sensor/lidar might fix this?
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