facial recognition

A Burnistoun sketch from BBC Scotland in which two men try to use a voice-recognition elevator that cannot understand their Scottish accents.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl scripts using Windows Vista speech recognition, with comically bad results. The footage shows the recognizer repeatedly mangling commands.

VICE News reporter Elle Reeve investigates China's rollout of facial recognition and mass surveillance technology and what it means for citizens. The report originally aired on VICE on HBO.

A one-minute clip from the film Minority Report showing digital signage that recognizes a passerby and personalizes ads to him by name. It depicts a vision of targeted advertising driven by biometric identification.

A clip from the movie Minority Report showing personalized advertising that recognizes a person as they walk through a mall.

A hobbyist compares vertical bifacial solar panels against south-facing angled panels using winter production results. It tests whether the usual mounting approach is actually best.

A sketch from the Scottish comedy show Burnistoun in which two men cannot get a voice-recognition elevator to understand the word eleven in their accents.

A Burnistoun sketch in which a voice-recognition elevator cannot understand two Scottish men saying the number eleven. It satirizes voice interfaces that fail on accents.

Jonna Mendez, former CIA Chief of Disguise, explains how disguises are used in intelligence work and what makes deception effective, including changing one's gait.

Huygens Optics explains the Fourier transform and shows how a lens performs one optically. A DLP projector is used as a Fourier filter to do simple pattern recognition on lithographic character patterns.

Microsoft Research's Rick Rashid demonstrates a speech recognition and translation system, built on deep neural networks, that turns his spoken English into Chinese speech in 2012.

A dramatized fictional video of micro drones with facial recognition and swarm AI used as autonomous killer weapons. It is a Slaughterbots-style warning about lethal autonomous weapons.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl code using Windows Vista's speech recognition, with hilariously bad results.

A HOPE XI talk on programming by voice with open source speech recognition. The speaker writes Linux systems code by voice and describes building custom voice grammars as an alternative to the keyboard for programmers with repetitive strain injuries.

A VICE News piece on China's Social Credit System, including a neighbor-watch pilot where paid watchers record behavior. It covers rewards for high scores and public shaming or restrictions for low ones.

The first lecture of Stanford's CS231n course on convolutional neural networks for visual recognition. It surveys the history and key challenges of computer vision, from the Cambrian explosion and Hubel and Wiesel to ImageNet.

A short CGP Grey explainer about how countries are defined, why recognition by others matters, and the oddities of places like Taiwan and Vatican City. It shows that statehood is partly a matter of diplomacy rather than fact.

Emily Shea explains how repetitive strain injury pushed her to program by voice using speech recognition (Talon), and gives a live coding demo. She argues voice-driven development can be pain-free, efficient and enjoyable.

Veritasium examines which experts have real expertise, drawing on chess research and work by Klein and Kahneman. It explains that expertise comes from pattern recognition built through deliberate practice in valid, feedback-rich environments.

Unity's real-time cinematic teaser 'Enemies' from its Demo Team, showcasing HDRP lighting, strand-based hair and an advanced digital human toolkit. It is a short showcase of high-end real-time rendering.

Moxie Marlinspike's DEF CON 18 talk on changing threats to privacy argues that surveillance arrived through convenient services and network effects, so opting out is not a real solution. It also includes his framing of getting social democracy rather than the fascism people feared.

Tom Scott writes a more honest VPN ad, with the sponsor's name redacted, and explains why the typical claims in VPN advertising are misleading. He notes the sponsor was not happy about it.

CGP Grey explains the history of the US Social Security card and number, and why they became a de facto national ID despite never being meant for it. He also covers why America resists a proper identity card.

Frank Abagnale, the real subject of Catch Me If You Can, speaks at Google about his life as a con man turned FBI fraud and cybersecurity expert, including advice on fraud, breaches and credit cards.

The Grugq's Hack In The Box 2012 talk on operational security for hackers, drawing on hacker indictments and counter-intelligence research. It reviews OPSEC goals and methods for avoiding detection and arrest, with case studies of how hackers got caught.

Dan Geer's Black Hat 2014 keynote argues that cybersecurity is a matter of power and policy rather than wishful thinking. He covers surveillance, the vulnerability market, software liability and privacy as the capacity to misrepresent yourself.

Cory Doctorow's 28c3 keynote argues that the copyright wars were just a skirmish and that the real fight will be a war on the general-purpose computer. He explains why locked-down devices, DRM and surveillance tools all depend on removing general computation.

Zoz's DEF CON 22 talk on operational security in the age of pervasive surveillance. He shows how hard it is to avoid mistakes even for people who should know better.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment explains how data brokers collect and sell personal information, including a stunt in which his team bought data to identify members of Congress.

Cory Doctorow's Talks at Google lecture on the coming civil war over general-purpose computing. He argues that locked-down devices, DRM, and surveillance threaten user control of computers.

Technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues that the machine-learning systems used to serve ads also decide what political and social information people see. She explains how opaque algorithms can nudge, segment and manipulate users, and warns that the real danger is powerful people using AI to control populations.

A DEF CON 23 talk showing how weak controls in electronic death registration systems let someone virtually kill a person and obtain a real death certificate, with consequences for their identity and life.

An Extra Credits episode on China's Sesame Credit, which gamifies obedient citizenship through a social score. It covers how the system rewards conformity and pressures people through their friends' behavior.

John Oliver interviews Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance, including street interviews showing people have not thought about what the government can see. The segment famously frames the issue through private photos.

A Last Week Tonight segment on pig butchering scams, in which long-con romance and investment fraud is run, often by trafficked workers. It explains how victims are groomed and interviews people who lost large sums.

Poul-Henning Kamp's FOSDEM 2014 talk is a hypothetical account of how an intelligence agency such as the NSA would sabotage open source software, standards and online discussion. It covers Skype's history, OpenSSL and psyops against standards.

Kim Nilsson presents his investigation into how Mt. Gox was hacked and mismanaged, tracing the finances and the missing bitcoins. It was given at the 2017 Breaking Bitcoin meetup.

Benn Jordan explains how Flock Safety's license plate cameras log and share vehicle locations, and explores how adversarial AI can defeat them. It covers weak security and the surveillance risks of private police-camera networks.

Aral Balkan's re:publica 2015 talk argues that people are the product of surveillance-based business models. It makes an ethical case against data monopolies and for privacy as a human right.

A 29C3 panel with whistleblowers Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake and William Binney. They talk about what happens when exposing secret government power becomes a crime, and about surveillance abuses.