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

Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API(chirag64.github.io)

47 points by chirag64 8 years ago | 15 comments

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

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

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

jalfresi 8 years ago | |

Agreed this is out of control now! And yet still, 20 years later, I can’t scroll the body of a table whilst keeping the header and columns aligned.

Surely things like that, or a src attribute for csv files, or even rudimentary charts and graphs for tables don’t even get considered.

Suppose fixing 20year old issues just aren’t as sexy as usb access from the browser...

As time goes on I connect less and less with browser developers.

squarefoot 8 years ago | |

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

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

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

captainmuon 8 years ago | | |

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

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

ameliaquining 8 years ago | |

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

kerng 8 years ago |

Google really is pushing forward what browsers do - I am not sure if that's a good thing. Especially in regards to privacy and security. Maybe they should separate browser from OS in some meaningful way. These capabilities should not be easily available in your ordinary web browser. Same with WebUSB that hackers can use to mount your USB drives and read data or eg. steal passwords from things like ubikeys... I know the analogy is a bit flawed, but it reminds me of all the power that Active X provided back in the day, when Microsoft tried to make the browser the OS.

pjmlp 8 years ago | |

That is what ChromeOS is all about.

edf13 8 years ago |

Was expecting a link to github proof of concept... received my browser doesn't not support FaceDetector API (Thankfully!).

userbinator 8 years ago |

What would normally be already somewhat creepy is amplified by the irony of having this appear at the same time as the several other items about SESTA/FOSTA/CLOUD.

mutebg 8 years ago |

This API is like 18 months old and super experimental, I don't think ever will land in official specifications. WebAssembley is here so is better to implement such things with it

midgetjones 8 years ago |

Well, I'm glad I use Firefox now

diroussel 8 years ago |

Safari on iOS already has face detection. But I don’t think there is an API for it.

If you can’t see well and so enable VoiceOver, when a webpage opens the camera to take a photo the phone will what it sees, “like face in centre of photo”.

It’s very usefully for blind of partially sighted people to take selfies.

Here is a reference: https://www.apple.com/uk/accessibility/iphone/vision/

Edit: added link

sanxiyn 8 years ago |

Draft specification is at https://wicg.github.io/shape-detection-api/

runnr_az 8 years ago |

I need a butt detector to launch my startup, Buttstagram.

pasbesoin 8 years ago |

"What could possibly go wrong?"