The Boombox Incident: removing bald people from photos | Hacker News Reader

The Boombox Incident: removing bald people from photos

225 points_cr1k62 comments

For the actual removal, you could try using conent-aware resizing[1] along with blob detection to give the person to be removed a negative weight.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk&t=3m43s

I wonder how well it works on people who have a skin color closer to their hair color.

I was about to suggest it really needs to at least be tried on people with darker skin tones.

Or old white people.

Or blonde white people.

People who aren't in Seinfeld.

This comment is outrageous, egregious, preposterous!

Yeah, his baldness detector is not robust as it just checks the average color of the area above the forehead, but you could make a robust one through transfer learning a deep model trained on ImageNet further finetuned on a small dataset of a few dozen images of bald and non-bald.

Something like this: https://www.kaggle.com/dansbecker/transfer-learning

This method gets good, robust performance with just a few minutes of training.

Since trained classifiers are already being used, and therefore fair game, a trained baldness classifier would be a better choice, I think. Of course you would need a dataset for that.

I was thinking this is a potentially racist algorithm.

Worked well for Amazon!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...

Deep learning with a 100 samples can do this completely with the body too. This is a similar project I did: https://comic2gif.com where I remove the speech written on the images, the same technology can be used here.

But edge detection is a lot easier on comics than on photos I would think. The background on a comic would also have a mostly solid color background which makes it easier.

> But edge detection is a lot easier on comics than on photos I would think

That should be true. But deep learning based models work quite good on natural images as Vgg dataset is mostly natural. This is perhaps one-off usage/application on comics.

I know this was a joke but I still wanted to see more examples

hey, author here, thanks for the attention on this post, especially the feedback regarding CV techniques. i wanted to write about some basic computer vision tools in the context of a Seinfeld reference. it was intended as a joke, but i realize it could be hurtful. i'm sorry if i hurt anybody's feelings.

I really like that you explained the algorithm and decisions you were making instead of just ploping code some on the page.

Well done!

As a photo store clerk I can confirm that this is indeed one of the most frequent requests we get, so this could be a huge timesaver. But you really need to work on the removal part, it’s practically unusable as it is!

When they apply this to the DVD cover of Die Hard 4, what would the result be?

Now show how to add back a cartoon character drawing of the boss (bald man,) like in the show.

So close!

As a bald man, I approve!

Loosely related video, Star Trek actor talks about being bald: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqm_Iq8rFeg .

I'm linking it to remind that perceiving baldness as something negative (here: a criterion for removal from a photo) can be a cause of distress and loss of confidence.

I know this article is trying to be tongue in cheek but I definitely think it's worth highlighting this issue.

My issue is most people won't find it in bad taste to make this tongue in cheek article. If someone made an article "Remove Mexicans from a photo" most people would realise it's harmful. Baldness is mostly genetic and I think it's horrible to pick on people for it, especially when it can be a huge issue for them.

I do understand why people would feel insecure about baldness. Is it changing for the better though? Loads of "cool" bald people, think Vin Diesel etc. I still have a head full of hair and just turned 30. Not sure how I'd feel as I've had long hair all my life. I do feel that the volume isn't as high as it was in my early 20s..

I hope we make some progress in a cure either way.

There is medication that can prevent baldness. It has very rare, but very scary side-effects though. Eventually we might have something that fixes the genes responsible for baldness.

It also, as far as I know, requires taking indefinitely. Once you stop, if you were going bald before, that process will continue.

I don't feel like baldness is something that needs to be fixed. To me that sounds the same as saying the genes for blonde hair can be "fixed".

Blond hair is easy to fix. Hair dye has been around for years. Why shouldn’t bald people be afforded the same freedom, in an era where we literally fly through the air on titanium wings just to take vacations?

It's the term "fix" that I don't like. It assumes the opposite state is broken.

A person with normal hair growth can choose to be bald. Someone with alopecia cannot choose the reverse. If baldness were to appear only by choice rather than as a result of low IGF-1 expression in hair follicles, I would imagine it would be more respectable, not less.

It would be helpful. After losing my hair, the sun became the enemy. Easy to forget to bring a hat.

Then you’re out of touch. Almost all men are very unhappy about losing hair, but very few mind being blond. Some even like it!

I've been taking finasteride for nearly a decade. No side effects for me and costs $40 a year. Haven't lost an inch of hairline since I started. My hairline is frozen at mild temple recession that looks "age appropriate" now that I'm older.

Yes I do have to keep taking it but I'm fine with that. Can't even imagine being completely bald at 30 which I would be if I hadn't started it young

I am not, strictly speaking, bald--I have about as much hair as Eisenhower did when he was president. My vanity is much more committed to not caring (or not showing that I care) about such matters than it is to the full head of hair I had years ago.

I went bald very young (started shaving my head around age 20/21 because there just wasn't enough left).

It was a big hit to my confidence, especially as a teen. I also felt it prematurely "aged" me - I used to joke that I turned 28 on my 18th birthday.

It is nice that there are successful/attractive men who are bald to point to, but I was more often compared to Moby or Billy Corgan, not exactly sex symbols.

It all seems silly in retrospect but it felt very serious at that age. I'm so used to it now that I don't even think about it. It helps that I'm old enough that being bald is "age appropriate" and I stick out less than I did in college.

I think it's worse when you're lacking confidence to begin with.

My hair started thinning when I was around 20 and kept thinning till I was about 30. Now it seems to be in a steady state of horse-shoe pattern.

I think it was worse for me when it began, as I started picturing all kind of terrible fates for me. I was obsessed with my hair density and wanted to kill myself. Now that I'm being bald and more mature and self-confident I'm not even sure I'd want to go back to having to do my hair again. And women don't seem to care at all. I'm still surprised by that, but the experiences I make every day make me wish I had lost all of my hair from one day to the next, just to get it over with.

Also, I don't want to romantisize going bald, but I think it rounded out my character.

Thanks for encouraging progress in a cure. Honestly, it all really depends on who you are. Some people don't really mind. Other people, like myself, are drastically affected by it emotionally. I've never really been a masculine guy, and having long, thick hair was part of that. Suddenly having it thin, seemingly overnight, at the age of 18 was a really frustrating thing. It gets frustrating when I want to dress certain ways, but can't pull off various looks because my bald head doesn't fit in with it. I feel like I've been roped into a very specific way of dressing as a result and, once again, the whole thing is really frustrating. I see some of my co-workers come in with fresh and stylish hair cuts and I become jealous I can no longer express myself in the same way.

I don't let it stop me from living my life and doing the things I want, but it's still a garbage thing that I absolutely will not deny has affected me every day.

Insecurities aside, I hate not having natural protection from the sunlight and cold. I miss being able to go to the beach without a hat.

I think it's kind of interesting that, thirty years later, the CEOs of SpaceX and Blue Origin are bald men.

Elon Musk is bald?

He used to be. Like many rich men who are image-conscious he seems to have had a hair transplant procedure. Look up images of him from the late 90s, he was clearly balding.

Defiantly thinning, but not bald[0].

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Elon_Mus...

that’s after hair transplants dude. Find a pic of him in the late 90s.

in my personal opinion: baldness used to be unsexier, but that changed in the last 1-2 decades. nowadays it's another hairstyle people might adopt even if they're not bald - fashionable, especially combined with a beard.

being partially bald (instead of going all in ... or all out?) feels like it's (still?) unstylish, as a tonsure (monk spot?) is not a hairstyle you'd be going for on purpose.

though, as i grow older myself, as in 30+, even though i still have a head full of hair i tend to notice it less and less as there are so many people in my social circle (mostly in the 25-45 year age group) sporting partially bald heads it pretty much became the new normal.

edit: one of the reasons might be that people started to get in shape more. if people are balding but in shape, the lack of hair becomes secondary. as linked below: http://extrafabulouscomics.com/comic/180/

One problem with becoming bald is that you now have to worry: what do I do with my sideburns (a sign of masculinity)? Do I trim them at the top and the bottoms?

Come on are there no limits to how sensitive people can be? It’s joke article on the internet, if that offends someone they need to see a shrink. I’m sensitive about my hair in person, with people I care about, but you really can’t be worrying about what online jokers joke about. That would be a full time job.

George is by far my favorite sitcom character. His schizo-nuances and paranoia and hilarious! I can relate.

Very much agreed. That character is so memorable that it's difficult for me to think of him playing a non-George role. I think the actor had trouble with post-Seinfeld roles too.

For me it's the same with characters from Friends. I can't see them in another role (except Jennifer, it's kind of odd to see her in other things but not as much as the others).

That being said, George is an absolutely great character and one of my favourites in sitcoms :) Just reading these comments makes me want to rewatch Seinfeld.

I thought David Schwimmer was pretty perfect as Cpt. Sobel in BoB.

Yeah, might depend on the movie / series. I did like LeBlanc in "Episodes" as well :)

Overall, seeing them will always remind me of their characters though.

George Costanza is Jason Alexander + Larry David. I recommend you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm if you enjoyed Seinfeld.

I would also recommend Curb Your Enthusiasm, but there is a difference: Larry David is neurotic, but even in his fictional Curb Your Enthusiasm persona he is extremely wealthy and successful. That is a big difference from George Constanza, who combined being neurotic with constantly being adrift employment-wise and has little to recommend himself.

Yeah, but if you like Seinfeld in general there's a good chance you'll like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'. Seinfeld has a higher 'standing' in my personal ranking, next to friends it's my favourite series to date.

If you like these shows and your sense of humour is similar to mine, you might also enjoy "Friends" and "How I met your mother". They all have a similar feel to me.

I hear this all the time, and it just doesn't click for me. I liked Seinfeld, but Larry's character on Curb is just too much. I also love It's Always Sunny... but I just cannot enjoy Curb.

To add another anecdote to the pile I love Seinfeld, Curb your Enthusiasm, and Alway Sunny but loathe Friends. I think the correlation is weak.

Technical aspects aside, this post is in a really bad taste.

Next time you're itching to show off your chops, maybe pick a project that does not involve airbrushing people somehow deemed unworthy of being remembered, based on their looks?

During world war II, the Nazis had the laborious task of detecting Jews among the occupied populations, at scale. Is that also a task worthy of being automated and then writing a post about it?

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