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New account, new #introduction post!

I’m Rhys, a writer, solarpunk, and witch/druid living in the Midlands, UK. My pronouns are they/them, although I’m currently exploring my gender, so that may change.

I've just set up a new blog: panga.blog/about

I will accept most follow requests! :apartyblobcat:

#Writing #Solarpunk #Anarchism #Witchcraft #Druidry #Midlands #Vegan #Bisexual #Polyamorous #NonBinary #Autism #ADHD #WorkingClass


🌴 Seph πŸ’­ πŸ‘Ύ reshared this.


We tested out Zenni's anti-facial recognition glasses coating. It actually (kinda, technically) works? "ID Guard" adds a pink sheen to the surface of the glasses that reflects the infrared light used by some facial recognition cameras. So, only threats like that

404media.co/zennis-anti-facial…


Zenni’s Anti-Facial Recognition Glasses are Eyewear for Our Paranoid Age


Zenni, an online glasses store, is offering a new coating for its lenses that the company says will protect people from facial recognition technology. Zenni calls it ID Guard and it works by adding a pink sheen to the surface of the glasses that reflects the infrared light used by some facial recognition cameras.

Do they work? Yes, technically, according to testing conducted by 404 Media. Zenni’s ID Guard glasses block infrared light. It’s impossible to open an iPhone with FaceID while wearing them and they black out the eyes of the wearer in photos taken with infrared cameras.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
However, ID Guard glasses will not at all stop some of the most common forms of facial recognition that are easy to access and abuse. If someone takes a picture of your naked face with a normal camera in broad daylight while you’re wearing them, there’s a good chance they’ll still be able to put your face through a database and get a match.

For example, I took pictures of myself wearing the glasses in normal light and ran it through PimEyes, a site that lets anyone run facial recognition searches. It identified me in seconds, even with the glasses. One of the biggest dangers of facial recognition is not a corporation running an advanced camera with fancy sensors, it’s an angry Taylor Swift fan who doxes you using a regular picture of your face. Zenni is offering some protection against the former, but can’t help with the latter.

But the glasses do block infrared light and many of the cameras taking pictures of us as we go about our lives rely on that to scan our faces. When those cameras see me now, there will be black holes where my eyes should be and that’s given me a strange kind of peace of mind.

The modern world is covered in cameras that track your every movement. In New Orleans, a private network of cameras uses facial recognition tech to track people in real time and alert cops to the presence of undesirables. Last year tech billionaire and media mogul Larry Ellison pitched a vision of the future where cameras capture every moment of everyone’s life to make sure they’re β€œon their best behavior.”

Zenni’s director of digital innovation, Steven Lee, told 404 Media that the company wanted to offer customers something that helped them navigate this environment. β€œThere’s devices out there that are scanning us, even without our permission and just tracking us,” he said. β€œSo we asked ourselves: β€˜could there possibly be a set of lenses that could do more than just protect our vision, maybe it could protect our identity as well.’”

As a side benefit of beating facial recognition, I noticed the ID Guard lenses were more comfortable for me to wear in sunlight than my normal glasses. I’m sensitive to sunlight and need to wear prescription sunglasses outdoors to prevent headaches and discomfort. The Zenni glasses cut down on a lot of that without me needing to wear shades.Lee explained that this was because the ID Guard blocks infrared light from the sun as well as cameras. This was one of the original purposes of the coating. β€œWhen we delved into that, we realized, not only could it protect your eyes from infrared…but it also had the additional benefit of protecting against a lot of devices out there…a lot of camera systems out there utilize infrared to detect different facial features and detect who you are,” he said.

There’s many different kinds of facial recognition technology. Some simply take a picture of a user's face and match it against a database, but those systems have a lot of problems. Sunglasses block the eyes and render one of the biggest datapoints for the system useless and low light pictures don’t work at all so many cameras taking pictures for facial recognition use infrared light to take a picture of a person’s face.

β€œWhat's happening when you're using these infrared cameras is it's creating a map that's basically transforming your face into a number of digital landmarks, numerically transforming that into a map that makes us each unique. And so they then use an algorithm to figure out who we are, basically,” Lee said.

But the pink sheen of ID Guard beats the infrared rays. β€œWhen infrared light is trying to shine into your eyes, it’s basically being reflected away so it can’t actually penetrate and we’re able to block up to 80 percent of the infrared rays,” Lee said. β€œWhen that is happening, those cameras become less effective. They’re not able to collect as much data on your face.”
On the left, the Zenni ID Guard glasses under an infrared camera. On the right, normal sunglasses under an infrared camera. Matthew Gault photos.
To test ID Guard’s effectiveness I put them on my wife and sent her to battle the most complex facial recognition system available to consumers: an iPhone. Apple’s Face ID system is the most comprehensive kind of facial ID system normal people encounter everyday. An iPhone uses three different cameras to project a grid of infrared lights onto a person's face, flood the space in between with infrared light, and take a picture. These infrared lights make a 3D map of a user’s face and use it to unlock the phone.

My wife uses an iPhone for work with a FaceID system and when she was wearing Zenni’s ID Guard glasses, the phone would not open. Her iPhone rejected her in low light, darkness, and broad daylight if she was wearing the Zenni glasses. If she wore her own sunglasses, however, the phone opened immediately because the infrared lights of Apple Face ID made them clear and saw straight into her eyes.

The 2D infrared pictures taken in most public spaces running facial recognition systems are much less sophisticated than an iPhone. And there’s a way we can test those too: trail cameras. The cameras hunters and park rangers use to monitor the wilderness are often equipped with infrared lights that help them take pictures at night and in low light conditions. Using one to take a picture of my face while wearing the Zenni glasses should show us what I look like in public to facial recognition cameras used by retail businesses and the police.

Sure enough, the Zenni glasses with ID Guard stopped the camera from seeing my eyes when the infrared light was on. I sat for several photos in dark conditions while the camera captured photos of my face. The infrared went right through my normal sunglasses while the ID Guard glasses from Zenni stopped the light all together. The camera couldn’t get a clear shot of my eyes.

Zenni is not the first company to offer some form of anit-infrared coating that disrupts facial recognition tech, but it is the first to make it affordable while offering a variety of style choices. The company Reflectacles has been offering a variety of Wayfarer-style glasses with an anti-IR coating for a few years now. But Reflectacles style options are limited and have a powerful green-yellow tint. Zenni is also a major glasses retailer competing with other major retailers, it’s offering a variety of styles that match different aesthetics, and the pink sheen is way less noticeable than the green coating.

Zenni offers the ID Guard on most of its frames and the glasses have a subtle pink tint that’s obvious if you look directly at them, but I didn’t notice when I wore them. I used them to watch TV and went to the movies with them on and never noticed altered colors. β€œSo with the pinkish hue, that was not by accident,” Lee said. β€œIt was purposeful. We wanted to do something where we could actively show individuals that the lenses were actively working to protect their identity.”

Whether Zenni’s ID guard will actually protect people from facial recognition is less interesting than the fact that they exist at all. The state of our surveillance dystopia is such that a major glasses retailer is advertising anti-facial recognition features as a selling point as if it was normal.


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NEW: SCOTUS holds off ruling on Trump's Nat'l Guard request, leaving troops blocked from Illinois for now.

Court orders briefing about a part of the law the Trump admin is using to federalize National Guard troops. Also in Illinois: Protesters indicted and an attempt to protect Bovino.

Law Dork: lawdork.com/p/scotus-holds-off…

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Hey! There is a huge and immediate need for cash donations to food banks across the country. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, the SFMarin Food Bank is a great place to donate and volunteer for: sfmfoodbank.org/ Even $10 or $20 can go a long way, because food banks can purchase food in bulk and at discounts.

#food #foody #sfba


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I believe that's the month between Septempril and Novembruary.







β™² @hen93ry@nota.404.mn:
Hey everyone, I’m #newhere. I’m interested in Diaspora. Some how I got bumped or my profile was disappeared, or server never came back up ?









When I saw this, I assumed it was posted by a venue owner until I saw who's name was at the bottom
in reply to 🌴 Seph πŸ’­ πŸ‘Ύ

This should be on the back of every star dressing room door. Actors as well as rock stars. The proper big stars are usually fine to work with (with a few notable exceptions), but the second tier are always trying to prove how big they are by mucking everybody about.

🌴 Seph πŸ’­ πŸ‘Ύ reshared this.


In 1944, a C-47 carrying 24 wounded soldiers crashed on an island in the Pacific. Army nurse Mary Louise Hawkins was injured, exhausted but unshaken. One man was bleeding out, his throat torn open by a propeller blade. Using the valve from a life preserver, Hawkins made a suction tube to keep him breathing, gave him plasma and tended to each man. When rescue arrived, all 24 were still alive. She became the first woman during WW2 to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross. - History Revealed
This entry was edited (13 hours ago)
in reply to maikon

@maikon Shit, yes, it has - well spotted, and thank you for pointing it out. The photo been doctored, and extremely grossly, too.

@BrianJopek

in reply to Joani xcx 😷

@clickhere @maikon I actually didn’t see much of a difference - I was focused more on what it was the woman did. But I switched the photo

in reply to Dan (he/him)

@Dan (he/him) @AstraLuma @Foxes in Love Heh, that brings to mind one of the things we'd do to newbies on the line at Papa Johns, if they were making a Β½ & Β½ pizza, we'd tell them they put the toppings on the wrong sides.
in reply to Foxes in Love

This one broke me up for some reason. And I am not aware of the meme being referenced.


🌴 Seph πŸ’­ πŸ‘Ύ reshared this.


@redbunhead.bsky.social & I are now donating to #ALIVE to help Alexandrians with food & housing assistance because everything is absolutely fucked right now and people need help. Please consider donating to a food bank or similar organization if you have the means to do so.

#mutualaid #foodassistance #housingassistance

alive-inc.org/









β™² @psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com:
beige.party/@Tattooed_Mummy/11… Tattooed_Mummy@beige.party - Morning-after pill now available for free in pharmacies across England #News ##GoodNews
Women across #England will be able to get the morning-after pill free of charge in pharmacies from today.

The move – hailed by officials as the biggest change to sexual health services since the 1960s – is expected to be innovative in making care more accessible.

Emergency #contraception is free from most GPs and sexual health clinics, but can cost up to Β£30 from pharmacies.

From Wednesday, however, the pill will be available for free from almost 10,000 community pharmacies without the need for an appointment with a family doctor or clinic.

itv.com/news/2025-10-29/mornin…










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Hey #Fediverse!

I'm building a Sound Library for Loops, my #ActivityPub video project, to let users add free audio to their videos.

I'm already looking into integrations with #FunkWhale and Bandwagon.

What other sources for free, libre, or public domain (CC-BY, CC0, etc.) music and sound effects should I check out?

#AskFedi #Loops #FreeMusic

in reply to dansup

not AP, but my primary source is generally jamendo.com/

not all music there is free culture, but all music is CC licensed. the web interface doesn't allow filtering on license afaik, but the API does.



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β€œWhy do they want access to your personal information?” Benson asks in the video. β€œWell, I’ve asked them that. Other secretaries of state, both Democrats and Republicans, have asked them that. They won’t tell us. Nobody β€” not the president, the DOJ or any other federal agency β€” has the right to your sensitive, private voter information.”
votebeat.org/michigan/2025/10/…
in reply to tend2wobble

Reminiscent of former Soviet bloc practices aggressively sniffing on, intimidating & maltreating civilian populations eg
"...
The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium fΓΌr Staatssicherheit, pronounced [minΙͺsˈteːʁiʊm fyːɐ̯ ΛˆΚƒtaːtsˌzΙͺçɐhaΙͺΜ―t]; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (pronounced [ΛˆΚƒtaːziː] β“˜, an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit), was the state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
It was one of the most repressive police organisations in the world, infiltrating almost every aspect of life in East Germany, using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent.

The function of the Stasi in East Germany (the GDR) resembled that of the KGB in the Soviet Union,⁠ in that it served to maintain state authority and the position of the ruling party, in this case the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
This was accomplished primarily through the use of a network of civilian informants (called unofficial collaborators) who contributed to the arrest of approximately 250,000 people in East Germany.
It also had a large elite paramilitary force, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, that served as its armed wing.
Known as "the shield and the sword of the party", the Stasi locked up opponents of the regime. Officers tortured prisoners by isolating them, depriving them of sleep and using psychological tricks such as threatening to arrest relatives.
..."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

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Hey, Anthropic owes me $9000! They illegally used at least 3 of my books on LibGen to create Claude. Now they're paying a $1.5 billion settlement, at $3000 per book. See if *your* books are on the list:

anthropiccopyrightsettlement.c…

If so, you have until March 23, 2026 to file a claim. The above website lets you file a claim, but this one explains everything more clearly:

authorsguild.org/advocacy/arti…

Actually I exaggerated: the payment will be split between authors and publishers, but I have to make the claim - so the settlement is making me do some work my publisher should be doing for me. My coauthors and I will just get half, $4500. One of these books has 2 coauthors, one has 3, and one is a book I edited, with essays by lots of authors. So $1000 is a more realistic estimate of what I get. Oh well.

Bizarrely, my most popular book, Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity, is not on the list. But I guess it's not surprising:

"The settlement agreement discloses that approximately 500,000 titles out of the 7 million copies of books that Anthropic reportedly downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi meet the definition required to be part of the class."

Only books whose copyright is registered with the US Library of Congress meet that defiinition!

If you have a book on the list, you can opt out of the current settlement and join future lawsuits. But you have to take action to do that!!! For more information on that, see item 40 here:

anthropiccopyrightsettlement.c…

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Boston Police Can No Longer Use Facial Recognition Software | Built In Boston


builtinboston.com/articles/bos…


in reply to 🌴 Seph πŸ’­ πŸ‘Ύ

"We could reduce the cost of society by eliminating those who contribute the least to it.

The idle rich who enslave the working poor."
SearingTruth

⇧