[HN Gopher] A Fuss Budget (1885)
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       A Fuss Budget (1885)
        
       Author : beardyw
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2024-02-14 09:08 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.futilitycloset.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.futilitycloset.com)
        
       | beardyw wrote:
       | I wonder if anyone has properly studied or automated this.
        
         | richiebful1 wrote:
         | I have a friend who worked in computer vision at Carnegie
         | Mellon and talked about automatically estimating focus levels.
         | I'm not aware of any successful product that gathers these
         | metrics though. Here's some papers from a quick web search:
         | 
         | - Monitoring Students' Attention in a Classroom Through
         | Computer Vision:
         | https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-94779-2_...
         | 
         | - Focus Estimation in Academic Environments Using Computer
         | Vision:
         | https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-31332-6_...
        
           | woleium wrote:
           | Fathom tries to do this for sales calls
        
           | jcutrell wrote:
           | I guess it says something about me that I expect this to be
           | weaponized by HR to manage company zoom behaviors.
        
         | jerf wrote:
         | One of my Crazy Fringe Ideas that anybody who wants can take
         | (because I've got no practical way of monetizing this) is
         | having large video conferences analyze the facial expressions
         | of the participants, and synthesizing it into a small number of
         | representative faces for the presenter to see how the crowd is
         | taking it. For instance, if everyone is engaged, the sample
         | faces would be engaged, but if some people started to drift
         | away, one of the faces would become disinterested. There's a
         | variety of interesting uses this could be put to to help a
         | presenter at least somewhat engage with a crowd as if they were
         | more live and in person.
         | 
         | Of course, this may turn out to be a case of too much truth
         | shattering too many illusions. Maybe we can have a
         | surreptitious CEO mode where all the faces at the multi-
         | thousand-person "all hands" meetings just automatically are
         | smiling and engaged. "Oh, yes, they were all hanging on your
         | every word and deeply excited about your new initiative to
         | engage in thought leadership for advancing synergy in the world
         | market."
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | You might like the plot of the (pseudonymous Neal Stephenson
           | collaboration novel), "Interface", by Stephen Bury. There's
           | definitely a parallel to what you're describing applied to
           | politics.
        
           | tonyarkles wrote:
           | > a small number of representative faces for the presenter
           | 
           | Interesting... kind of taking the idea of Eigenfaces [1] and
           | adding an extra layer of categorization to it. I like it!
           | 
           | [1] https://towardsdatascience.com/eigenfaces-recovering-
           | humans-...
        
       | 082349872349872 wrote:
       | (1885) !
        
       | Vox_Leone wrote:
       | Interesting insight. My attempt at canonicalization would be
       | that, therefore, the orientation of the frontal and sagittal
       | planes (attitude and azimuth of the heads) are functions of the
       | degree of engagement. Engagement is a measure of the alignment of
       | those vectors.
        
       | JKCalhoun wrote:
       | Happy that Futility Closet is back.
        
         | jfengel wrote:
         | Had the web site gone? I know they ended their podcast, and I
         | miss it; it was charming. I had assumed that the website kept
         | going.
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | They announced closing up shop -- but apparently that
           | sabbatical lasted only a handful of months. (Sadly, I had
           | stopped visiting in the interim and didn't realize they were
           | back until recently.)
        
       | hermitcrab wrote:
       | Galton was a brilliant thinker and a deeply horrible human being.
       | 
       | I miss the Futility Closet podcast. Well worth listening to their
       | back catalogue. IIRC one of the founders had health issues. I
       | hope they are doing ok now.
        
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