
Deep Learning Enables You to Hide Screen When Your Boss Is Approaching - kawera
http://ahogrammer.com/2016/11/15/deep-learning-enables-you-to-hide-screen-when-your-boss-is-approaching/
======
spraak
As a linguist, I really appreciate reading/hearing people write/speak in a
non-Native language, as the constructions are really interesting, and while I
don't intend to laugh at anyone, sometimes amusing:

> Perhaps I am the one who possesses the face image of the most boss in the
> world. I must have it more than his parents.

:)

~~~
franciscop
This is from a Japanese-speaking person most likely. Besides the small note
with two Japanese characters (ヽ(‘ ∇‘ )ノ ﾜｰｲ”), you can see some strings it in
the screenshot.

I've been learning Japanese and studied in Japan for a while and it _is_
fascinating to see this:

> When you are working, you have browsed information that is not relevant to
> your work, haven’t you?

I don't know enough Japanese to translate half of it, but that kind of
negative question termination is really characteristic from the language:
"masenka?" (ませんか？) or even "sou desuka?" (そうですか？) as a reply.

The interesting thing is that you can see the progress depending on the
English level of the person, as Japanese people who are more fluent in English
will first translate it into "right?". Even more fluent people will leave the
sentence open-ended like it's missing something as they realize it's not so
natural in English but still haven't totally switched over.

Note: I'm Spanish and it's also funny to catch myself saying some of these
different things as well.

~~~
wodenokoto
> This is from a Japanese-speaking person most likely.

More things pointing to this being a Japanese blog:

"aho" in "Ahogrammar", the name of the blog, is Japanese for stupid/silly.

The wordpress theme is setup to write dates in Japanese.

The default "Hello World" post from the wordpress installation has been left
intact and is in Japanese.

He links to his Github, where he registered himself under a Japanese name and
as living in Tokyo, as well as published code for a Japanese chatbot that can
search for restaurants [1].

[1]
[https://github.com/Hironsan/HotPepperGourmetDialogue](https://github.com/Hironsan/HotPepperGourmetDialogue)

------
ikeboy
Question: will this post help or hurt them when they're trying to get another
job in the deep learning field?

~~~
amelius
It will hurt them because now there are more people who have knowledge of DL.

~~~
d33
Are you sure that's how it works? If you only had one programmer capable of
creating websites, would we have internet the way it is today?

~~~
amelius
Building websites was more profitable 15 years ago than it is now. In fact,
being a webmaster often was a full-time job in those days.

~~~
d33
It still is, it just depends on scale.

------
DodgyEggplant
(1) This is a clever implementation. Maybe with a mobile camera it can be even
more convenient to use? (2) True knowledge work requires breaks, and can not
be measured with simple metrics like "boss watch what on screen" or "lines of
code" (3) Even true knowledge workers can get into a non productive youtube
loop, and sometimes external influence helps to prevent procrastination (4) If
your relationship with the boss is based on these types of system, you better
look for another place where you are respected 360 for your contribution (5)
We should respect people that can not easily find interesting work or bosses
that respect you (6) Communication, context and respect are always better than
authority, hierarchy, and politics. Alas, humans can be very good at both

~~~
jpttsn
(6) Not always

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thedangler
Couldn't you use face recognition and skip the deep learning part. I was
playing with the Sonos Python API and I found one where if the camera spotted
an office worker it played their theme music. It used some face recognition
API. But good work nonetheless

~~~
reachtarunhere
Exactly my point. I don't think DL really gives any significant advantage in
this case.

~~~
mmjaa
I don't think that was the point of the article .. more to give him some way
of learning DL on the job ..

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cobbzilla
i remember many old-school DOS games featured a "boss key". with a single key-
press, the screen would instantly hide the game and show some innocuous
"business app" instead.

this is taking it to a whole new level. i love it

~~~
CodeWriter23
Heh, one time the boss walked back into the lab, looked at one of my workmates
computers and said "Ah, I see you're running lookbusy" (for the younger
amongst us, lookbusy was a program that would intercept a hot key and display
a fake Lotus 123 spreadsheet on your screen)

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falcolas
Changing what's on your screen won't help much when your boss has access to
your internet logs, and potentially remote access to your computer... (Yes,
these are both still things in startups today)

~~~
webreac
I always have an ssh tunnel toward squid running on my scaleway server (3.6€
per month). The portable version of firefox allows me to avoid the enterprise
policy that prohibit customizing proxy in chrome.

~~~
jlarocco
Depending on how serious your company is about network security, it's entirely
possible they MITM all secure connections. Especially something really
suspicious like a persistent SSH tunnel to a scaleway server.

I don't even understand why you'd go through all the effort. It's a silly
position to put yourself in. If the IT policy bothers you that much, talk to
somebody about changing it or find another job.

------
klue07
Reminds me of:

[http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/](http://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/)

[http://pcottle.github.io/MSWorddit/](http://pcottle.github.io/MSWorddit/)

[http://codereddit.com](http://codereddit.com)

------
dajohnson89
I hate the idea of my boss looking at my screen. I'll browse reddit or watch
YouTube videos or check on my sports team whenever I want. If you have a
problem with my productivity, let's talk about it. Otherwise, respect my
fucking privacy. I'm an adult and a professional.

~~~
libeclipse
To be fair, and I'm speaking as an outsider here since I'm relatively young
and haven't had any experience in your industry, employees are paid per hour,
which means that your firm has bought your time for that hour. You can't
really use that time to do your own stuff.

That's just the way I see it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong and this sort of
thing is normal.

~~~
DanBC
Your employer wants to get best value for their money.

Some bad employers think this means arse-on-chair for that hour. They may go
as far to time loo breaks.

Some better employers recognise that employees, and thus the work they produce
benefit from some flexibility.

But, I think obviously, employers can't allow completely free use of their
computer network. They need to defend against malware and they need to protect
their data. They also need to stop people watching porn in open plan offices.

~~~
satysin
If you are employing someone who is watching porn in an open plan office the
problem isn't with your internet filtering system. It is with your employee so
just fire them! If someone is dumb enough to think watching porn in the office
is a "good idea" then they are too dumb to be working for you. Just my 2c.

------
shade23
Wouldn't the workplace have a problem if an employee has a camera up which
records 24x7 or atleast till he is at work.

Sidenote : don't desk Webcams have a recording red light?

~~~
robinduckett
When I worked at a thankless "startup", I set up a Pi Camera pointed out of
the window from my desk that was next to the window. It was setup to take a
picture every five minutes of the trees whilst the office was closed.

One of my colleagues took exception to this when he came in about ten minutes
earlier than I (not that he could tell it was using the camera, or even what
it was doing) that he thought it a great idea to rip the camera out of the pi
by the ribbon and pull the SD card out when it was on.

When I discovered the smashed up pi in the morning, I asked who broke my pi
and explained that I was capturing a time lapse of the window. He told me I
should have asked permission before recording people in the office.

My initial reaction was to have a go at him, tell him he was responsible for
any costs, tell him that he was overreacting and that he is in a room with
literally 45 laptop cameras pointing at him daily, but he remained resolute
that he was in the right and I was some kind of perv.

The only image my pi camera captured that wasn't the window was a single frame
of his angry face as he ripped apart the delicate ribbons and wires plugged
into the pi.

That job was pretty bad in most respects, and I finally got out of it to go
contract professionally, but there are a few bad memories that linger.

------
rixrax
This reminds me of a 'boss proximity meter' that we made while in college.
Now; this was the early days of when Bluetooth started to appear on mobile
phones. What we did as interns was to have a SW on desktop that alerted you
when bosses Bluetooth enabled phone started to approach your cubicle. That was
a lot of fun! And mostly of novelty value of course! And I did learn a thing
or too about BT in the process... :)

------
Vinnl
Next step: make it open
[http://www.hackertyper.com/](http://www.hackertyper.com/)

------
leonatan
While this is a fun project, the ultimate conclusion here should be: if you
feel uncomfortable in you job or browsing the internet near your boss, it's
time to move to a different job. I understand this is not a privilege possible
by everyone, those that can should exercise it.

------
rafinha
Ok people need to start writing articles on what deep learning rather cannot
do ;)

~~~
pakl
People do write those, and even propose viable alternatives, but those
articles don't get upvoted as much ;)

------
mynameisbahaa
your boss may notice that the cursor isn't blinking since you are using an
image!

------
id122015
Which "The Office" episode did you inspire from:

Episode with "the password"?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GxqvnQyaxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GxqvnQyaxs)
Or episode with"the spy " ?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INbuofE_hms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INbuofE_hms)

------
BatFastard
Can also be used for wives when they walk in on you doing something like ah..
reading "Dear Abby"

~~~
Maerin
Nothing to see here. Just jerking off to some lines of code.

------
golemotron
Instead of full face recognition can't you just recognize pointy hair?

------
surajx
Any decent face recognition library would have done the job. But i guess the
intention was to learn DL, and use it also as a marketing tool. Well done and
really good presentation.

------
amelius
I'm looking for an implementation which warns me whenever I'm slouching. Could
I use the same code for that purpose?

~~~
ZeroFries
There are some devices for that. Eg:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gobackbone/backbone-
the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gobackbone/backbone-the-smart-
easy-way-to-a-healthy-back)

------
marricks
Seems like this could get pretty annoying with false positives... but awesome
idea nonetheless.

------
tscs37
Applied Deep Learning in the Wild.

------
sogen
Favorited just for the effort :)

------
juskrey
Sorry, as someone who worked with faces, I can't believe this has no false
negatives

------
xyzzy4
I wish they would just pass a law banning office spaces without doors.

~~~
stephengillie
A door isn't that helpful when everyone can just ping you on Slack anyway. And
it's not like you can close the app for a while, because then people think
you're unresponsive and unhelpful. Especially when 1/3 of your team is remote.

~~~
atomwaffel
But I can mentally snooze a Slack notification for three minutes or so, enough
to neatly tuck away everything in my head and reach a state where I can more
easily resume what I was doing. That doesn't work as well when I have someone
breathing down my neck who "just wants a really quick word".

------
stretchwithme
Isn't this situation the reason handheld devices were invented?

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lx0741
Funny now you could watch porn at work!

------
jsjohnst
Am I the only one who thinks, gee, can't we just do actual work at the place
we are being paid to "work" and not goof off needing something like this?

I get it, people need downtime every now and then. How about doing something
that's different, but still benefits the company?

Maybe I'm just getting old, but it really bothers me how much I see coworkers
on Facebook, or worse, especially as most of them are the ones who barely put
in an 8hr day.

~~~
downandout
If this bothers you _and_ your bosses, a much more effective approach than
trying to physically catch them would be to simply either block Facebook or
write something that logs the amount of time people are spending on the
corporate network browsing those types of sites. Tell everyone that these
wasted time stats will be baked into their performance reviews.

Voila - you now have a fun-free workplace.

~~~
SapphireSun
Or people just use their phones instead but the atmosphere is somewhat
poisoned. :)

~~~
jsjohnst
It's more often in meetings that I see it, people on their phone randomly
flicking through their Facebook feed rather than participating. My personal
thought is, if you're that bored, then excuse yourself from the meeting and do
something else.

------
cocktailpeanuts
In a real world, you actually want to do this when __anyone__ is passing by.
You don't want to be seen as a slacker by your boss, but you also don't want
to be seen as a slacker by your colleagues.

In which case, this is actually a much easier problem to solve since all you
need to do is detect any motion (instead of all this convoluted--although
hilarious--deep learning task).

This is like the story where some government tried to come up with a super
high-tech pen that works in the space (because regular pens don't work in zero
gravity environment) when the final answer was just a pencil.

So the lesson here is: there are many ways to solve a problem, and if you
don't know what problem you're trying to solve and you don't know your
customer well enough, you will end up wasting a lot of resource doing
something totally unnecessary. (But it was a fun blog post! Kudos for that)

~~~
mynameisbahaa
didn't you watch the movie "3 idiots" ? pencils didn't work well in outer
space too!

from:[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-
fiction-n...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-
spen/)

"Originally, NASA astronauts, like the Soviet cosmonauts, used pencils,
according to NASA historians. In fact, NASA ordered 34 mechanical pencils from
Houston's Tycam Engineering Manufacturing, Inc., in 1965. They paid $4,382.50
or $128.89 per pencil. When these prices became public, there was an outcry
and NASA scrambled to find something cheaper for the astronauts to use.
Pencils may not have been the best choice anyway. The tips flaked and broke
off, drifting in microgravity where they could potentially harm an astronaut
or equipment. And pencils are flammable--a quality NASA wanted to avoid in
onboard objects after the Apollo 1 fire."

~~~
DiabloD3
And thus the invention of the Fisher Space Pen.

[http://www.spacepen.com/](http://www.spacepen.com/)

Rubber that, under the pressure inside of the ink cart, is liquid, but when
finally written onto paper, becomes solid instantly and cannot be smeared.

I've had one for years, and it is the smoothest and best pen I've ever owned.

~~~
mynameisbahaa
I didn't know that these pens are available to the public! They have some
great looking pens though. I may try one in the future

