Google spec’d a bigger sensor than what Apple uses in the latest iPhones and, therefore, should have been able to crush Apple in image quality. DxOMark says otherwise. In lab conditions, the Pixel 6 Pro scores 143 from the main camera:
The iPhone 13 Pro Max scores 144:
In real-world conditions, I would expect that the Apple camera software yields substantial practical advantages. The autofocus scores, above, already show that the iPhone is likely to be better at capturing kids running around.
As impartially measured by Google DEI employees, the Pixel 6 Pro scores higher in equity. “Image equity: Making image tools more fair for everyone” (blog.google):
As part of Google’s Product Inclusion efforts, our teams are building more equitable camera and imaging products for people of color.
Building better tools for a community works best when they’re built with the community. For the new Pixel 6 Camera, we partnered with a diverse range of renowned image makers who are celebrated for their beautiful and accurate depictions of communities of color—including Kira Kelly, Deun Ivory, Adrienne Raquel, Kristian Mercado, Zuly Garcia, Shayan Asgharnia, Natacha Ikoli and more—to help our teams understand where we needed to do better. With their help, we’ve significantly increased the number of portraits of people of color in the image datasets that train our camera models.
(the bad old days: “Google Photos Tags Two African-Americans As Gorillas Through Facial Recognition Software” (Forbes))
If having accessible “communities of color” is helpful in building a more equitable camera, shouldn’t Samsung have the most equitable camera of all? Nearly all South Koreans are “of color” by our current definition. (See “Michelle Wu is Boston’s first woman and first person of color elected mayor” from state-sponsored NPR, regarding a Chinese-American (apparently this person’s most important characteristics relative to the mayor job are current gender ID and skin color)).
Samsung makes all of the Goog’s phones, but a difference of 1 in these benchmarks means absolutely nothing to lions. A better benchmark is how long it takes the goog to recompile all the dead Java formalities to start the camera. It wouldn’t be surprising if 20 GB of the firmware just printed “all work & no play makes George Floyd a dull boy” since 2020.
Google says the Pixel 6 is the first phone made by Google… FWIW
I haven’t even seen an iPhone Pro Max 13 in person but I think the camera is by far the best part of the phone and that’s what I’ve told other people as well.
My Samsung A42 5G sucketh by comparison and the weird thing is some of the image processing it does, which I’ll post a shot of later. It has some kind of strange processing going on at what looks like the 40×40 or so pixel range that I find weird when I zoom the images in. They don’t look bad at moderate zoom, but as soon as you crop in closely you can see the subprime “Escher-esque” image processing artifacts. Well, it’s a $400 phone. The slow-mo works! The battery life (1500 mAh) is also stonkin’ and the voice quality is worlds better than my old Galaxy S4. Mine runs for days without touching a charger even with a lot of flashlight use and that’s what want most. I can’t believe reviewers actually complain about the small delay switching from app. to app. People are spoiled rotten.
Of course, I’m not a totally addicted meth-head app. user on my phone, either. I don’t even have Facebook on it! One of these days I’ll get a knock at my Metaverse door and Insane Clown Posse will be there to examine my head.
Sorry, 5000 mAh not 1500. It’s a big battery in the A42.
Alex: ICP wants you to give a seminar to the Family at the Gathering.
“… increased the number of portraits of people of color in the image datasets”
Why not take advertisements for the datasets? There are so many people “of color” in ads that I’m shocked to see the occasional ad with only white people, sometimes even with white males!
We’re currently testing these two smartphones and we’ve found the Pixel 6 Pro is slightly better in most scenarios compared to the iPhone 13 Pro. The new long exposure and action panning modes are genuinely useful. The Pixel has a wide-angle portrait mode that the iPhone lacks. The Pixel’s telephoto lens is much sharper for faraway subjects. HOWEVER, the iPhone wins BIG for telephoto portraits, and fauxkeh transitions (like from a person’s hair to the background) are MUCH better on the iPhone.
Sorry for the slightly OT post, but here is a shot from my Samsung A42 5G, taken just now, outdoors and handheld with the (allegedly) 48 megapixel camera. The photo data is:
Focal length: 4.60 mm; Exposure: 1/350 sec.; f/1.8; ISO 40; Normal program; Centerwighted-Average metering; Image Size: 8000×6000; Portrait (normal 1); 72 ppi Resolution; No Flash
https://i.ibb.co/rxd7Hyk/SAMSUNG-A42-G5-PIC.jpg
It looks pretty nice at full zoom but as you go in close, take a look at all of the image processing that’s going on in the 40×40 pixel range! It looks like an Oil Paint filter! So caveat emptor on a $400 phone at the very least. Verizon justifies this by saying it’s only $5 bux/month but then they try to get all that back in the first month by shoving 20 or 30 gigabytes of data at $15 bux a pop down the pipe.
They might say this is a 48 MP camera for advertising purposes and bragging rights, but you tell me how “massaged” and fudged that figure is. I have seen this before in other shots taken with the camera in its various modes and the algorithm is very distinct, so basically any “high resolution” photos taken with this camera are more a work of the imagination than reality. Note how it blurs the lettering on the signs! I am standing right across the street from them and can read them with my unassisted eyes.
It’s a little like that great 5G promise….
Anyway, here’s hoping the iPhone Max Pro 13 doesn’t resort to shenanigans like this for the money you pay.
It’s is obvious you are a rich white hetero male, never having been a part of a disadvantaged minority. Can you not at least see how Obama being elected really meant a lot to black people? Just two generations ago black people were slaves, and one generation ago they had to use separate restrooms, water fountains, pools, and schools. There had never been a black president. It means a lot to disadvantaged groups to see a breakthrough for their race, sex, sexual preference, etc.
Although that’s not really true yet if you are a Republican (typical Republican: “I wonder why they think we are racist???”):
“Over a third of incoming House Democrats identify as people of color, though just 2 percent of incoming House Republicans do.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/slideshows/116th-congress-by-party-race-gender-and-religion?slide=3
I bet it is disappointing when FaceID does not work on a new $1000 phone simply because of one’s race. Of course the developers are mostly white and didn’t sufficiently test minority facial recognition.
“Dr” PhilG’s empathy grade: F. But it is understandable, his perceived white privilege is decreasing.
Mike: I think that is risky to assume that someone cannot identify with a victimhood group in today’s America. There are a lot of ways to be part of a “disadvantaged group” as you put it, e.g., 2SLGBTQQIA+, Chinese (“person of color”), Jewish (non-white, ever since the election of card-carrying Nazi Donald Trump, says https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/are-jews-white/509453/ ). And, since I hope that you’ll agree with me that gender ID is fluid and that sexual preference also may vary from day to day, membership in the 2SLGBTQQIA+ victimhood group is difficult to predict.
Separately, I’m glad that you think that the Google Pixel 6 Pro is a “breakthrough for their race” from the perspective of Black people who were slaves just two generations ago (i.e., in the 1970s).
Please write more Mike, I really enjoy reading your rants. Do not forget to add what gender and race you identify as, it will make your comments even more powerful.
@philg – can we add an option to have race and gender for every comment and some filtering? This would allow one to filter only comments that matter ignoring the text in the comments so one does not have to waste time on reading non-persons.
Two generations ago was the tenth president, John Tyler, who was born in the 1790s. His grandson died last year.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8816555/Grandson-TENTH-president-John-Tyler-dies-aged-95.html
I’m a middle aged man and my grandparents were born in the 1800s.
I am not talking about a random person’s identification, I am talking about you. Your gender ID is fluid? I didn’t realize. Maybe Jews are disadvantaged?
1. Politically they have done well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_political_milestones_in_the_United_States
2. It is rough for the most prolific stereotype to be known as “rich,” “well-off,” “wealthy.”
3. Regarding an awful chapter of Judaism: At least one Republican sitting Congresswoman agrees with “Dr” Phil, “’Any rational Jewish person’ thinks mask mandates are as bad as the Holocaust.”
If a cloth mask on one’s face for 15 minutes in the grocery store is equal to the Holocaust, the Holocaust mustn’t have been too bad.
I stand by my comment about Republican Congressman racial representation, which you have explicitly chosen to ignore.
Are you or have you ever been a part of a disadvantaged group? Not hypothetically for a random person — your tactic to shift the discussion — but in reality (we’ve already shown above that the Jewish religion is not a disadvantage).
Mike: Perhaps you have been living under a rock, but it is hard to overlook that BIPOC is frivolously inserted into any topic under the sun. That’s what philg makes fun of. And you want to destroy the last humorous sites on the Internet and turn them into the NYT?
[A generation is generally counted as 25-30 years, despite the fact that fortunate males can have sex with younger women at the age of 90.]
Anonymous: “Do not forget to add what gender and race you identify as, it will make your comments even more powerful.” I think that what you’re looking for has already been implemented. See https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/annual-microsoft-ignite-conference-entices-criticism-over-woke-introductions “I’m an Asian and White female with dark brown hair,” she continues, “wearing a red sleeveless top.” (as part of an introduction) https://twitter.com/ErrolWebber/status/1456318551342530560 is also a good video (linked from the preceding) that implements your idea.
Regarding the BIPOC… the original post wasn’t meant to poke fun at those who have made bank with careers in DEI, celebrating the BIPOC, etc. It is a sincere attempt to understand the logic of the social justice experts. Asians are people of color. A group of people of color is a community of color. A camera company with access to a community of color will make a camera that rates higher on the equity scale than a camera company without such access. Simple logic, therefore, would seem to require that Chinese-, Japanese-, and Korean-made cameras score higher than American-designed ones in this critical area. And yet we are told that this isn’t so. A bunch of white people in Silicon Valley, some of whose friends are BIPOC, has maxed out in equity while teams of actual people of color (Asians surrounded by Asians in China and Korea) are left in the dust.
Mike: Before I can answer your question about personal victimhood, I think I need to understand a little more about the terms that you’re using.
Is someone who identifies as a “woman” part of what you call a “disadvantaged group”?
Is a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community part of what you call a “disadvantaged group”?
Is a Hispanic person part of what you call a “disadvantaged group”? (please use our official government definition of “Hispanic” from https://www.census.gov/topics/population/hispanic-origin/about.html so that we are talking about the same people!)
At any given time, is a person 100 percent masculine or 100 percent feminine or is it possible to be somewhere in the middle even if one does not formally identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+?
Same question about sexual preference. At any one time, excluding those who are part of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community, is any given person solely attracted to people of one gender ID?
And, if there is a continuum of masculine/feminine and a continuum of sexual preference, is a person’s position on those continuums fixed or could that position vary with time?
Is a transwoman less of a woman than a cisgender woman? Less entitled to a job that is set aside for “women”, for example? Less desirable in any way as a sex partner for a heterosexual person identifying as a “man”?
Once you answer the above questions, we can talk about my own victimhood!
This can help :
https://youtu.be/w5F_AhciUy4
philg: That is good point. Asians of course are only people “of color” when it fits the narrative, white otherwise. In this case image recognition and neural network organizations often have 80% Asians, so they count as white!
I still find the mainstream hyper-focus on BIPOC funny: Google could just have said “We have improved image recognition”, which normal people would prefer because no racial group is singled out. Instead they stoke the flames.
(I’d also consider it a privilege if FaceID did NOT work. Why give Google another unique identifier to track you, serve you ads and perhaps share their face database with The Swamp?)
Perhaps this is pessimistic but I would take Mike’s comments very seriously in at least one respect. They are obviously strongly and sincerely held and likely to be shared by many others. philg, if you haven’t already I hope you consider preparing a .onion site or the like, as a “plan B” in case your site gets cancelled.
LordP: I agree that Mike’s point of view is held by a majority of Americans (only a narrow voting majority because a lot of the folks who think like Mike are under 18). And my site has already been canceled! Remember that it was hosted at Harvard and was the most popular blog on the Harvard server. They told me that my blog was being shut down because it didn’t fit their new policy in which, while they acknowledged that it was challenging to censor content, every blog author must have a Harvard University email address. Examples of such addresses were provided in the policy, including “@hms.harvard.edu” (“the medical school” as folks in Boston say). I responded from my hms.harvard.edu account. They said “You still have to move your blog”.
You’re probably right that I should set up a mirror site in one of the free speech-oriented societies (what are those right now? Iceland and Sweden?). See https://www.bahnhof.se/filestorage/userfiles/bahnhof_free_speech_policy.pdf for example. Certainly if we extrapolate from the last 5 years of change in the U.S., it could become illegal or impractical to run a site like this one. But then I’m not sure who the audience would be. Just as we give 5-year-olds COVID-19 vaccines for their own protection (it is a tragedy when a healthy slender 5-year-old turns overnight into a diabetic 82-year-old and is killed by SARS-CoV-2), the U.S. will need a Great Firewall of some sort to protect children from harmful speech that is available on servers in Iceland and Sweden. There is no way to know if someone making an HTTP request from inside a house is a child or an adult, so the only way to protect children from harm is to block the content from reaching home broadband networks.
LP: That’s too pessimistic indeed. 🙂 Of course people want to cancel anything and anybody, but there is nothing even remotely here that would be grounds for cancellation on the ISP level.
Anonymous: I agree with you that an ISP wouldn’t have canceled this site in 2015, for example. But look at the front page of a typical American news web site. Our democracy is imperiled, the best evidence of which is the January 6 insurrection. While the First Amendment might be applicable in ordinary times, we’re currently in a dual state of emergency (Emergency 1: the existence of SARS-CoV-2 conflicting with every American’s right to live forever or at least until death via diabetes; Emergency 2: the existence of subjects who disagree with the rulers and who therefore might be plotting an insurrection at any time (just as they did on January 6)). Whenever the rulers of a state or a country declare an emergency, the Constitution does not apply.
Remember what Idi Amin wrote to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis: “When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition.”
As a member of an 2SLGBTQQIA+ community (I personally am not 2SLGBTQQIA+ but my community is, according to the director of my town’s Community Center) I just need to remind people that official censorship isn’t only necessary sometimes, it’s not wrong either. To prevent the spread of incorrect information and opinion, it’s especially important to remember:
When it comes to Harvard, an institution comprised of the Least Privileged People on Earth, they are also never wrong. Exactly as it was explained in an episode of Frasier, “Roz in the Doghouse” (S02E12) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDsAY9Xn-4
“Frasier : You don’t understand. It’s not the same as Dad being wrong, or your being wrong. I have a degree from Harvard. Whenever I’m wrong, the world makes a little less sense.”
In fact, they are so indefatigably correct that they removed the lede sentence from that video. It’s not only not funny, it’s not even wrong!
2 generations ago, does it mean millennials or generation X?
Roger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#List_of_named_generations says babies being born now are in Generation Alpha, so two generations ago would be Millennials. On the other hand, maybe Mike was talking about adult slaves (at least age 18?) and therefore we’d go back to Gen X.
Another accepted way to measure generations, however, is with human lifetimes, as Mike has done. And for “two generations ago” we look at the birthdate of the grandparent of an old person who has died. I would pick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah as a typical example for human lifespan and therefore two generations back under Mike’s methodology would be approximately 2,700 years ago or 700 B.C. That takes us roughly to “According to Plutarch, Solon (c. 594–593 BC) forbade slaves from practising gymnastics and pederasty.” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece#Pre-classical_Greece )
Philip, Methuselah was a pre – Biblical flood character, and it was different back then: according to Hebrew Bible flood was boiling and destroyed much of quality soil and original energy from Creation; post-flood people were allowed to eat meat and started to live shorter life spans. Pre -flood Genesis has lifestyles in 800 – 900 years ranges, post flood lifespans fall until they get to Noses and Aharon who are modern centenarians at 120 and 127 years if I recall correctly. Incidentally it appears to match modern longest lifespans. In Psalms, King David (around 1000 – 900 BCE) states that “human age is 70 years or 80 years if strong” so it already matched modern unhealthy lifestyle.
Bible is very poetic and precise in details if studied seriously. Pre-flood cloud covers was so strong when it rained that rainbow could not be seen, post-flood God made rainbow visible, as a peace symbol and reminder on new treaty with Noah and his descendants – it is in a shape of inverted (from God point of view) bow shown to mankind; inverted bow pointed on oneself used to be a peace symbol in the ancient world and sign to cease hostilities.
In Mike’s calculations and per his disclosure he is one lifetime away from his grand-dad Karl Marx and from one his hated Republicans who in such cases used to say “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
^Moses and Aharon of course
> Of course the developers are mostly white and didn’t sufficiently test minority facial recognition.
No white developer wants to touch training models with Black pictures with a ten foot pole. You can only lose and be fired as a racist if something goes wrong.
How did we get there? I can tell you that white Europeans were ecstatic about the election of Obama after the Great Satan George W. Bush. However, we thought it would end there and racial relations would be normalized. Little did we know what was about to happen …
The last 8 years taught me to listen to the Republicans every now and then.
There is a difference between a generation and a lifetime (three of my lifetimes will take you back to signing the Constitution, and of course widespread slavery).
Race relations are indeed stalled compared to the rapid changes of the 20th century, and the retrograde folks take advantage of the often frivolous and noisy demands of the woke. Ignorance begets poverty and bigotry. The answer is universal education for everybody who will undertake it, but many will still be left behind.
2cent (maybe only 1 cent if the latest tax proposed tax increases make it to Joe Biden’s desk): What do you mean by “race relations”? Is there an organized group that can claim to speak for all members of a “race” (however we might define that term)? If not, how can there be relations between races? Wouldn’t it just be relations among people, some of whom may happen to identify with one or more races?
If you look at the birth stats in https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/11/06/locked-down-pregnant-and-stoned-is-actually-a-great-way-to-go-through-life/ you’ll see that California soon won’t have a significant number of white non-Hispanic people not a significant number of Black people. Therefore, I don’t think it would make sense to talk about some old process being “stalled”. The descendants of the people who were involved in that process have been replaced by migrants and children of migrants.