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I may have told this story before (perhaps back in 2008 if this was posted then) -- but my first gig in tech was QA for Hewlett Packard testing printer/scanner/copier units. At some point I scanned a photo of my then-girlfriend and crashed the unit. Was able to do it repeatedly, provided I scanned the image in straight/cleanly. I didn't come across any other images that reproduced the issue, only this one photo. The underlying bug was a buffer overrun of some sort, was fixed before shipping -- and the image became a part of the durable regression test suite for that department.

discuss

ComputerGuru|5 years ago

Not surprised there was a bug, but I am surprised it was patched (before or after shipping). I have an “enterprise grade” HP scanner (3500 F1) with buggy Twain drivers I had to manually disassemble and patch that will crash any time you try to duplex scan a single-sided sheet of paper. The blank page detection algorithm caused a null pointer dereference if two-sided mode was selected but the second side was elided.

The bug reproduced 100% of the time with all available versions of their drivers in any application using the TWAIN rather than WIA or proprietary scanner interface. It was as simple as scanning any one-sided document in duplex mode. I escalated the issue to their engineers who kept insisting the issue was with my PC until the product was EOL’d just a year or two after production.

I had other hardware issues pop up and ended up getting a Fujitsu for ADF document scanning and keeping the HP for scanning photos with the flatbed. Not many stand-alone hi-res dual color ADF/flatbed scanners out there.

ryandrake|5 years ago

If you're in software, you probably know this, but your bug was likely ignored not because it couldn't be reproduced, but because the engineers on the project were prioritizing feature work for the next version of the scanner, and did not have any support from management for fixing bugs in an already-shipping product. Sadly, driver software quality tends to max out at the level where customers won't return the hardware for a refund, and then the company abandons it and works on the next shiny new device.

m463|5 years ago

I can't help but wonder if Alexander Hamilton or Benjamin Franklin would cause printer problems too (for a different reason)

closeparen|5 years ago

Counterfeit protection does work on image recognition, but not necessarily the faces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

beachy|5 years ago

Sad that this rings a GDPR bell in my mind.

romwell|5 years ago

You don't need GDPR for this to have legal issues.

As an amateur photographer, I'm pretty sure that you'd formally need a model release form for a commercial use of it to be legitimate[1].

Of course, as with any legal issue, the company would weigh the probability of it being enforced vs. the hassle of doing it right... and it's pretty clear where the balance is in most cases.

[1] https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-anot...

mhh__|5 years ago

Is it enough to buy her bottle of wine or something in exchange for being able to keep the photo indefinitely?

m463|5 years ago

What if her name was Lena?