On: How Perceptual Hashes Work

[piotrSikora]

This reminds me of OpenSSH's fingerprint visualization support ("VisualHostKey yes"):

    $ ssh A.B.C.D
    Host key fingerprint is b0:c9:c9:96:fb:fd:ac:a4:ff:70:8f:1b:35:f4:f9:2e
    +--[ECDSA  256]---+
    |                 |
    |                 |
    |      .       .  |
    |     o *     . ..|
    |      O S     o..|
    |     . .     . ..|
    |      .   o o   .|
    |       . + + +E. |
    |        o.++*....|
    +-----------------+
    
    me@A.B.C.D's password:

Original article introducing this feature: http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=200806150... (2008/06/26).

[neworbit → piotrSikora]

I can't be the only one who thinks "This looks like the visualization algorithm is nethack"

[eru → neworbit]

Plane of fire, or so.

[wickedchicken → piotrSikora]

This is pretty much the opposite from what the article is talking about -- the article is trying to get a hash from an image in order to compare that image to another, while you're talking about synthesizing an image from an arbitrary hash...

[piotrSikora → wickedchicken]

Hence "reminds me" :)

[killerswan → wickedchicken]

Well, one could use a variation of this technique to compare tons of other things... Music?

[bct → killerswan]

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Audio_Fingerprint

The Picard MP3 tagger uses this kind of thing (and MusicBrainz' database of tracks and audio fingerprints) to identify files.