Hacker Cinema
Losing Lena
2019 · Film · documentary · 27 min
Directed by Kyra Bartley
There's a secret hidden in almost every website and every digital image you've ever seen. And how it got there is part of a far bigger story.
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8 comments on Hacker News
From the link above
> Forsén stated in the 2019 documentary film Losing Lena, "I retired from modeling a long time ago. It's time I retired from tech, too... Let's commit to losing me."
> Forsén herself has also suggested that the photo should be retired. In 2019, she said she was “really proud” of the picture and she re-created the shot for Wired magazine, which called her “the patron saint of JPEGs”. But later that year, the documentary Losing Lena spearheaded the latest effort to encourage computer science to move on. “I retired from modelling a long time ago,” Forsén said on its release. “It’s time I retired from tech, too. We can make a simple change today that creates a lasting change for tomorrow. Let’s commit to losing me.”
Yes it is.
It’s probably downvoted because it doesn’t add anything to the debugging story.
At some point, I’ll probably watch the “Losing Lena” documentary. But I wasted a few minutes to determine the comment was not related to the story
Lena said “Once upon a time, I was the centerfold of Playboy,” says the former model in the new documentary Losing Lena. “But I retired from modeling a long time ago. It’s time I retired from tech, too.”
See https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/How-a-Nude-Playboy-Photo-Became-a-Fixture-14878319.php
She later said she wanted people to stop using the picture. https://finchcompany.com/projects/losing-lena-trailer/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/31/tech-publisher-bans-playboy-centrefold-test-image-from-its-journals
> Forsén herself has also suggested that the photo should be retired. In 2019, she said she was “really proud” of the picture and she re-created the shot for Wired magazine, which called her “the patron saint of JPEGs”. But later that year, the documentary Losing Lena spearheaded the latest effort to encourage computer science to move on. “I retired from modelling a long time ago,” Forsén said on its release. “It’s time I retired from tech, too. We can make a simple change today that creates a lasting change for tomorrow. Let’s commit to losing me.”
David wasn’t made with the intent to be pornographic. Lena’s picture was. Being unaware of the evidence doesn’t mean there isn’t any. There’s plenty of evidence of the mild bias inherent in the use of Lena, if you actually want to find the evidence. Lots of women have mentioned their mild discomfort with seeing it in a professional setting. There’s a documentary about this story called “Losing Lena”.
The documentary is literally called "Losing Lena" and tried to advocate for the removal of a meme image from an academic context. And it did so by immensely amplifying its exposure in a mainstream context.
The supposedly "deeper" part of their argument is even more pathetic, maternalistic, infantilising nonsense. Are they seriously claiming that women are so fragile that they will forego pursuit of their intellectual passion because sometimes, some academic papers use the image of a women wearing a fancy hat and bare shoulders? What a low view of women these documentarians have. What a vile insult to half the population.
I can only imagine that the movie was made by freak puritanical zealots who would literally explode if they ever saw a television advertisement for shampoo. And these zealots seem to have zero concept of how technology works. The movie's tagline falsely claims that "There's a secret hidden in almost every website and every digital image you've ever seen." The fact that anyone took it seriously is itself a sick joke.
See the documentary Losing Lena[1]:
[1]: https://www.losinglena.com/