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Isn't that wonderful?
In the advanced year of 2026, with AI eating up all the RAM and storage, that the best image data they can process is still in 1950's greyscale?
What the actual fuck?
It's infrared, it's designed to work without a distracting white flash going off for every car, just an infrared flash. As it's outside our normal colour spectrum, it's also why seat belts appear white instead of the normal grey.
I've seen white flashes on these types of cameras in China, and it's quite creepy, infrared flashes are only creepy once you know it's there.
I got your point 100%
But still, back to my point, datacenters are eating all the RAM and storage, yet can't even record color photography?
Please explain that.
They already explained this for you.
The photo isn’t taken in colour because it’s in infrared.
It is in infrared because it is easier to work with.
Further?
Photos for fines don’t need pretty colours.
Need me to lower the bar again?
The law is black and white and so are the receipts.
Nothing to do with RAM and storage in datacenters. All to do with the camera.
Seatbelt is dark, why the fuck is infrared picking it up as white?
We have such advanced technology, why can't the cameras at bare minimum detect a fucking seatbelt?
Color isn't outright necessary, but holy fuck it can't even detect illumination levels?
But why male models?
I got you an updoot back bro. He's probably too young to get it.
Because the dark color is reflected visible light, it probably reflects more infrared light so looks bright to an infrared camera. We technically shouldn't even be able to see this image at all, it's being rerendered in visible light but as infrared is one "color" it's shown as monochrome
No shit, that's the entire point, IR cameras shouldn't be used at all to 'see' seatbelts...
But still, back to my point, datacenters are eating all the RAM and storage, yet can't even record color photography?
In addition to what other people have said, the AI used by these cameras is not the same as the LLMs using massive amounts of RAM. Weirdly, computer vision is a lot more efficient than LLMs, and usually performs best with simplified and consistent monochrome images.
Monochrome?
Fuck, the first GameBoy released in 1989, and that wasn't even monochrome!
Edit for those that don't know, the original GameBoy had four shades of puke green, not two.
Monochrome just means shades of one colour, so the original GameBoy is still monochrome.
Monochrome ≠ Multishaded
No shit, monochrome means the pixel is either on or off.
The GameBoy had 4 shading levels...
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color).
In computing, monochrome has two meanings:
- it may mean having one color which is either on or off (also known as a binary image),
- allowing shades of that color.
Man this thread has been excellent to read. Felt like watching a funny man / straight man skit. Props for bringing it home and doing the work.
In graphics programming, we don't use such terms arbitrarily. Mono=1, plain and simple.
The original Macintosh was proper monochrome, either pixel on or pixel off, a true 'binary image' as your definition states.
You ever try reading or writing graphics software? Nowhere in our code will you ever see anything besides 1 bit per pixel referred to as monochrome.
What the GameBoy has is 2 bits per pixel, which means its a paletted image, and looking past the puke green color of the screen, is otherwise considered a crude form of greyscale, not monochrome.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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