As the coronavirus fear grips the world, people are taking various precautionary measures to prevent the disease, including not touching their face.
A new website -- Donottouchyourface.com offers help to people who cannot resist themselves from touching their face.
The website uses simple machine-learning algorithm to recognise images of each individual user touching their face, and not touching their face. Once it registers the user’s images, it uses web notifications to ping them if they touch their face.
If the window is not minimised, a large “NO” written with red, flashes on the screen, as per the Guardian report.
The whole service is trained and run locally on each computer, meaning that neither the webcam data nor the trained AI, needs to be sent back to the developers.
All the calculations from webcam and alerts are done on the computer and are never sent over the internet. The creators of this website warned that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends not touching the face as one of the measure to stop the virus from spreading, according to the Guardian report.
However, the site does not guarantee that this will prevent users from getting the disease. They said “It might help,” Guardian reported.
While the coronavirus pandemic is on the rise as the death toll has surpassed 3000 and the virus has infected more than 95,000 people worldwide, developers are making apps and websites in response to the disease.
Apple and Google had to remove unreliable apps on coronavirus in order to counter misinformation and prevent spreading rumours regarding the disease.
Published on
March 07, 2020
A letter from the Editor
Dear Readers,
The coronavirus crisis has changed the world completely in the last few months. All of us have been locked into our homes, economic activity has come to a near standstill. Everyone has been impacted.
Including your favourite business and financial newspaper. Our printing and distribution chains have been severely disrupted across the country, leaving readers without access to newspapers. Newspaper delivery agents have also been unable to service their customers because of multiple restrictions.
In these difficult times, we, at BusinessLine have been working continuously every day so that you are informed about all the developments – whether on the pandemic, on policy responses, or the impact on the world of business and finance. Our team has been working round the clock to keep track of developments so that you – the reader – gets accurate information and actionable insights so that you can protect your jobs, businesses, finances and investments.
We are trying our best to ensure the newspaper reaches your hands every day. We have also ensured that even if your paper is not delivered, you can access BusinessLine in the e-paper format – just as it appears in print. Our website and apps too, are updated every minute, so that you can access the information you want anywhere, anytime.
But all this comes at a heavy cost. As you are aware, the lockdowns have wiped out almost all our entire revenue stream. Sustaining our quality journalism has become extremely challenging. That we have managed so far is thanks to your support. I thank all our subscribers – print and digital – for your support.
I appeal to all or readers to help us navigate these challenging times and help sustain one of the truly independent and credible voices in the world of Indian journalism. Doing so is easy. You can help us enormously simply by subscribing to our digital or e-paper editions. We offer several affordable subscription plans for our website, which includes Portfolio, our investment advisory section that offers rich investment advice from our highly qualified, in-house Research Bureau, the only such team in the Indian newspaper industry.
A little help from you can make a huge difference to the cause of quality journalism!
Support Quality Journalism
Please Email the Editor