Virginia DMV Makes Driver's Licenses Look More Like Mug Shots

Facial recognition software operates on the principle that people never make expressions ever, and just wander the earth looking like dead-eyed zombies. Thus the Virginia DMV, in order to make driver's license pictures more compatible with the latest facial recognition techmologies, has decreed that you can't smile in your photo.

As the very predictable joke goes, who wants to smile at the DMV anyhow? HAR HAR HAR do not laugh, if you are about to have your picture taken!

Now everybody's license will have a photo that looks more like a mug shot, which should make processing go a little more smoothly down at the police station.

The new rule also benefits Virginia's very large and historically oppressed population of people without teeth.

 As if It Needed to, Virginia Bans Smiles at the DMV [Washington Post]