Seems like an AI could perform this sort of analysis to geolocate images with far fewer distinct features and no reliance on any prior knowledge, since it would have near omniscient knowledge of all satellite imagery. For example, this seemingly unidentifiable shot of Gwern’s window view [0] contains a nondescript tree next to a body of water. Nigh impossible for a human without any prior knowledge of Gwern’s general location to identify, but potentially trivial for an AI, since it could automatically scour all satellite imagery for trees and shrubbery of similar shape next to a body of water and a house with a three-sash bay window, a task utterly infeasible to do manually.
I don't work in AI but would this really be as easy as you say. Plants might not seem to change much in the time you are observing them but they can change significantly throughout the season and are constantly "reshaped" by blowing winds and the like.
So what is the point of all this? If done by Ukrainians, what military objective does is accomplish?
Are we supposed to track down the people responsible for the Tomahawk cruise missile program as well? I mean, this piece does not make any sense to me. There is a difference between the people that make weapons and those that use them.
It’s the people who program the missiles. People who knowingly attack power infrastructure in a cold country (my parents spent 12 hours without the power today). People who make mistakes that make missiles struck residential buildings. Investigators said he contacted them and they were completely nonchalant about the result of their work. He used the term “banality of evil”.
I find it hard to blame the Russians doing this especially much. At least I’d have to blame the developers of the hellfire missile and reaper drone just as much.
The people who make missiles are complicit, and are partially responsible for the deaths that result from them. And yes, that raises awkward questions about the military industrial complex, and about other countries and people who are also doing it.
But it's basic cause and effect, some people built a missile, some people ordered its use, some people launched it at the target. All of them bear some portion of the responsibility for the end result, any other conclusion is not entirely honest.
I mean this is not the context to have this discussion, but yes, if another country operated like the US does, we would call many of it's actions "war crimes" and discussing the relative complicity of the "civilians" that make the missiles.
If you work on anything even distantly military related, it's a risk you take as part of the job. If your country loses any war/power struggle, the new incoming government will punish you for being involved in the military of the old government fighting against the incomers.
In a context of war crimes trial, it made all the sense.
If a missile is programmed to fall in a maternity full of pregnant women, they are necessary accomplices of a massive assassination. They could be lied about it the first couple of times. After nine full months of terrorism, "we didn't knew the consequences of our actions" is not reasonable
Online women have to deal with this sort of crap routinely.
I know a sex worker who was very careful about her online identity. She posted several years ago some completely innocuous thing, like “looks like I’m going to need a new pair of boots.”
From this one tweet, her stalkers were able to cross-reference which city she lived in by looking up historical weather reports for areas that recently had snowfall. They knew that she also was a professor, so they went down the list of female professors in nearby universities until they found a match.
Well, one hidden implication behind your comment could be that women who work sensitive jobs shouldn't reveal their face or their profession online, or else they deserve to be unmasked. When framed that way, maybe you can see why I disagree.
I'm reminded of _why the lucky stiff, who was a legendary ruby programmer from 2004ish. As far as I know, he didn't do sex work, but he showed his face at conferences all the time. He was a very private fellow - he would ask people to drop him off at a cafe or a park after outings. When some of his stalkers attempted to unmask him, he left the ruby community (I think for that and other reasons).
> The man said he had identified a train station reflected in the singer's eyes in a selfie she posted online. The 26-year-old then waited at the station until he saw his victim and followed her to her home, police said.
> He also said he had studied videos the woman shot in her apartment, looking at details such as the placement of curtains and the direction of natural light coming through the window to try to determine exactly which floor she lived on, reports said.
There was also that thing with Shia Labeouf's "he will not divide us" campaign (?), where at one point 4chan folk tracked down the physical location based on a webcam view pointed skywards at a flagpole, geolocating it based on the transit times and flight paths of aircraft passing in view (determining the compass direction from the sun setting and rising, I think there was also something about figuring out the altitude from contrail formation?) and comparing it to one of those flightradar type sites.
That was a far more impressive bit of coordination and analysis; this really boiled down to looking through a stupid number of photos for the three-pronged staircase
> By searching through geotagged photos of the street on the Russian social network VK they came across a high-resolution photograph taken by a professional roofer while he was on top of the north wall of the facility
I think the parent commenter is implying that there's an even bigger community willing to do it for $1000. It is unclear whether the bounty would drive away the original community though.
Boring. They already knew the geolocation, so they were merely confirming the geolocation rather than geolocating a photo taken in an unknown location.
Readit News
[0] https://www.gwern.net/Links#hardware
One thing they mention is getting approx time from shadows when you know the location.
That photo has a blurry date/time in it. Which lets you use shadows to find approx latitude I think.
Train an AI to identify and measure features in satellite imagery (water bodies, trees, lawns, buildings, etc.)
Allow a user to search for areas of size x m^2, that have water bodies of at least y m^2, forested area of at least z m^2, etc.
Computers keep generating a cat gravity field around, it seems. Who is Gwern? (or if you prefer: Why are we peeping at their nice workplace?)
Dead Comment
Are we supposed to track down the people responsible for the Tomahawk cruise missile program as well? I mean, this piece does not make any sense to me. There is a difference between the people that make weapons and those that use them.
Deleted Comment
But it's basic cause and effect, some people built a missile, some people ordered its use, some people launched it at the target. All of them bear some portion of the responsibility for the end result, any other conclusion is not entirely honest.
Most of the missile strikes have no military value, as Russia seems to withdraw from parts of Ukraine.
Perhaps showing the group responsible would make them think about what they are doing besides inputting coordinates.
If a missile is programmed to fall in a maternity full of pregnant women, they are necessary accomplices of a massive assassination. They could be lied about it the first couple of times. After nine full months of terrorism, "we didn't knew the consequences of our actions" is not reasonable
I know a sex worker who was very careful about her online identity. She posted several years ago some completely innocuous thing, like “looks like I’m going to need a new pair of boots.”
From this one tweet, her stalkers were able to cross-reference which city she lived in by looking up historical weather reports for areas that recently had snowfall. They knew that she also was a professor, so they went down the list of female professors in nearby universities until they found a match.
I'm reminded of _why the lucky stiff, who was a legendary ruby programmer from 2004ish. As far as I know, he didn't do sex work, but he showed his face at conferences all the time. He was a very private fellow - he would ask people to drop him off at a cafe or a park after outings. When some of his stalkers attempted to unmask him, he left the ruby community (I think for that and other reasons).
> The man said he had identified a train station reflected in the singer's eyes in a selfie she posted online. The 26-year-old then waited at the station until he saw his victim and followed her to her home, police said.
> He also said he had studied videos the woman shot in her apartment, looking at details such as the placement of curtains and the direction of natural light coming through the window to try to determine exactly which floor she lived on, reports said.
There was also that thing with Shia Labeouf's "he will not divide us" campaign (?), where at one point 4chan folk tracked down the physical location based on a webcam view pointed skywards at a flagpole, geolocating it based on the transit times and flight paths of aircraft passing in view (determining the compass direction from the sun setting and rising, I think there was also something about figuring out the altitude from contrail formation?) and comparing it to one of those flightradar type sites.
RIP Russian professional roofer
Deleted Comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33321411