timje1 (u/timje1) - Readit News

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

chippiewill · 5 months ago

I agree, the UK Police wouldn't typically let you get away with "it's just a joke". This would constitute a mixture of identity theft, fake ID and misuse of computers.

timje1 · 5 months ago

I've scribbled 'this is satire' across each and every generated ID, so they can't realistically be used for anything.

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

ta1243 · 5 months ago

Your MP

    Name: Mike Wood
    Party: Conservative
    Constituency: Stafford

Err, Stafford has been Labour since the last election, and before that it was a Conservative, but it was Theodora Clarke. Mike Wood is MP for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire.

Surely the way you build something like this is a postcode -> constituency table (I assume available free), a constituency -> mp table, and mp -> image generation (with caching or generate multiple versions)

Even if the lookup data mis-selected the constituency (I think some postcodes can straddle constituencies), surely the Constituency/Name/Party would be consistent.

I'm guessing you're using chat-gpt for the entire program?

timje1 · 5 months ago

Nope! Office of national statistics published a CSV for postcode -> constituency name [ https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/6f2f35a9a0b94e7... ], and then the official gov.uk parliament API for a constituency name -> MP lookup [ https://members-api.parliament.uk/index.html ]. So all of the data is the officially available data. I humbly posit that this is a publicly owned bug.

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

bashtoni · 5 months ago

When I tried it with the Walthamstow constituency the ID used a , as a date separator instead of a .

Seems odd, but probably wouldn't be noticed by an automated validator anyway.

timje1 · 5 months ago

They're definitely not perfect. I wouldn't want them to be perfect, then they might be used for something nefarious. The mock IDs use fake details and fake faces, and don't even attempt to get the watermarks and machine readable parts right.

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

epanchin · 5 months ago

Ideally you would save them as they were generated, and deliver the saved version the second time?

timje1 · 5 months ago

Yup, that's what happens. If you request a postcode that leads to an MP that's not been seen before, it starts generating that MP and saves the ongoing promise, and gives that promise to everyone else to asks for that MP.

Had to make sure to implement this so that I didn't end up generating duplicates.

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

dannyobrien · 5 months ago

As someone who was involved in the original guerilla digital activism that spawned the third-person URL format for independent UK government-watching websites (ie "Write to Them", "They Work for You"), I applaud your on-topic brand extension, Tim :)

timje1 · 5 months ago

Thanks Danny - it was indeed following 'They Work For You' - I'm a big fan of that site.

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

dom96 · 5 months ago

Really? Does it really cost that much to generate a single image like this?

timje1 · 5 months ago

yeah to generate a photo of reasonable quality it costs like $.18, so multiply that by 650ish MPs and you have a pretty expensive lil parody site...

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

dom96 · 5 months ago

Why didn't you just create the images for all 650 MPs ahead of time?

timje1 · 5 months ago

Because that's expensive as hell and I didn't know if anyone would visit the site..

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

arrowsmith · 5 months ago

The generated addresses aren't real. It gave a London address for my MP; I know where he lives and it isn't London.

Most MPs' home addresses are actually quite easy to find. Mine's was printed below his name on the ballot paper last election – a nice reminder of how we used to have a high-trust society. I doubt this practice will be continued for much longer.

timje1 · 5 months ago

Yeah the address on all the IDs is for parliament. I assume one could find em there

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

chippiewill · 5 months ago

I agree, the UK Police wouldn't typically let you get away with "it's just a joke". This would constitute a mixture of identity theft, fake ID and misuse of computers.

timje1 · 5 months ago

It's literally just sticking the MPs name into an AI and asking for it to generate a mock ID for them. None of their real data is being used (e.g. their face, their DoB, the address) and the mock IDs wouldn't fool anyone for a second. I'd love if someone who understands the law would weigh in though

timje1 commented on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act use-their-id.com/... · Posted by u/timje1

Mindwipe · 5 months ago

Always tells me an MP can't be found despite multiple attempts.

timje1 · 5 months ago

Seems like open AI is rate limiting me for a minute, I didn't expect to get top of HN this quickly. Use Starmer's for now - WC2B6NH