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This guy really is something: > I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more ro

This guy really is something: > I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more rounded indicating a more exposed area and erosion), the texture of the canyon floor (flat rock vs sloped indicating higher up in a watershed with infrequent water), and the larger cliff/mesa in the upper background of one of the photos. I took all that and lined it up with the flight time and flight path of the helicopter - earlier in the morning taking off from Monticello, UT and flying almost directly north before going off radar (usually indicating it dropped below radar scan altitude. From there, I know I am looking for a south/east facing canyon with rounded red/white rock, most likely close to the base of a larger cliff/mesa, most likely closer to the top of a watershed, and with a suitable flat area for an AS350 helicopter to land. Took about 30 minutes of random checks around the Green River/Colorado River junction before finding similar terrain. From there it took another 15 minutes to find the exact canyon. Yes... I'm a freak. https://old.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/jzw628/help_me_find_this_obelisk_in_remote_utah/gdfbzee/ https://old.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/jzw628/help_me_f...

wpasc 6y ago
You have to love the internet sometimes. Someone who works construction (as he stated) can develop a fun investigatory hobby just via the internet. The he can sign his work with a silly name like bear__f##ker (which I'm guessing is a reference to the movie super troopers).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  On the other hand, it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person for the Boston Marathon bombing. It's all well and good as long as we remember not to put too much stock in it when it really matters.
  - bgravinz 6y ago
    Once an entire government worth of people led the US into war that cost millions of lives over fake reports of nukes. It would be interesting to compare the damage caused by open, crowd-sourced investigative efforts against the damage caused of closed "authoritative" investigative efforts.
    - dimitrios1 6y ago
      Ha, if only they had the guts to be so specific! They just hid behind the blanket statement of "WMD"s and deflected any questions of specifics. Could have been nerve gas, could have been a biological agent. Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted. That would never happen today.
    - matthewdgreen 6y ago
      I think it’s amusing that the takeaway from this episode is “the intelligence agencies screwed up” and not “the intelligence agencies found no evidence, and then were directly pressured by their political masters to construct evidence to justify a desired military outcome.”
      - artificialLimbs 6y ago
        If the people at the agency had integrity, they would have immediately brought these concerns up the chain or public.
        mapmap 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
        techer 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)
  - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    As an analyst, something in me twitches involuntarily at your response. By people like this you mean redditors doing internet sleuthing? But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers. The evidence they use can be anything from high quality to low/ fraudulent. And then we have the fact that the alternative official systems also have incentives/disincentives and also get things wrong: imagine writing about police or courts "they once fingered the wrong person for crime X, so don't put too much stock in it when it really matters". if the Wikipedia article is anything to go by, the Boston bombing case was a bunch of internet people reacting on a rumour of similarity to descriptors/ images released by the authorities. whereas in this case, a smart fellow follows a systematic and logical system to come to a reasonable conclusion. I'd rather tell people to learn to judge evidence and the analytical thought that goes into making the conclusions. Of course, we mustn't entirely discount the possibility that all this is just some PR stunt and this guy is in on it :p But either way, I'd say the better message is to learn to be skeptical, think analytically, and judge things on the quality of the evidence and the thought process used to come to the conclusion. /soapbox
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers. Am I out of line to thinking that at least some of the types of people listed in your hypothetical group of sleuths have some sense of professional ethics to not recklessly speculate on a public web community in terms of a manhunt as was the case in Boston?
      - ufmace 6y ago
        They probably do. Unfortunately, the mechanics of Reddit favor any random dope posting something that is exciting and sounds good over smart and careful people taking their time to make sure they get it right. And of course, "Hey guys I've got it, this is totally it!!!" goes up much faster than "I found something that might be interesting, let's check it out, but I'm not sure yet, so don't anybody go off half-cocked".
  - darkerside 6y ago
    It's fine if it matters. What isn't fine it's if it's unverifiable.
  - kordlessagain 6y ago
    > it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person And it's people like you who try to judge them equivalent in public view, when they clearly aren't.
  - m463 6y ago
    Right, what if it was accepted as fact, but turns out the monolith was there for millennia and was only recently uncovered by a sandstorm?
- donpott 6y ago
  I feel the same way about the people who do OSINT, which is featured in HN every now and then. A fascinating world, to be sure!
- noxer 6y ago
  Imagine if these people would investigate voter fraud. No mainstream media would ever report that ;P
  - encom 6y ago
    These kinds of people are investigating voter fraud.
- anoncake 6y ago
  Bear_Fucker, actually. I don't think # is even allowed in Reddit usernames.
TechBro8615 6y ago
People like this make OpSec hopeless.
- sp332 6y ago
  Maybe the surveillance planes made opsec hopeless.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  OpSec is (largely) a red herring. What you want is impunity.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    [citation needed]
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      I don't have a citation, just inferences based on years of observation. I also didn't lay OpSec is mostly useless. I'm not convinced that's true, though it may be. OpSec alone is useful but brittle. If it's all you've got, you'll probably eventually have a bad day. Looking at entities considered "masterminds", what I often find is ... some intelligence, yes, but a lot of shielding from, or disregard of, risk. Impunity is actual or believed freedom from consequence. There are a few categories: - The proficient: extremely good at their game. Effective, so long as it works. Covert. - The well-protected -- friends in high places. State actors and their contractors, generally. Often under diplomatic covered. "Too big to jail" and politically-conneccted (Brock 'Stanford Rapist" Turner https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-jail/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-jail/...) The Mossad team assassinating Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabhouh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Ma...) (though most of the team were effectively burnt). May include some non-state actors: warlords, terrorists, narcotics gangs, though most of these fall below. Covert, but can retreat quickly to safety, or are at low risk if caught. - The brazen. Operations with overwhelming force, whether shown or used. Military campaigns, many criminal organisations, warlords, militias. Overt. - The uncaring: those who have no care whether they live or die. Most suicide attacks, 9/11 bombers, the original "hashīshīn", etc. 2008 Mumbai attacks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks Overt or covert. - The ignorant: Simply unaware of the risks. Child soldiers, the Boxers (China), "wrong way 'round" Pan Am flight 18602 landing at Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, unknown to the pilot, in a heavily-mined harbour. https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/the-long-way-round-part-2-dff698a18a60?source=---------35------------------ https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/the-long-way-round-part-... - The expendable. Assets who need only be used once, whether burnt (retired) or killed afterwards. This includes a segment of the consulting or management workforce, who have a certain ablative funtion. Martin "Pharma Bro" Shkreli. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/17/857612249/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-denied-release-from-prison-to-research-coronavirus-cur https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... The relatively recently disclosed Crypto AG case, where the Swiss manufacturer of a widely-used manufacturer of communications encoding equipment was shown to be a CIA-owned front is a case in point. Signals intelligence relied not so much on exceptional decryption capabilities, but on the widespread use of a backdoored technology. The strong focus of US intelligence policy on similarly backdooring networking hardware (Cisco), telecoms switches (Greece), computing hardware, operating systems, and softwaare, speaks to the probable usefulness of this method. It's not OpSec but influence and immunity that enables this. Update: Parent's question, if brief, was entirely fair. Which is why I answered it.
numpad0 6y ago
What I figured from the Internet is technical proficiency in random fields isn’t rare, but a stable, provable, predictable proficiency, on top of passable level of social acceptability, coexisting in a single consistent humanframe, is what is rare.
- dmix 6y ago
  > but a stable, provable, predictable proficiency, on top of passable level of social acceptability, coexisting in a single consistent humanframe, is what is rare. Seems like every 'weird job' or skill gets you an American reality TV contract these days. Either that or some Youtube followers.
discreditable 6y ago
You may also find 4chan users' tracking of Shia Labeouf's flag interesting. https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good-thing-pulls-off-the-heist-of-the-century1 https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good...
- laverya 6y ago
  I wish the video there included the post-capture flagpole. Did the guy actually replace it with an American flag? Don't leave us hanging!
  - late_groomer 6y ago
    "Down went Shia's white flag of defiance, up went a red Trump hat..."
    - laverya 6y ago
      Which is remarkably unclear. Did someone just toss a Trump hat into the air after pulling down the flag? Was the stream stopped before morning returned, and so the only shots are in the dark? Is it an important set of questions? No. But still a better ending than the "oh yeah they stole the flag, now here's a shot of the flag flying during the day again".
      - csunbird 6y ago
        No, I remember the footage, they actually put a MAGA hat and a MAGA shirt on the pole and it was on live stream. Edit: The footage is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rbA3ouyPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rbA3ouyPw
        laverya 6y ago
        That is a much better ending, thank you! Not entirely sure why it wasn't included in the article's video. (Also really not sure what the idea behind using a shirt as a flag was) And of course there's a couple of Internet Historian videos: https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0 https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0 (warning - very /pol/, exactly as should be expected)
CPLX 6y ago
I believe the term of art for this, self-described by its adherents, is "weaponized autism"
- beamatronic 6y ago
  Like the Focused in the novel "A Deepness In The Sky" by Vernor Vinge.
  - _1100 6y ago
    I can’t get into Deepness after reading Fire. Too different and my expectations for the scale he set up are too big...
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      You'd be even more frustrated by Children of the Sky. Not only is it limited in scope (to Tines' World), but it leaves a bunch of plot threads unresolved, presumably for a sequel. :/
      - generalizations 6y ago
        I liked the other two, but I stopped reading Children for exactly the reason you described.
    - johncalvinyoung 6y ago
      I like all three of the novels in the series, but for dramatically different reasons and feelings.
wp381640 6y ago
If this guy live streamed himself playing GeoGuessr I’d watch the hell out of it
- raunakdag 6y ago
  Watch GeoWizard. He’s pretty much the same.
  - wp381640 6y ago
    He introduced me to the site! He’s a great content creator
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Thanks for the tip, I've now subscribed!
ogre_codes 6y ago
The internet sleuthing might just be smoke and mirrors. It's possible this guy already knew where the monolith because he knew the installer or is the installer. Either way, he's comes out looking good. Not sure which is more likely.
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  Eh there are whole communities of people who do stuff like this as a hobby. There's no particular reason not to believe it.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Wasn't trying to suggest it's unbelievable or discredit the guy's ability to chase things down. Merely raising the possibility that he could have gotten his information another way. People who put up things like this often want them to get found.
  - ce4 6y ago
    Yep. I sometimes do this with ads for the housing market here in the 30k inhabitants town. Track down a house where the ad shows some exterior but doesnt tell the exact address, only the town or district. It helps a lot having done some OSM Mapping in the past and it is actually fun.
- Ataraxy 6y ago
  Considering the post is on /r/geoguesser it's much more likely they're just really good at stuff like this. Some people are just insane at that game.
bregma 6y ago
Zoom. Enhance. There it is.
dredmorbius 6y ago
44 bits. It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[1] Geospatially, assuming 10m resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique location on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans). Searching for a ~1m^2 monolith visually within a 10m^2 square is reasonable. GNU units: You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2) You want: Definition: 43.798784 You have: ln((1 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2) You want: Definition: 45.535749 49 bits buys 1m accuracy, 63 1cm, 69 1mm. Land or sea. For comparison, cellphone positioning accuracy is typically 8--600m: - 3G iPhone w/ A-GPS ~ 8 meters - 3G iPhone w/ wifi ~ 74 meters - 3G iPhone w/ Cellular positioning ~ 600 meters https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accurate-is-the-gps-on-my-smart-phone-part-2/ https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accur... https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/
- raihansaputra 6y ago
  64 bits definitely buys <1cm^2 accuracy using S2 Cells/S2id. I'm always wondering why S2 doesn't see wider use for encoding location/area data. https://s2geometry.io/resources/s2cell_statistics.html https://s2geometry.io/resources/s2cell_statistics.html https://s2geometry.io/devguide/s2cell_hierarchy https://s2geometry.io/devguide/s2cell_hierarchy
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks. Relevant xkcds: Coordinate Precision https://xkcd.com/2170/ https://xkcd.com/2170/ Map of the Internet: https://xkcd.com/195/ https://xkcd.com/195/ xkcd'Splained: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2170:_Coordinate_Precision https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2170:_Coordinate_... https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/195:_Map_of_the_Internet https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/195:_Map_of_the_I...
- joppy 6y ago
olodus 6y ago
Holy shit. I would not want to play geoguesser against that person.
14 6y ago
You have also heard about capture the flag reddit has done? It is amazing what they can do with limited information. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/614zy7/what_is_the_deal_with_shia_lebouff_and_capture/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/614zy7/what_i...
lqet 6y ago
As someone who is house-hunting at the moment, this is exactly what I do all evening for houses without an explicit address in the online exposé. Most of the time, the combination of solar panels and the positions of rooftop windows and the chimney is a collision free hash value.
jjtheblunt 6y ago
that's got to be one of the happiest things i've seen online in quite a while
ogisan 6y ago
This reminds me of #SmashTheStone from a few years back when the 4chan community came together track down and prevent 9gag from burying a meme-carved rock. Video from the internet historian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFykQv6Q08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFykQv6Q08
nobrains 6y ago
Then, incase you have not seen this, you will be amazed by it: https://youtu.be/3s54_MF2XPk https://youtu.be/3s54_MF2XPk (reconstitution of the Beirut blast).
Symmetry 6y ago
Information wants to be free, in the sense of leaking out via unexpected sidechannels. But this strongly reminds me of "Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies" which uses a fairly similar example. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-truths-contagious-lies https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-...

wpasc 6y ago

You have to love the internet sometimes. Someone who works construction (as he stated) can develop a fun investigatory hobby just via the internet. The he can sign his work with a silly name like bear__f##ker (which I'm guessing is a reference to the movie super troopers).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
On the other hand, it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person for the Boston Marathon bombing. It's all well and good as long as we remember not to put too much stock in it when it really matters.
- bgravinz 6y ago
  Once an entire government worth of people led the US into war that cost millions of lives over fake reports of nukes. It would be interesting to compare the damage caused by open, crowd-sourced investigative efforts against the damage caused of closed "authoritative" investigative efforts.
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    Ha, if only they had the guts to be so specific! They just hid behind the blanket statement of "WMD"s and deflected any questions of specifics. Could have been nerve gas, could have been a biological agent. Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > Everyone played their role (media and government) in deflecting attention away from the core issue that we were being bullshitted. That would never happen today.
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    I think it’s amusing that the takeaway from this episode is “the intelligence agencies screwed up” and not “the intelligence agencies found no evidence, and then were directly pressured by their political masters to construct evidence to justify a desired military outcome.”
    - artificialLimbs 6y ago
      If the people at the agency had integrity, they would have immediately brought these concerns up the chain or public.
      - mapmap 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair
        techer 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)
- ACow_Adonis 6y ago
  As an analyst, something in me twitches involuntarily at your response. By people like this you mean redditors doing internet sleuthing? But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers. The evidence they use can be anything from high quality to low/ fraudulent. And then we have the fact that the alternative official systems also have incentives/disincentives and also get things wrong: imagine writing about police or courts "they once fingered the wrong person for crime X, so don't put too much stock in it when it really matters". if the Wikipedia article is anything to go by, the Boston bombing case was a bunch of internet people reacting on a rumour of similarity to descriptors/ images released by the authorities. whereas in this case, a smart fellow follows a systematic and logical system to come to a reasonable conclusion. I'd rather tell people to learn to judge evidence and the analytical thought that goes into making the conclusions. Of course, we mustn't entirely discount the possibility that all this is just some PR stunt and this guy is in on it :p But either way, I'd say the better message is to learn to be skeptical, think analytically, and judge things on the quality of the evidence and the thought process used to come to the conclusion. /soapbox
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    But redditors doing internet sleuthing could be anyone; from detectives, to judges, to professional analysts, to trolls, to pr firms, to fraudsters and framers. Am I out of line to thinking that at least some of the types of people listed in your hypothetical group of sleuths have some sense of professional ethics to not recklessly speculate on a public web community in terms of a manhunt as was the case in Boston?
    - ufmace 6y ago
      They probably do. Unfortunately, the mechanics of Reddit favor any random dope posting something that is exciting and sounds good over smart and careful people taking their time to make sure they get it right. And of course, "Hey guys I've got it, this is totally it!!!" goes up much faster than "I found something that might be interesting, let's check it out, but I'm not sure yet, so don't anybody go off half-cocked".
- darkerside 6y ago
  It's fine if it matters. What isn't fine it's if it's unverifiable.
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  > it was people like this that once fingered the wrong person And it's people like you who try to judge them equivalent in public view, when they clearly aren't.
- m463 6y ago
  Right, what if it was accepted as fact, but turns out the monolith was there for millennia and was only recently uncovered by a sandstorm?
donpott 6y ago
I feel the same way about the people who do OSINT, which is featured in HN every now and then. A fascinating world, to be sure!
noxer 6y ago
Imagine if these people would investigate voter fraud. No mainstream media would ever report that ;P
- encom 6y ago
  These kinds of people are investigating voter fraud.
anoncake 6y ago
Bear_Fucker, actually. I don't think # is even allowed in Reddit usernames.

TechBro8615 6y ago

People like this make OpSec hopeless.

sp332 6y ago
Maybe the surveillance planes made opsec hopeless.
dredmorbius 6y ago
OpSec is (largely) a red herring. What you want is impunity.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  [citation needed]
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    I don't have a citation, just inferences based on years of observation. I also didn't lay OpSec is mostly useless. I'm not convinced that's true, though it may be. OpSec alone is useful but brittle. If it's all you've got, you'll probably eventually have a bad day. Looking at entities considered "masterminds", what I often find is ... some intelligence, yes, but a lot of shielding from, or disregard of, risk. Impunity is actual or believed freedom from consequence. There are a few categories: - The proficient: extremely good at their game. Effective, so long as it works. Covert. - The well-protected -- friends in high places. State actors and their contractors, generally. Often under diplomatic covered. "Too big to jail" and politically-conneccted (Brock 'Stanford Rapist" Turner https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-jail/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-jail/...) The Mossad team assassinating Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabhouh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Ma...) (though most of the team were effectively burnt). May include some non-state actors: warlords, terrorists, narcotics gangs, though most of these fall below. Covert, but can retreat quickly to safety, or are at low risk if caught. - The brazen. Operations with overwhelming force, whether shown or used. Military campaigns, many criminal organisations, warlords, militias. Overt. - The uncaring: those who have no care whether they live or die. Most suicide attacks, 9/11 bombers, the original "hashīshīn", etc. 2008 Mumbai attacks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks Overt or covert. - The ignorant: Simply unaware of the risks. Child soldiers, the Boxers (China), "wrong way 'round" Pan Am flight 18602 landing at Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, unknown to the pilot, in a heavily-mined harbour. https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/the-long-way-round-part-2-dff698a18a60?source=---------35------------------ https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/the-long-way-round-part-... - The expendable. Assets who need only be used once, whether burnt (retired) or killed afterwards. This includes a segment of the consulting or management workforce, who have a certain ablative funtion. Martin "Pharma Bro" Shkreli. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/17/857612249/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-denied-release-from-prison-to-research-coronavirus-cur https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... The relatively recently disclosed Crypto AG case, where the Swiss manufacturer of a widely-used manufacturer of communications encoding equipment was shown to be a CIA-owned front is a case in point. Signals intelligence relied not so much on exceptional decryption capabilities, but on the widespread use of a backdoored technology. The strong focus of US intelligence policy on similarly backdooring networking hardware (Cisco), telecoms switches (Greece), computing hardware, operating systems, and softwaare, speaks to the probable usefulness of this method. It's not OpSec but influence and immunity that enables this. Update: Parent's question, if brief, was entirely fair. Which is why I answered it.

numpad0 6y ago

What I figured from the Internet is technical proficiency in random fields isn’t rare, but a stable, provable, predictable proficiency, on top of passable level of social acceptability, coexisting in a single consistent humanframe, is what is rare.

dmix 6y ago
> but a stable, provable, predictable proficiency, on top of passable level of social acceptability, coexisting in a single consistent humanframe, is what is rare. Seems like every 'weird job' or skill gets you an American reality TV contract these days. Either that or some Youtube followers.

discreditable 6y ago

You may also find 4chan users' tracking of Shia Labeouf's flag interesting. https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good-thing-pulls-off-the-heist-of-the-century1 https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good...

laverya 6y ago
I wish the video there included the post-capture flagpole. Did the guy actually replace it with an American flag? Don't leave us hanging!
- late_groomer 6y ago
  "Down went Shia's white flag of defiance, up went a red Trump hat..."
  - laverya 6y ago
    Which is remarkably unclear. Did someone just toss a Trump hat into the air after pulling down the flag? Was the stream stopped before morning returned, and so the only shots are in the dark? Is it an important set of questions? No. But still a better ending than the "oh yeah they stole the flag, now here's a shot of the flag flying during the day again".
    - csunbird 6y ago
      No, I remember the footage, they actually put a MAGA hat and a MAGA shirt on the pole and it was on live stream. Edit: The footage is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rbA3ouyPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rbA3ouyPw
      - laverya 6y ago
        That is a much better ending, thank you! Not entirely sure why it wasn't included in the article's video. (Also really not sure what the idea behind using a shirt as a flag was) And of course there's a couple of Internet Historian videos: https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0 https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0 (warning - very /pol/, exactly as should be expected)

CPLX 6y ago

I believe the term of art for this, self-described by its adherents, is "weaponized autism"

beamatronic 6y ago
Like the Focused in the novel "A Deepness In The Sky" by Vernor Vinge.
- _1100 6y ago
  I can’t get into Deepness after reading Fire. Too different and my expectations for the scale he set up are too big...
  - duskwuff 6y ago
    You'd be even more frustrated by Children of the Sky. Not only is it limited in scope (to Tines' World), but it leaves a bunch of plot threads unresolved, presumably for a sequel. :/
    - generalizations 6y ago
      I liked the other two, but I stopped reading Children for exactly the reason you described.
  - johncalvinyoung 6y ago
    I like all three of the novels in the series, but for dramatically different reasons and feelings.

wp381640 6y ago

If this guy live streamed himself playing GeoGuessr I’d watch the hell out of it

raunakdag 6y ago
Watch GeoWizard. He’s pretty much the same.
- wp381640 6y ago
  He introduced me to the site! He’s a great content creator
- pwinnski 6y ago
  Thanks for the tip, I've now subscribed!

ogre_codes 6y ago

The internet sleuthing might just be smoke and mirrors. It's possible this guy already knew where the monolith because he knew the installer or is the installer. Either way, he's comes out looking good. Not sure which is more likely.

lovegoblin 6y ago
Eh there are whole communities of people who do stuff like this as a hobby. There's no particular reason not to believe it.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Wasn't trying to suggest it's unbelievable or discredit the guy's ability to chase things down. Merely raising the possibility that he could have gotten his information another way. People who put up things like this often want them to get found.
- ce4 6y ago
  Yep. I sometimes do this with ads for the housing market here in the 30k inhabitants town. Track down a house where the ad shows some exterior but doesnt tell the exact address, only the town or district. It helps a lot having done some OSM Mapping in the past and it is actually fun.
Ataraxy 6y ago
Considering the post is on /r/geoguesser it's much more likely they're just really good at stuff like this. Some people are just insane at that game.

bregma 6y ago

Zoom. Enhance. There it is.

dredmorbius 6y ago

44 bits. It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[1] Geospatially, assuming 10m resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique location on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans). Searching for a ~1m^2 monolith visually within a 10m^2 square is reasonable. GNU units: You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2) You want: Definition: 43.798784 You have: ln((1 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2) You want: Definition: 45.535749 49 bits buys 1m accuracy, 63 1cm, 69 1mm. Land or sea. For comparison, cellphone positioning accuracy is typically 8--600m: - 3G iPhone w/ A-GPS ~ 8 meters - 3G iPhone w/ wifi ~ 74 meters - 3G iPhone w/ Cellular positioning ~ 600 meters https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accurate-is-the-gps-on-my-smart-phone-part-2/ https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accur... https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/

raihansaputra 6y ago
64 bits definitely buys <1cm^2 accuracy using S2 Cells/S2id. I'm always wondering why S2 doesn't see wider use for encoding location/area data. https://s2geometry.io/resources/s2cell_statistics.html https://s2geometry.io/resources/s2cell_statistics.html https://s2geometry.io/devguide/s2cell_hierarchy https://s2geometry.io/devguide/s2cell_hierarchy
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks. Relevant xkcds: Coordinate Precision https://xkcd.com/2170/ https://xkcd.com/2170/ Map of the Internet: https://xkcd.com/195/ https://xkcd.com/195/ xkcd'Splained: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2170:_Coordinate_Precision https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2170:_Coordinate_... https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/195:_Map_of_the_Internet https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/195:_Map_of_the_I...
joppy 6y ago

olodus 6y ago

Holy shit. I would not want to play geoguesser against that person.

14 6y ago

You have also heard about capture the flag reddit has done? It is amazing what they can do with limited information. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/614zy7/what_is_the_deal_with_shia_lebouff_and_capture/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/614zy7/what_i...

lqet 6y ago

As someone who is house-hunting at the moment, this is exactly what I do all evening for houses without an explicit address in the online exposé. Most of the time, the combination of solar panels and the positions of rooftop windows and the chimney is a collision free hash value.

jjtheblunt 6y ago

that's got to be one of the happiest things i've seen online in quite a while

ogisan 6y ago

This reminds me of #SmashTheStone from a few years back when the 4chan community came together track down and prevent 9gag from burying a meme-carved rock. Video from the internet historian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFykQv6Q08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFykQv6Q08

nobrains 6y ago

Then, incase you have not seen this, you will be amazed by it: https://youtu.be/3s54_MF2XPk https://youtu.be/3s54_MF2XPk (reconstitution of the Beirut blast).

Symmetry 6y ago

Information wants to be free, in the sense of leaking out via unexpected sidechannels. But this strongly reminds me of "Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies" which uses a fairly similar example. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-truths-contagious-lies https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-...