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A Russian Missile Crew Was Geolocated from Just This Photo
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoSeems 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. [0] https://www.gwern.net/Links#hardware https://www.gwern.net/Links#hardware
- vanattab 4y agoI 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.
- garbagetime 4y agoThis seems like a possibility. 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.
- aaron695 4y ago
- pvaldes 4y agoHumans are better picking tiny details. My first candidate would be a young oak, maybe an apple. Possible poplar at right. 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?)
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe Bellingcat book goes through several of these kind of investigations. They also discuss the potential for AI to help. 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.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- _aavaa_ 4y agoReminds me of 4Chan tracking down Shia Labeouf's flag.
- setr 4y agoThat 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
- bismuthcrystal 4y agoSo 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.
- euos 4y agoIt’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”.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 4y agoI 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.
- pifm_guy 4y agoAlmost any image of a building in the world is geolocatable with a bit of effort.
- slaw 4y agoIt would be easier and faster to have $1000 bounty for the first person who recognizes and provides location.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- junon 4y agoPeople are willing to do it for free. There's a big community that derives a great deal of pleasure from geolocation.
- shitlord 4y agoI 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.
- junon 4y agoI don't think the 1000 bounty would be feasible nor help much. Still need to verify, etc. And most people capable of doing it are already doing it for free.
- brtkdotse 4y ago> 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 RIP Russian professional roofer
- euroderf 4y ago(insert tasteless joke about falling in rather than out a window)
- IYasha 4y agoNot surprised. I did this with a few friends and they were scared to sh*t. Back in 2010s.
- gcr 4y agoOnline 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.
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoIf she posted her face online and disclosed that she’s a professor, then she was not at all careful about her online identity.
- pvaldes 4y agoYup, "I'm a sex worker and also a professor" is a troublesome combination of jobs. A recipe for being insta-fired or attracting all kind of troubles.
- gcr 4y agoWell, 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).
- waste_monk 4y agoSee also this incident: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50000234 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50000234 > 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.
- prvit 4y agoBoring. They already knew the geolocation, so they were merely confirming the geolocation rather than geolocating a photo taken in an unknown location.
- totalZero 4y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33321411 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33321411