7 ms·

I'm the engineer he's referring to. I still get a laugh seeing Justin's amazement when we told him her name. To answer a few questions... - This isn't the actu

I'm the engineer he's referring to. I still get a laugh seeing Justin's amazement when we told him her name. To answer a few questions... - This isn't the actual photo but looks similar, except that she was alone. Justin was afraid of reposting the same photo after the results of handing over a photo last time :) - There was no useful exif data in the image. - We knew her high school and approximate age in Austin, but were unable to find any yearbooks / class rosters online. (Idea not pursued: try to acquire a yearbook offline). - Facebook Graph Search and LinkedIn with the criteria we knew didn't help. - Google Image search didn't help. > "I'm sure there's a lot of information missing from this story" Quite true. Ultimately we had several methods going at once to try to figure it out. The one that came back with results first relies on some information Justin still doesn't know we had (though he would still be impressed), but other approaches we also expected to work would be possible with only what's in the story, and haven't yet been mentioned here. EDIT: shared more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369751

antr 13y ago
tineye.com or similar?
- philfreo 13y ago
  no luck
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
Justin's own phone leaked his location (through some google-lattitude, or Yelp like service or perhaps gps directly) while Justin drove (or rode with her in a taxi) to her home.
- philfreo 13y ago
  good idea, but not the case here.
- jbg331 13y ago
  How would they have gotten my GPS location? And how would they have figured out which one was her house. I was in her neighborhood and stopped multiple places that were 'significant' to her as a kid. Any of them could have been her house. And I wasn't at anyone for more than 60 seconds
  - niuzeta 13y ago
    so... another reason to be scared of engineers?
nathas 13y ago
Did you go back to the bar where they originally met and talk to the bartender? She probably frequents the bar if she lives in the area. At that point, if the bartender knows some of her backstory or friends or anything - maybe only has a first name - things get much simpler.
- philfreo 13y ago
  nah we were too lazy for that - it all happened while chilling on a laptop :)
wahsd 13y ago
You obviously knew something about her that made it possible, which you even admit Justin doesn't know you had. People are getting bored with your shenanigans, spill it!
- philfreo 13y ago
  I don't feel bad about letting the discussion continue as-is because of the fact that we completely expected to get the answer with only the information mentioned here. I still haven't heard this method mentioned yet directly. The "extra" information we got came later after we already started working on it, and came as surprise. It just happened to bring the result back sooner than the other approach.
  - danso 13y ago
    Nah I like this approach...let us bumble around for awhile in the discussion...I'd be very surprised if no one on HN could surmise the solution, but I'll admit I'm stumped (though I've only thought about it for a few minutes before getting back to work)
  - niuzeta 13y ago
    that the extra information brought the result back "sooner" is intriguing. If you don't mind me asking, would other approaches discussed here have brought the result nonetheless? or did they?
    - philfreo 13y ago
      I'm pretty confident it would have, but we ultimately "stopped" it after getting the answer confirmed, so I can't say with 100%.
      - niuzeta 13y ago
        So you stumbled on a piece of information which proved useful, notwithstanding that you didn't intend to look for. If Justin observed correctly, you guys were very impressed with yourselves. Had you retrieved the answer by methods of which you were confident, you would've still been impressed, but not greatly.(I'm making a lapse conjecture here, of course) Since you were confident that you would be able to find her, prior to looking at the picture, according to the article, I don't think you were looking for any information in the picture other than for confirmation. However, some extra information in the picture(since it was taken very recently) enabled you to look further, which returned a result. Perhaps a building, an address, or some sort of landmark-ish location which narrowed whereabouts of the picture vastly? If this were the case, then I can understand that you guys were very impressed, because well, it is. EDIT: Just saw the 'solution'; very nice touch!
zzzcpan 13y ago
Dating sites?
zzzcpan 13y ago
Her CV somewhere on a job hunting site?
niuzeta 13y ago
The team(including Justin: using first name here for convinience's sake) had a trip to Austin. Where they were should be a public knowledge. Perhaps they(you) started the search from there. A facebook search or so could tell some plans of people who would have fun at that particular place. It is also possible that during the few days' correspondence one of the engineer guys had some other piece of info that we are not familiar with. Seeing how the engineers already knew her high school, I'm sure Justin talked about her with co-workers. I think the key information that's missing here is what the engineers knew but Justin didn't know that they knew.(Sounds like a quote out of a Friends episode, mmm)
grecy 13y ago
A few ideas come to my head. * Everyone was at the original bar at the same time - someone else had photos from the night that had her and other people in them, and those people (her friends) could be found online. * The bar had some kind of "sign-up for x" list, or some kind of contest, or some kind of photos of the night, which were helpful. * You searched twitter/facebook/whatever for a girl posting about a boy she just met at bar X, blah blah * We know she was going to some kind of event - you guys figured out what that was, and found a guest list or something. * You guys did a some wi-fi sniffing and read a few emails. He did say he emailed you the photo, so you know which account to listen for. Are any of those close?
- philfreo 13y ago
  Some good ones, but nope.
  - danso 13y ago
    So in the other post, you said you inadverdently realized you had a second photo of the target (which presumably contained key identifying info)...so, are you saying here that that second photo didn't come from investigating the event that she was at (i.e., if it had a meetup/lanyrd page, looking at all the attendee photos and seeing what looked like her?)
    - philfreo 13y ago
      The second photo that we later realized we had was one a teammate had taken himself and didn't have anyone else in it. I think it was doable with just 1 photo, and I'm not ready to share with Justin how the 2nd photo helped. :)
      - grecy 13y ago
        So you had a second photo of the girl, taken by a team mate, but it has only her in it? OK then, there is something identifying about this girl, which the second photo gave you * Tattoo * Glasses * Hair * Amputee * Scar/burn, etc. * particular purse/hat/watch/accessory * etc.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
evan_ 13y ago
You looked on Instagram and other for pictures taken at the bar, and you found one either taken by the woman in question or one of her friends with the mystery woman tagged. Or maybe you knew that she wanted him to meet her at an event and you found a roster for that event- or ie if it was a real estate convention you would have a pretty good idea that she was a realtor and could look at websites for realtors in Austin. Or maybe you checked his recent facebook friends, looked at his recent twitter followers, and everyone who liked/commented on his recent photos/posts on Instagram and whatever other social networks he's on- as well as the photos/posts he liked/commented on. I think you took a (relatively) low-tech approach to this.
mmmooo 13y ago
post pic on craiglist/similar in Austin area. Say you found wallet/purse/camera/etc with her picture. Anyone that knows her please call/email w/ Name/Address for you to send back. Use highschool for validation when contacted. Might have some error.
- philfreo 13y ago
  This is the closest I've heard to one of the ideas that we expected to work, so I'll share. - Create an ad on Facebook with her picture. - Target people that went to her high school within 4 years of the range of years we thought she graduated within. Was only a few hundred people so the cost of running the ad would likely only be a few bucks. - The ad copy / landing page just needed to be convincing that we weren't stalking her. We went with the "help us win a bet" approach but the "lost camera" approach would have been good also. Ultimately we got the answer sooner from another approach after we found out that we had another picture of the girl that Justin didn't know we had. So we canceled the ad, but I think this would have worked if given enough time.
  - mmmooo 13y ago
    yah I was actually thinking of facebook ad just after I replied, with that criteria..only thing that turned me off from it what that you made it sound as highschool was a post-processor (validation) vs pre-processor (targeting)
  - hkdobrev 13y ago
    So you had two pictures? But what does this give you? Unless the second picture was available on the internet it is just the same as the first one.
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      It entirely depends on what was contained in the photo..... Photos can contain information.
  - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
jpmc 13y ago
It was this line - "On Thursday night, after exchanging texts all day, around 8:00pm local time the girl sent me a picture of her in order to convince me to meet her at an event she was going to." Find the event Thursday night at 8:00pm in Austin and start tracking down from there.
- 127001brewer 13y ago
  Without spending too much time on this, I thought of the same as well and knowing that: Her dress, which was very unique had never been worn by her, because she bought it the day before ...should narrow down the events that this person wanted to attend. Here are the events that happened that day: http://www.austinchronicle.com/calendar/2013-09-05/ http://www.austinchronicle.com/calendar/2013-09-05/ ...which, to me, only had one really unique event that evening: http://www.facebook.com/events/1405498132998020 http://www.facebook.com/events/1405498132998020 ...which, possibly, would include a picture of that person either in the same outfit or include a profile picture of that person commenting or liking the event. But this is just a guess...
  - S4M 13y ago
    Your facebook link contains a list of 73 persons going to the event, so maybe one of them had a picture that matched the one the team had of the girl...
JesseAldridge 13y ago
Did you make a post on Reddit/4chan/Facebook/whatever asking, "Does anyone know this girl?"
dkb 13y ago
Philfreo > I think that the girl did share something with you that Justin doesn't know, such as something that she did accomplish in that school, like winning some kind of award, winning a competition or something similar. Then, you used that information along with the name of the school in Google.
jasdeepsingh 13y ago
C'mon Phil, spill the beans now!
elorant 13y ago
So you know the school and you have her picture. By her picture you can make a guess about her age. Then you search the web for graduates for particular dates from this particular school. It doesn’t have to be a yearbook or a class roster, people on LinkedIn mention the schools they’ve attended. Sooner or later you’ll find someone and then you can narrow the search. Even simpler, once you find someone you simply contact him with a fictional story as to why you’re searching this woman. From there on it just takes some old good fashioned social engineering.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
She bought that dress from some Austin boutique and modeled it for them, or left a review? Y'all found the review?
rorrr2 13y ago
Did she "check in" at the bar with FourSquare?
abdelix 13y ago
If the other picture was found in some social network ,maybe it was labeled .
espeed 13y ago
Called and sent the picture you took to the bar and/or to the people you met at the bar where you took the picture, and someone knew her.
joetann 13y ago
Wherever you were that night had a Facebook page with an event created for the evening you were there. You uploaded your second picture to the Facebook event, or tagged the Facebook page of the bar you were at. Then someone tagged the girl in the photo, revealing her identity.
pmorici 13y ago
Here is my guess: The second photo you realized you had showed the subject holding the device used to take the picture sent to your colleague. You investigated that particular device and found a way to uniquely identify it's pictures based off some characteristic of it's photos, not necessarily EXIF, then scoured the Internet for photos with the same unique characteristic until you found one that revealed more information about the subject?

antr 13y ago

tineye.com or similar?

philfreo 13y ago
no luck

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

Justin's own phone leaked his location (through some google-lattitude, or Yelp like service or perhaps gps directly) while Justin drove (or rode with her in a taxi) to her home.

philfreo 13y ago
good idea, but not the case here.
jbg331 13y ago
How would they have gotten my GPS location? And how would they have figured out which one was her house. I was in her neighborhood and stopped multiple places that were 'significant' to her as a kid. Any of them could have been her house. And I wasn't at anyone for more than 60 seconds
- niuzeta 13y ago
  so... another reason to be scared of engineers?

nathas 13y ago

Did you go back to the bar where they originally met and talk to the bartender? She probably frequents the bar if she lives in the area. At that point, if the bartender knows some of her backstory or friends or anything - maybe only has a first name - things get much simpler.

philfreo 13y ago
nah we were too lazy for that - it all happened while chilling on a laptop :)

wahsd 13y ago

You obviously knew something about her that made it possible, which you even admit Justin doesn't know you had. People are getting bored with your shenanigans, spill it!

philfreo 13y ago
I don't feel bad about letting the discussion continue as-is because of the fact that we completely expected to get the answer with only the information mentioned here. I still haven't heard this method mentioned yet directly. The "extra" information we got came later after we already started working on it, and came as surprise. It just happened to bring the result back sooner than the other approach.
- danso 13y ago
  Nah I like this approach...let us bumble around for awhile in the discussion...I'd be very surprised if no one on HN could surmise the solution, but I'll admit I'm stumped (though I've only thought about it for a few minutes before getting back to work)
- niuzeta 13y ago
  that the extra information brought the result back "sooner" is intriguing. If you don't mind me asking, would other approaches discussed here have brought the result nonetheless? or did they?
  - philfreo 13y ago
    I'm pretty confident it would have, but we ultimately "stopped" it after getting the answer confirmed, so I can't say with 100%.
    - niuzeta 13y ago
      So you stumbled on a piece of information which proved useful, notwithstanding that you didn't intend to look for. If Justin observed correctly, you guys were very impressed with yourselves. Had you retrieved the answer by methods of which you were confident, you would've still been impressed, but not greatly.(I'm making a lapse conjecture here, of course) Since you were confident that you would be able to find her, prior to looking at the picture, according to the article, I don't think you were looking for any information in the picture other than for confirmation. However, some extra information in the picture(since it was taken very recently) enabled you to look further, which returned a result. Perhaps a building, an address, or some sort of landmark-ish location which narrowed whereabouts of the picture vastly? If this were the case, then I can understand that you guys were very impressed, because well, it is. EDIT: Just saw the 'solution'; very nice touch!

zzzcpan 13y ago

Dating sites?

zzzcpan 13y ago

Her CV somewhere on a job hunting site?

niuzeta 13y ago

The team(including Justin: using first name here for convinience's sake) had a trip to Austin. Where they were should be a public knowledge. Perhaps they(you) started the search from there. A facebook search or so could tell some plans of people who would have fun at that particular place. It is also possible that during the few days' correspondence one of the engineer guys had some other piece of info that we are not familiar with. Seeing how the engineers already knew her high school, I'm sure Justin talked about her with co-workers. I think the key information that's missing here is what the engineers knew but Justin didn't know that they knew.(Sounds like a quote out of a Friends episode, mmm)

grecy 13y ago

A few ideas come to my head. * Everyone was at the original bar at the same time - someone else had photos from the night that had her and other people in them, and those people (her friends) could be found online. * The bar had some kind of "sign-up for x" list, or some kind of contest, or some kind of photos of the night, which were helpful. * You searched twitter/facebook/whatever for a girl posting about a boy she just met at bar X, blah blah * We know she was going to some kind of event - you guys figured out what that was, and found a guest list or something. * You guys did a some wi-fi sniffing and read a few emails. He did say he emailed you the photo, so you know which account to listen for. Are any of those close?

philfreo 13y ago
Some good ones, but nope.
- danso 13y ago
  So in the other post, you said you inadverdently realized you had a second photo of the target (which presumably contained key identifying info)...so, are you saying here that that second photo didn't come from investigating the event that she was at (i.e., if it had a meetup/lanyrd page, looking at all the attendee photos and seeing what looked like her?)
  - philfreo 13y ago
    The second photo that we later realized we had was one a teammate had taken himself and didn't have anyone else in it. I think it was doable with just 1 photo, and I'm not ready to share with Justin how the 2nd photo helped. :)
    - grecy 13y ago
      So you had a second photo of the girl, taken by a team mate, but it has only her in it? OK then, there is something identifying about this girl, which the second photo gave you * Tattoo * Glasses * Hair * Amputee * Scar/burn, etc. * particular purse/hat/watch/accessory * etc.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

evan_ 13y ago

You looked on Instagram and other for pictures taken at the bar, and you found one either taken by the woman in question or one of her friends with the mystery woman tagged. Or maybe you knew that she wanted him to meet her at an event and you found a roster for that event- or ie if it was a real estate convention you would have a pretty good idea that she was a realtor and could look at websites for realtors in Austin. Or maybe you checked his recent facebook friends, looked at his recent twitter followers, and everyone who liked/commented on his recent photos/posts on Instagram and whatever other social networks he's on- as well as the photos/posts he liked/commented on. I think you took a (relatively) low-tech approach to this.

mmmooo 13y ago

post pic on craiglist/similar in Austin area. Say you found wallet/purse/camera/etc with her picture. Anyone that knows her please call/email w/ Name/Address for you to send back. Use highschool for validation when contacted. Might have some error.

philfreo 13y ago
This is the closest I've heard to one of the ideas that we expected to work, so I'll share. - Create an ad on Facebook with her picture. - Target people that went to her high school within 4 years of the range of years we thought she graduated within. Was only a few hundred people so the cost of running the ad would likely only be a few bucks. - The ad copy / landing page just needed to be convincing that we weren't stalking her. We went with the "help us win a bet" approach but the "lost camera" approach would have been good also. Ultimately we got the answer sooner from another approach after we found out that we had another picture of the girl that Justin didn't know we had. So we canceled the ad, but I think this would have worked if given enough time.
- mmmooo 13y ago
  yah I was actually thinking of facebook ad just after I replied, with that criteria..only thing that turned me off from it what that you made it sound as highschool was a post-processor (validation) vs pre-processor (targeting)
- hkdobrev 13y ago
  So you had two pictures? But what does this give you? Unless the second picture was available on the internet it is just the same as the first one.
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    It entirely depends on what was contained in the photo..... Photos can contain information.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago

jpmc 13y ago

It was this line - "On Thursday night, after exchanging texts all day, around 8:00pm local time the girl sent me a picture of her in order to convince me to meet her at an event she was going to." Find the event Thursday night at 8:00pm in Austin and start tracking down from there.

127001brewer 13y ago
Without spending too much time on this, I thought of the same as well and knowing that: Her dress, which was very unique had never been worn by her, because she bought it the day before ...should narrow down the events that this person wanted to attend. Here are the events that happened that day: http://www.austinchronicle.com/calendar/2013-09-05/ http://www.austinchronicle.com/calendar/2013-09-05/ ...which, to me, only had one really unique event that evening: http://www.facebook.com/events/1405498132998020 http://www.facebook.com/events/1405498132998020 ...which, possibly, would include a picture of that person either in the same outfit or include a profile picture of that person commenting or liking the event. But this is just a guess...
- S4M 13y ago
  Your facebook link contains a list of 73 persons going to the event, so maybe one of them had a picture that matched the one the team had of the girl...

JesseAldridge 13y ago

Did you make a post on Reddit/4chan/Facebook/whatever asking, "Does anyone know this girl?"

dkb 13y ago

Philfreo > I think that the girl did share something with you that Justin doesn't know, such as something that she did accomplish in that school, like winning some kind of award, winning a competition or something similar. Then, you used that information along with the name of the school in Google.

jasdeepsingh 13y ago

C'mon Phil, spill the beans now!

elorant 13y ago

So you know the school and you have her picture. By her picture you can make a guess about her age. Then you search the web for graduates for particular dates from this particular school. It doesn’t have to be a yearbook or a class roster, people on LinkedIn mention the schools they’ve attended. Sooner or later you’ll find someone and then you can narrow the search. Even simpler, once you find someone you simply contact him with a fictional story as to why you’re searching this woman. From there on it just takes some old good fashioned social engineering.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

She bought that dress from some Austin boutique and modeled it for them, or left a review? Y'all found the review?

rorrr2 13y ago

Did she "check in" at the bar with FourSquare?

abdelix 13y ago

If the other picture was found in some social network ,maybe it was labeled .

espeed 13y ago

Called and sent the picture you took to the bar and/or to the people you met at the bar where you took the picture, and someone knew her.

joetann 13y ago

Wherever you were that night had a Facebook page with an event created for the evening you were there. You uploaded your second picture to the Facebook event, or tagged the Facebook page of the bar you were at. Then someone tagged the girl in the photo, revealing her identity.

pmorici 13y ago

Here is my guess: The second photo you realized you had showed the subject holding the device used to take the picture sent to your colleague. You investigated that particular device and found a way to uniquely identify it's pictures based off some characteristic of it's photos, not necessarily EXIF, then scoured the Internet for photos with the same unique characteristic until you found one that revealed more information about the subject?