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How fateful?

chan.co.za

121–130 of 343 posts

Re: How fateful?

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the pragmatic approach and said to myself "look, if Google really wants to know where I am the only way to avoid it is to go into the woods without my phone, so why not?" Then one day the Toronto Transit Commission police thought I was re-using someone elses streetcar fare because of how old it was. I just prefer the streetcar to subways, so I took a longer route. As soon as I pulled out my phone with my locat…

I'm sure people have opposite stories where instead of a quick dismissal they received attitude, general harassment, or escalation. Small "crimes" like stealing streetcar fare are sought out not because of the crime itself but because the more contact points people have with police the more people are arrested. There is probably an overlap of people who steal streetcar fare and people who are harboring small amounts…

When I stopped driving in the United States, I noticed a sharp drop in interaction with the police. Years would go by with zero interaction. In a car: A few times a year (or month if unlucky). All of those automobile-related interactions are an opportunity for you to make a small mistake that will be blown up by the officer.

Re: How fateful?

#122
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which third party app? I would love to know who has a good implementation of it (with appropriate detection of venues).

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The third-party app only records my GPS coordinates and I process the data myself. Unfortunately, there isn't anything yet that has any of the functionality of Google's location history.

Email me if you’re still interested in building this.

Re: How fateful?

#123
post #5

> It makes me feel very philosophical. Likely we had walked past each other every other week for three years with our heads down, or in the clouds, paying very little notice to the people around us. Past Channon had not the foggiest clue what impact an unnoticed stranger would come to have on her. Since learning this I can’t help but look at the passers-by in my day-to-day life in a different light. And no shame in g…

I don't really agree, if you sat down and talked with every single person you walked by throughout the day you would meet many people you clicked with, both on a friendship and romantic level. If the author was that outgoing they probably would have met their partner earlier, or she would have found someone she liked better. In other words I don't think who we end up with is some 1 in a million cosmic star aligning m…

    Your love is one in a million
    You couldn't buy it at any price
    But of the nine-point-nine-nine-nine hundred thousand other possible loves
    Statistically some of them would be equally nice

    Or maybe not as nice but, say, smarter than you
    Or dumber, but better at sport or... fuckin' tracing?

    I'm just saying
    I really think that I would, probably
    Have somebody else

    If I didn't have you
    Someone else would do
-- Tim Minchin, If I Didn't Have You

Re: How fateful?

#124
post #5

> It makes me feel very philosophical. Likely we had walked past each other every other week for three years with our heads down, or in the clouds, paying very little notice to the people around us. Past Channon had not the foggiest clue what impact an unnoticed stranger would come to have on her. Since learning this I can’t help but look at the passers-by in my day-to-day life in a different light. And no shame in g…

I don't really agree, if you sat down and talked with every single person you walked by throughout the day you would meet many people you clicked with, both on a friendship and romantic level. If the author was that outgoing they probably would have met their partner earlier, or she would have found someone she liked better. In other words I don't think who we end up with is some 1 in a million cosmic star aligning m…

Exactly. Many people don't realize, that the more people you are interacting with, the greater the odds are to finding what you seek. Probably this is more true for men, as oppose to women, as men tend to be more proactive. However, men still need to overcome any shyness or fear of rejection, to unlock such greater possibilities.

Re: How fateful?

#125
post #45

This sounds sort of similar to Strava Flybys[0]. It users your run/ride location data and show people who posted public activies that passed you by. Sometimes interesting, but I bet a lot of Strava users who post their activities as "public" don't know this feature exists and might turn to "followers only" if they did. [0] https://labs.strava.com/flyby/

The Flyby feature has been opt-in for about two years.

Ah! Good to know. I didn’t see any reference to that on their product page so assumed it was still on by default

Re: How fateful?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any social gathering is a place where you can meet your significant others, university is not the exclusive place for that. Most most introverted people tend to do though (myself included), is attending less social events as they become older. But you can still force yourself out there and meet people based on your hobbies. And who knows, maybe you meet your significant other at one of those events for your favorite…

Church is really the classical place. It's a shame there's not a similar place for large groups of secular people to gather once a week for social events.

Unitarian Universalist Church. Ethical Culture Society. There are quite a few non-credal churches or "not-a-church" organizations built along churchy lines.

Re: How fateful?

#127

When my wife and I combined our photo libraries later in life, we found a photo of the two of us, back-to-back at a ball a few years before we first met.

The last person I dated and I figured out we had probably been literally face to face a couple years before at an event, and I was probably talking to her boyfriend about something.

Re: How fateful?

#128

Plot Twist: When google's algorithms decided those two individuals should pair, it started showing them ads for the same events in order to increase the probability of them meeting. The goal was achieved by the system in 3 months, exactly as predicted with a 99% probability with a 95% CI. The system's next goal is to subtly nudge the couple to reproduce within the next year in order to help google meet their user acc…

That's pretty disturbing, and not too far beyond capabilities.

I think the biggest one missing would be that iirc a date going well seems pretty much random in dating service data, despite a fair bit of effort to find correlations.

Re: How fateful?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you haven't been the victim of fabricated narratives supported by your tracked locations as data in order to imprison or blackmail you. This is just a rehashed "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about". Thank you to the other commenter for pointing out the banality of the "crime".

That's really making the assumption that this didn't happen before data tracking..... And that argument is much, much older than the digital age. If anything, extra tracking helps exonerate more than without it (false imprisonment, etc) https://time.com/wrongly-convicted/

Every extra data point is an opportunity for abuse, not exoneration.

When you are facing wrongful conviction, the assumption is that you are unable to present evidence in an effective manner anyway.

Re: How fateful?

#130

Plot Twist: When google's algorithms decided those two individuals should pair, it started showing them ads for the same events in order to increase the probability of them meeting. The goal was achieved by the system in 3 months, exactly as predicted with a 99% probability with a 95% CI. The system's next goal is to subtly nudge the couple to reproduce within the next year in order to help google meet their user acc…

Somewhat related, I had high hopes for Facebook Dating to be a great product and a dating site/app disruptor. FB has all that data, why not use it to play matchmaker? Unfortunately, like many other Facebook ventures, it's nothing as expected, and is just a "Here's people in your area. Kind of. Sometimes."
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