DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
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Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#2Tldr they waited until DNA sequencing and databases were good enough
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#3Related. Others?
Mystery of Somerton man’s identity solved after 73 years, researchers say - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32251717 - July 2022 (14 comments)
Australia Exhumes the Somerton Man, and His 70-Year Mystery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27250937 - May 2021 (5 comments)
The Lost Man - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9666581 - June 2015 (4 comments)
The Body on Somerton Beach (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913942 - June 2014 (14 comments)
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#4I loved reading this. A nice short but true mystery solving story.
But the epilogue about how being an electronics engineer gave them a bit of a unique edge feels like a self-serving stretch. The techniques in the story seem accessible to any reasonably well-learned individual if they’re motivated enough to sleuth. All the advanced work was done by other people. And there’s a tinge of the classic, “the established discipline is living in the past but us engineers can do it better…”
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#5odd how "AI Face Recognition" sounds so authoritative, yet "machine learning Face Recognition" is also accurate but does not hide the inherent uncertainty, guesswork, noise and error in the process
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#6odd how "AI Face Recognition" sounds so authoritative, yet "machine learning Face Recognition" is also accurate but does not hide the inherent uncertainty, guesswork, noise and error in the process
AI is the new marketing term. Machine learning is old.
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#7Amazing! I wonder how much this rules out the espionage, or the connection to Jo Thomson though. I wonder if she sold him the poison or something. In any case, I am morbidly fascinated by stories of people dying alone, without children, and being forgotten. Perhaps because I feel it could be my own fate. Certainly more common than any of us are prepared for, as we are all decendents of the genetic winners.
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#8The article mentioned 'elliptical suicide note' what did they mean by that? It's not a code? Just random letters?
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#9Tldr they waited until DNA sequencing and databases were good enough
But what is good enough?
Mistakes are still make quite regularly. Most people (all?) still can't grabs what "confidence interval" or "probability" are.
Re: DNA, AI facial reconstruction, and grit identified Somerton Man 75 years later
#10> Note that SNPs have around 50 to 150 base pairs of nucleotides
What does this mean? SNPs being, by definition, single nucleotide polymorphisms, how does the author jump from 1bp to 50-150bp? Or is he referring to the surrounding DNA region?