Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#41

Post by michaelmior »

cdfgg wrote: post #22
mintplant wrote: post #16

> Although, the solution would occasionally have issues with particular letters. A mistake like this can and has destroyed lives. http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-18-695bgk/ > Police officer John Edwards was patrolling a quiet neighborhood in Bellaire, Texas when he saw an SUV driven by two young African-American men. It was just before 2am on December 31, 2008. Edwards followed the SUV and ran the license plate num…

isn't it because the officer type wrong license? i thought the scanner purpose is to minimize human error like this

An automated scanner may be more accurate, but given that it will perform far more scans, I could imagine the total never of false positives being higher.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#42

Post by aaron695 »

> Imagine a passive system scanning fellow motorists for an abductors car that automatically alerts authorities and family members to their current location and direction.

Seriously? You jumped the shark from interesting tech, to think of the children it's ok to go all Orwell here.

First App I'd make. Cheating spouse app. Is your partner or Ex hiding from you. Pay here for tracking info. Part of which goes to the people collating data.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#43

Post by fphhotchips »

andrewstuart wrote: post #39
anitil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing doesn't really happen in Aus. I could see someone getting arrested and spending a night in jail unnecessarily or maaaaaaybe tased (and to be clear, whether we consider this a fair price to pay is a different question), but police rarely shoot people here.

Yes it does. Just the other day the trigger happy cops shot a couple of people at a swingers party.

"The other day" = almost two months ago. Also, apparently (this is one of those stories with three sides) he was holding a fake gun without an orange tip or similar. Police say he was brandishing it, others say he didn't even have it on him. Who knows.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#44

Post by DrScump »

mintplant wrote: post #16

> Although, the solution would occasionally have issues with particular letters. A mistake like this can and has destroyed lives. http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-18-695bgk/ > Police officer John Edwards was patrolling a quiet neighborhood in Bellaire, Texas when he saw an SUV driven by two young African-American men. It was just before 2am on December 31, 2008. Edwards followed the SUV and ran the license plate num…

It's more complex than that.

Despite the tragic result, the officers were unanimously acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/24/suprem...

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#45

Post by Johnny555 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #37
taitems wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear. That's so creepy someone might actually do it! I'm getting into home automation at the moment, so a use case that I think I deleted from the article was just letting you know that your mum or someone had pulled up in the driveway. License plates vs. a known list of visitors. Or as is happening here in some of our suburbs, "Alert: A group of 4 men have arrived in a stolen V8 Commodore"

> That's so creepy someone might actually do it! It's only creepy if it's done on a targeted, individual basis, which it won't be. As it is - in many countries you legally have no expectation of privacy in a public place, so I have no problem with en-masse ANPR. If the police eventually develops a very dense sensor network that can track every car's movement across every intersection then there would be too much info…

it would reduce the need for inherently-dangerous hot pursuits to follow a vehicle as the cameras would do that anyway.

It wouldn't really reduce the need for the infamous hot-pursuits because often in these hot pursuits, the car is stolen so the driver is not who the car is licensed to.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#46

Post by bigiain »

mintplant wrote: post #27
fao_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the fault lies with the trigger-happy police, not with the software.

Of course. But it is precisely this "trigger-happy" nature which makes an introducing a system with an appreciable error rate dangerous. This at least partially ( partially ) accounts for higher costs.

I wonder what the comparison of error rates between simple ANPR and "cops typing plates in" looks like...

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#47

Post by taitems »

5_minutes wrote: post #32

How did you get to the number 220 of vehicles?

It was sourced from an article. I originally built the tool to see if it could be done (given I knew the DB existed), and then did some Googling and found BlueNet. I wasn't actually trying to do it better/cheaper, it just so happened it had been done before.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#48

Post by bigiain »

taitems wrote: post #20

Author here, hi HN/Reddit. I had hoped I'd made it clear enough, but by no means am I recommending something I cobbled together in an hour on the couch be rolled out as a competitor to BlueNet. I mean shit, I'm web scraping their database and using compressed footage from cheap dashcams. The algorithm is also untrained. I was, on the other hand, hoping to promote healthy discussion and pose some good questions relate…

I've got a war story about a government project we did for which we invoiced in total ~$80k, which by the time it made it to the media was a "$3.5 million dollar project".

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#49

Post by taitems »

hoodoof wrote: post #40
taitems wrote: post #20

Author here, hi HN/Reddit. I had hoped I'd made it clear enough, but by no means am I recommending something I cobbled together in an hour on the couch be rolled out as a competitor to BlueNet. I mean shit, I'm web scraping their database and using compressed footage from cheap dashcams. The algorithm is also untrained. I was, on the other hand, hoping to promote healthy discussion and pose some good questions relate…

I worked in government once and could not believe the cost required to get what I saw as small projects done. In the end I understood, when I came to understand, as other in this thread have pointed out, that there's support, rollout, training, documentation, project management, planning and it goes on and on. The technical solution can be just a small company of providing a sustainable solution to an organization. H…

I've worked with state government and fortune 50(0)s, so I get where you're coming from. Costs that are just part of doing business seem like enormous waste to outsiders. That being said, I've heard some horrible war stories. NDAs but.

Re: When an experiment with existing technology does a “good enough” job

#50

Post by anitil »

andrewstuart wrote: post #39
anitil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing doesn't really happen in Aus. I could see someone getting arrested and spending a night in jail unnecessarily or maaaaaaybe tased (and to be clear, whether we consider this a fair price to pay is a different question), but police rarely shoot people here.

Yes it does. Just the other day the trigger happy cops shot a couple of people at a swingers party.

This is what I get for not following the news. I also remember a case years ago on Bondi beach where a guy having a psychotic break and brandishing a knife was killed. If I remember correctly this was used a justification for introducing tasers.

I should have said rarely.

Post reply on HN