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

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

#61

Post by anitil »

ecdavis wrote: post #15
anitil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In much (all?) of Australia all government tenders have to be publicly advertised so this is something you could definitely look in to if you were interested. In particular, Victoria's listing is at : https://www.tenders.vic.gov.au/tenders/index.do

I read an interesting article earlier today about IT spending in Australia: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-28/federal-governments-$1... > It found public servants were too afraid to make major changes to IT procurement and were not talking with other departments to avoid duplication. > "A fear of external scrutiny of decisions — such as through Senate estimates and audits — leads to a low-risk appetite and a cult…

While I agree, Aus has also had some success with IT projects.

Many federal projects are now under a single sign on portal that works very well. Our taxes take less than an hour to fill out as most details are pre-filled.

And speaking for NSW, the RTA/RMS/Whatever-they're-called-these-days (our equivalent to the DMV for US readers) is almost fully functional without an in-person visit.

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

#62

Post by clusmore »

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 was, on the other hand, hoping to promote healthy discussion and pose some good questions related to IT procurement here in Australia. There needs to be a happy medium between what I've wired up and an $86M solution.

A related story for this discussion: QUT students design a $500 cloud-based census server four times better than IBM’s $9 million system [1]

[1] http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/qut-students-design...

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

#63

Post by KGIII »

mchahn wrote: post #34
taitems wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emergency services vehicles run so much equipment they have isolated power from engine power.

I have noticed here in California the the police always leave their patrol cars running when parked. I was entering a restaurant a saw a patrol car running. I saw the officer inside and asked him why they leave the cars running. I asked him if was to be ready to take off fast. He laughed and said that there is so much electronics inside that the battery would run down during lunch. I didn't think to ask why they didn…

Boot up times for the computer(s). That takes a while, though I imagine it is getting faster.

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

#64

Post by KGIII »

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…

Conversely, such is prohibited in my State. If it is to be done, it must get judicial approval, be for a limited time, data deleted, and target a specific subject.

I helped the ACLU stuff the envelopes. I consider that some of my best work.

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

#65

Post by rasz »

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

sure, he typed wrong number and got same make, model and color stolen vehicle, also:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/policeman-b...

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

#66

Post by smcl »

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…

"...and Edwards drew his gun" - I think this is the situation where the problem arose, not the license plate scanning itself

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

#67

Post by alexbeloi »

wallace_f wrote: post #21
shadowtree wrote: post #3

Any project in a heavily regulated environment is not measurable that way. The cost comes from compliance, audits, paperwork. Trials, PoCs, etc. You also need to prove security and a long term lifecycle for the solution. Those open source packages - are they being updated? Who validates patches? etc etc. Those are moats, once you're able to deliver the above, you're set for a long time. Good luck!

Oh come on. Not all heavy-handed regulation would pass a cost-benefit analysis. Nor does it cost 80 million to run some POCs and QA on a project like this. At nearly 400,000 AUD per vehicle, the question should be what better opportunities to help people did the Australian Govt pass up in order to engage this project?

I think the point was that the costs are justified by the burden of meeting regulatory requirements, not the benefit of the regulation.

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

#68

Post by camillomiller »

anitil wrote: post #50
andrewstuart wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A knife in the hands of a psycho is much more dangerous than you might think. If he's at close enough range a shooting reaction is correct.

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

#69

Post by Casseres »

bigiain wrote: post #48
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".

Feasibility studies, hiring experts to write reports, the salaries of everyone in the department, etc? I have no idea, but conceivably if one wanted a juicy headline, there's ways to get it.

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

#70

Post by DarkKomunalec »

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…

No 100% accurate license-plate reader exists - and that includes human eyesight. Showing license identification confidence levels, as the author's code does, is far better at dissuading the cops from over-reliance on the tool, than pretending no mistakes will ever be made.
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