Are those top tier Geoguessers that do crazy stuff like figure out a location from 4 pixels and a mcslurry contracted by the CIA?

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• Wwwbdd@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Who says they don’t already? I knew a guy who worked for a major government agency who’s job was to look over horrible pictures to try to figure out where they were taken.

  I bet the most skilled people do work for them, not just youtube. But talking to that guy, it’s a tough job, not for everyone. Instead of a random streetview image it’s a scene of abuse, so…

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• Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You can get jobs like that, sure. Normally called GIS analyst (geospatial informations systems)

  For a while, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service GIS job applications were less about ticking boxes and more looking at a satellite image of a structure and being asked, “what is this, where is it, and why is it interesting”

  And the answer might be "Its ostensibly a wastewater treatment plant, its in southern Iran, and its interesting because the truck parked next to the liquid chemical tank farm has an ISO gas storage trailer, not an ISO liquid storage container as might be expected.

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• DarkCloud@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The problem is getting the pictures to work from. People who don’t want to be found aren’t giving the CIA pictures of their locations, and I’d imagine the CIA already knows what road signs look like in different countries, or where certain mountains and other features are.

  The problem is getting the pictures. It’s intel collection, not processing.

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  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    the CIA already knows what road signs look like in different countries, or where certain mountains and other features are.

    I mean “the CIA” isn’t a person. Someone there does this work. Which is what we’re talking about.

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    • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If you read about what they did and how incompetent they are, i wouldn’t be surprised if they employ some nepotism guy who looks looks at pictures and goes: uuuh, not alabama.

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• Microw@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m sure that those agencies have been contacting top players for that game over the last few years. But if those simply dont want to work for them, thats moot.

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  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I wouldn’t be surprised to find they created the game. And if not, sponsored the competitions.

    Great way to scout that kind of talent.

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• MataVatnik@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Israel intelligence has a division dedicated to neurodivergent people who scour satellite photos. So wouldn’t be surprised if they have people like this on payroll

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  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I could monetize my favourite hobby?

    (Assuming someone NON-genocidal valued it)

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    • KingJalopy@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can’t assume it won’t be weaponized, in fact you should expect it.

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• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I just assume they’re super lucky. Or that they play so much, they recognize when it shows them the same picture because it doesn’t have an infinite set of images.

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  • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They use Google street view, so it’s a ton.

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  • SolOrion@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Like the other guy said, it’s street view.

    With that said, road patterns are a solid chunk of what the really good players are looking for/at. There’s definitely more to it than that, but because of the nature of the game there’s almost literally always a road in view.

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    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My guess is that some memorization exists, check the geoguesser grand finals, there was one play where both players marked the exact same spot with absolutely no clues another that “maybe Mongolia”.

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  • MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It has a practically infinite set of images. Seriously, I’ve seen people do geoguesser and get nothing but back roads in the middle of basically Anywhere, Earth; I’ve seen people get stuck inside malls, go into caves, walk down random-ass rabbit trails in the middle of a forest surrounded by miles of fucking nothing (I wish I could remember what video I saw that in, it was fucking insane). Geoguesser pulls from the full catalog of Google Street view images, and there are a lot of street view images.

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• SGforce@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Really it’s crowdsourcing and statistics. Show an image to a big enough crowd and someone will pick something up. It’s like the birthday problem but with geography.

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  • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There really are some good geoguessers. It’s not a crowd source game.

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  • SolOrion@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s 100% not about crowdsourcing. Idk how that even makes sense- do you know what Geoguessr is?

    There’s some people that are absolutely cracked at geoguessr. Rainbolt, for example.

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  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A thousand people can take guesses, but only a skilled player can say “Oh yeah, that foliage looks like San Juan or some other mountainous region of Argentina”, or “That black electrical tape is a Nigeria thing”

    People who live in those places aren’t likely to notice how their electrical poles are different.

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  • 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not to pile on here, but this is not an instance of the birthday problem.

    The birthday problem would kick in if we asked “what are the chances that any two of these N people know the same place, whatever it may be.”

    But instead we’re discussing “what are the chances that one of these N people recognizes a specific place P.”

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    • Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      there are many details in one image, and the chances of some player recognizing one of those details is an instance of the birthday problem?

      That would be a valid model. But you are still right that it doesn’t apply: It would give the effect that a different geoguesser would get the picture right every test, while we are seeing consistent results from the top geoguessers.

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  • Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I see your point, but the Birthday Problem would apply differently.

    It is the chance of “collision” between randomly picked elements two large enough sets of random data. If I understand correctly, the random data here would be “geographical fact” like bush density and road width. Set A is geoguessers’ geographical knowledge, and set B is pictures’ geographical features.

    So if we picked hundreds of random picture and hundreds of geoguessers and asked them, the chance of one guessing one image is high. And the person would be largely dfferent every time.

    In this case, we can give one specific geoguesser a large amount of pictures and that same geoguesser would get most of them right.

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• Deflaktor@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wait till you find out how good ai is at pinpointing a picture.

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