Slashdot Mirror
Help Find Steve Fossett
An anonymous reader invites us to join in the hunt for the missing Steve Fossett using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. DigitalGlobe, one of Google's imaging partners, has acquired new high-resolution satellite imagery of the area where Fossett disappeared on Monday. The public can now go through this imagery and quickly flag any images that might contain Fossett's plane. Flagged images will receive further review by search and rescue experts.
This is better than "Where's Waldo?"!
What's he wearing red and white stripes? Seriously though, this is a pretty cool tool even if it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...
Get a web developer
but I found Waldo!
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
For helping a fellow human being? A warm fuzzy feeling inside. And, if you believe in it, karma/brownie points with your deity of choice.
For helping a millionaire in his hour of need? Who knows, maybe 15 minutes of fame, a few opportunities that you would otherwise not had and maybe a modest reward.
For most, doing the former is enough.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I suppose there are already trained people looking at the images. From the Police, Fire-Department, or whatever organization handles these kinds of emergencies in Nevada. I stress the word trained because the satellite data definetely needs experienced eyes to look out for the right stuff.
The article starts by explaining what to look for on these images. This is good, but to substitute for experience in looking at such images.
To be fair, most missing persons are hiding in bus terminals and seedy motels. Even if it sadly takes someone of celebrity, even someone whose personal hobby is to put themselves into ridiculous danger, to develop a new form of distributed wetware computing, it's still for the better.
Maybe if someone had thought of this earlier, that unlucky family in Oregon wouldn't have been stranded in their car for a week. Or maybe, now there's a new option for the next time that does happen.
Forget SETI-at-Home. I'd much rather play "FindTheLostPeople-at-Home".
Cool, can i get some of my neighborhood? The stuff on google is a good 5 years old, if not older. The resolution is pretty poor too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, then, any novices who join in here may gain some experience!
One day we'll be telling our children, "When I was your age, we actually had people comparing satellite imagery to find lost people!"
Seriously, though, can't computers do this sort of thing more efficiently? I'm no expert on the state of image recognition research, but you think it would be good enough that a computer could pick out potential "hits" for further review by trained professionals, perhaps by searching for what looks like man-made objects in remote areas or comparing old imagery with the current, updated samples.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
The area of Nevada where he is missing is actually rugged and mountainous ( I have some proerties in those parts myself ). Look on Google earth if you don't believe me, the name 'Nevada' means ',mountains. Also area 51 is now where nearby. There's a lot of rugged and inaccessible terrain he could've gone down, unfortunatley, and 5 days is a long time without water, its dry and hot out this time of year. I'd say the situation doesn't look good at this point, but we can always hope for a miracle, best of luck to the SAR and CAP people.
Hmm. I found something that was interesting that is of correct sizr and somewhat airplane shaped. Probably nothing, but there's still the possibility. However, the frigging site doesn't accept my clicks on either of the radio buttons under the sample image. The browsers I'm using are Safari, Camino and Firefox
Am I doing it wrong or is the page really picky when it comes to peoples' browser choises?
"No Windows, no helping"?
Anyone got it working?
Where have your banknotes been?!
Yes, Google Earth has updated images of the region. You can tell because they are obviously satellite photos and not overflight. Notice that everything is shot from straight up instead of the normal angle and also note the lack of color.
Read the article, and you'd see that they explain how authorities helped facilitate new images.
38 29' 03.51" N
119 24' 21.64" W
If amateurs can find new meteor craters with google earth, why not airplanes? How trained do you really have to be to spot an oddly shaped bright feature in otherwise mundane terrain?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I press the "End" key to scroll all the way down. Look at the image. Click Yes or No. Click Submit Hit. Three interactions per image.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Most of us aren't SAR experts, and wouldn't know a burn mark from a ridge shadow. The SARs that will be sifting through the public's mostly incorrect identification of accident artifacts would be better utilized in direct search efforts (either in the air or using imagery), rather than being distracted by what could best be considered a somewhat morbid game of "Where's Steve".
The time to test this type of technology out isn't during a live SAR mission. Leave the search and rescue to the experts, and please don't tie up their time with your well-meaning, but ultimately time-wasting, suppositions.
where is Bin Laden, or WMDs, or Waldo...
These pictures are lousy - to really get useable images would require a fly-over.
Manned flyovers are expensive, slow, and often dangerous if a person is lost due to inclimate weather;
However Unmanned flyovers can be conducted in poor weather, at very low cost, and without pilot fatigue or airspace crowding concerns.
It is ironic that private pilots have been objecting to uav, and now their hero doesn't have the benefit of private UAV flights for search and rescue in his time of need.
Not to gloat, but this would be a fitting time for the private pilots associations to change course on elbowing out UAV's and giving another nascent industry to europe.
AIK
I'd say that's a hit. The object matches the dimensions of a Super Decathlon, according to Google Earth.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
So they have an infrastructure in place that can easily organize & manage a massive search like this and you want to bitch because you had to "like... sign in" and occasionally fill out a CAPTCHA? Jeez, dude. A man's life is likely at stake here and a company stepped up to try and help the cause and you're complaining because they didn't implement the solution exactly as you would've liked. Why don't you spend more time checking out HITs and less time posting stupid shit on /. if you care so much about the process being impeded?
This is a very good use of the technology. I hope this works if for no other reason than to bring closure to his family if he hasn't survived.
My problem is the way they've got the web page set up. Every time I submit a new "HIT", I have to scroll all the way down the page again to see the next image. It's great that they have a "primer" a the top, but I've done a couple hundred now... I don't need to keep seeing that over and over again. Just cut to the chase and show me the next picture to examine.
Also, looking at the Google Earth swath that this is covering, I can't help but think that he might be outside of that. Can anyone comment? Or do they know "if he's anywhere, he's in that area."?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
We're all screwed unless the government can track small aircraft flying over entirely unpopulated land in the middle of nowhere near absolutely no valuable targets. So remote, in fact, that no one has noticed a plane go down in the last week.
/sarcasm
You're right - this is obviously yet another demonstration of our inability to defend against terrorism.
It probably can't hurt, but you're right in that it can be difficult for even a trained observer to spot the wreckage of a small plane at that resolution - or even from 5,000 feet with your own eyeballs.
I spent a few years on the local search and rescue team and fortunately only got to see one serious crash up close. From the air, it looked more or less like a bunch of trash strewn across a 100-foot stretch of hillside. Nothing you'd identify immediately as an aircraft, though in this case the huge burn mark helped it stand out.
I recently lost my mobile phone somewhere in Wadham College gardens, Oxford, and I was wondering if I could get this kind of help to find it. Any takers?
What, you thought there was no interesting CS research left to do?
But can I get some /. karma if I find him?
I was about to post how distorted the image is, when on a hunch I decided to unclick the "terrain" box on GE. The image becomes a LOT clearer, but I still don't think it is nearly clear enough to identify something as small as a 22" plane.
I keep hearing people whine about the Mechanical Turk interface. Each image only requires one mouse click and two keyboard presses (no mouse movement at all required). Here's how:
1 - When you manually accept the first hit, make sure you check "Automatically accept the next HIT".
2 - Press the END key to scroll all the way down to see the image.
3 - Click the mouse on Yes or No.
4 - Press the ENTER key to accept the HIT.
5 - Goto 2
I've found two images that are really good candidates for a crash. One was at 38.020248,-119.368515. It looks like a line of tree damage, with a bright object at the edge of the tree line.
Next, I keep hearing people saying that laypeople aren't useful for something like this. This is simply to flag interesting images so experts can spend their time looking only at the most likely candidates. Also, this is free for them. So they could use an algorithm something like this:
Show each image to at least 5 people.
Each time someone says "Yes" to a specific image, show it to two additional people, up to a max of 20 reviews.
Sort the images by descending Yes vote count and show them to the experts in that order.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
(no comment)
it is a bit ridiculous considering all the missing persons there are out there who get no attention...
Did you just make this up because it makes you seem like a Sensitive and Thoughtful Person? Or can you actually name someone who went missing in the wilderness and "got no attention"?
FYI, rangers and such take their jobs very seriously. So far as I know, everyone reported missing in the wilderness gets a full spare-no-expense search and rescue effort. They look for "nobodies" just as hard as they're looking for Fossett, and the dedicated folks who do those tough jobs would take great offense at your ignorant suggestion otherwise.
Too bad it's done by Amazon. It's an absolutely fantastic idea, and a really new technology application (getting the public to scan pictures). Unfortunately, I don't have, and won't have an Amazon ID due to their continued promotion of dog fighting
Fuck you, Amazon.
I don't respond to AC's.
The last time an effort like this was undertaken, it was for Jim Gray (Database researcher, Microsoft Fellow), who had disappeared sailing from San Francisco. I checked on that for a while, but never saw any more information.
Was anything ever found in the search for Jim Gray? No remnants of his boat, or other signs of what happened?
Ok, so what do we do if we find a plane just browsing in Google Earth? (way more efficient than refreshing the webpage).
38 7'34.00"N, 11929'4.81"W
Much more fuzzy than the AC plane, so this is probably nothing, but the size and shape is about right (a bit shorter, but of the plane is angled, it could easily show up shorter).
True, it could be a publicity stunt. But if it isn't intentional, then he's dead. He had enough experience to know to have an ELT/EPRIB on his plane. If he didn't activate it when he went down, it's because he was too injured to flip a switch to turn it on. Id the wreck was bad enough to break his ELT/EPRIB, then he didn't stand a chance.://www.nctackle.com/acraq406mhzg1.html http://www.avionix.com/store/elt.html
We are all just people.
...as Steve Fossett originally set out to take this journey to find a flat and long enough place to do his world land-speed record. Now Google has high-resolution imagery of the whole place, which makes the whole undertaking a bit obsolete in retrospect ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I think the insinuation that such a technology and effort would ONLY be made available to a rich white man is jaded and wrong.
I am sure that this technology and effort would be made, also, for any pretty white girl. Especially if she's blond.
And unless you're a white millionaire or a pretty white blond girl, who cares if you're missing? I've watched Fox News enough to know that nobody except pretty white blond girls ever go missing *anyway*.
What I don't understand is . . . who does some rich wealthy adventurer not have some sort of backup plan or beacon or something? And besides that, what has he ever done for society other than be rich? Traveling around the globe in a hot air balloon hardly benefits mankind. *shrug*
I'm not saying he shouldn't be found or that I wish any ill will on him. I just don't see what he's done to warrant such a high concern on an international level beyond any other missing person... except at least someone who was kidnapped is less responsible for their situation than some adventurer who puts himself in harms way for hobby.
The offset isn't constant, sadly. In some places it is the aforementioned 640feet North, in other places 640feet NE, in other places only a 100feet or so.
Meanwhile, here are three candidates.
38 19'12.87"N, 119 16'56.30"W
38 7'51.26"N, 119 27'41.67"W
38 7'34.00"N, 119 29'4.81"W
All are a bit fuzzy, but "plane shaped" and the right size. #2 is by far the sharpest.
I was unable to find either of these in the original google earth maps. (I did find a few others that WERE in the old maps, so they're discarded).
I have just completed my 729th image looking for Steve Fossett on the Mechanical Turk. I guess thats a lot more than I originally intended to do, but my reasons for keeping going are:-
In the 729 views, I've reported one image that contained a feature that looked like a rock formation impersonating an aircraft. The instructions tell us to be conservative so I reported the hit.
Plenty more to go around folks! How often are you given the chance to personally save the life of a billionare? Sounds worthwhile even in capitalist America to me.
-F
38 3'24.02"N 11914'56.55"W It looks like a plane, it's about 20 ft in length and has a 23-24 ft wingspan. I don't know how to contact them but if anyone here can communicate with them, please do. Don't forget to credit me if it turns out to be his plane.
I started cruising around in Google Earth and I found something interesting at 3815'31.05"N,11918'59.08"W . It's about the right size and is not on older maps. How do I report it? The Mechanical Turk interface has no method for reporting except to flag one of the random tiles.
How often does that happen with light aircraft? Do they vanish entirely very often?
This might have been said already but I'm too drunk and tired to check the posts.
Take several detailed pictures and look for the diffs; there he is; if he's alive.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I'd just like to point out a couple things:
I consider my right to travel anywhere I want freely a part of my right to privacy.
I frequently fly a small plane over rural (very flat) Minnesota, and there is no radar coverage at lower altitudes. I assume filing a flight plane for a local flight at low altitudes in mountanous terrain would be very similar and there would be little benefit over telling someone at the airport about where you are headed and about when you'll be back (which he did). If he was flying low there's a good chance he wasn't even able to make radio contact with any controllers.
Unlike most missing persons searches, Steve vanished with a 20' x 20' plane as a marker, which hasn't been spotted in nearly a week of searching. Good luck finding the more common single person using satellite (well, any satellite that the public gets access to, anyway). I don't think he's really being treated that much differently than anyone else.
I fly with the Civil Air Patrol, and think it's awesome that I can sit at my desk and help with the search without having to burn gas or worry about hitting a mountain.
I think you guys are awesome for pitching in - keep up the good work!
(back to searching...)
The correct Spanish word for mountain is montaña, not a plain n but n with ~ on top.
That is correct.
Going on an offtopic tangent, I find it funny how many Spanish-derived English words have seemingly been adapted from their Spanish spelling, rather than from their pronunciation, as you would perhaps expect. Montana is a good example; if it had been adapted from the pronunciation it would have been something like montanja. Also Texas or Mexico: they have kept the spelling from a time, a few centuries ago, when in Spanish the "x" represented the gutural sound usually written as "kh" in English. Of course, English speakers now pronounce the "x" in Texas or Mexico as "ks", which has precisely nothing to do with the original pronunciation. There are many more examples of this.
I've had a quick skim through the replies.... How recent are these images? C:\>
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
When I started to help this morning there were 32,000 work units (called hits, images to be reviewed) available. They were disappearing at a rate of 5-10,000 per hour, meaning that all things being equal there were 50-100 people looking at them.
:) I'm guessing that although from the side it's mostly blue, that the top of the wings are white.
However over the past half hour the work units available have been *increasing*. Currently 12,000 and increasing. Clearly they are adding more to be done faster than we're doing them. So anyone who helped out at the beginning - don't assume the hits are "all done". There could be more at any time.
In my old version of IE I couldn't see the scale bars or the example image, looking at the same coords of a unique scene in google maps I estimated the image was 125m x 125m - which would be half meter resolution. Now I see they claim the images are actually 85x85m, which would be 1.08ft resolution.
Based on that and that I've done 400 units, that mean's I've searched one full square mile.
It also means the 32,000 units I saw when I started is only 10 miles x 10 miles, 100 square miles. I heard someone else say that they only have 500 square miles of imagery. Looking at Google Earth, assuming the new imagery is the kinda-rectangular patch that is all the same color/brightness - they have approx 1700 square miles. That means there is approximately 600,000 work units in total that need done. If everone does a square mile (shouldn't take more than an hour) then we need 1700 people helping.
But as someone else noted - they're really artificially limiting the search area, considering the range on his plane. Assuming he went certain places or crashed on his way back to the ranch. That doesn't bode well.
PS: It'd be way way more effective if they showed a "image before crash" so that people could self-discover their false positives, without forcing people to download google earth and figure it's before/after out, and/or be smart enough to copy/paste the coords into google-maps satellite view.
PPS: If they were really smart, they'd have a second private pool of the public's false positives being reviewed by amateurs or employees whom they know have much much smaller false positive rates, whom they know are comparing the two available before images (google maps and google earth) against the current images.
BTW: Here are images of the actual specific plane he was flying. http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/N240R.html (Aviation buffs take pictures and index online everything that flies, apparently
What do you think about
38 27'2.88"N 119 25'25.17"W
as possible wreckage of another plane, from some time ago?
I think this is a great chance to go back and bring closure to those families of people missing in unrecovered crashes in the past, in the area. I hope they go ahead and let the survey complete, even if they find Fossett soon.