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Help Find Steve Fossett

Posted by kdawson on from the spare-wetware-cycles dept.

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.

9 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. I couldn't find Steve by 10e6Steve · · Score: 5, Funny

    but I found Waldo!

  2. Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Not all missing persons can be seen from space by searchr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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".

  4. Found a plane... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    38 29' 03.51" N
    119 24' 21.64" W

    1. Re:Found a plane... by Fullerene · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The scale make it a little bit small, but I think it is exactly the sort of thing that they are telling us to report to them. Contact the HIT requestor via Amazon perhaps?

      Looks like a plane to me too.

    2. Re:Found a plane... by clarkkent09 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doesn't seem to be an old wreck as it doesn't show up in older maps. I looked before I downloaded the maps in the article and there was nothing there. Also, measuring the plane with the ruler tool shows 22 feet, exactly the length of Fossett's plane.

      Unfortunately, the lack of north-west facing shadows around the plane (see the trees) suggests that this is a plane in the air, not on the ground.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  5. Re:what's he wearing? by sentientbeing · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yo mammas so fat when she got lost and they found her on google earth.

    --

    ------
    beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
  6. Fast Turk Interaction by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  7. Re:Obligatory question in capitalist America by Fullerene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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:-

    • If Steve isn't found immediately, there probably won't be much point in looking anymore. We have to help today.
    • I admire his approach to life. We just passed Steve Irwin's anniversary here in Oz and this sort of guy is all too rare.
    • This isn't a lottery - you help almost as much by your work in eliminating the useless images as you do by escalating the significant ones so you can always feel a sense of satisfaction even when you don't see a plane.
    • I've got nothing else better to do with a lazy Sunday.

    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