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How Baidu Tracked the Largest Seasonal Migration of People On Earth
KentuckyFC writes During the Chinese New Year earlier this year, some 3.6 billion people traveled across China making it the largest seasonal migration on Earth. These kinds of mass movements have always been hard to study in detail. But the Chinese web services company Baidu has managed it using a mapping app that tracked the location of 200 million smartphone users during the New Year period. The latest analysis of this data shows just how vast this mass migration is. For example, over 2 million people left the Guandong province of China and returned just a few days later--that's equivalent to the entire population of Chicago upping sticks. The work shows how easy it is to track the movement of large numbers of people with current technology--assuming they are willing to allow their data to be used in this way.
Submitter/editors can't make the distinction between passengers (which one person can be multiple times) and people. It's a hard life...
Well, in fairness, when everyone flies home for Thanksgiving, the airports and people who provide wifi will be able to do the exact same thing.
'Willing' can include "don't give a fuck as along as they have free wifi and can update their Facebook status/play whatever game they're all playing".
The modern definition of "willing" when you're discussing technology is "hasn't disabled this functionality or removed the battery from their phone".
Who needs consent when you own the network?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
As others have said, 3.6bn people can't be travelling. I guess they must be counting individual, substantial journeys, but they don't say, which is a bit rubbish. I noticed that this number was unsourced, which also seemed a bit rubbish.
Never fear. TFA says:
"The Chinese researchers mention the question of privacy, however. That’s an issue that would make this kind of tracking difficult in democratic countries, or at least the public acknowledgement of it.
See that? Companies that make apps would never dare to ask you to let them access your location if you live in a democracy.
This article says it's 3.6 billion passenger trips. Over a 40-day period, that's a little more believable, but I wonder what is counted as a "passenger trip". Let's say I live in NYC, and I want to travel to Lincoln, Nebraska for the holiday. So, subway ride to the airport, that's a passenger trip. Flight to hub in Chicago, another passenger trip. Flight from Chicago to Omaha, another passenger trip. Then whatever means I use to get from Omaha to Lincoln, another passenger trip. Coming home, I do the same thing all in reverse. That's eight passenger trips for one person for the holiday.
So, you take the 3.6 billion passenger trips, and divide it by 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever you think is the average passenger trip per person. Then divide that over a 40 day period, and account for the difference in population, and maybe you get something like a multiple of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.
I dunno, I'm just throwing it out there as a possibility.
Proverbs 21:19