
Show HN: Grassland – Real-Life SimCity - david_at
http://grassland.network
======
jaredmsmith
This is truly interesting, but from a privacy perspective if mass adoption
actually occurred, _extremely_ worrying.

Not “inverse surveillance” as stated, but just surveillance in the hands of
people. At mass deployment, mass surveillance accessible by anyone. Since when
does that protect anyone’s privacy?

~~~
david_at
The true problem with surveillance is the asymmetry of it all. Grassland uses
Game Theory to remove that asymmetry. "...no party could maintain a
parasitical, data gathering asymmetry (one-sided surveillance) so long as
there are other parties acting in their own self interest. A 'scorched earth
policy'".

It answers the question, who's watching the watchers? Everyone. And the
network itself is paying them to do it.

> ...extremely worrying.

It seems to me this forces people into Nash Equilibrium. Say I now know
everything about you and vice-versa and anything we do to each other would be
broadcast around the world for all to see and irrevocably encrypted in a
worldwide database. And since "...all nodes are anonymous, if it's
computationally improbable to be sure of the identity and intentions of all
parties who may end up with the data, then all parties are compelled to expand
node territory for their own self interest and eschew behaviour leading to
M.A.D. outcomes"

> Since when does that protect anyone’s privacy?

It doesn't. And it doesn't care. I don't mean to sound rude but you'll have to
throw away this veneration of privacy to grasp what this is really about; like
esteeming the Divine Right of Kings, that's not going to work any more. People
are fighting over the right to keep riding this precious dead horse while
corporations and governments are riding over them in AI Ferraris because they
know that the ones who'll will win are those who privately control the most
data to train machines to do, well... everything that a human can do and more.
They don't care about your privacy. It's long gone and turned into glue.
People want to believe in it but it's dead. And the longer people think it's
still out there somewhere waiting for them, the longer it'll take them to
grasp the power that data affords any party that disregards that belief. Then
one day they'll wake up and realize all their land is in the hands of the
Conquistadors.

~~~
cmroanirgo
> _you 'll have to throw away this veneration of privacy to grasp what this is
> really about_

I cannot disagree more strongly. Every day our need to fight for privacy
increases.

All it takes is someone to take my actions and skew them in a political light.
From there on it's tiny policy shift that could end up with me in jail for
some fascist political crime that isn't a crime at all. Every day our
governments take more and more: we really shouldn't be doing their work for
them!

Look at what's happening in China: a whole religious cleanse is taking place:
Muslim, Buddhist, and even simple meditation groups (Falun Gong) are being
persecuted and imprisoned.

Russia has outlawed Jehovah's Witnesses for similar purpose, citing "extremist
activities".

And this is before we even get to more "political" style actions, such as
white hacking and security research. We need to be exceedingly carefully with
public spyware!

~~~
ethbro
If Xinjiang were under _public_ surveillance, with the results accessible to
the whole world, the Chinese government might tread more carefully.

As is, one of their biggest enablers is being able to effectively deny access
to the area.

 _Edit_ : I'd note this is generally an effective tactic of oppressive
regimes. It takes dedicated, brave, well-funded people to access an area
that's even semi-denied. Much less regularly. And the internet / world's
attention is fickle. No updates, no photos, no video? No one pushing for
justice.

~~~
notahacker
> If Xinjiang were under public surveillance, with the results accessible to
> the whole world, the Chinese government might tread more carefully.

Not really. The world already has a pretty good idea that China has
incarcerated millions of people for what wouldn't be considered offences or
adequate standards of proof in the West as part of wider political struggles.
And livestreaming is going to end at the point of arrest. A system tracking
the full history of every one of those millions of individuals' movements
prior to incarceration would add no useful insight into the nuances of the
conflict or rhetorical weight to arguments to take any form of action against
the Chinese government, but would be exceptionally useful to helping said
government in tracking down anyone that has ever interacted with
$PersonOfInterest or visited $Place.

There's a reason that people campaigning for the world to take interest in
human rights issues in their region do so by broadcasting explanations of
their cause and how brave and inspiring their missing friends are rather than
broadcasting their whereabouts.

~~~
david_at
You're looking at something and calling it 'surveillance' because you don't
yet have a word to describe the entire thing. It's too new so you see it
through your 'old eyes'. You noticed there was a camera involved and you knew
what that was so you ran with it.

It's the proverbial blind man whose hand has happened to land on the tusk and
he tells his companions, "It's a spear!". You're not seeing the whole elephant
because you've never seen one.

It benefits you when other people have knowledge about the world. It benefits
you if other people have the knowledge to drive safely. It benefits you that
your neighbours have a basic knowledge of germ theory and don't throw their
sewage in the streets like medieval peasants. It benefits you that your fellow
voters have at least a basic education and can make somewhat informed
decisions. It benefits you that medical knowledge isn't locked away in some
vault in Alexandria but it's in the mind of the doctor whose preventing an
outbreak of some disease you happen to be susceptible to.

Did you not read the things I was able to learn just from my first node? We
can give so many people free access to information that would push back
darkness, fear and superstition just a little further. And these people would
do and build things that would make your life better.

So instead of channelling the Archbishop of Canterbury telling Bible
translator John Wycliffe that too much knowledge will corrupt the commoners,
open your eyes.

------
chris1993
It seems technically interesting but societally problematic. For example it
appears to greatly simplify stalking and harassment. How can a domestic
violence victim avoid their attacker if their movements are so easily
monitored? Perhaps use this to identify people walking away from a gay bar or
a political meeting to set up a bashing? Note when somebody leaves home in
order to rob their place? And bear in mind that for some individuals the cost
of being identified back won't outweigh the value in being able to locate
their victim.

~~~
david_at
The situation you're describing means you can know exactly what your
stalker/harasser's routine is too. You can also prove undeniably that they are
a stalker or harasser. In fact, Grassland will be watching them even when you
can't. It can make statistical predictions to you about when they sleep, where
they work, where they're going to be at 11 tomorrow etc etc.

It's a two way stalker street.

~~~
chris1993
Yes, but you don't know your stalker exists until you are attacked and perhaps
they just don't care if their routine is known. Consider that your
stalker/attacker may enjoy the power of forcing you to monitor them back. So
now we have a new avenue for trolling.

The system as described empowers the obsessive aggressor far more than
improving the lives of people who don't care to focus on the minutiae of the
lives of others.

~~~
netsharc
To join the hypothetical, I'd imagine you can deploy AI/ML to try to avoid
your stalker(s). Google Assistant already tells you when to leave for work and
which route to take, imagine having it vary the time and the route to avoid
stalkers it has noticed from the data it gathered.

But then the stalkers would also have the same system to try to figure out
what your digital bodyguard recommended to you.

~~~
arisAlexis
that's a cool side project "ninja steam" where you randomize Google Assistant
routes to cover up your tracks :D

------
vessenes
Hi David, I posted an issue on GitHub with a few questions, but I have one
better asked here: what’s with your license? I _think_ I understand it
generally in that it looks like you want the right to harass people who
integrate grassland with social media; but what is the Deep Paranoia text
generation thing you refer to? And can you talk about how your group theory
link relates to the project?

~~~
rhcom2
> Any abuse of this software and/or algorithm(s) evinced by parties engaged in
> violation of this Agreement, if discovered will be taken as aknowledgement,
> consent and agreement by those parties to allow any member of the Grassland
> community to attempt to seek out and identify such parties in order to
> target and generate any digital news, social media content or other types of
> information that the household and/or family of the members of such parties
> may consume using the 'Deep Schizophrenia' narrative

It reads like, "if you break this license, we'll dox you and your family"

~~~
garmaine
Wow, wtf.

~~~
crooked-v
I'm getting some TempleOS vibes here.

~~~
fartcannon
I was thinking timecube, myself.

~~~
david_at
The words you guys use "dystopian", "doomsday", etc. etc. are all from
fiction. These are literally categories of genre-fiction. You're seriously
trying to make straight faced predictions about the future using what is
literally in the book store under "Fiction". Something that is by definition
not real, a fabrication, a lie. How can you possibly expect me to take you
seriously or grasp what it is that I'm doing? You've taken stories you know
are fake and mapped them to the real world. How is that any different from
religion? I'm giving you guys mathematical arguments and you're giving me Dr.
Seuss. And you've put words in my mouth to suit your narrative. The story you
want to believe. A story that's fake by defintion.

Don't you see how messed up that is? Well, Hitchen's Razor says that, "What
can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Here's my
razor, "What can be asserted with fiction can be dismissed with fiction". This
is a bulwark against those who insist on living in a world of fantasy and
superstition. But for the rest of us, those who want to live in reality, I'm
giving you the real world.

------
warent
I agree there are a lot of privacy concerns here, but isn't this what
governments and mega-corporations are already doing? This way at least the
data will be accessible to more than just privileged groups.

Furthermore, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that this could add a whole
new depth to the market of privacy and security. If this "Grassland" became
the norm, then privacy concerns would be less niche, the effectiveness of our
privacy efforts would be more obvious as we would have immediate feedback, and
it would, therefore, be easier to ensure we're maintaining privacy from
governments/corps (or anyone else for that matter).

So rather than reflexively lashing out at this as a "scary threat to privacy"
maybe this is actually a counter-intuitive evolution to enhanced privacy and
connectivity.

~~~
chris1993
At least there are some limits to the use of the data when it is restricted to
a few elites. When any loony or malcontent can use it then it just makes
things much worse for those at the bottom of the heap.

~~~
david_at
You're looking at something and calling it 'surveillance' because you don't
yet have a word to describe the entire thing. It's too new so you see it
through your 'old eyes'. You noticed there was a camera involved and you knew
what that was so you ran with it.

It's the proverbial blind man whose hand has happened to land on the tusk and
he tells his companions, "It's a spear!". You're not seeing the whole elephant
because you've never seen one.

It benefits you when other people have knowledge about the world. It benefits
you if other people have the knowledge to drive safely. It benefits you that
your neighbours have a basic knowledge of germ theory and don't throw their
sewage in the streets like medieval peasants. It benefits you that your fellow
voters have at least a basic education and can make somewhat informed
decisions. It benefits you that medical knowledge isn't locked away in some
vault in Alexandria but it's in the mind of the doctor whose preventing an
outbreak of some disease you happen to be susceptible to.

Did you not read the things I was able to learn just from my first node? We
can give so many people free access to information that would push back
darkness, fear and superstition just a little further. And these people would
do and build things that would make your life better.

So instead of channelling the Archbishop of Canterbury telling Bible
translator John Wycliffe that too much knowledge will corrupt the commoners,
open your eyes.

~~~
thecupisblue
Exactly. The real world is comprised of data, and the more we restrict it to
private interest, private interest gets to reap more benefits. Information is
only leverage against you if it's not public.

~~~
david_at
Absolutely!

It's funny that the words they use, "dystopian", "doomsdayish" etc. etc. ...
are all from fiction. these are literally categories of genre-fiction. They're
trying to make straight faced predictions about the future using what is
literally in the book store under "Fiction". Something that is by definition
not real, a fabrication, a lie. How can they possibly expect me to take them
seriously or grasp what it is that I'm doing? They've taken stories they know
are fake and mapped them to the real world. How is that any different from
religion? I'm giving them mathematical arguments and they're giving me Dr.
Seuss.

That's messed up. Well, Hitchen's Razor says that, "What can be asserted
without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Here's my razor, "What
can be asserted with fiction can be dismissed with fiction". This is a bulwark
against those who insist on living in a world of fantasy and superstition. But
for the rest of us, those who want to live in reality, I'm giving you the real
world.

------
dgellow
That sounds really terrible from a privacy point of view. That reminds me of
the technology SeeChange at the core of the dystopian novel The Circle.

~~~
david_at
Please see my answer to jaredmsmith ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19532560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19532560)

In addition to that, and I'm going to approach this delicately because some
people are uncomfortable with facing this fact. But since you're on here I'm
sure you know this. If you have a cell phone, used a credit reporting agency
(Equifax?) or used almost any website in the past 10 years, you're already
being tracked and your data has already been stolen in, on average, one data
breach a month to advertise or politically manipulate you. The horse has
already left the barn. Your life is right now being sold and resold every
millisecond.

But I'm doing you a favour. Because I'm giving your life away for free.

And that data is freely disseminated to everyone not just because it stands as
unassailable proof an AI performed a difficult computation on human behaviour
and earned those coins but because it's important that everyone knows the
truth about events in the natural world for science, democracy, health,
justice and all rational decision making. An embargo on stupidity and
ignorance in that node's corner of the world at least. Advantage must then
come from helpful innovation not parasites rent seeking on people's data.

~~~
GordonS
You're obviously a very intelligent and talented individual to have created
this, frankly amazing, system, and to articulate your reasons for doing so.

But I fundamentally disagree with the notion of total surveillance as a remedy
to asymmetric surveillance. You obviously think this would benefit the world,
but the endgame looks like a _dystopian nightmare_ to me.

I really wish you would have used your talents for "good rather than evil",
looking at ways to _prevent_ surveillance rather than increase it.

~~~
david_at
You're looking at something and calling it 'surveillance' because you don't
yet have a word to describe the entire thing. It's too new so you see it
through your 'old eyes'. You noticed there was a camera involved and you knew
what that was so you ran with it.

It's the proverbial blind man whose hand has happened to land on the tusk and
he tells his companions, "It's a spear!". You're not seeing the whole elephant
because you've never seen one.

It benefits you when other people have knowledge about the world. It benefits
you if other people have the knowledge to drive safely. It benefits you that
your neighbours have a basic knowledge of germ theory and don't throw their
sewage in the streets like medieval peasants. It benefits you that your fellow
voters have at least a basic education and can make somewhat informed
decisions. It benefits you that medical knowledge isn't locked away in some
vault in Alexandria but it's in the mind of the doctor whose preventing an
outbreak of some disease you happen to be susceptible to.

Did you not read the things I was able to learn just from my first node? We
can give so many people free access to information that would push back
darkness, fear and superstition just a little further. And these people would
do and build things that would make your life better.

So instead of channelling the Archbishop of Canterbury telling Bible
translator John Wycliffe that too much knowledge will corrupt the commoners,
open your eyes.

~~~
GordonS
I think what you've done here is interesting, fascinating even - but also
terrifying, and better belonging in the realm of sci-fi, rather than the real
world.

You talk about undeniable benefits knowledge, giving specific examples - yes,
there are many examples where knowledge is useful and can improve lives, but I
really don't see how knowing what time my neighbour takes a dump will benefit
myself or humanity (a crude example, but you get the idea).

> Did you not read the things I was able to learn just from my first node

I guess you mean the "Use Cases" section on the linked page. Yes, I read
those, and they played a large part in my comment you are replying to. For
example:

> A citizen or public servant who wants to know what any citizen or (rival)
> public servant is doing at this moment or has ever done before

Sorry, I value my privacy and that of others. And this was the nail in the
coffin:

> I now know most of my neighourhood's average height, individual walking gait
> identification pattern, estimated salary based on car model, family
> structure, daily schedules, how many (visibly) pregnant women, on what days
> in July the guy across the street mowed his lawn, the pattern he mowed it in
> the 8th time and that it was the same day my other neighbour had 5 guests
> over for a get together. I can rewind and replay it from multiple angles in
> 3D. If I really want, I can convert it to spreadsheet format, etc.

Just.... no. Please.

~~~
david_at
That data may be trash to you but to a sociologist, to an economist, to an
epidemiologist, to an anthropologist, to a historian, to a city planner, to a
property developer, to an investment firm, to an insurance company, to a
kinesiologist and on and on... it's TREASURE.

~~~
GordonS
...and I treasure my privacy.

~~~
david_at
Then don't install a Twitch streaming video camera in your bathroom. And don't
order a custom t-shirt with your banking password printed across the chest.
This isn't rocket science.

If you're out and about in view of others, you don't have privacy. By
definition of what we call "privacy" that is the exact opposite of privacy.

[https://media.giphy.com/media/NPyHgTkMStCXC/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/NPyHgTkMStCXC/giphy.gif)

------
whatshisface
Future generations will look upon this like we look upon the guy who
disassembled a bunch of smoke detectors in order to turn his back yard into a
radioactive superfund site.

------
krrishd
Looking for a link to the PDF of it, but I’m reminded of David’s Gelernter’s
“Mirror World” [0] concept from the 1990s, was lucky enough to encounter it in
one of my classes.

Hadn’t thought of the proposal as more than sci-fi but here we are :)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_world)

~~~
david_at
I didn't have a name for the type of software that Grassland is and that's why
the first sentence on the site is so long. I'd never heard of this "Mirror
World" concept before but the similarities are surprising now that I've read a
bit about it. I've added it into the description as "A world mirroring
system..."

~~~
david_at
On second thought. The man who coined the term seems like he's got some
uhmm... issues.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDfBLFyTBM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDfBLFyTBM4)

------
sibeshk96
Kudos for the concept. Intriguing form of counter-surveillance that could
actually work in a lot of existing surveillance states. Had a few questions :

1\. Who in the system is responsible for maintaining and updating the object
detection model? It seems like a centralized point of failure for an otherwise
decentralized system. Might want to check out existing techniques for
Federated Learning for ways to counter this.
([https://www.openmined.org/](https://www.openmined.org/))

2\. How possible is it to mount a Sybil attack on this system? Why did you
select PoW considering it's weaknesses? One possible problem could be that
early adopters will necessarily have to be co-located for the system to have
any value(Hence consolidating value in a certain geographical area, making it
very easy to regulate/shut-down).

~~~
david_at
1) Yeah, I'm not sure how Federated Learning would solve the problem.
Federated learning still requires someone to decide on a single model and it's
still trained under the coordination of a central server[1]. And how do you
ensure the data people are giving the model is good? You need some sort of
scheme to determine that. So how do you decide on the scheme?
Decentralization? Isn't this decentralised-turtles all the way down?

2) I'll explain in detail how it prevents Sybil attacks later. But It involves
signing all the tracklets and digest tuples (see website) as well as a sort of
Russian Nesting Doll of hashes. PoW is the only viable one we have. I like to
use systems that are battle tested. I don't know what you mean by PoW
weaknesses. Could you clarify? You don't need to co-locate. Read what I
learned about my neighbourhood with just one node under "Use Cases" on the
site. As to people shutting it down, I have clearly delineated on the site's
front page what my theorem predicts will happen if they do. They're handing
data, unprecedented knowledge of human behaviour and AI dominance to those who
don't. So yeah, shut it down. Fill your boots,
mate...([https://i.imgur.com/rDJWv5E.gif?noredirect](https://i.imgur.com/rDJWv5E.gif?noredirect)).

[1] [https://towardsdatascience.com/whats-new-in-deep-learning-
re...](https://towardsdatascience.com/whats-new-in-deep-learning-research-
understanding-federated-learning-b14e7c3c6f89)

------
endofwatch
The one saving grace of such a system is that it should make it trivially easy
to identify who is running these nodes, so that they can be forcibly ejected
from your community.

~~~
david_at
Grassland software is just the proof of a theorem whose 3 postulates/axioms I
clearly outline on the front page of the site. My theorem predicts that a
population that shuts it down is just concentrating cryptographic money and an
AI with perpetually increasing and unparalleled knowledge of human behaviour
into the hands of those that don't. In short, the rest of the world would
react with ->
[https://i.imgur.com/rDJWv5E.gif](https://i.imgur.com/rDJWv5E.gif)

------
rboyd
It says "successfully submitting fake data in the network is so
computationally intractable that any self-interested node would find it more
profitable to be honest", but that doesn't sound quite right.

I see the diagram and how it should enforce that the input frame is valid wrt
the hidden layer, but it seems I could generate a fake overlay animation (for
n POVs) and superimpose it over (or object detect and scrub it from) the input
frame sequence.

~~~
david_at
You'd have to do this repeatedly. Many times a second. And you could have to
always have a different one each time. And you'd still have to hash the hidden
layer so you're still spending money. And you'd still have to make sure your
objects didn't behave on the map in a funny way. They couldn't walk through
walls or fly off into space. Or walk into the ground. Because other nodes will
see that. It'd too difficult to maintain over time.

~~~
rboyd
But I'm speaking to the set of cases where there is some external economic
incentive (outside of the crypto token value) to either incriminate or
exonerate some actor's behavior.

I think the scrubbing/exoneration scenario is straightforward, and the
physical anomalies you mention (for the incriminate overlay attack) would be
handled by CG or 1:1 offline model recording.

Maybe the network needs to report on cases where sensors disagree and
visualize/surface these n different versions of history.

Any thoughts on leveraging something like Golem for the compute and Streamr or
Erasure for the payment/sponsorship?

~~~
david_at
> I think the scrubbing/exoneration scenario is straightforward, and the
> physical anomalies you mention (for the incriminate overlay attack) would be
> handled by CG or 1:1 offline model recording.

You could but it would take a lot of effort even if you just wanted to scrub
the data of one. You'd also have to know what you're about to scrub before you
even do it. You'd also have to make sure there weren't other nodes around too.
Keep in mind, every few months the power requirements of the models increase.
The next model will have semantic segmentation
([https://medium.com/nanonets/how-to-do-image-segmentation-
usi...](https://medium.com/nanonets/how-to-do-image-segmentation-using-deep-
learning-c673cc5862ef)) so by Eon 1 things are going to be much, much harder
to fake than Eon 0, which we're at now.

I'll admit, it's never going to be perfect. But as you mentioned, we can find
ways to make it better. But one thing I believe we can guarantee
mathematically is that if someone's going to make an attempt to submit fake
data into the Merkle Tree, we're going to make them have to pay out the nose
just to attempt it. So they have to have a lot of resources at their disposal.
But in the end, they're also involved in raising the value of Grassland's
currency for everyone else. Because they're funnelling more compute costs into
the system, trading their money for Grassland's coin. So everyone else in the
network is, in a certain sense, rewarded from the penalty extracted from the
attacker's dishonesty.

> Maybe the network needs to report on cases where sensors disagree and
> visualize/surface these n different versions of history.

Yes, I'll think about this... Do you have further thoughts on this?

> Any thoughts on leveraging something like Golem for the compute and Streamr
> or Erasure for the payment/sponsorship?

I don't really know much about them. Most of the 'blockchain' stuff out there
seems quite overly complicated to me and I'm not sure what they even do to be
honest (Not to disparage these systems in particular. I think I've only ever
heard of Golem before. And the other two I've never heard of). But I'd rather
work with systems that I know and aren't going to be changed from under me
because of the whims of some other dev team. And Grassland has quite a unique
problem space so it was necessary to build the system from the ground up so I
know exactly what each piece is doing and what it could potentially do because
I don't put in any more code than I need to.

~~~
stevens32
I'm not sure I follow the reasoning that making attacks expensive is strong
enough protection. State actors have plenty of resources to throw at this,
much more than private citizens - doesn't that mean this effectively becomes
one way surveillance again? Since if the stalker has enough resources, you
can't effectively stalk them back

------
Ozzie_osman
One interesting tweak you could consider, don't know if it's possible: it
would be great if everyone could see logs of access as well. If everyone is
giving up privacy symmetrically, it might be an interesting dynamic if
everyone can also see who accessed their information (or, if it's anonymous,
simply know that _someone_ accessed it).

------
madhadron
Neural networks plus proof of work is interesting, but there is one,
foundational problem: cryptocurrencies have no particular value. Bitcoin has a
bubble of people who held a particular ideology and didn't understand
currency, and folks who needed money laundering took advantage of that.
Without a similar bubble, it's hard to convince someone to give you a currency
that you can, say, pay taxes with in exchange for some numbers that you can
prove were hard to calculate.

Beyond that, it's pretty straightforward to shut down. If a municipality
decides it doesn't like this, you pass a law against it. You can't fully
anonymize sparse nodes because the appearance and disappearance of objects
under various situations lets you pinpoint where it is and either send the
police up to break it or give the company running the poorly secured security
camera an injunction to fix it.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Bitcoin has a bubble of people who held a particular ideology and didn't
> understand currency, and folks who needed money laundering took advantage of
> that.

I'm pretty sure that the Bitcoin ideology specifically seeks to enable money
laundering. It's not like people who needed money laundering took advantage of
a design flaw; the point is to let people launder money.

~~~
arisAlexis
actually all money transacted is transparent because the blockchain is public
domain. What is used for money laundering is dollars. It's a common fallacy
that there is a lot of money laundering with Bitcoin disproved by EU studies
(google them).

------
rosstex
What are the privacy implications of such a system?

~~~
traderjane
It may allow organizations and governments to hold each other accountable,
because generally there's an inappropriate coordination or centralization of
the data-gathering machinery and the political/financial machinery.

As for privacy, I think it will serve to add more players to the data game,
balancing the powers.

~~~
rosstex
Sorry, let me just list the first use case:

"A citizen... who wants to know what any citizen... is doing at this moment or
has ever done before"

uh

~~~
usrusr
More power to those who have the resources to get the digging done for them.
Even with a perfect AI interface, you could only ask "Alexa" so many questions
in 24 hours. Lowly individuals would gain absolutely nothing, they have better
things to do than sniffing each other's data trails. That investment of time
would in the overwhelming majority only be worthwhile for malicious use cases.

Even in the simple stalker/stalker evasion scenario: the stalker would enjoy
digging into the data, but for the stalkee, keeping track of the stalker for
avoidance would be a terrible chore.

------
aboutruby
Wouldn't most of those use cases be illegal? For instance tracking license
plates of cars is already illegal as far as I know.

~~~
howard941
Where is gait identification or license plate tracking illegal? If you're
visible to the naked eye from a public space in the US it wouldn't be a bad
idea to expect it.

~~~
canofbars
Because laws are able to make these distinctions that seem arbitrary when
broken down.

"How can child porn be illegal when its just ones and zeros on a magnetic
disc"

"How can harassment be illegal, if you are in a public place you should expect
words in the form of sound waves to enter your ears"

~~~
howard941
I condemn child porn and verbal abuse. Have you no shame?

------
Mizza
Love it love it love it.

Can it work with existing public webcams? I'd love to track the comings and
goings of every politician in Washington.

~~~
david_at
I'm glad you like it. Yes it can :) Keep in mind it's still beta. There's
still more work that needs to be done. But if you have any questions just open
up an issue on github or email me. My email is on the bottom of the website.

------
coldacid
Quite amused to see that Presto card! Always great to see something done here
in Ontario. On the other hand, the privacy/security implications of this are
very frightening.

~~~
david_at
:) You know I heard saying once. I think it goes something like this, "Every
mathematician receives their best ideas in the three 'B's. 'Bed', 'Bath' and
'Bus'"

------
sdan
Can you put this on a car to get a full 360 view of what's going on?

~~~
david_at
Unfortunately, no. Not at this time. Your node calibrates itself and
interprets what it sees in each 2D video frame into the real 3D world by
'knowing' where its 'virtual self' is placed in the 3D map of the real world
that you'll find in the GUI. When you set up your node, you have to do set
this calibration once, manually using the GUI and its accuracy in space is
down to half a centimetre on the earth's surface and its accuracy in time is
down to a millisecond.

If it was on the top of the car, the node would have to be constantly updated
automatically. But GPS is no where near that accurate. I guess you could use a
combination involving LIDAR to constantly tell the node where it is so the
car's position is updated in Grassland.

But it would make more computational/economic sense for the government and
economically self-interested citizens (interested in mining Grassland's coin)
to line the streets with ip cameras which grassland nodes can read from to
analyze and broadcast car and pedestrian locations/speed etc. etc. millisecond
by millisecond. Which self driving cars could pick up and 'know' everything
going on around them even things they can't 'see' themselves.

~~~
raidicy
What's stopping me from finding all the unsecured IP cameras in my city and
using them to "mine" data? Further, if I could do that what's stopping others
from reusing the nodes that I set up?

~~~
david_at
> What's stopping me from finding all the unsecured IP cameras in my city and
> using them to "mine" data?

Absolutely nothing.

> Further, if I could do that what's stopping others from reusing the nodes
> that I set up?

Right now, nothing. Nodes could overlap other nodes. But they're still using
compute cycles so they're still spending money. The only issue is, who gets
theirs into the tree first. And if the hash is the same, you better be first
or you're just wasting time.

Keep in mind, I've still got a lot of work to do. And until today, I've been
working on this by myself. And pretty much since last summer. You can see the
list of tasks that I need to complete on the site under "Beta Version".

~~~
raidicy
Thanks for answering my question. And I want to say I appreciate what you're
doing. Information is power and it's being leveraged against individuals
practically unchecked. If I had to guess some state actor would have come up
with (or already has) with a technology like this eventually. Everything in
that system would be kept private and be leveraged against the individual
without consent.

Tools would be built with it that contain their own biases and uses. The
appeal of using this system against others would be too great, either for
those in power or those who seek to sell the ability. For that reason I like
the ubiquitous access _everyone_ would have.

Distributing this to everyone reminds me of the end of "The Stars My
Destination"

To continue with my original question though; I'm guessing whatever system has
faster compute cycles will win the race of who hashes first? Will you be able
to tell who's hash gets there first

~~~
david_at
> I'm guessing whatever system has faster compute cycles will win the race of
> who hashes first? Will you be able to tell who's hash gets there first

Yes, but it's not just about hashing power though. And there's no nonce like
Bitcoin. It's mostly about deep learning inference power. You can see the
process described on the website under "Unrewriteable History And Reasonable
Storage Requirements" (though I'll probably change that title soon and call it
"[something] Merkle Tree"). I've copied the last bullet point here...

* The process of producing the next Merkle Tree is a competition any node can compete in. A person who cultivates real trees is an Arborist so we'll use that term. Our "arborists" will also need to perform inference on the frames that were randomly selected for evaluation based on the last Merkle root, and will need to publish each frame's digest tuple and the "reserved digest" (see diagram). If the original node holding the reserved digest signs the arborist's digest, it generates that node's reward coins and a percentage goes to the arborist. But that will only propogate if that arborist's tree is also accepted by a majority of the network. Therefore, as long as (1) there is always active competition to compute the Merkle Tree by statistically verifying the work of all other nodes and (2) over 50% of every active node prevents inflation of the money supply by rejecting trees that don't pass their proof-of-work, then all rational (self-interested) nodes will have to be honest.

------
pilooch
Interesting project! You could run the neural networks directly on the pi.
Expect 3 fps for object detection, try ncnn or deepdetect + ncnn for ease of
use. That's without GPU. With a Jetson Nano expect up to 50 fps. You could
detect more classes as well, as needed.

------
darkpicnic
The opening description has to be the most informative, amazing run-on
sentence I've ever seen.

~~~
david_at
I'm going to screenshot this comment and send it to my high school English
teacher.

------
bjelkeman-again
The video isn’t viewable on an Ipad.

~~~
david_at
Sorry, I'm going to change the video format later. Maybe a GIF or something.
But I don't want to touch it now while so many people are looking at it just
in case I mess things up.

I've uploaded the two of them to Gyfcat for now. Let me know if that works for
you

[https://gfycat.com/BigGraveCricket](https://gfycat.com/BigGraveCricket)

[https://gfycat.com/EqualGreatDarklingbeetle](https://gfycat.com/EqualGreatDarklingbeetle)

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Thanks. That worked.

------
darepublic
Interesting idea to create a currency of proof of work for a task of intrinsic
value. I had thought about creating a currency around making successful
predictions, some computational activity that is not random but has some
demonstrated value.

------
webdva
Wow, very cool and inspiring stuff.

~~~
david_at
Thank you. Much appreciated :)

------
Kip9000
This is incredibly interesting! Real time simulation at scale!!

------
arisAlexis
this is a prime example of what blockchain can do

------
70122-_6
needs an odroid, tudder extension completing.

