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Big data

Facebook and google indexing firearm serial numbers.

4 Responses to “Big data”

  1. Rob K Says:

    No, they’re OCRing all text in images, which happens to include serial numbers on guns.

  2. Sigivald Says:

    What Rob said.

    They don’t care about “gun serial numbers” specifically.

    It’s ALL TEXT IN ALL IMAGES.

  3. Tirno Says:

    It’ll take a little bit longer for the machine learning to figure out the context of when a sequence of numbers on a gun-shaped object is a serial number or a model number.

    So the next advance in OCR-proof receivers will be to have the whole thing covered in numbers with silver fill, as if it were a weird grip pattern, with the actual serial number in the same size and font but NOT filled.

    Or write the serial number in Hebrew or Japanese or something and if anyone challenges you on the validity of that numbering system, call them a racist and an Arabic numerical supremacist.

  4. pkoning Says:

    Tirno, all those techniques are trivial details. Anything that can OCR numbers off photos reasonably reliably is vastly more sophisticated than the algorithms needed to sort out those minor obfuscations you describe.
    The simple answer is: don’t post photos of your weapons.

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