What are we supposed to believe this is some sort of magical VCR?
Programmer tries to explain binary search to the police
Submitted 11 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@startrek.website to programmer_humor@programming.dev
https://startrek.website/pictrs/image/14129b6b-6cd5-4c12-89da-0fd23e294fc7.jpeg
Comments
Elon_Musk@hexbear.net 11 months ago
psud@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Most security cameras record mpegs to hard drives
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 11 months ago
I used to do this when having problems while rendering video in my past life.
lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
image transcription:
Afterwards I found a chatroom thread among Cambridge computer scientists, one of whom had also been told that unless he could pin down the moment of theft no one would look at the footage. He said he had tried to explain sorting algorithms to police - he was a computer scientist, after all. You don’t watch the whole thing, he said. You use a binary search. You fast forward to halfway, see if the bike is there and, if it is, zoom to three quarters of the way through. But if it wasn’t there at the halfway mark, you rewind to a quarter of the way through. It’s very quick. In fact, he had pointed out, if the CCTV footage stretched back to the dawn of humanity it would probably have only taken an hour to find the moment of theft. This argument didn’t go down well.
LUHG_HANI@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This sparked something magical OP.
The_Picard_Maneuver@startrek.website 11 months ago
And I had worried about it being a picture of text.
DroneRights@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I was in exactly this situation. My bike was stolen, there was CCTV, they said it would take hours to go through the time during which it was stolen.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
“Can I have a copy of the recording?”
DroneRights@lemm.ee 11 months ago
That’s what I said, and they said no
andioop@programming.dev 11 months ago
Source article for the curious, and an unpaywalled copy on archive.is
schmidtster@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I get the sentiment, but you want them to waste public resources doing it on all these different clunky uis and software? Sometimes these take minutes to load new information to parse.
Maybe waste your time pinpointing it instead of expecting public resources to do what you could do for them?
new_guy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I mean… their job supposedly is to protect and serve the citiens so yeah… I’d expect them to use their tools to do their job.
schmidtster@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s your software and you know how to operate it. Would take you a fraction of the time as well.
Maybe public cameras sure, but private that’s not their tool by any stretch of the imagination.
And most public cameras don’t record for privacy reasons.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 11 months ago
Oh shit, a few minutes to do their job. The fucking horror, wouldn’t want to cut into their being an utter fucking bastard time, where they’re probably harassing a minority or beating their wife.
schmidtster@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s public money, why waste it when you could provide it for them.
But argue fallacious points.
NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social 11 months ago
So I should do their job for them?
Why the fuck are we paying them then?
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 11 months ago
on all these different clunky uis and software
As someone who has used security cam software before. I swear they are designed to be as unhelpful, slow, and convoluted as possible.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, every time I have ever had to hand over footage to the police for thefts at our family store, I clip and organizr that shit. I also include a paper identifying each file, the timestamps and what happened during them, any details I identified that they can corroborate (physical description, identifiable clothing/tattoos, make and model of vehicle, license plate number, etc.). I often end up putting in 1-2 hours of work on it watching, editing and transferring footage.
If you want traction and results from the police, you need to make it as easy as possible for them by doing the heavy lifting yourself. The cynical view is that thats because they just don’t care, but also, in fairness, your case is one of dozens of cases on their desk and the cases never stop coming. This is your priority, so put in the effort instead of expecting others do so.
gregorum@lemm.ee 11 months ago
That’s an interesting way to say that they shouldn’t get paid if they’re not doing their jobs. 
ooterness@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This post is horrifying, not funny.
uis@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This student should never go to xitter. He will be canceled instantly.
potterman28wxcv@beehaw.org 11 months ago
I do not get why it would work in that case. I assume the scenario is someone with a bike coming, doing theft, then leaving with the same bike.
Therefore there will be a period without bike, then a period with bike, then a period without bike again.
Let’s assume there is no bike on the particular moment viewed. How do you know whether it occured before or after the theft? If you make the wrong decision, you get stuck on an endless binary search… Unless you take note at each timestamp where you made the decision, draw a tree of timestamps, and go back the tree if your search is fruitless but that’s much more complicated than what this post says.
SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
You’re making this way more complicated than it actually is. The guy definitely can give estimates for when he parked the bike and when he found out that it was stolen. It’s not that complicated.
potterman28wxcv@beehaw.org 11 months ago
I misunderstood the problem. I thought the thieve came on bike to steal something. I did not get that the bike itself was what got stolen.
Aatube@kbin.social 11 months ago
To me it sounds like they stole the bike.
potterman28wxcv@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Thanks indeed I misunderstood the problem
8000mark@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
For anybody else looking for the source of this quote: archive.md/RyZI0