Would it be? I was implementing similar stuff for a crappy PHP forum 15+ years ago that wanted to track which users were sharing private posts outside their community. It started with screenshot-tracking by embedding small 1xN base64 images that were almost completely transparent except for some tinting on each pixel to represent a 1 or a 0 bit at the edges of several elements where they wouldn't be noticed. That didn't survive jpeg compression or photos, so I added text transforms that represented tracking bits as well. Things like one vs two spaces after a period or an expanded contraction would correspond to a bit of the ID of the user the text was served to.
That worked fine since the site was mostly prose, but I couldn't help but think about generalizing it to encode tracking bits as page styling information as well. Never ended up finishing that implementation because I got too in the weeds trying to account for rendering differences in customized user agents by adding error correction bits to the IDs. That way it wouldn't matter if a few styles were overridden or obscured.
I don't think any of these ideas were particularly novel or difficult to think of, so I'd expect plenty of independent implementations over the years. If they do their job right you'd never know about them, so there's likely more than you expect.
They could place nearly invisible watermarks that only a camera would notice. Probably your safest bet is to deep fry the image. Pictures of pictures with high compression turned on.
Lol it's literally just a giant watermark across the screen with the person's name and blocking the screen when the webcam identifies a smartphone...
Needless to say, both of these are trivially bypassable.
I think most of us are more concerned about the potential presence of invisible watermarks, obviously submitting a picture with "JOHN SMITH ACME CORP 2025-01-09" blatantly strewn across the screen will be trivially traced back to you
It is actually pretty common among Chinese companies. At least in Tiktok, where all software are internally developed (as explained in the article they use Lark, something similar to Slack).
This gives them flexibility and usability as different softwares can interact seamlessly. For example you can click open a link to the document that other people are screen sharing during a meeting. But it also embeds your name on the screen so you probably don't want to take a screenshot or a photo.
I know many companies also use techniques that generate invisible watermarks that are difficult to remove without breaking the image. I don't know exactly what the technique is, but maybe this is close:
Microsoft did it on the XBOX (360? Or the original, not sure) to help track leaks. If you uploaded a video or took a picture, the background of the system menu embedded enough data to find the individual user. IIRC it had to do with a pattern of rings or drops or something. I can't find the article about it any more.
Google used to watermark internal emails using non-visible Unicode. It would catch people copy-pasting things to the press. (This was circa 2010; I don't know if they still do it.)
Printers and copiers have hidden "tracking dots" that can ID the specific device used. Introduced by Xerox in the mid 80s and not known to the public until 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
I do remember world of warcraft using some funny trickery for their screenshots too. embedding client info into the screenshots, to figure out who took it. (If the player was under NDA or similar)
> Google used to watermark internal emails using non-visible Unicode. It would catch people copy-pasting things to the press.
How does that even work? I assume the unique identifiers are generated along the lines of https://zws.im but do they send a different version of the same email to each unique recipient? Or does the watermark get inserted by some email client when copying text?
iPhones, Pixels, and Samsung phones have been defaulting to HEIC for around five years now, so it’s unlikely that compression alone would prevent tracking dots or other unique noise or patterns from being preserved. Steganography is a well-established technique that can definitely survive through photographs, even under compression. Variations in fonts or typography could be used for tracking too. There are plenty of creative ways this could be achieved.
The more obvious explanation would be that air controllers surmised that it was at risk of being shot at again if it continued attempting a landing in Grozny and the safest thing to do was to divert it out of Russia.
Regional air traffic control is in Rostov (on-Don) - you’d think they’d at least be able to get the military controllers at Rostov (Southern military district HQ) on the horn?
Assuming they have an established channel of communication, yes they would have, but imagine trying to communicate to them which blip on the radar screen is an actual civilian aircraft, and hoping they're able to track it and make sure they only fire on other targets.
And notably, the "drones" were civilian propeller aircraft fitted out to fly an unmanned suicide trajectory. I'm not sure they would even look all that distinguishable on a SAM operator's screen from a small jet like this.
The Airliner has a transponder and a radio. Pretty sure the drone does not.
The transponder code, assigned by various ATC would identify that aircraft as a civilian airliner when it checks in, and on the screens of the SAM operators.
Also, the speed and altitude of the airliner, even approaching Grozny would not be the same as a drone. Airliners, even on approach, are somewhat faster, probably 200-250mph, or faster, and much higher in altitude, at least 5000ft, probably more like 10,000ft until close to the airport.
Out of curiosity, why wouldn't a hostile power also put a transponder on their drone (maybe one even replaying a nearby plane's code)? Surely that could help it blend in and avoid defenses
More importantly, it's not uncommon when crossing Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) regions (eg. from Washington Center, to NY Center) for controllers to instruct pilots to change Squawk codes. Same applies when crossing from one country's airspace to another.
One of these drones, without a bunch of extra avionics would be unable to change transponder codes in flight, and talk with controllers via relay, that would probably double the cost of the drone, or at least significantly increase it.
So even doing something creative, like spoofing the transponder Squawk code, from another aircraft, probably wouldn't help.
Also, with Mode-C, and Mode-S transponders, the later used with ADS-B, which feeds all the flight tracking websites, the transponder transmits altitude.
A SAM operator will figure out somewhat quickly if an airliner is supposed to be at 10,000ft and 250mph but isn't according to primary radar tracking, but much lower and slower, that it's spoofing it's transponder.
A regional jet on approach and a prop aircraft in cruise don't necessarily look that different in ground speeds, altitudes, or even radar cross section to most radars.
This is the Russia war coming home to roost. They better admit that they are engaged in an actual war, and stop allowing civilian aircraft in areas that are attacked frequently.
Secondary surveillance radar does not depend on tracked aircraft knowing their own position, though.
ADS-B is an augmentation of that, which makes receivers simpler, but ATC generally does not rely on it exclusively (except in some very remote regions), nor on any type of active/cooperative signal or response – if everything else fails (maliciously or accidentally), there's usually primary radar as well.
These "drones" are more like enclosed ultralights, heavily loaded, 50-80mph, which an airliner would have already stalled at and be dropping out of the sky.
Ukraine is modifying a large variety of smaller aircraft to be suicide drones. Yes, A-22s/A-33s are used which cruise at like 100-120MPH or so (though there's been some talk of turboprop conversions of the same, too). But other small civilian aircraft which cruise at more like 160MPH have been employed, versus a late approach speed of the Embraer of 180-190MPH or so.
And remember, radars vary groundspeed, which can easily vary by +/- 25MPH from actual (and will be reading the Embraer's speed on the low side).
It's one of the reason Russia was very hesitant to shoot them down initially. Some of the planes were cessna and similar single engine prop planes that were loaded with explosives and remote controller:
Magnus doesn't usually direct his frustration at others (except in the infamous Hans Niemann game) but he has been known to storm out of interviews after some of his bad losses.
No, I'm not. It's apples and oranges, without a doubt. But, when I look at what car fits my needs. It was an Outback before, and the major factor was reliability. The Leaf has performed admirably there, with only the equivalent ICE components needing servicing. I probably wouldn't buy a BMW, but my friend would and that's where we started - hey EV's are really heavy, I wonder how much heavier it is than my car? Huh, TIL.
Those numbers mean disposable household income divided by the square root of household size. American households are unusually large for a developed country, and measures like that overestimate individual incomes relative to countries with smaller households.
To throw in a data point on this for reference, as an American I pay around ~$220 a month (~$2,640 per year) on health insurance through my job, this comes out of my pre-taxed income. While I won't get into specifics on the details of the terms, I am quite happy with it.
I work in Massachusetts, but I live in New Hampshire. I pay more than double this on both Social Security fees & Massachusetts income taxes, which are non-deductible since New Hampshire has no income tax and makes up for that with higher property taxes (housing is cheaper though). Filtered to just health related services I can easily identify, in total I pay for Social Security, Medicare, and indirectly Massachusett's state healthcare (which I can only gain access to under limited conditions). Of these, only the private insurance fee directly benefits me, and I have little faith social security will actually pay out when I reach the qualifying age.
In terms of investment my HSA, and 401k are a much better dollar for dollar investment for my future finances than any government service, so I find it extremely unlikely I would ever truly benefit from public healthcare.
Despite my tone here, I'm more annoyed than upset about this. Due to the overall societal benefit, I'm not entirely against public healthcare depending on the details, I'm just under no illusion that it would be to my benefit, and I'm not much of an outlier. I'm also mostly convinced the root issue here is the inflated cost of healthcare rather than just the insurance aspect, public healthcare naively implemented would likely turn into yet another government subsidy for hospitals to devour imo.
> To throw in a data point on this for reference, as an American I pay around ~$220 a month (~$2,640 per year) on health insurance
Having just filled my annual benefits selections tonight, here's my data point: health insurance is $3000/month on the company plan (36K/year).
Yes, the company "pays" for a percentage of that. But of course the entire $3K/month is part of my total compensation cost to the company. If healthcare wasn't so ludicrously expensive in the US, they could afford to pay me more, instead of funneling all this money to insurance company profits.
Insurance companies don’t actually make very much profit. I don’t recall the exact number, but something like 80-90% of premiums taken in are paid out in claims. Insurance companies are an easy target though, since no one wants to go after the doctors and hospitals for charging too much.
> Insurance companies don’t actually make very much profit.
Insurance companies usually (maybe it's always, not certain) are regulated to a percentage cap spent on categories. What is the result? They are incentivized to push prices ever higher as much and as fast as possible because a % of higher price is more profit for them.
> Insurance companies are an easy target though, since no one wants to go after the doctors and hospitals for charging too much.
Doctors and hospitals actually provide a valuable service, they provide health care. They deserve to be paid.
Insurance companies provide no value whatsoever, they are just a middleman siphoning off profits off the work of doctors (and nurses and everyone else doing the actual work).
Also, doctors don't actually charge that much. When I get billed $980 for a 15 minute doctor visit (as I just was last month), it is most certainly not because the doctor is earning ~$4000/hr. That doctor isn't paid more than your average senior software engineer (in Silicon Valley anyway), all the rest of the money is lost to middlemen who didn't contribute anything.
Switzerland's system is the kind of system Obamacare was modeled after (i.e. requiring private health insurance, and providing subsidies to those who can't afford it).
No doubt, Switzerland's healthcare is cheaper (American doctors and hospitals are some of the most expensive in the world), but the data I linked to is already adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP).
If you do as I suggest then you eliminate a lot more than 90% of the risk. 62% of cyclist fatalities weren't wearing a helmet, so that alone is a huge thing you can do to improve your odds. 22% are drunk. 50% are on major roads. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/bicyc...
I knew I would get responses about "why don't cars just..." e.g. why should I change, they're the ones who suck. I'm not suggesting or opposing public policy changes here. I'm giving practical advice which makes cycling much safer than the statistical average.
If you do all of what I say, it's a reasonably safe and healthy pastime.
It’s a publicly traded company with very high liquidity (tens of billions being traded each day). The market cap is based on the price that other buyers and sellers are bidding. This hypothetical of there being no other buyers simply doesn’t apply.
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