Gattaca: Key to Cracking Burglary Case: Two Squashed Mosquitoes
https://www.newser.com/story/323037/burglar-is-caught-thanks-to-2-mosquitoes.html
<warp>
We've arrived at Full Gattaca.....
https://www.wired.com/story/parabon-nanolabs-dna-face-models-police-facial-recognition/
Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect's Face—and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It | WIRED
Those both literally sound like semi-implausible sci-fi plots from 20 years ago.
Actually, let me rephrase that. Those both sound like plot devices that would be in movies that would also include flying cars, personalized ad panels as you walk down the street and more. In other words, Gattaca, Blade Runner, something set that far in the future.
Of course, the original Blade Runner was set in 2019, so there you go and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the PKD novel it is based on) was set in 1992. So there you go. The glass half full version is that we have successfully postponed the worst of of the Androids/Blade world far beyond expectations.
> DNA to Predict a Suspect's Face—and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It
There must be way to many environmental variables that change face characteristics for this to work at this point. Then you add in gene expression and epigenetics and this indeed seem scifi to me. I suppose they'll be able to run algorithms to predict some of that some day where they calculate local stressors to figure out some of that, but I really doubt it will get close any time soon.
PKD was an interesting person.
>sound like semi-implausible sci-fi plots
You were supposed to have watched them by now.
I didn't particularly like Gattaca but it is turning out to be a dead-on portrayal of how DNA could be used in the dystopian state. IIRC, they closed an airport to find dna material --turned out to be an eyelash-- and up pops a picture of the suspect.
>> supposed
Well, thus my revised comment. I meant to say that when we saw this tech in movies, it seemed like a distant future with all sorts of other miracle inventions just shy of transporters. It's strange to see how much of the sci-fi of my youth has become annoying ho-hum technology that we complain about not working just right. And I have to say that the parts that I expected to come first have no necessarily been the ones that have come first.
As an example... as a kid who was six when Americans landed on the moon and by nine, just three years later, we were driving CARS on the moon, it seemed obvious to me that we would have large permanent bases there by 2000 that would be launch pads for Mars missions. Obviously. It seemed unlikely sci-fi that you would video conference with the people on those bases.
The massive hyper-exponential fall in DNA sequencing has been astounding. When my wife's prof did his PhD, they had to do PCR by hand with single samples, agitating them and mixing based on stopwatch alarms. When she did her PhD, they had machines that did single samples while you did other things. Just a few years later, going back to her lab, people were feeding arrays of 1000 samples into machines. And that has continued to accelerate like that over the intervening 20 years since then.
It is really hard to grasp what a hyper-exponential process will yield when you are only seeing the very beginnings.
>> didn't particularly like
Everyone raved about Gattaca at the time and I also wasn't impressed, but I saw it again more recently and had to admit it held up better and I thought it was better than the first time.
I like Blade Runner, but Androids still trumps it.
>"Enemy of the State"
This one boils down to realtime location data & mapping (old tech now), high resolution cameras on spy satellites (really old tech**), & phone/communications interception (NSA has it beat nowadays).
really old tech**
1970: The dad of a college friend worked for the gov (likely CIA/Corona) interpreting what equipment the Soviets had installed in buildings, ships, tanks, etc. He worked mostly from high-res spy photos looking for antennas that were mounted -the source was probably U2s at first, satellites later. By the time I graduated they could read license plates and there were hints that they could make out some print on documents.
https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/corona-americas-first-imaging-satellite-program/
CORONA: America's First Imaging Satellite Program - CIA
During the Gulf War weren't they saying that they could use satellite imagery to read the title of the cover of books people were holding?
"You can now get commercially available Earth Observation imagery up to a maximum resolution of 31x31cm per pixel – and yet you don't need higher resolution than about 20m per pixel for most of what we do."
Hell, at this resolution they can see your religion.
https://www.space-intelligence.com/2021/11/18/why-dont-we-use-the-highest-resolution-images-available-sometimes-less-is-more/
Why don't we use the highest resolution images available? Sometimes, less is more - Space Intelligence
>There must be way to many environmental variables that change face characteristics for this to work at this point.
Weeeell, I have to say I was surprised that when I did a 23 and me, it predicted a lot of things about my looks that are true.
It said I probably had light brown colored hair, pale skin, and blue to green eyes with dark rings around the irises. It said I burned easily and that I am likely to have bunions. It even said I am likely to drink more caffeine than the average person and that I am shorter than average, have a slim build and have more fast twitch muscle fibers than the average person. (I didn't know that, but looking back, that tracks: I can sprint, but long distances are work.)
Even if all this does is determine the suspect is white, slim and has light brown hair, THAT is something to go on when you have nothing.