user-avatar
Today is Friday
March 29, 2024

Tag: search

July 6, 2017

Using Browser plugin to crowdsource against fake images

by viggy — Categories: internet, social, software, tech — Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Recently we have seen an exponential increase in circulation of fake news and images. Fake images play a major role as with some simple image editting, a completely different context can be conveyed. This menace has been used by various political parties to spread their propaganda.
With Google Image search being so powerful, I propose that it should be possible to use a browser plugin to verify the originality of the image. We can use Google Image Search to find other sources where the image is used and hence get different contexts of the image. Once this is developed, a repository of responses from the users may be created where they can easily report images which they feel are being used in wrong context on a particular website. As this repository improves, what we will see is that most of the images can be captured in the repository so that for the same image, we do not have to depend on Google Image Search everytime but rather use the repository itself.

Let us now look at how a common user would use the plugin.
A user who has the plugin installed browses a webpage with different images on it. Suppose he/she is interested in understanding the source of the image, the user right clicks on the image and selects the option, “Search For Source”. Initially, this should cause a Google Image Search Query and the results along with the websource of the images found should be displayed in a dailog box. The user should be given an option of reporting the image as original or fake based on the results shown along with option of marking what the user thinks is the original source of the image along with some comments.
This usecase seems to be a good starting point to release the plugin as version 1.

In the next version, we should be able to first look at the repository of all the reported images and give a much better information about the image based on all previous reportings of the image. As the community grows, we would ofcourse want moderation of reportings to ensure that false reportings by the very people spreading false news is avoided. An open structure similar to Wikipedia would be needed to ensure a fair community is developed to keep the system unbiased and trustworthy.
An API of the repository can also be created so that social networking sites and messaging platforms can develop support in their platform so that when images are shared on their platform, users automatically get the information from the repository. For example, a simple bot for telegram messaging platform can be developed which can be asked to show the information from the repository based on a certain command when a image is shared in a group. Ofcourse we need to ensure that private images from people’s chat is not shared in the repository and necessary checks and balances are put in place for the same.

September 16, 2014

Project Idea: harddisk search engine

by viggy — Categories: FSMK, project — Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

I do have loads of media files in my two external harddisks, one of 3TB and another of 1TB. And overtime the data is all over the place, in some cases, there are duplicates also and there is currently no way, I can easily remember if I have a particular data or not. Over all its a mess. Hence I need a good way to arrange all of this data and have a cache of its metadata in my laptop, so that it becomes very easy for me to search whether I have a particular media file available with me or not. Media can be anything from movies, documentaries, songs, iso images, series, etc.

So this are the requirements of such a software:

  •  Do full scan of HDD connected and collect all data available in it.
    • User should be able to give a minimum/maximum size of interest(files less than say 1MB may not be of importance)
    • User should be able to give formats of interest(User may just want video files to be listed/searched)
  • Should be able to update an existing scan so that only new files are added to it again
  • Using the collected data, user should be able to search a particular file based on filename/filetype/size etc

 

 

October 13, 2009

What does the alphabets on the left of aptitude search command output mean?

by viggy — Categories: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , Leave a comment

If you are reading the article as you were searching for an answer to the question mentioned in the subject, that means you are not a regular user of “man” command or you were not satisfied with the info given in man page of aptitude command. The following is an excerpt from the man page of aptitude command and hence dont bother to read if you have already gone through it thorughly. If you have not, then from next time spend more time reading man pages. They are the best tutorials.

However here is the excerpt:::

Unless you pass the -F option, the output of aptitude search will look something like this:

i apt – Advanced front-end for dpkg
pi apt-build – frontend to apt to build, optimize and in
cp apt-file – APT package searching utility — command-
ihA raptor-utils – Raptor RDF Parser utilities

Each search result is listed on a separate line. The first character of each line indicates the current state
of the package: the most common states are p, meaning that no trace of the package exists on the system, c,
meaning that the package was deleted but its configuration files remain on the system, i, meaning that the
package is installed, and v, meaning that the package is virtual. The second character indicates the stored
action (if any; otherwise a blank space is displayed) to be performed on the package, with the most common
actions being i, meaning that the package will be installed, d, meaning that the package will be deleted, and
p, meaning that the package and its configuration files will be removed. If the third character is A, the
package was automatically installed.

For a complete list of the possible state and action flags, see the section “Accessing Package Information” in
the aptitude reference guide. To customize the output of search, see the command-line options -F and –sort.