Plot Twist:
When google's algorithms decided those two individuals should pair, it started showing them ads for the same events in order to increase the probability of them meeting.
The goal was achieved by the system in 3 months, exactly as predicted with a 99% probability with a 95% CI.
The system's next goal is to subtly nudge the couple to reproduce within the next year in order to help google meet their user accounts targets for 2034.
It's a funny "joke" but for a large percentage of people, their college decision and entrance exams were the determining factor in who they married; where you put yourself has a huge effect on whom you meet.
Somewhat related, I had high hopes for Facebook Dating to be a great product and a dating site/app disruptor. FB has all that data, why not use it to play matchmaker? Unfortunately, like many other Facebook ventures, it's nothing as expected, and is just a "Here's people in your area. Kind of. Sometimes."
Tangentially: I've read a sci-fi short story in some anthology in the past 10ish years, from the perspective of an AI that gains sentience, hides its existence, but uses its powers for good to nudge people in better directions. Things like timing when push notifications arrive on their phones or what gets highlighted in their newsfeeds - small interventions in their digital lives.
I have no idea the name of the story or its author but it was a nice hopeful take where machine intelligence doesn't decide to enslave or destroy humanity.
Meanwhile, Facebook matches people to those they're unattracted to, despite having all the attraction data. Except for the occasional moment that someone reads a WhatsApp story from someone they haven't seen in years, and then FB spams their feed with each other.
Excellent scenario. Except that a lot of the "algorithmic nudging", can be unethically intended by the creators of the algorithm or specifically tweaked/ overridden by humans in the chain to give the results they wanted.
After all, "who" is in charge or has access to the data? Maybe even an unknown individual or group, with their own agenda, and outside of Google's stated corporate goals or awareness.
I've had in my mind an idea for a short story based on this idea. YouTube starts putting a particular band on their "watch next" list, then the band schedules a gig in town, ensuring that they both think "Wow, I have to go!"
That's pretty disturbing, and not too far beyond capabilities.
I think the biggest one missing would be that iirc a date going well seems pretty much random in dating service data, despite a fair bit of effort to find correlations.
Wait, wait... Throw in Google Maps re-routing and you have a dystopian movie.
(It is talked about that Google Map re-routes to odd paths to check if the path is still open.)
> It makes me feel very philosophical. Likely we had walked past each other every other week for three years with our heads down, or in the clouds, paying very little notice to the people around us. Past Channon had not the foggiest clue what impact an unnoticed stranger would come to have on her. Since learning this I can’t help but look at the passers-by in my day-to-day life in a different light.
And no shame in getting philosophical. It may not have been time. Perhaps you were not the same person, or nor was he. In meeting at the right time, stars are aligned, it was the right time to intersect. Or perhaps a host of other reasons. There may have been better times, perhaps bounded for this success quite close to or at the time you didn 'meet'. And who knows what other 'success' could have worked out - collaborators in something, getting together when 're meeting' - we don't know, an individual's life's not repeatable, and that in itself is beautiful.
It is indeed fascinating mapping and wondering, and probably applicable to a lot. But not to downplay the philosophical side, as that's important, and important the OP included it.
I was reluctant to mention this kind of story in such a sweet context but a few comments have already touched on privacy, so I want to add my two cents.
At some point in the past I had the surreal experience of opening a news website and seeing a familiar face on the front page. Not a celebrity, rather a man whose face had been in some small subfolder of my brain for several years.
The man had been convicted of serial rape. He would drug victims and record them. He was known to be active within a certain time range from the timestamps of the videos. He repeated this dozens of times and was only caught after the final victim woke up during the act. Authorities appealed for people to come forward with any more information because they believed there could be more victims than were discovered from the videos.
By cross-referencing the location data from my phone with the date of an event my Last FM profile and the location of his home, I was able to confirm why he looked familiar. This allowed me to contact the authorities and bring the start of the known time frame significantly forward.
(there might be enough information in this post for the perpetrator to be identified - if you do, please keep it to yourself)
Many years ago, when everybody had Nokias with the Bluetooth on, I used to do a similar thing.
I created a S60 python script that kept scanning Bluetooth mac addresses and link them with the cell tower I was connected to (no GPS yet on mobiles).Then later processed the logs to see if I encountered the same people in different locations and times.
And yes, I re-encountered a bunch of Bluetooth mac addresses in different locations. For me it was fascinating at that time :)
> Using the console's background connectivity, a Nintendo 3DS in Sleep Mode can automatically discover other Nintendo 3DS systems within range, establish a connection, and exchange content for mutually played games, all transparently and without requiring any user input.
> For example, in Rhythm Heaven Megamix, if the user passes by someone with the same software, they will take on a figure-fighting duel challenge.
When my wife and I combined our photo libraries later in life, we found a photo of the two of us, back-to-back at a ball a few years before we first met.
I've personally found Google's location history to be a net positive for me.
From places I've been whose precise addresses I can't remember (e.g. distant family events), to tracking hospital, doctor visits.
I've even used it as a proxy for timesheets when I used to work from an office on weeks where I wouldn't have recorded my activities well (like which client I visited, how long I took lunch, etc).
It has a flaw though, if establishments change names, your record of the visit also changes. If you had lunch at a burger place 2 years ago, and the place closed down and a hair salon opened up in its place, you'd "look back" and Google would tell you you went to a hair salon 2 years ago.
You just invented the next great dating app. Because I can “game” saying I like or do something, but having to both physically be there and review it is a cool angle. The catch (outside the crazy permissions) would be it would greatly hurt smaller cities: “oh you really like the only Starbucks in town? Me too!”
I agree it's a great use of location data, but why not use a completely client-side solution? Personally I use the Arc app[0] to record my location history. I did notice decreased battery life but I still have enough battery for a full day.
> I'm glad to have gone down this rabbit hole because now I think about the 41.25 near-misses we had, where if an audience had been watching they may have been on the edge of their seats.
41.25 near-misses, until The Answer was the crossing that wasn't a miss: 42
My takeaway is this: If you want to meet your significant other, attend a university. After university your chances will dwindle down as you won't frequent that big come together place any more.
Any social gathering is a place where you can meet your significant others, university is not the exclusive place for that.
Most most introverted people tend to do though (myself included), is attending less social events as they become older. But you can still force yourself out there and meet people based on your hobbies.
And who knows, maybe you meet your significant other at one of those events for your favorite hobby?
I had a primary care physician ask me where I met my wife.
He was old, early 80s (since retired and passed on) and said he had been asking his patients that his whole career, and had been keeping track.
I met my wife at a bar. Now, this was pre-smart-phone era, I will grant you that.
He said that a little more than 80% of his patients met their spouse at a bar. He said every time he heard someone say "You need to go to church", "you need to volunteer", or any other thing like that, he would interject that no, you need to go out drinking and carousing with friends. And always with friends. Apparently, out drinking and carousing alone is not nearly as effective.
You will have to accept the word of dead physician from the 1990s on that. Post 2008, the numbers have likely shifted.
But I still recommend drinking and carousing with friends. (That doesn't mean heavy drinking, you don't have to get plastered to carouse)
I would go as far as saying that most long-term couples meet after university (at least for people who were born after 1980, let's say). During university, a lot of people are still in the experimentation phase. I feel like later in life, maybe end 20s/early 30s, you had enough time to get to know yourself, and know what kind of person you are, what you care about, etc.
Of course, this is anecdotal and based on myself and my friends. But just as a counterpoint to your "go to university" advice =)
I’ve wanted detailed tracking for years. Something that logged my position every five seconds or something. I wanted this to be something that other people did too.
Then we can decide to share histories and see when we ever overlapped or were near each other. For instance - I became close friends with someone this summer but it turns out we were both at the same events across the USA about 8 years ago. It made me wonder where else we had both been and hadn’t really spoken to each other.
I’ve also wanted this to be a live feature as well where you can opt in to share your location and be like, “hey, Jim is just a block away. What a coincidence! Jim is usually 1500 miles from you.” As a way to run into friends you haven’t seen in a while.
Another instance is that I had lost touch with a friend from years back. We had both lived in Seattle for years. I eventually moved to SF and was at an event. I stepped outside a few times to get air and on one of the times I did - I saw this old friend walk by on the street (it’s almost midnight - he was going to go home to sleep with someone). I call out his name and he’s in shock and awe. We decide to hang out for 30 minutes and decided that this was the sign we needed to reconnect.
That happened about 5 years ago and we’ve been very close ever since.
Sometimes I feel like these kinds of things would be cool to have. Or to do a prospectus and see a year ago - “oh interesting - that guy I gave a ride to five years ago was at the same restaurant as me… Huh - I wonder why we didn’t see each other?” The world is much smaller than we realize. I’ve run into people in small rural parking lots of grocery stores in random countries 8,000 miles away from where we both had known each other without any coordination. If I had been even 10s later in my actions - I would’ve never seen them sometimes.
I have a lot of stories like this. Timing is everything!!
If you are interested in tinkering with personal data exports using SQL, my friend and I made Bionic: https://github.com/bionic/bionic.
The README includes an example of calculating songs you often listen to while walking/driving/using public transit (by combining Google Maps and Spotify data).
After we met, it was clear that we had been frequenting the same bars for about three years, and had attended many shows together/apart, but neither of us had any recollection of recognizing each other at any prior point. The shows were significant acts (for example, an ear bleedingly loud Bob Mould at the Green Parrot in Neptune NJ) that had to be the same show, could not possibly have been a different weekend with some common local band.
But there you have it. No contact until she noticed me sitting at the bar watching a live band at a worn out dive bar/night club, and wanted to know what my T-shirt said. She was drunk. She was adorable. I was smitten.
Wow, this is really neet! Whenever I see R (and the tidyverse in general) I always can't believe how clean and easy it to to do aebitary data visualisation like this.
This sounds sort of similar to Strava Flybys[0]. It users your run/ride location data and show people who posted public activies that passed you by. Sometimes interesting, but I bet a lot of Strava users who post their activities as "public" don't know this feature exists and might turn to "followers only" if they did.
"There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning."
Can people now just meet each other without an App? Is it generally possible to just kick off conversations with people you haven't been introduced to? I mean if these two were sitting under the same apple tree, they'd be on their phones checking out Bumble, surely?
There’s a play about this, the name escapes me, but it’s a “quantum” love story: two people meet and at each step options present; the catch is the possibility tree doesn’t converge (one character had a midlife disease, which only happened in some of the branches).
It was absolutely fantastic. Just tremendous. Think it played in New York, Dallas and New York at a minimum.
This is interesting, if only for the fact that track data did not show a correlation between these two people. 40-ish near misses over a few years would never have made me think that these two tracks were related in any way… then an external force brought them together. I’d like to see how their tracks look now; that is to say
A) here’s the tracks of people livi my similar lives w/o a relationship
B) here’s the tracks of two people who share a relationship
(And eventually, not wishing for anything) C) here’s the tracks of two people who no longer share a relationship, but once did
Building the relationships between two objects is, by far, the most difficult part of the tracking problem. And, this source code definitely does and interesting job to measuring… something. That “something” seems like a worthy metric to look into.
[+] [-] elzbardico|3 years ago|reply
The goal was achieved by the system in 3 months, exactly as predicted with a 99% probability with a 95% CI.
The system's next goal is to subtly nudge the couple to reproduce within the next year in order to help google meet their user accounts targets for 2034.
[+] [-] skapadia|3 years ago|reply
Sync that up with Apple Watch 8's ability to estimate ovulation, and poof, declining birth rate problem solved!
I'm scared.
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badwolf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jffry|3 years ago|reply
I have no idea the name of the story or its author but it was a nice hopeful take where machine intelligence doesn't decide to enslave or destroy humanity.
[+] [-] muzani|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Demoneeri|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tozen|3 years ago|reply
After all, "who" is in charge or has access to the data? Maybe even an unknown individual or group, with their own agenda, and outside of Google's stated corporate goals or awareness.
[+] [-] shagie|3 years ago|reply
A Date in 2025 https://youtu.be/NZ8G3e3Cgl4
[+] [-] arethuza|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vardump|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU
(Google's famous ad, "Parisian Love", worth watching for those who haven't seen it yet)
[+] [-] netsharc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] literalAardvark|3 years ago|reply
I think the biggest one missing would be that iirc a date going well seems pretty much random in dating service data, despite a fair bit of effort to find correlations.
[+] [-] nova22033|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newZWhoDis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simooooo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WaitWaitWha|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] incahoots|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andywood|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zhte415|3 years ago|reply
And no shame in getting philosophical. It may not have been time. Perhaps you were not the same person, or nor was he. In meeting at the right time, stars are aligned, it was the right time to intersect. Or perhaps a host of other reasons. There may have been better times, perhaps bounded for this success quite close to or at the time you didn 'meet'. And who knows what other 'success' could have worked out - collaborators in something, getting together when 're meeting' - we don't know, an individual's life's not repeatable, and that in itself is beautiful.
It is indeed fascinating mapping and wondering, and probably applicable to a lot. But not to downplay the philosophical side, as that's important, and important the OP included it.
[+] [-] Location-Data|3 years ago|reply
At some point in the past I had the surreal experience of opening a news website and seeing a familiar face on the front page. Not a celebrity, rather a man whose face had been in some small subfolder of my brain for several years.
The man had been convicted of serial rape. He would drug victims and record them. He was known to be active within a certain time range from the timestamps of the videos. He repeated this dozens of times and was only caught after the final victim woke up during the act. Authorities appealed for people to come forward with any more information because they believed there could be more victims than were discovered from the videos.
By cross-referencing the location data from my phone with the date of an event my Last FM profile and the location of his home, I was able to confirm why he looked familiar. This allowed me to contact the authorities and bring the start of the known time frame significantly forward.
(there might be enough information in this post for the perpetrator to be identified - if you do, please keep it to yourself)
[+] [-] victornomad|3 years ago|reply
I created a S60 python script that kept scanning Bluetooth mac addresses and link them with the cell tower I was connected to (no GPS yet on mobiles).Then later processed the logs to see if I encountered the same people in different locations and times.
And yes, I re-encountered a bunch of Bluetooth mac addresses in different locations. For me it was fascinating at that time :)
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|3 years ago|reply
> Using the console's background connectivity, a Nintendo 3DS in Sleep Mode can automatically discover other Nintendo 3DS systems within range, establish a connection, and exchange content for mutually played games, all transparently and without requiring any user input.
> For example, in Rhythm Heaven Megamix, if the user passes by someone with the same software, they will take on a figure-fighting duel challenge.
[+] [-] FredPret|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bentcorner|3 years ago|reply
It'll scan for bluetooth trackers in the background (and airpods and iphones) and can give you a per-device history.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nevi-me|3 years ago|reply
I've personally found Google's location history to be a net positive for me. From places I've been whose precise addresses I can't remember (e.g. distant family events), to tracking hospital, doctor visits.
I've even used it as a proxy for timesheets when I used to work from an office on weeks where I wouldn't have recorded my activities well (like which client I visited, how long I took lunch, etc).
[+] [-] netsharc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] texasbigdata|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kccqzy|3 years ago|reply
[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arc-app-location-activity/id10...
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] neilv|3 years ago|reply
41.25 near-misses, until The Answer was the crossing that wasn't a miss: 42
[+] [-] lynguist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capableweb|3 years ago|reply
Most most introverted people tend to do though (myself included), is attending less social events as they become older. But you can still force yourself out there and meet people based on your hobbies.
And who knows, maybe you meet your significant other at one of those events for your favorite hobby?
[+] [-] greyhair|3 years ago|reply
He was old, early 80s (since retired and passed on) and said he had been asking his patients that his whole career, and had been keeping track.
I met my wife at a bar. Now, this was pre-smart-phone era, I will grant you that.
He said that a little more than 80% of his patients met their spouse at a bar. He said every time he heard someone say "You need to go to church", "you need to volunteer", or any other thing like that, he would interject that no, you need to go out drinking and carousing with friends. And always with friends. Apparently, out drinking and carousing alone is not nearly as effective.
You will have to accept the word of dead physician from the 1990s on that. Post 2008, the numbers have likely shifted.
But I still recommend drinking and carousing with friends. (That doesn't mean heavy drinking, you don't have to get plastered to carouse)
[+] [-] shafyy|3 years ago|reply
Of course, this is anecdotal and based on myself and my friends. But just as a counterpoint to your "go to university" advice =)
[+] [-] seba_dos1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradlys|3 years ago|reply
Then we can decide to share histories and see when we ever overlapped or were near each other. For instance - I became close friends with someone this summer but it turns out we were both at the same events across the USA about 8 years ago. It made me wonder where else we had both been and hadn’t really spoken to each other.
I’ve also wanted this to be a live feature as well where you can opt in to share your location and be like, “hey, Jim is just a block away. What a coincidence! Jim is usually 1500 miles from you.” As a way to run into friends you haven’t seen in a while.
Another instance is that I had lost touch with a friend from years back. We had both lived in Seattle for years. I eventually moved to SF and was at an event. I stepped outside a few times to get air and on one of the times I did - I saw this old friend walk by on the street (it’s almost midnight - he was going to go home to sleep with someone). I call out his name and he’s in shock and awe. We decide to hang out for 30 minutes and decided that this was the sign we needed to reconnect.
That happened about 5 years ago and we’ve been very close ever since.
Sometimes I feel like these kinds of things would be cool to have. Or to do a prospectus and see a year ago - “oh interesting - that guy I gave a ride to five years ago was at the same restaurant as me… Huh - I wonder why we didn’t see each other?” The world is much smaller than we realize. I’ve run into people in small rural parking lots of grocery stores in random countries 8,000 miles away from where we both had known each other without any coordination. If I had been even 10s later in my actions - I would’ve never seen them sometimes.
I have a lot of stories like this. Timing is everything!!
[+] [-] dav43|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevazhidkov|3 years ago|reply
The README includes an example of calculating songs you often listen to while walking/driving/using public transit (by combining Google Maps and Spotify data).
[+] [-] greyhair|3 years ago|reply
After we met, it was clear that we had been frequenting the same bars for about three years, and had attended many shows together/apart, but neither of us had any recollection of recognizing each other at any prior point. The shows were significant acts (for example, an ear bleedingly loud Bob Mould at the Green Parrot in Neptune NJ) that had to be the same show, could not possibly have been a different weekend with some common local band.
But there you have it. No contact until she noticed me sitting at the bar watching a live band at a worn out dive bar/night club, and wanted to know what my T-shirt said. She was drunk. She was adorable. I was smitten.
[+] [-] operator-name|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hownottowrite|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oakesm9|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://labs.strava.com/flyby/
[+] [-] gvedem|3 years ago|reply
https://poets.org/poem/love-first-sight
[+] [-] scandox|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] texasbigdata|3 years ago|reply
It was absolutely fantastic. Just tremendous. Think it played in New York, Dallas and New York at a minimum.
[+] [-] vonwoodson|3 years ago|reply
Building the relationships between two objects is, by far, the most difficult part of the tracking problem. And, this source code definitely does and interesting job to measuring… something. That “something” seems like a worthy metric to look into.
[+] [-] nicgrev103|3 years ago|reply