There are downsides with downloading their app just to input bad data, but it’s a fun thought.
edit: While we’re at it we might as well offer an alternative app to people.
I posted in [email protected] to collect recommendations for better apps
The post: https://lemmy.ca/post/32877620
Leading Recommendation from the comments
The leading recommendation seems to be Drip (bloodyhealth.gitlab.io)
Summarizing what people shared:
- accessible: it is on F-droid, Google Play, & iOS App Store
- does not allow any third-party tracking
- the project got support from “PrototypeFund & Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Superrr Lab and Mozilla”
- Listed features:
- “Your data, your choice: Everything you enter stays on your device”
- “Not another cute, pink app: drip is designed with gender inclusivity in mind.”
- “Your body is not a black box: drip is transparent in its calculations and encourages you to think for yourself.”
- “Track what you like: Just your period, or detect your fertility using the symptothermal method.”
Their Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@dripapp
Ok, let’s use your first example. Someone crosses into a neighboring state and returns in the same day…I had co-workers who did that every day.
Let’s narrow that down… You cross into another state with abortion care once and return in the same day. Or maybe you’re a salesman closing a deal. Or maybe you’re visiting family and have work tomorrow… And honestly, both those situations are far more frequent. That happens every day. It happens more if you live near the border - otherwise you probably got a hotel. Unless you can’t afford a hotel. And the list goes on - all this structured data turns into stories at some point
Here’s the thing. Prism could handle it, because it’s a ton of people on the payroll
The government is not a monolith though…9/11 is a great example. We knew it would happen, we knew it was planned, but the right people didn’t know in the right time, because the agencies are not a monolith.
Because that is the hard part - communication is hard, harder with security concerns. More data means more analysts reviewing it - you can collect all the data you could want , (and we do), you could hire all the analysts you can afford (and we do), but that still gives you severe limits
We’re actually pretty great at stopping terrorism, but we do that (in part) because we have all this data and use it for specific ends
None of this shit is easy - I used to do this, specifically. How do you take 15 data sources that sometimes conflict, and deconflict them? There’s no hierarchy of truth here. This is literally a cutting edge problem - it’s a literal holy Grail. No one can solve it in 3 weeks, or even 3 years
You want a 20% rate? I could give it to you tomorrow, poisoned data or no, I could give it to you in weeks… Maybe not 3, because that’s a shit ton of data sources, but with proper motivation I could pump it out.
You want 90%? Give me a century or two, and I’m good at this. Maybe a genius could give it to you in a lifetime of with
It’s like they say in game dev, you can do 90% in 10% of the time, but the last 10% takes 90% of the time. And that’s a solved problem.
Except this is an unsolved problem, possibly the most lucrative unsolved problems in history