Yeah, working code snippets would be great. That would provide an unambiguous implementation that someone could use to dig into the underlying functions used and learn the basic concepts that would be tedious for the author to go through.
In terms of the notation, it seemed like the author actually tried to keep his paper accessible, so my complaint isn’t with the author. My gripe is more with math notation in general.
In my opinion, unless you’ve read the appropriate textbooks or taken the right classes, math notation is hard to learn. The symbols are hard to Google for. Integral symbols, R for real numbers, sigma, delta, the round E that stands for IN are not found on a standard keyboard so it’s challenging for a layman to Google and learn that notation on their own. Math evolved over millennia and the notation wasn’t constructed with SEO in mind, so I understand why things are the way they are, but it’s a stumbling block for the uninitiated trying to learn more advanced math. Maybe there are resources like math.stackexchange out there that I’m unaware of that would help make learning notation more approachable.
One of the aspects of math papers that I dislike is how unapproachable they are if you’re unfamiliar with some of the terminology and conventions. The esoteric symbols don’t make it any easier to Google their definitions either.
For instance, what does this mean?
> μ is the law of Y
μ is usually the mean or average. Is “law” something else?
I don’t think most people need to adopt this on their cameras for it to work. My perspective here is that journalistic sources that want to be trusted could employ this system. Along with signing the media and the blockchain, a system would need to be built to simply show the change log and history of a photo from the source. These journalism websites could just link out to it to demonstrate their veracity.
Once that’s adopted by the NYTs, WSJs, BBCs of the world, I’m hoping there would be critical mass to pressure more and more journalistic sources to adopt this standard. Eventually, any credible journalism would be on this technology and any outlet that doesn’t use this would be viewed with a grain of salt.
I agree though that a number of developments would have to happen to make this a reality. I would think that a partnership between NYT and Apple or Nikon could kickstart it though.
The way I thought that the blockchain would be employed is to use it to track transformations of the image. Post-processing, adding captions, and what not. This would provide an audit trail of changes to the original source image.
If, in fact, we can’t reliably sign the source image as authentic, then the rest of the system falls apart. It seems like this is the crux of the problem.
Is this a solvable problem by requiring camera manufacturers cryptographically sign photos and videos created on those devices? If that’s in place then it seems like it could be the basis for chain of custody of journalistic images backed by a blockchain. This seems like the only viable solution to me since any AI powered solution would just be a cat and mouse game.
In terms of the notation, it seemed like the author actually tried to keep his paper accessible, so my complaint isn’t with the author. My gripe is more with math notation in general.
In my opinion, unless you’ve read the appropriate textbooks or taken the right classes, math notation is hard to learn. The symbols are hard to Google for. Integral symbols, R for real numbers, sigma, delta, the round E that stands for IN are not found on a standard keyboard so it’s challenging for a layman to Google and learn that notation on their own. Math evolved over millennia and the notation wasn’t constructed with SEO in mind, so I understand why things are the way they are, but it’s a stumbling block for the uninitiated trying to learn more advanced math. Maybe there are resources like math.stackexchange out there that I’m unaware of that would help make learning notation more approachable.