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DEDA – Tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation Toolkit

(github.com)
285 points pavel_lishin | 5 comments | 01 Apr 25 21:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.829s | source
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otaviogood ◴[01 Apr 25 22:39 UTC] No.43552025[source]▶
Me and my team used these yellow tracking dots to reconstruct shredded documents for a DARPA shredder challenge over a decade ago. You can see our program highlight the dots as we reconstruct the shredded docs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzZDhyrjdVo Thanks to that, we were able to win by a large margin. :)
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dylan604 ◴[01 Apr 25 23:23 UTC] No.43552345[source]▶
what was the process of getting each of the shredded pieces scanned for your program to use. I'm guessing that process could have a write up on it just as much as the solver. there's definitely a personality type that can handle that type of mess
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1. otaviogood ◴[02 Apr 25 00:15 UTC] No.43552586[source]▶
DARPA scanned the shreds. The funny thing is, they didn't want to shred the original paper, so first they photocopied the paper in a high quality color copier, shredded it, and scanned it. And that's where the little yellow dots came from. :D
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2. dylan604 ◴[02 Apr 25 00:39 UTC] No.43552698[source]▶
interesting. now my brain is churning on why would they not want the originals shredded. what does that say about the value they placed on the originals? why would they open a contest up with documents of such perceived value as the content? being DARPA, i'm sure there's a reason though
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3. otaviogood ◴[02 Apr 25 00:49 UTC] No.43552749[source]▶
You might be reading into it too much. I think the originals were just random pieces of different kinds of paper. Graph paper, yellow lined, paper, blank white paper... I don't remember exactly, but I think the copies could be special paper with a colored backside so they would know which way was up really easily for the scanning process.
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4. dylan604 ◴[02 Apr 25 03:59 UTC] No.43553540{3}[source]▶
no it was a deliberate what if meant in jest that probably really could have been kept to myself
5. anitil ◴[02 Apr 25 04:07 UTC] No.43553588[source]▶
Did they scan both sides of the shreds?