The Serial-Killer Detector (2017) | Hacker News Reader

The Serial-Killer Detector (2017)

newyorker.com

66 pointshotgoldminer7 comments

Note that he’s running this as a rather young retiree of 60 years, and is limited by the lack of corporate resources exposing him to possible lawsuits.

The news business still works well enough for this excellent article in the New Yorker to tell us of an instance where it stopped working. Right now, we still get a glimpse of what is being destroyed. Soon, the idea of someone having the freedom to devote a year’s work to an unproven method of investigation will be lost to history.

I found that part rather impressive as well that he got one year to do this. I immediately said to myself he must make 50k or more a year and his boss let him do that so how much will this story make them or what is the motive in allowing such freedom. Cool. But I have the opposite feeling about the future. I think the age of robots is coming and we will be swamped with nothing to do. People may start doing what they are passionate about and this seems like something others may get on board.

More recent article from Cleveland news station indicates no serial killer caught yet, but I guess at least now they're actively looking for one (or three):

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-met...

Someone sent me this a few weeks ago, and I've been playing with loading his datasets into a graph database. It's kind of a mess of CSV and some column formatted files, but it's a fun process.

Will share if I make something of it.

The improve crime solved statistics by implying correlation equals causation. How does the total percentage of serial anything compare to other countries.

Not at all. He's just identifying suspicious clusters of unsolved murders. He's not even identifying suspects. That's up to the police, mainly using standard methods.

So I really have no clue why he says:

> Hargrove is pleased about the investigation but he also worries that something may go awry. “What if they arrest the wrong guy, and he sues?” he asked.

Why would they sue him? I mean, his not-for-profit has ~no money. And I doubt that he's wealthy. It'd make more sense to sue the police.

People have sued the wrong person and lost plenty of times. He probably wouldn't lose if he got sued, but even if he won, the trouble might be more than he wants to handle. And if he does lose, well, that would really suck, and that's not impossible either.

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