iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Since 2025, Thomas Bordeaux and I have supported a BBC investigation into Austin Tice’s kidnapping. It’s published in the podcast series: “Where is Austin Tice.” A summary of Episode 4 has been published as an article. It proves that the regime planned the abduction. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Austin Tice: Assad regime planned US journalist's kidnap for weeks, BBC finds

Austin Tice’s abduction was approved by Syria’s former leader Bashar al-Assad, a source claims.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Although it shouldn’t be too hard to add a separate feature that allows you to accurately mask each frame of a specific video before watching (you would just have to wait a couple seconds for the segmentation model to do its job).

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Yup:) the basics were really easy. The annoying part so far was dealing with permissions and different ways that websites present their images/thumbnails in different ways. But that has been solved now, leaving just the “lag” from analysing+masking the image as a minor issue for real-time masking.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Definitely possible, but in this case I think that’s unlikely.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

They’re slowly pushing towards the mass commercialisation of satellite imagery (it’s one of the things that AI is actually making feasible). I assume within a couple years they’ll launch/promote a new subscription based platform, and keep google earth web for anything not worth commercialising yet.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Watching graphic videos is a slow mental health killer. Now, after years of staring at endless types of horrors, I’ve been working on a browser extension that uses CNNs to detect people (&other objects) in fotos and videos, and blurs them out. If you would like to beta test it with me, let me know.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

If I did, it’d have been published:) sadly people can only guess at those details.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Haven’t ventured there in a while but good to see that I didn’t mess up my first public ship location:)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

What can I say, it’s a big ship:)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

The Matros Koshka is currently offloading wheat in Syria. Seemingly in Latakia, around 35.5223, 35.7692. Sentinel Imagery also indicates its presence in Latakia by showing a large vessel with a coloured (blue-ish) streak near the bridge of the ship.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

No worries, I get the point you’re making, makes sense.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Of course, but that will be a manual task or done with very high res sat imagery. Need to know if step 1 is possible before someone can even consider step 2.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

For my 2nd undergraduate thesis, I researched the feasibility of using Convolutional Neural Networks to automate the process of mapping military trenches. Thought this summary might interest some of you. medium.com/@gaborfriese...

medium.com

Using AI to Detect Military Trenches on Satellite Imagery

This article provides a simplified and summarised view of my second undergraduate thesis. For access to the full thesis on this topic (14 pages) or underlying datasets, please reach out to me …

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Reposted by Gabòr Friesen

Bellingcat @bellingcat.com · 22/08/2025

Galen and our wider tech team have built many tools that are now regularly used by Bellingcat researchers and other newsrooms. One such tool is the Shadow Finder tool, built alongside @gaborfriesen.bsky.social , that @georainbolt.bsky.social tested out last year. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQIj...

youtube.com

how to find a location using only the shadow

YouTube video by RAINBOLT

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

He’s also a GNSV member (not a super big surprise though)

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Reposted by Gabòr Friesen

Chris Osieck @chrisosieck.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Despite the fact that I haven't been making any new guides, some of which were written together with @gaborfriesen.bsky.social, in relation to applying OSINT techniques in the Middle East for a while, it always warms my heart when people from the region use these to learn these skills themselves.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

It should mean unknown ground vehicle as far as i’m aware. If you have a reason to believe it’s not, it’s possible that ads-b is misclassifying it?

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Veel demonstranten hebben de mogelijkheid om (zonder gewelddadig verzet) gearresteerd te worden van te voren al geaccepteerd. Dat was in Scheveningen natuurlijk anders. Plus, deze demonstraties (zeker die van gisteren in het universiteits gebouw) zijn op plekken die makkelijker af te zetten zijn.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

To a large extent it’s the same. Declaring martial law usually comes with the argument that they have some form of support (e.g. “silent majority”). But it simultaneously admits that a significant enough portion of the populace is so vehemently against you that you need martial law to stay in power.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

If you want a jesting but semi-serious add on to the blog (which is how I usually see this problem): If AI can do your OSI(NT) research for you, it’s time to spend some time learning more advanced research methods (especially for the problems where AI can’t be meaningfully applied yet).

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Not the worst airport to get lost in as long as you make it to your flight in the end :)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Vehicle identification: If any journalists here ever struggle to identify (military) vehicles on (relatively) low-resolution sat imagery, please let me know. I'm testing a new identification method. Too busy to find cases right now, but if anyone already has a case, I'd love to help and see.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Just clicked a link in an NOS (dutch news) article expecting to go to X but actually ended up on Bluesky, nice surprise.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

I’m considering it the ultimate online “objective reporting award” whenever one person adds me to something like “zionist allies” and someone else to “hamas supporters.”

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Especially cause it could easily be combined with other media (be that text or audiovisual) for people who want an in-depth version while still providing the core information to a broader audience.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

I think NOSStories has a pretty admirable format across several platforms, although you’ll want to consider the difference in stories and the fact that you have a different target audience.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Another tool idea: OSINT Mental Health: An extension that uses CNNs to draw bounding boxes around humans in videos (models for this already exist), before automatically blocking out the areas in those bounding boxes. Reduces the amount of graphic content that researchers face in conflict videos.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Another one I didn’t know about, thanks!

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

I kinda wish you could see which starter packs you were put on. Sometimes I randomly get like 100+ followers in a day and just go “huh, I wonder where that came from.”

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

I guess the per capita overall donations stat in the post is roughly similar between the two, so sounds about right.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

To be fair, in my experience with “smaller” projects (hard to say for big things like UNICEF), generally people in the UK seem to donate bigger sums than people in the Netherlands. Not sure if the total number of donations differs after adjusting per capita. But yes, the stats could use more stats

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Reposted by Gabòr Friesen

Centre for Information Resilience @cen4infores.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Since 7 October 2023, CIR has verified over 1,300 incidents across Gaza, Lebanon & Israel, documenting destruction, casualties & violations using over 9,100 pieces of data. Explore our open-source map to uncover the trends and stories behind the numbers ⬇️

info-res.org

Israel-Gaza Conflict Map

The Israel-Gaza Conflict Map is a map of incidents documented by CIR covering the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel and Lebanon since 7 October 2023.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

We tried to geolocate the 2012 video of Austin Tice. In the process, we realised that it was most likely created right next to a Syrian military base. medium.com/@gaborfriese... (a comprehensive write-up of our recent thread)

medium.com

Geolocating The Disappearance of Austin Tice

This article is an expanded version of the original Bluesky thread

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

No worries, relatable struggles

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Would be amazing yeah! while this seems pretty reasonable all around, it's not conclusive. Would be nice to see if we're thinking similarly. Out of curiosity, I presume you and Timmi didn't publish them because you also couldn't get something 100% conclusive?

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Potential Correction: Taking alternate perspectives into account, it is very possible that these are the visible ridgelines. In this case, the valley still remains enough of a potential match to be worth investigation (in fact, it actually becomes a better match)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

@jonnyghizmo.bsky.social, @megalemeter.bsky.social, Palt, Slang, @subtleknife.bsky.social, @thomasbordeaux.bsky.social, and I performed the research for this thread in the @bellingcat.com discord. A more coherent medium article based on this research will be written soon.

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

If any journalist or researcher based in Syria or Damascus is interested in researching this topic, we hope this can help provide relevant information for where to look. Based on open source information, we cannot do much more. However, with human eyes on the ground, this becomes much easier. (7/8)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Due to the limited frames, their low resolution, and perspective problems, we cannot provide a conclusive geolocation paint. However, what we do know, strengthened by contextual information left out of this thread, strongly indicates that this is the valley of the video. (6/8)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Finally, while severely hampered by the low resolution and a lack of clearly visible ridgelines in the video. The panorama seems to have remarkable similarities with peakvisor results. (5/8)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

This is further confirmed by some of the visible shrubbery in the valley's North, a near-perfect match with available satellite imagery. (4/8)

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Gabòr Friesen @gaborfriesen.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

This Panorama (created by @thomasbordeaux.bsky.social), while hampered by the bad video quality, helps provide a better overview for geolocating. Firstly, the surface places the location at the bottom of the valley. (3/8)

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