If you dig through to the source reddit posting [1], you can see that the post only really puts 6 different individual taxi IDs out there for visualization. To me, only the first 4 seem like a good visual fit for the prayer times, and the overall trip heatmap [2] suggests that they may just be part of a larger pattern of eating/taking a break at sunrise, noon, and sunset for all cab drivers. While the blog posting is begging the question of whether or not the data release contains personal data as a result of these findings, much more invasive findings have already been published (and posted to HN) with this NYC Taxi data, like corroborating individual trips by high profile people. [3] Notwithstanding the privacy issues and questionable methods used to obfuscate the data, I personally think that the release is a great step in the right direction for open data.
EDIT: For better or worse, deducing ethnicity, country of origin, and/or religion is probably much easier based on this data set [4]. People have come up with analyses like this [5]. The data analysis is great, but my fingers are crossed that tabloid newspapers and their ilk don't pick this up and run off xenophobic, fear-mongering articles.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2t201h/ide... [2] https://i.imgur.com/lyK0qTI.png [3] http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars...
EDIT: For better or worse, deducing ethnicity, country of origin, and/or religion is probably much easier based on this data set [4]. People have come up with analyses like this [5]. The data analysis is great, but my fingers are crossed that tabloid newspapers and their ilk don't pick this up and run off xenophobic, fear-mongering articles.
[4] https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Transportation/Medallion-Drive... [5] http://vizual-statistix.tumblr.com/image/107987401281