That's true, but you can always be triangulated down a couple hundred meters by figuring out which towers you're connected to.

We definitely got the cellphone tower triangulation data. I never once saw GNSS data provided by a carrier. We used FindMeSAR https://findmesar.com/, the subject would usually text back the coordinates from the phone.

Just one data point.

The revolution that's occurred since my SAR volunteer days is the wide availability of satellite messenging on consumer phones. I'm guessing that's really changed the situation quite a bit.

That's a pretty big assumption, though, isn't it? As we saw the Navier-Stokes psychosis episode over the New Year holiday, formalizing correctly really isn't guaranteed.

That’s all the watches are doing anyway. Even if you do buy a watch, keep in mind you need to run regular max effort runs to get an accurate value.

Save 1 life in the USA, or take the same 7.5 million and save ~1000 lives in Africa. Interesting lens on which to view these numbers.

For me, it’s just already damn hard to make sure you can hear numbers correctly over the radio. In marginal conditions, it’s a hell of a lot easier to use numbers (and requires less time due to not having to repeat or ask for clarification).

Do I really want to be trying to say “arrows.midst.senses” over a handheld radio?

The carbon footprint of your average city dweller is far lower.

However, re: "crumple zones":

The streets of the USA are basically an arms race. Bigger and bigger and bigger because "it's safer". Safer for you, maybe. This is how we ended up with pickup trucks that have hoods as high as your shoulders.

Kei trucks and cars are great, and in Japan they're quite safe (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24499113/) but the context is completely different. Cars weigh half as much, the drivers are twice as careful and traveling at half the speed.

Drones are good at covering terrain that's difficult to traverse on foot. Canyons, cliff walls, the like. As some of the rescues on the site show, they're also good for getting another angle that's not human-being eye level, which is sometimes all you need to spot a clue or subject.

Drones are not very good at covering large areas of ground quickly. It's also extremely difficult to spot anything small than an entire human being on the drone's camera. That means you miss valuable things like bootprints, pieces of equipment, etc.

They're a very useful tool in the toolbox, but I don't see them replacing human beings until image recognition technology gets another level-up. "Recognize a human being or signs of one with the background of literally any possible terrain on Earth" is a bit beyond what's field-deployable at the moment.

Driving through the Imperial Valley was a big wake up call for me as to the dire state of the water situation in California. We are transporting water hundreds of miles to grow food in the middle of a desert.

The old incentives and laws are clearly not going to be enough for the future, particularly on the Colorado. As usual, no one acts until the crisis is here on our doorstep.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35926000

Points: 3

# Comments: 0