I was hoping to get a summary of how the guy guessed!
“Well, by the angle of the sun he had to be in an n-mile radius of his car. In that area, there are only 4 cliffs with sufficient height to be in that photo with wildfire burn areas in between. And the plants had to be of the genus whateverae due to the shape of their spikes, and those _obviosuly_ only grow on the north face of sedimentary rocks... so it had to be X”
> "I have a very weird hobby, which is I love taking a look at photos and figuring out where they're taken."
Sometimes you have the right person in the right place at the right time. I'm also really interested in learning more about how this person pinpointed the hiker.
"I looked at a multitude of clues from the terrain, the type of foliage, the angle of the sun, the moss on trees and together with the EXIF info from the hiker's photo, I was able to deduce the location of the missing hiker!"
I'm super confused why he didn't just send his GPS cords. If he had enough reception to send a text with a photo, he should have been able to get GPS, right? At the very least the tower he was connected to should have given his approximate location, right?
He had GPS coords in photos turned off. He sent the photo before he got lost, then his phone died, then he realized his predicament. Yeah, hikers who know WTF they are doing generally don't end up in the news like this. This is distressingly common on the 10,000+ ft peaks near Los Angeles, like these folks: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/hikers-survival-san....
Getting coordinates from towers doesn't work the way most people think it does.
First, there are still many many areas in the US where your phone will only be able to get a reliable signal to one tower, and those areas also happen to correlate well with areas that people like to go for outdoor recreation.
Second, you have to have somebody involved that knows the right specific questions to ask, and you have to have a representative at the phone company that's not a fleshy automaton. Search and rescue efforts tend to be coordinated by local law enforcement (usually sheriffs or park services), and training varies a lot. So, for practical purposes, this information is often not available.
Third, the information you get back requires some interpretation. It's not like the phone company sends back a map with a nice circle on it; you get some values back from one or more radios at one or more locations (possibly with or without orientations for the radios, and possibly that information is current and reliable or not). Then you have to plot those values, and then you have to take into account fun little quirks of physics, like the part where canyons of some kinds of rock can bounce a signal really well and cause somebody to be closer to the tower than the data would suggest. Other formations act like big reflectors.
Zero of the searches that I have been on have included helpful information from cell towers.
It's fun to think that identifying the location from the picture did it, but actually law enforcement can easily get location history from the cell phone provider for any subscriber.
I remember reading about that Bill Ewasko case back when it became newsworthy. On reflecting now, and hearing about other stories, I tend to think the guy was abducted / killed by someone in the wilderness, given the weirdness about his cell phone signals, etc. and him never having been found. There's a lot of shady shit that goes on in the desert, even in a place like Joshua Tree.
Anyway, aside from that, I am perpetually in awe / fascinated by how we as human beings long to solve a puzzle, no matter how distant or unfamiliar (or insignificant) another person is to us. There are stories about townspeople keeping a stranger's death alive for decades until solving it. It's almost like a mysterious death is as important, if not more important in a collective consciousness, as lots of people dying from something that is well known or not "interesting"...
I just don't get how smartphones still don't have a well designed way to quickly ask for help in cases like this, or even worse if you are not lost but injured. A big configurable button that when tapped tries to fix gps and send your position to the numbers you choose when the cell signal is strong enough. Going alone in the wild is amazing but can be dangerous even for the expert.
Actually I just realized that from lock screen of my phone, tapping on emergency also shows "What's my location".
Besides GPS, it sadly also needs/uses internet connection and then shows street address.
Oh and last time our car died in some small town with unpronounceable German name - once I called insurance (with roadside assistance module), operator sent me SMS, shortened URL opened up web browser and page asked for permission to get GPS access, and 10 seconds later she had exact Lat/Long on her screen.
Though honestly not the most obvious or accessible thing. Most people would probably just call the emergency number directly instead of using the convoluted button combination.
"You can also add emergency contacts. After an emergency call has ended, your iPhone will alert your emergency contacts with a text message, unless you choose to cancel this option. Your iPhone sends them your current location, and, for a period of time after you enter SOS mode, it sends updates to your emergency contacts when your location changes."
The 911 system in the US is slowly modernizing and more and more agencies support E911 and NG911 capabilities.
Additionally both Android and iOS support location sharing with dispatch centers and more and more jurisdictions across the country are capable of receiving that info. So, we're getting there.
I have set up a Macro using MacroDroid (Android App) that will respond with my location if an approved contact sends a certain phrase.
Because it uses SMS, I think it should work where signal is spotty.
You can also use the app to listen for certain Intents (like a button sequence on a smart watch) and perform the same location/sms action.
Last year I had reason to search for a missing walker from my remote home. I went to all the satellite image sites google could find and got nothing - months out of date pictures, too low resolution to be of use. It was a long shot but close enough to be imaginable that there might be a “put credit card in, get high res photo of area from the last flyover”. Lo and behold a few weeks later just such a service appeared on HN.
The person was eventually found by people in the area, and had died on a path in an open field, (sudden collapse and no chance to have used their phone to call anyone) so being out of tree cover etc. might plausibly have been found by a good clear overhead image. Probably still too small for a non-military satellite image, maybe a drone flyover.
I do often wonder what it would take for humans to actually save people Thunderbirds style. We’re getting closer and closer to ubiquitous surveillance, but when you look at the nutty putty cave incident or the Thai schoolchildren in the cave, locations were known there was just no way to blast the rock without crushing the people, and rescue or failure came down to human effort. Very little future tech would have made either rescue attempt enormously easier, would it? To get to people trapped under rock quickly you need to move or melt a lot of rock and you can’t blast or drill casually because of the risk to the people. That leaves slow or low-energy rescue which is slow and limited in what it can try.
How are today’s emergency services doing compared to a platonic ideal emergency service which can find and save anyone anywhere on earth from any trouble they are in, Superman style? Are we almost as good as it’s possible to be (but not evenly distributed), or nowhere near?
At some point personal/family emergency meant that instead of "regular" 1800km of both wife and myself driving across Europe - I was about to drive that on my own, all in one go/day. And then few days later back.
To ease her mind - I turned on family/emergency location sharing in Google Maps.
Afterward we realized it's supper convinient way to avoid those "How long before you (and one of kids that either one of us would pick up) are home?" calls.
Although starting shortly before Covid the functionality seems to have taken a nose dive. Like randomly showing one of us is in different city (e.g. Amsterdam vs Rotterdam), or now during Covid often saying "Offline, along with last known location from 1h ago (which tends to be home) and what was battery level at the time".
Actually it seems like some engineer (pre covid) though of optimizing refresh time for Google Maps location sharing based on how much it changes over some recent time.
And now combination of WFH meaning it's same place for majority of the day and that TTL being high, and literally all grocery stores we go to having no cellphone signal (I mean not even SMS can make it) putting us in edge of an edge case.
Google has been really tightening the strings on background execution. Maybe double check that Maps and Play Services are allowed unlimited data access, and exempted from battery savings (if you have that enabled).
@jonah, thanks for posting. I'm the guy that wrote those PDFs. The #1 thing that suprised me in doing the research is that the standard 911 system as defined by the FCC does not get the caller's coordinates from their cell phone like Uber does.
Now with that said, there are a lot of 911 call centers that use RapidSOS or other add on technology that do get the caller's coordinates directly from the caller's phone.
Of course a person calling 911 has no way to know beforehand whether the 911 call center handling their call will be able to get their coordinates via technology. That is the reason I urge everyone to have some way to use their phone to get their coordinates and the equally important accuracy value. Use a compass app, use FindMeSAR (I am developer) or use something else. I don't care. Instead, the important point is that you use 'something instead of nothing'.
I use Google Location Sharing to continuously share my location with a few friends. It's quite nice. Makes planning easier. Also, maybe it'll help with this stuff haha.
On a related note, I played geoguessr for the first time in a while ... and it's now a partly premium service with a huge community. I'm kinda impressed by the model they figured out.
And also related:
If you've got the android app MacroDroid (and presumably Tasker and others) you can set up an SMS auto-responder that will send your GPS coords. You can make it respond to a pre-approved contact who sends a pre-approved phrase. It means you're not constantly sending out location data, but can be reached hands-free if needed. And you should be able to sneak in an SMS even when service is unreliable.
But, as this poster stated (see comment tree here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065803) there is no reason to be going into wilderness in 2020 (or 2021) without a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). You get them, of course, at a place like REI.
As another poster said "They should be considered as basic and as necessary as a life vest, seat belt, or bike helmet. You should not be backpacking on the Appalachian trail without one." See this comment tree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065435
There are also variants of PLBs (which are not as robust) called satellite communicators. The Garmin Inreach series and Zotero devices are quite popular satellite communicators.
Even when exercising outside and not in the wilderness, I carry a Garmin Inreach Mini (which works with my Garmin watch) in case of a medical emergency. I have health conditions and it virtually guarantees that emergency services gets my GPS coordinates. Of course, I take other safety precautions to avoid an emergency in the first place.
I'm confused. If you are talking about wilderness, I maybe agree. But then you talk about the AT.
If you are hiking on marked trails, you don't need to go drop $200 on electronics before you should feel safe going for a walk in the woods. You don't even need hiking boots, SPF 50 wicking t-shirts, or merino wool underwear.
I just really have a lot of trouble with that comment. I originally downvoted--but then I didn't--but I just have trouble with the concept that I must always take active measures to have people rescue me just really bothers me.
I'd probably consider a PLB if I were soloing in a remote area but I doubt if I would on the AT in general. And certainly don't have (or would consider) in routine local outside areas.
Carrying a PLB or satellite communicator is not a bad idea, but there is a huge obstacle for many people to obtain one: They cost a fair bit of money. I believe the Inreach devices are ~$400USD, plus a minimum subscription of ~12/month. That's not realistic for a lot of people.
People have been successfully & safely travelling the wilderness for centuries without these devices. If you have solid wilderness skills, and take appropriate precautions, there is nothing unsafe about exploring the wilderness, with or without a PLB.
If you don't have a PLB, the least you should be doing is telling someone close to you where you are going to be parking, how long you expect to be out, when you plan to return and what your expected route is. If any of that information changes then try to update your contact person before you commit to a different route.
Go over what to do (for both you and your POC) if you don't report in within a certain time after your expected return.
When you're traveling off trail, it's not enough to simply have a map & compass... You need to learn how to interpret a topographic map, and recognize the terrain around you. That takes time & effort.
It's a very useful skill, and worth learning if you're going outdoors. But it's not as simple as looking at road maps and reading street signs.
Coincidentally, there is a great Sierra Club program in Los Angeles & Orange County that teaches off-trail navigation (among other skills)... It's called the Wilderness Travel Course, and it's great fun. I believe the Mountaineers in the PNW also teach those skills as part of their leadership program.
The hiker texted a photo. Even better, since he had a smartphone, he could text his GPS coordinates from an app like Gaia. Not sure if there's a way to get lat/long from Apple or Google Maps.
[+] [-] curiousllama|5 years ago|reply
“Well, by the angle of the sun he had to be in an n-mile radius of his car. In that area, there are only 4 cliffs with sufficient height to be in that photo with wildfire burn areas in between. And the plants had to be of the genus whateverae due to the shape of their spikes, and those _obviosuly_ only grow on the north face of sedimentary rocks... so it had to be X”
[+] [-] mparlane|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1382375691233103874
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|5 years ago|reply
Sometimes you have the right person in the right place at the right time. I'm also really interested in learning more about how this person pinpointed the hiker.
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carabiner|5 years ago|reply
He had GPS coords in photos turned off. He sent the photo before he got lost, then his phone died, then he realized his predicament. Yeah, hikers who know WTF they are doing generally don't end up in the news like this. This is distressingly common on the 10,000+ ft peaks near Los Angeles, like these folks: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/hikers-survival-san....
[+] [-] thaumaturgy|5 years ago|reply
First, there are still many many areas in the US where your phone will only be able to get a reliable signal to one tower, and those areas also happen to correlate well with areas that people like to go for outdoor recreation.
Second, you have to have somebody involved that knows the right specific questions to ask, and you have to have a representative at the phone company that's not a fleshy automaton. Search and rescue efforts tend to be coordinated by local law enforcement (usually sheriffs or park services), and training varies a lot. So, for practical purposes, this information is often not available.
Third, the information you get back requires some interpretation. It's not like the phone company sends back a map with a nice circle on it; you get some values back from one or more radios at one or more locations (possibly with or without orientations for the radios, and possibly that information is current and reliable or not). Then you have to plot those values, and then you have to take into account fun little quirks of physics, like the part where canyons of some kinds of rock can bounce a signal really well and cause somebody to be closer to the tower than the data would suggest. Other formations act like big reflectors.
Zero of the searches that I have been on have included helpful information from cell towers.
[+] [-] gamblor956|5 years ago|reply
From the TFA: "The hiker, 46-year-old Rene Compean, sent a photo to a friend before becoming lost"
[+] [-] neolog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wooptoo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaiju0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kleton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hesk|5 years ago|reply
I came across that story after somebody on HN posted about the Death Valley Germans [2]. A couple of hours well-spent.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/22/magazine/voya... [2] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
[+] [-] supernova87a|5 years ago|reply
Anyway, aside from that, I am perpetually in awe / fascinated by how we as human beings long to solve a puzzle, no matter how distant or unfamiliar (or insignificant) another person is to us. There are stories about townspeople keeping a stranger's death alive for decades until solving it. It's almost like a mysterious death is as important, if not more important in a collective consciousness, as lots of people dying from something that is well known or not "interesting"...
[+] [-] gpas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techcode|5 years ago|reply
Besides GPS, it sadly also needs/uses internet connection and then shows street address.
Oh and last time our car died in some small town with unpronounceable German name - once I called insurance (with roadside assistance module), operator sent me SMS, shortened URL opened up web browser and page asked for permission to get GPS access, and 10 seconds later she had exact Lat/Long on her screen.
[+] [-] lathiat|5 years ago|reply
Though honestly not the most obvious or accessible thing. Most people would probably just call the emergency number directly instead of using the convoluted button combination.
"You can also add emergency contacts. After an emergency call has ended, your iPhone will alert your emergency contacts with a text message, unless you choose to cancel this option. Your iPhone sends them your current location, and, for a period of time after you enter SOS mode, it sends updates to your emergency contacts when your location changes."
[+] [-] xsmasher|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonah|5 years ago|reply
Additionally both Android and iOS support location sharing with dispatch centers and more and more jurisdictions across the country are capable of receiving that info. So, we're getting there.
https://www.blog.google/products/android/expanding-emergency...
https://rapidsos.com/our-latest/google-and-rapidsos-partner/
https://rapidsos.com/our-latest/apples-ios-12-securely-and-a...
[+] [-] interestica|5 years ago|reply
You can also use the app to listen for certain Intents (like a button sequence on a smart watch) and perform the same location/sms action.
[+] [-] c-slice|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandelany|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodrellblank|5 years ago|reply
The person was eventually found by people in the area, and had died on a path in an open field, (sudden collapse and no chance to have used their phone to call anyone) so being out of tree cover etc. might plausibly have been found by a good clear overhead image. Probably still too small for a non-military satellite image, maybe a drone flyover.
I do often wonder what it would take for humans to actually save people Thunderbirds style. We’re getting closer and closer to ubiquitous surveillance, but when you look at the nutty putty cave incident or the Thai schoolchildren in the cave, locations were known there was just no way to blast the rock without crushing the people, and rescue or failure came down to human effort. Very little future tech would have made either rescue attempt enormously easier, would it? To get to people trapped under rock quickly you need to move or melt a lot of rock and you can’t blast or drill casually because of the risk to the people. That leaves slow or low-energy rescue which is slow and limited in what it can try.
How are today’s emergency services doing compared to a platonic ideal emergency service which can find and save anyone anywhere on earth from any trouble they are in, Superman style? Are we almost as good as it’s possible to be (but not evenly distributed), or nowhere near?
[+] [-] techcode|5 years ago|reply
To ease her mind - I turned on family/emergency location sharing in Google Maps.
Afterward we realized it's supper convinient way to avoid those "How long before you (and one of kids that either one of us would pick up) are home?" calls.
Although starting shortly before Covid the functionality seems to have taken a nose dive. Like randomly showing one of us is in different city (e.g. Amsterdam vs Rotterdam), or now during Covid often saying "Offline, along with last known location from 1h ago (which tends to be home) and what was battery level at the time".
Actually it seems like some engineer (pre covid) though of optimizing refresh time for Google Maps location sharing based on how much it changes over some recent time.
And now combination of WFH meaning it's same place for majority of the day and that TTL being high, and literally all grocery stores we go to having no cellphone signal (I mean not even SMS can make it) putting us in edge of an edge case.
[+] [-] toast0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonah|5 years ago|reply
Cell Phones and SAR - Browser-based Location Apps https://wisarandgis.blogspot.com/2016/06/cell-phones-and-sar...
Reasons Why 911 Sometimes Cannot Find Cell Phones https://findmesar.com/p/pdf/reasons_why_911_cannot_find_cell...
The Smart Way To Use A Cell Phone To Contact 911 https://findmesar.com/p/pdf/smart_way_call_911_with_cell_pho...
[+] [-] MappingSupport|5 years ago|reply
Now with that said, there are a lot of 911 call centers that use RapidSOS or other add on technology that do get the caller's coordinates directly from the caller's phone.
Of course a person calling 911 has no way to know beforehand whether the 911 call center handling their call will be able to get their coordinates via technology. That is the reason I urge everyone to have some way to use their phone to get their coordinates and the equally important accuracy value. Use a compass app, use FindMeSAR (I am developer) or use something else. I don't care. Instead, the important point is that you use 'something instead of nothing'.
[+] [-] renewiltord|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interestica|5 years ago|reply
And also related: If you've got the android app MacroDroid (and presumably Tasker and others) you can set up an SMS auto-responder that will send your GPS coords. You can make it respond to a pre-approved contact who sends a pre-approved phrase. It means you're not constantly sending out location data, but can be reached hands-free if needed. And you should be able to sneak in an SMS even when service is unreliable.
[+] [-] dbt00|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] disabled|5 years ago|reply
But, as this poster stated (see comment tree here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065803) there is no reason to be going into wilderness in 2020 (or 2021) without a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). You get them, of course, at a place like REI.
As another poster said "They should be considered as basic and as necessary as a life vest, seat belt, or bike helmet. You should not be backpacking on the Appalachian trail without one." See this comment tree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24065435
There are also variants of PLBs (which are not as robust) called satellite communicators. The Garmin Inreach series and Zotero devices are quite popular satellite communicators.
Even when exercising outside and not in the wilderness, I carry a Garmin Inreach Mini (which works with my Garmin watch) in case of a medical emergency. I have health conditions and it virtually guarantees that emergency services gets my GPS coordinates. Of course, I take other safety precautions to avoid an emergency in the first place.
[+] [-] kevinpet|5 years ago|reply
If you are hiking on marked trails, you don't need to go drop $200 on electronics before you should feel safe going for a walk in the woods. You don't even need hiking boots, SPF 50 wicking t-shirts, or merino wool underwear.
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
I'd probably consider a PLB if I were soloing in a remote area but I doubt if I would on the AT in general. And certainly don't have (or would consider) in routine local outside areas.
[+] [-] SkittyDog|5 years ago|reply
People have been successfully & safely travelling the wilderness for centuries without these devices. If you have solid wilderness skills, and take appropriate precautions, there is nothing unsafe about exploring the wilderness, with or without a PLB.
[+] [-] iamthepieman|5 years ago|reply
Go over what to do (for both you and your POC) if you don't report in within a certain time after your expected return.
[+] [-] kortilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] axiosgunnar|5 years ago|reply
On a related note, have there been any attempts on developing AI models that can pinpoint an (approximate?) location, given a photo?
[+] [-] xnx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp0826|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_F**k_With_Cats:_Huntin...
[+] [-] curiousllama|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therockspush|5 years ago|reply
Finding someone using intuition and suncalc.
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/03/using-the-su...
[+] [-] KoftaBob|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perrohunter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SkittyDog|5 years ago|reply
It's a very useful skill, and worth learning if you're going outdoors. But it's not as simple as looking at road maps and reading street signs.
Coincidentally, there is a great Sierra Club program in Los Angeles & Orange County that teaches off-trail navigation (among other skills)... It's called the Wilderness Travel Course, and it's great fun. I believe the Mountaineers in the PNW also teach those skills as part of their leadership program.
[+] [-] ArcturianDeath|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] starpilot|5 years ago|reply