Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 166 posts

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#11

Post by ggreer »

[deleted] wrote: post #6

[deleted]

The article's line, "In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free..." is dishonest. Services like Find My iPhone only work if:

1. The phone can determine its location via GPS, cell tower, and/or wifi positioning.

2. The phone has Internet access. (Cell or wifi.)

As you might suspect, the south Indian Ocean doesn't have many cell towers or wifi hotspots. GPS signals don't penetrate water, nor do the frequencies radiated by cell phones. Even if you had an unobtainium phone that survived the crash and depth, it couldn't be tracked.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#12

Post by windsurfer »

lostlogin wrote: post #5
melling wrote: post #2

"In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free, the $250 million jet vanished." It sounds like Inmarsat is now making basic ping location available for free: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182223-inmarsat-now-givin...

That quote had me thinking too. Could I not be tracked please? What would that cost?

Don't cell towers need to know your position to transfer you from tower to tower?

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#13

Post by cornellwright »

ggreer wrote: post #11
[deleted] wrote: post #6

[deleted]

The article's line, "In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free..." is dishonest. Services like Find My iPhone only work if: 1. The phone can determine its location via GPS, cell tower, and/or wifi positioning. 2. The phone has Internet access. (Cell or wifi.) As you might suspect, the south Indian Ocean doesn't have many cell towers or wifi hotspots. GPS signals don't penetrate water, nor do the freq…

It's only a little off. Services like Spot [http://findmespot.com/en/] offer satellite tracking with updates every 5 minutes while moving for $100 for equipment and $100/year for service. Spot doesn't quite cover the whole world, but Delorme InReach does [http://www.inreachdelorme.com/] for like $250 for equipment and $150 per year.

Given how easily available this technology is to anyone with a credit card, it's hard to understand how a $250M airliner doesn't have something similar.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#14

Post by 0xffff2 »

melling wrote: post #2

"In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free, the $250 million jet vanished." It sounds like Inmarsat is now making basic ping location available for free: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182223-inmarsat-now-givin...

That quote is disingenuous in the extreme. You absolutely can not track a $100 smartphone in the middle of the Indian ocean, for any price.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#15

Post by melling »

ggreer wrote: post #11
[deleted] wrote: post #6

[deleted]

The article's line, "In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free..." is dishonest. Services like Find My iPhone only work if: 1. The phone can determine its location via GPS, cell tower, and/or wifi positioning. 2. The phone has Internet access. (Cell or wifi.) As you might suspect, the south Indian Ocean doesn't have many cell towers or wifi hotspots. GPS signals don't penetrate water, nor do the freq…

United seems to have quite a bit of coverage there:

https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/wif...

The map:

https://www.united.com/web/format/img/travel/inflight/05-28-...

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#16

Post by sigmar »

windsurfer wrote: post #12
lostlogin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote had me thinking too. Could I not be tracked please? What would that cost?

Don't cell towers need to know your position to transfer you from tower to tower?

Nope

edit: though I guess that fact that you are connected to a specific tower leaks location information

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#17

Post by gaur »

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede.

I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front, instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#18

Post by cosmotron »

gaur wrote: post #17

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede. I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

I believe the "weeks" figure is related to this quote: "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia, Dolan said."

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#19

Post by cddotdotslash »

gaur wrote: post #17

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede. I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia." I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading a story, not just a two minute summary.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#20

Post by Johnie »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #19
gaur wrote: post #17

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede. I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia." I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading a story, not just a two minute summary.

I thought there was some technological reason (ie battery dead), but it seems like it's just a funding thing. The batteries only had 30 days of life anyway.
Post reply on HN