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I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

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Re: I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

#81

Post by mindslight »

scrozier wrote: post #50
mindslight wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, because I'd say that jargon is a facilitator of communication between knowledgeable people. It can always be looked up by those with the interest but not the knowledge. I end up doing this all the time, and appreciating reading dumps of domain knowledge and perspective. Meanwhile, writing everything for a lowest common denominator audience creates real barriers to communication - both destroying communications…

It would take the author a few seconds to type "remotely operated vehicle" (or whatever it stands for), and therefore save hours of time for people who need to look it up. Not to mention...I almost skipped the article because I didn't know what ROV stood for. Lost audience. Your argument is that lots of experts on remotely operated vehicles would scoff at the article because it didn't use their "inside" jargon? First…

Jargon generally takes on its own meaning and context beyond a naive reading. "ROV" customarily refers to an underwater remotely operated vehicle, not merely any "remotely operated vehicle" (contrast with flying "drones" or contemporary cars with cell modems). I'm nowhere near an expert or even frequent user of the term, that's just from my casual recollection and a quick search seems to back it up.

The proper comparison isn't the author's time versus the readers looking it up, but rather readers encountering a term for the first time having to look it up versus every other reader having to read overly verbose writing that reiterates basic definitions rather than getting to the novel points. If you're as interested in ROVs as you imply, well now you know for all of the other times you will read the term. If you're really expecting to never encounter the term again, I wonder why you're reading a technical engineering-adjacent forum.

And yes, effective communication within "like-minded cliques" is exactly what is facilitated by jargon. Personally I'd rather read concise technical descriptions from such direct communications (doing the work to learn what I don't know from context or external sources), rather than having to skim through watered-down general-audience "edutainment" articles and read between the lines to figure out the specific touchstones being referenced by canned general phrases.

Re: I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

#83

Post by throwaway81523 »

The article doesn't say so, but some web search and deepl.com translation makes it sound like the second missing person may have died by suicide. When they first found the sunken car, they wondered (presuming that the car had gone off the road by accident) how the heck the car had ended up so far out into the water. The answer might be that it didn't fall off the road, but rather was driven off at high speed on purpose, with the express intention of making it hard to find afterwards. :(

Re: I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

#84

Post by flaminHotSpeedo »

jumploops wrote: post #76
rblatz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first case I kept wondering why they needed so much complicated technology. The water they’re searching isn’t all that deep a cheap canoe and a long pole with a go pro, and a magnet on a rope would have been equally effective, cheaper, and faster. But for the second case that they needed the be able to search a much wider area and the tire tracks likely wouldn’t have been visible in on a camera. Really cool p…

> For the first case I kept wondering why they needed so much complicated technology. "It's always in the last place I looked" I think we're seeing the first few guesses for where the car might be, but according to the author, there was a 40km distance between the cabin and the girlfriend's town. Hindsight is 20/20, but I wouldn't put it past the author to commit beyond 3 search sites, some of which may require deepe…

Also by my interpretation it sounds like the author welcomed the excuse for a project

Re: I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

#85

Post by trymas »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #65

Frankly, my takeaway here is that police detectives in Finland are poorly trained and not very good at analytical thinking. In the first case, if they'd reasoned things out like the author did, they could have simply had someone walk alongside the road that he was likely to be on, they would have seen pretty obvious evidence of damage to the ground / foliage, gone for a closer look, and seen all the broken car bits.…

Hindsight is 20/20, though I was asking similar things since almost the beginning. If the car went off the road - there must have been signs for it. Broken shrubs, trees, car parts, etc.

Especially for the first case, where OP found Citroen car parts on the side of the road 10 years after the accident.

My only guess - in the middle of forested Finland - police force is small and most likely overworked.

Re: I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

#87

Post by klausjensen »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #70

I throughly enjoyed reading the entire story. However I found it strange he sort of ended with “they searched for the car and asked us to leave.” The first one they got thanked profusely. But at no point did the author ever claim to have definitively found the car or the body. It’s humble but almost oddly so. Anyway great story.

Finnish people are typically quite humble and don't invite a lot of attention.

Re: I built an ROV to solve missing person cases

#90

Post by drcongo »

spathi_fwiffo wrote: post #17

I would suggest defining any acronyms in the title of an article in the introduction section of the article. Had to get to PART 6 to answer my first question: What is an "ROV"? "The solution was to use an ROV, Remote Operated Vehicle "

Once I got to the end of the first page without finding out, I selected the "ROV" in the title and three-finger-touched my trackpad and it told me the answer. One of the little Mac niceties I'd struggle without.
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