Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by RC_ITR | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

RC_ITR

Just as a PSA in case not everyone knows this new feature.

In the US and a growing number of other countries, the latest iPhones have a satellite network for emergencies.

If tech giants are going to spend money on something cool, might as well use it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213426

View on HN

It's not exactly "satellite network", it's piggy-backing on an existing SAR reception infrastructure that used to require somewhat expensive dedicated devices. Not sure it's a good idea, I'd expect a wave of SAR requests for not real emergencies.

The devices aren’t even particularly expensive any more, about $200 iirc.

A PLB usually also has a radio transmitter on it that allows rescuers to direction-find your location.

PLB stands for personal locator beacon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_locator_beacon

Aren't SARs generally mounted on satellites? E.g. https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...

It's a low bandwidth, high latency facility nowhere near what you'd typically think about when you think of a network.

Search-And-Rescue, not Synthetic Aperture Radar.

While the consequences of easier communications when you get in trouble (or just get scared/tired) in the outdoors isn't intuitively obvious, SAR people I've chatted with generally seem to think that better comms is a net positive in that people can communicate before things get really dicey.

ADDED: There are also perhaps more common situations like going off the road in a snowstorm.

First time I heard about it, and looking at this after some googling: https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/search-and-rescue-satellites/

If I am getting this right, Apple and other device makers would have some kind of beacon registration for every single device it produces with the feature ?

If this story is accurate, the integration with the iPhone's existing crash detection has already been used in a rescue:

https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/14/iphone-14-satellite-crash-det...

Which is a pretty neat capability all things considered.

it has also falsely reported accidents numerous times

Idk where you’re getting your info, but they’re globestar satellites and Apple invested half a billion dollars into that company.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/11/emergency-sos-via-sat...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com