

"John Aldridge fell overboard in the middle of the night, 40 miles from shore" - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/a-speck-in-the-sea.html?pagewanted=all

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dave1629
A great story, with lots of interesting technology aspects too. The Coast
Guard seems to have a strange mix of advanced and very primitive technology
for conducting searches - a program that uses Monte Carlo simulations to
predict the best places to search and (presumably smartly) computes good
search paths for all the available resources and can relay those paths
directly to the helicopters' autopilot systems, but then does the actual
searching with people in the helicopters scanning with their eyes and the
computer system crashes with no way to restore state mid-search.

Seems like it shouldn't be too long before the Coast Guard can just launch a
few hundred drones (e.g., DJI Phantom 2 Vision Quadcopters only costs ~$1K
each, but might need a few boats to provide networking and recharging out at
sea) with directions to scan the area, and computer vision algorithms would do
most of the video analysis.﻿

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidEvans/posts/FFQsaWuy8Ry](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DavidEvans/posts/FFQsaWuy8Ry)

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shalalala
What brand of boots!? What brand of boots!?!

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kanamekun
I couldn't find the brand anywhere, although I found a good picture of his
boots here: [http://www.kjonline.com/news/NY-lobsterman-rescued-
after-12-...](http://www.kjonline.com/news/NY-lobsterman-rescued-
after-12-hours-in-water-.html)

That article has a quote that explains why the brand of boot isn't mentioned:
<< His father, John Aldridge Sr., joked to his son not to reveal the brand
name on the boots to reporters: "Not until we get a contract offer." >>

