6 ms·

MH370: China releases satellite images of possible crash site

46 points by aburan28 13y ago

r00fus 13y ago
I'm getting more and more fond of the "live feed" style of reporting that theguardian.com does so well. Other than your tech release liveblog, does anyone else do this kind of news format? It's pretty awesome, as the timeliness of the reporting and sequence convey a story that goes beyond the individual facts.
- kalleboo 13y ago
  My local Swedish newspaper does it (http://www.sydsvenskan.se http://www.sydsvenskan.se) when there are events like storms or public transport delays that have ongoing news. They also allow reader comments into the feed to gather new info from the field and respond to questions. I think they use coveritlive.
- erichurkman 13y ago
  BBC does it as well. I've seen on a handful of other news sites (NY Times, CNN, NBC) for some events. Forums are a great source, too, when you get parties that are interested in aggregating news sources [1] for the community. Sports and elections use the format very frequently — these have the advantage that significant infrastructure can be set up in advance, whereas breaking news live blogging is more adhoc, and often constitutes just updating the text of a posted article on a website. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/20288q/comprehensive_timeline_malaysia_airlines_flight/ http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/20288q/comprehensive_t...
- notatoad 13y ago
  Reddit is my go-to for live-feed style news of major events. there's always somebody in the comments of a front-page thread doing a good running summary of what's happened so far.
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    Yeah, I found Reddit's investigative journalism superb during the Boston Marathon Bombing /s
    - mcintyre1994 13y ago
      In fairness wasn't that a subreddit? It probably got posted and on the front page a few times, but it's very different to the live news in big front page news threads referenced. An example is the showdown there, the top live news comment was the best I saw for the events anywhere.
      - svenkatesh 13y ago
        It moved to a subreddit when the thread in /news or /worldnews got too big (I don't remember specifics). In any case, the effects of the witchhunt weren't limited to that subreddit anyway... the users started harassing Sunil's parents on Facebook and began calling LEO with their harebrained theory. There's a reason that vigilante justice isn't legal in most of the civilized world.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      One mistake ruins the entire foundation of crowdsourced information! Never trust forums for info! /S
      - svenkatesh 13y ago
        You're right, that was the only instance in which Reddit was wrong. Ever. /s
        Gigablah 13y ago
        All journalistic entities have been wrong multiple times before, so we should only trust the official authorities. Oh wait, they're confused too.
        13y ago
- hershel 13y ago
  Circa.io does it nicely in an app form, and storify is a crowd sourced platform for doing such stories.
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    FYI Heroku is reporting that the site is down.
- nadc 13y ago
  Vox Media (behind The Verge, Polygon, SB Nation etc.) announced in January they're working on something similar [1]. Their jobs page [2] is listing a few positions under 'Project X'. Worth keeping an eye on. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/26/5348212/ezra-klein-vox-is-our-next http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/26/5348212/ezra-klein-vox-is-... [2] http://jobs.voxmedia.com/apply http://jobs.voxmedia.com/apply
  - anamoulous 13y ago
    The've been doing it for years on SB Nation. http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/12/19/5228994/kobe-bryant-injury-left-knee-fracture-tibia http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/12/19/5228994/kobe-bryant-i...
bruceb 13y ago
If they were taken Sunday wonder why it took 4 days for them to become public? Anyone familiar with satellite imaging? Are the images not sent instantly to earth where they can then review?
- meritt 13y ago
  There are a massive number of images to review. The South China Sea search area alone is 14,440 square miles.
  - bruceb 13y ago
    That is true but if this turns out to be not far off the flight's original path then I am a little surprised still.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  well someone has to notice something too. In this day and age I expect them to be available real time but my ex brother in law used to do similar for the air force and what he could see in a photo is beyond me even after going "its right there". Video about finding V1 in WW2 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23270332 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23270332 explaining how to find something in photos
  - bruceb 13y ago
    That is an awesome story thanks for sharing the link. More people died making the V1/2 than killed in Britain I didn't know that.
- duochrome 13y ago
  The image was taken on March 9 11:00 AM and relaesed on Marh 12. That's about 48 hours. Also note that their work is to "found the airplane" not to "release the image".
- United857 13y ago
  Possibly because the Chinese initially didn't want to release the images to give away the full capabilities of their satellites to potential adversaries. It's safe to say these images have been blurred/degraded from the original sources.
melling 13y ago
Can this information be used in the crowd-sourced search that is happening on http://tomnod.com http://tomnod.com so people can focus on that area for a while?
- meritt 13y ago
  Most likely but I couldn't find an easy way to go to a specific lat/lon coordinate and they make interacting with their system in an unintended fashion fairly annoying. If you click the 'random location' you'll see a POST which contains a JSON body that has lat/lng coords and such, might be able to manipulate that in order to figure out the correct grid # that tomnod assigns to that area.
  - zeratul 13y ago
    Please let us know. I think they are using their own internal lat/lon mapping to encode images. I was able to get some images using their API: https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/18/206345/136360.jpg https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/18/2... https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/12/3224/2133.jpg https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/12/3... but most of the numbers return 403. Above links roughly match upper left and lower right corner.
- eliteraspberrie 13y ago
  http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014 http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014
ccarpenterg 13y ago
Oil rig worker says he saw Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 burst into flames Source: http://www.news.com.au/world/oil-rig-worker-says-he-saw-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-burst-into-flames/story-fndir2ev-1226853302184 http://www.news.com.au/world/oil-rig-worker-says-he-saw-mala...
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
The images are from SASTIND, available here: http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c303244/content.html http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c303244/content.html These images interpolated 400%: http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303251-416.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303251-416.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303252-55.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303252-55.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303253-144.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303253-144.png
gejjaxxita 13y ago
Serious question: How can they tell it's not a cloud?
- duochrome 13y ago
  I think there are a few different satellites that their imaging systems respond to different lightwaves.
BrandonMarc 13y ago
It's my understanding the South China Sea is, compared to open ocean, really more of a shallow lake that happens to be teaming with Chinese subs. American ones, too, for that matter. If the plane did hit this body of water, would these subs have noticed it? If so, are they keeping silent as a matter of tradecraft, to avoid showing their capabilities to the other side?

46 points by aburan28 13y ago

I'm getting more and more fond of the "live feed" style of reporting that theguardian.com does so well. Other than your tech release liveblog, does anyone else do this kind of news format? It's pretty awesome, as the timeliness of the reporting and sequence convey a story that goes beyond the individual facts.

kalleboo 13y ago
My local Swedish newspaper does it (http://www.sydsvenskan.se http://www.sydsvenskan.se) when there are events like storms or public transport delays that have ongoing news. They also allow reader comments into the feed to gather new info from the field and respond to questions. I think they use coveritlive.
erichurkman 13y ago
BBC does it as well. I've seen on a handful of other news sites (NY Times, CNN, NBC) for some events. Forums are a great source, too, when you get parties that are interested in aggregating news sources [1] for the community. Sports and elections use the format very frequently — these have the advantage that significant infrastructure can be set up in advance, whereas breaking news live blogging is more adhoc, and often constitutes just updating the text of a posted article on a website. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/20288q/comprehensive_timeline_malaysia_airlines_flight/ http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/20288q/comprehensive_t...
notatoad 13y ago
Reddit is my go-to for live-feed style news of major events. there's always somebody in the comments of a front-page thread doing a good running summary of what's happened so far.
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  Yeah, I found Reddit's investigative journalism superb during the Boston Marathon Bombing /s
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    In fairness wasn't that a subreddit? It probably got posted and on the front page a few times, but it's very different to the live news in big front page news threads referenced. An example is the showdown there, the top live news comment was the best I saw for the events anywhere.
    - svenkatesh 13y ago
      It moved to a subreddit when the thread in /news or /worldnews got too big (I don't remember specifics). In any case, the effects of the witchhunt weren't limited to that subreddit anyway... the users started harassing Sunil's parents on Facebook and began calling LEO with their harebrained theory. There's a reason that vigilante justice isn't legal in most of the civilized world.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    One mistake ruins the entire foundation of crowdsourced information! Never trust forums for info! /S
    - svenkatesh 13y ago
      You're right, that was the only instance in which Reddit was wrong. Ever. /s
      - Gigablah 13y ago
        All journalistic entities have been wrong multiple times before, so we should only trust the official authorities. Oh wait, they're confused too.
      - 13y ago
hershel 13y ago
Circa.io does it nicely in an app form, and storify is a crowd sourced platform for doing such stories.
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  FYI Heroku is reporting that the site is down.
nadc 13y ago
Vox Media (behind The Verge, Polygon, SB Nation etc.) announced in January they're working on something similar [1]. Their jobs page [2] is listing a few positions under 'Project X'. Worth keeping an eye on. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/26/5348212/ezra-klein-vox-is-our-next http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/26/5348212/ezra-klein-vox-is-... [2] http://jobs.voxmedia.com/apply http://jobs.voxmedia.com/apply
- anamoulous 13y ago
  The've been doing it for years on SB Nation. http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/12/19/5228994/kobe-bryant-injury-left-knee-fracture-tibia http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2013/12/19/5228994/kobe-bryant-i...

bruceb 13y ago

If they were taken Sunday wonder why it took 4 days for them to become public? Anyone familiar with satellite imaging? Are the images not sent instantly to earth where they can then review?

meritt 13y ago
There are a massive number of images to review. The South China Sea search area alone is 14,440 square miles.
- bruceb 13y ago
  That is true but if this turns out to be not far off the flight's original path then I am a little surprised still.
Shivetya 13y ago
well someone has to notice something too. In this day and age I expect them to be available real time but my ex brother in law used to do similar for the air force and what he could see in a photo is beyond me even after going "its right there". Video about finding V1 in WW2 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23270332 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23270332 explaining how to find something in photos
- bruceb 13y ago
  That is an awesome story thanks for sharing the link. More people died making the V1/2 than killed in Britain I didn't know that.
duochrome 13y ago
The image was taken on March 9 11:00 AM and relaesed on Marh 12. That's about 48 hours. Also note that their work is to "found the airplane" not to "release the image".
United857 13y ago
Possibly because the Chinese initially didn't want to release the images to give away the full capabilities of their satellites to potential adversaries. It's safe to say these images have been blurred/degraded from the original sources.

melling 13y ago

Can this information be used in the crowd-sourced search that is happening on http://tomnod.com http://tomnod.com so people can focus on that area for a while?

meritt 13y ago
Most likely but I couldn't find an easy way to go to a specific lat/lon coordinate and they make interacting with their system in an unintended fashion fairly annoying. If you click the 'random location' you'll see a POST which contains a JSON body that has lat/lng coords and such, might be able to manipulate that in order to figure out the correct grid # that tomnod assigns to that area.
- zeratul 13y ago
  Please let us know. I think they are using their own internal lat/lon mapping to encode images. I was able to get some images using their API: https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/18/206345/136360.jpg https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/18/2... https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/12/3224/2133.jpg https://ddnhehdam2vn0.cloudfront.net/malaysiaair2014_02/12/3... but most of the numbers return 403. Above links roughly match upper left and lower right corner.
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014 http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014

ccarpenterg 13y ago

Oil rig worker says he saw Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 burst into flames Source: http://www.news.com.au/world/oil-rig-worker-says-he-saw-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-burst-into-flames/story-fndir2ev-1226853302184 http://www.news.com.au/world/oil-rig-worker-says-he-saw-mala...

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

The images are from SASTIND, available here: http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c303244/content.html http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c303244/content.html These images interpolated 400%: http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303251-416.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303251-416.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303252-55.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303252-55.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303253-144.png http://www.eliteraspberries.com/files/303253-144.png

gejjaxxita 13y ago

Serious question: How can they tell it's not a cloud?

duochrome 13y ago
I think there are a few different satellites that their imaging systems respond to different lightwaves.

BrandonMarc 13y ago

It's my understanding the South China Sea is, compared to open ocean, really more of a shallow lake that happens to be teaming with Chinese subs. American ones, too, for that matter. If the plane did hit this body of water, would these subs have noticed it? If so, are they keeping silent as a matter of tradecraft, to avoid showing their capabilities to the other side?