Posts by Alan J. Wylie

Which is why The Register loves the standards process

obligatory xkcd

Good video from Big Clive

The cause of the Bored Ape UVC eye burn incident?

As mentioned in the article, It's not the first time that there has been UV eye damage at a function in Hong Kong. He thinks that this time there was a "lavatory" theme room with exposed UVC germicidal tubes around the top of the walls.

A cave, rather than a mine, and a laboratory, rather than a computer

I used to work for Laser-Scan Labs in Cambridge, founded by Professor Otto Frisch. Reading his biography "What Little I Remember", I came across this description of him visiting Blue John Cavern, whither a Manchester Hospital's radium supply had been moved for safe keeping, in order to get some radon gas, a decay product of the radium, for his research into separating out the uranium 235 isotope using heat and gravity.

This was shortly after he and Rudolf Peierls had published their memorandum on the feasibility of an air droppable atomic bomb.

At my request Oliphant arranged for me to get some radon from a hospital in Manchester; the radium had been removed to safety, deep below ground in the Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire, a well known tourist attraction in peace time.

Any safety officer would shudder at the thought that I walked out with that thing, protected by only a couple of inches of lead, and that I travelled within a few inches of that radiation source first by car and then by train. Today that would be considered an unacceptable radiation hazard both to myself and to other people in the compartment.

My personal experience

I had to call 999 to request the local Cave Rescue to evacuate a companion with appendicitis. The police (who for historical reasons handle cave and mountain rescue calls) required a W3W location. I provided them with one (though I also have two OS grid ref apps on my smartphone). The operator then identified my as being at Ingleborough Show Cave, when I was actually at Gaping Gill, about a mile away with no vehicular access between the two.

P.S. See page 16 of Mountain Rescue Magazine

Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications

Here's a real life example of W3W going wrong: Keswick Mountain Rescue Team

An 83 year old female collapsed in Crow Park. The informant gave the 999 call handler a What3Words location which was close to Hawes End. The team sent a Landrover first truck to the location only to find nobody. Further enquiries revealed the true location within walking distance of the base. Fortunately more team members had arrived at base and were able to respond quickly to this potentially serious medical incident. The casualty was assessed and stretchered back to base for further assessment and to await the arrival of an ambulance.

This is the second callout in 3 days (and there have been others) when the W3W location has been close enough to be believable but wrong enough to be useless. W3W should not be relied upon on its own. Always give a verbal description of where the casualty is and better still a grid reference from a map or use the app

Wrapping at column 78

One thing missing in the article: wrap your lines for easier reading.

I'm a proud user of emacs/VM

And my proudest e-mail

You no longer call from a fixed geographic point with a known number, but are at the mercy of a skew of GIS systems that may or may not work for you.

Exactly this happened to me. At 07:50 I dialled 999, needing Cave Rescue to evacuate a casualty with appendicitis. I knew exactly where I was in North Yorkshire (Gaping Gill) and the Cave Rescue Organisation would have known exactly too (in fact, several of their members were with me, but for insurance reasons calls have to go via the Police). Gaping Gill is in North Yorkshire, but the mobile mast I connected to was in Lancashire, so I was put through to that Police Force. After going through the "What Three Words" farce[1][2], after which the operator tried to put me at a different cave several miles away, I was told that North Yorkshire Police and then CRO would phone me back. This didn't happen until 08:40. I've tried raising complaints with the two forces and also the IOPC, but all they are interested in dealing with are the actions of individual officers, not that the system is broken. I was told, in particular, that one police force cannot transfer a call to another, nor set up a three way call with Cave/Mountain rescue organisations. In remote areas where signal is poor, 999 sometimes goes via an alternate provider or signal is so intermittent that the phone cannot be called back. Also the caller may have had to move away from the casualty to get signal, leaving them alone and without first aid attention. The rescue organisation duty officer has local knowledge which will often allow them to easily locate a caller, knowledge which the small number of call centres can never have.

A couple of links to similar incidents:

overdue on a walk over Fountains Fell in the dark and poor visibility

lost on Ingleborough

[1] BBC: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

[2] Mountain Rescue Magazine Summer 2021: Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications