Slashdot Mirror
Israeli Troops Who Relied On Waze Blundered Into Deadly Palestinian Firefight (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Israeli forces mounted a rescue mission in a Palestinian neighborhood after gun battles erupted when two soldiers mistakenly entered the area because of an error on a satellite navigation app, Israeli authorities said Tuesday.The clashes late Monday in the Qalandiya refugee camp outside Jerusalem left at least one Palestinian dead and 10 injured, one seriously. According to initial Israeli reports, the two soldiers said they had been using Waze, a highly touted Israeli-invented navigation app bought more than two years ago by Google. The smartphone app, which has a settings option to 'avoid dangerous areas,' relies on crowdsourcing to give users the fastest traffic routes.
Sod it all, I want tech or geek news.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If you're relying on a commercial and/or free app or program for life-or-death situations, I think you're doing it wrong. If said option is the only option, then you have to take it at face value and accept some self-responsibility. I'm not going to trust my life to crowdsourcing for surgery or medication, so why would I trust my life to crowdsourcing for navigating near a war zone?
So, two soldiers of one of the best-trained, best-equipped military forces on the planet were using a consumer-oriented phone app for navigation?
Something tells me that a certain two solders will be peeling a whole lot of potatoes over the next year or so.
If you're using crowdsourcing to figure out the safe way to go, someone's got to be the first one to report a hazard.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Modern app appers know that ONLY apps can app apps, so these app appers got apped by apping apps while apping other apps!
Apps!
I just looked through my Waze settings and I don't see "avoid dangerous areas", does that just show as an option for some third world places like Palestine or NYC?
The closest thing I found was "avoid dirt roads"
It seems Waze is sadly lacking the option to mark a hazard for "active firefight".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
two soldiers mistakenly entered the area because of an error on a satellite navigation app
And what was this supposed "error"?
According to the article (or at least, the most informative quotes in the article), the "dangerous places" setting was switched off and the driver wasn't actually on the Waze-suggested route.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"Did you guys see anything in there about bullets and explosions? "
"Ummm...Maybe check the current weather section."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
really??????
What could possibly go wrong?
A gun battle broke out in a Palestinian neighborhood late Monday after Israeli forces tried to rescue two soldiers who had mistakenly entered the area because of an error on a satellite navigation app, Israeli authorities said Tuesday.
Really?
Agence France-Presse quoted a Waze official on Tuesday as saying that the setting to warn about areas “dangerous or prohibited for Israelis to drive through” had been switched off on the device the soldiers used.
“In this case, the setting was disabled,” the official told the news agency. “In addition, the driver deviated from the suggested route and, as a result, entered the prohibited area.”
I'm having a really hard time seeing how that's the app's fault.
Nope, no sig
policy and the map will be correct!
meet Mean(ie)s. Crowdsourced info is vulnerable to attack, do not rely on it for military reasons without verifying the information is accurate.
Whether it shows up depends on what country you are in.
Facts:
1. Israelis are mammals.
2. Israelis fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the Israelis to flip out and kill people.
Weapons and gear:
Israeli M16
Israeli Stars
Israeli Outfit
Testimonial:
Israelis can kill anyone they want! Israelis shoot Palestinians in the heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this Israelis who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon the Israelis killed the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw a Israelis totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window.
And that's what I call REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you don't believe that Israelis have REAL Ultimate Power you better get a life right now or they will shoot your head off!!! It's an easy choice, if you ask me.
Israelis are sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants. I can't believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. These guys are totally awesome and that's a fact. Israelis are fast, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I can't wait to start krav maga next year. I love Israelis with all of my body (including my pee pee).
Q and A:.
Q: Why is everyone so obsessed about Israelis ?
A: Israelis are the ultimate paradox. On the one hand they don't give a crap, but on the other hand, Israelis are very careful and precise.
Q: I heard that Israelis are always cruel or mean. What's their problem?
A: Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other mammals, Israelis can be mean OR totally awesome.
Q: What do Israelis do when they're not shooting off heads or flipping out?
A: Most of their free time is spent flying, but sometime they stab. (Ask Mark if you don't believe me.)
DC is so block-by-block it's hard to imagine this working effectively. Seriously, you can walk five blocks from the FBI building and be on a bad street if you make a right but a good one if you make a left.
Of course one person's "dangerous neighbourhood" is someone else's "home" .... crowd sourcing the distinction is probably a silly idea - or was there an "Occupying Army" switch they forgot to turn on to tell it what side they were on?
There WAS no firefight at the time. From TFA:
The trouble didn't show up until after they arrived.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
just wait for an auto drive car to mess up like this and who will do the hard time when you drives on to the airport runway?
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.c...
Or drive though a armed forces base?
On to a bus only lane / road?
That'll hopefully teach them not to rely on civilian navigation tools that assume peacetime.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You would think traffic backing up at crossing 1, then 2, then 3, would give it an idea that crossing 4 would soon backup based on some sort of distance per minute algorithm bit NO!
Bullets I can forgive, they travel faster than freight trains....
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I'm sorry, I can't read your Unicode comments... Can you use a text editor like vi or something?.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So, not only was the setting not enabled (user error), but the driver didn't even follow the route that Waze provided (user error)!! Naturally, summary blames the app. Journalism at its finest!
The headline makes it sound like there was this firefight just sort of hanging out, like firefights do, and a couple of troops just blundered into it.
Let's rewrite the headline in active voice: "Palistinians Attempt to Kill Two Noncombatant Israeli Soldiers Who Accidentally Entered Refugee Camp"
From the article:
I don't think Israel is perfect, nor Israeli soldiers, but I am rather tired of how passive voice is so often used when describing things done to Israelis.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=3132
I wouldn't say that the two Israeli soldiers "blundered into a firefight". They blundered into a refugee camp, and there a group of Palestinians tried to kill them. Since their vehicle was blocked and then destroyed, they fled on foot. The firefight came later, when more Israeli soldiers came to rescue the two who blundered.
Note that the Slashdot story headline is worse than the one from the Washington Post, which is: "Israeli troops relying on Waze app blunder into Palestinian area; clashes follow"
I note also that the summary has a detailed accounting of the harm done to Palestinians: "at least one Palestinian dead and 10 injured, one seriously." Yet curiously it leaves out the small details that the Palestinians attacked first, destroyed a military vehicle, and injured 10 Israeli soldiers.
Again for comparison, the Washington Post article says:
Perhaps the omissions are simple mistakes, but it's kind of strange how the omissions were all about harm done to Israeli soldiers.
I'll finish with one more quote from the Washington Post story:
So the two soldiers who "blundered" are guilty of getting a bit lost. I've gotten a bit lost; I'm just lucky that I don't live in a place where a mob of people will attack me if I go to the wrong neighborhood.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I look forward to reading their review on play.google.com
"It is a killer app."
Sloppy commenters. It's as if there were no "preview" function, isn't it?
"In 300 meters, shoot left."
"...recalculating..."
"In 200 meters, throw hand grenades right."
"...recalculating..."
"Arriving at ambush location, on right."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A refugee camp is not a dangerous area. The problem is that they were foreign military invaders and they were probably there to do harm. It's not really easy to "wander into" a refugee camp.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Isn't this like a police officer reporting that waze failed to warn him about his speed trap before he set it up and gave out four tickets?
How exactly was a navigation app supposed to warn the soldiers an area was dangerous when the only thing that made it dangerous was two soldiers walking into a peaceful neighborhood then subsequently shooting it up, killing a person and injuring 10 others. Or are they really suggesting they walked into a pack of heavily armed dangerous Palestinians who unexpectedly opened fire on them, all missing with every surprise shot, with the result of them walking away chuckling and talking about a smartphone app leaving a trail of bodies behind because they are just that damn good.
Have they ever considered the possibility that Google is okay with people of both sides of their holy war using the app and considers an area safe until someone on either side reports a couple murderous militant assholes shooting someone who prays to wrong flavor of the same sky fairy?
First of all "Ãoestormed" would make an awesome band name.
But beyond that, once the car was firebombed it would have been helpful to mark that for other Waze users. Again, there's no good way to mark "active firefight" or "mob action" in Waze, though at the very least they could mark the burned-out husk of the vehicle as "object on road".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah. Sorry about the Unicode stuff. /. somehow lacks an "edit" functions. I usually don't proof-read copy-n-paste operations.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Heh heh. If someone firebombs my car, there's a firefight.
If you're using crowdsourcing to figure out the safe way to go, someone's got to be the first one to report a hazard.
Plus the safety / hazards in this region are heavily dependent upon the demographics of the people reporting the problems. An area safe for Palestinians may not be safe for Israelis, an area safe for Israelis may not be safe for Palestinians.
No israelis were harmed during the manufacture of this news.
'Poor navigation by israeli leads to invasion and subsequent killing of one Palestinian and the injury to 10 more.' would have been a more acurate headline.
Have gnu, will travel.
I wish I could mod this higher.
Well, Waze did know to send Infidel troops into a Mohammedan Jihadi camp and kick some butt!!! They're really living up to parent company Google's motto 'Do no evil'.
Here, I'll code it for ya:
Table-ized A.I.
Is an unprovoked attack what we expect from these barbaric, feral people? Perhaps Israel ought to expel the arabs once and for all.
an ill wind that blows no good
The closest thing I found was "avoid dirt roads"
I browsed through the source code when the client app was first released and you are indeed right. The option (at the time) to "Avoid Palestinian controlled areas" had been replaced with "Avoid dirt roads" in the worldwide code release.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
does it matter that two people got shot at for going down the wrong street not bother anyone? I'm not trying to say its ok, but maybe someone could have just said: "your in the wrong area guys, you need to shake your ass back the way you came. pronto!"
Was getting shot at really necessary?
I notice a lot of posts in Slashdot that sides with Israel, even if it is not post worthy. I think we have a clear lobby source here. Note to Slashdot, kindly refrain from pro-Israel posts until the state of Israel observes international law and human rights. No justice, no peace.
"A traffic incident has been reported here by fellow Wazers"
Must not have sound too threatening.
"Agence France-Presse quoted a Waze official on Tuesday as saying that the setting to warn about areas 'dangerous or prohibited for Israelis to drive through' had been switched off on the device the soldiers used. âoe 'In this case, the setting was disabled,' the official told the news agency. 'In addition, the driver deviated from the suggested route and, as a result, entered the prohibited area.' " A cynic might suggest the soldiers went looking for trouble, and found more than they were counting on. Of course, we're not allowed to say things like that...it's "anti-Semitic".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
How many Palestinians would have died if the Israelis had not been using Waze?
The Zionist propaganda machine has completely dominated public television to not dare show that there is apartheid in Israel, or that there are sky high walls separating Palestinians from Israelis to not have such occurrences happen in the first place. They too have dominated www.reddit.com/r/worldnews with every article slammed with tons of deceitful comments regarding the occupation. Could you kindly leave this site alone? It has no place here.
Sure... when you suicidal bastards acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, and stop lobbing rockets into Israel.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
crowd sourcing can be blamed just like the weather to justify military action that was not sanctioned by the people.
FREE PALESTINE
Those guys certainly weren't the sharpest pencils in the box.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I feel that non-Israelis have a hard time grasping the notion of a "dangerous area". What does it really mean?
Under Oslo II accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank_Areas_in_the_Oslo_II_Accord --- yes, read it whole if you do want to understand the issue) there are three types of territories: A, B, and C. Being on territory type A means for an Israeli one simple thing: if you are attacked (anyhow, for any reason) there is no-one to help you. Getting you out of trouble (and there well may be trouble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Ramallah_lynching) means a rescue operation by the Israeli army. I repeat: not a police operation, Israel will have to get soldiers on the ground. Now, in *some* areas of territories of type A the mere entrance of Israeli soldiers (even if their only intent is to proceed through without stopping) immediately breaks all the hell loose (and this is exactly what happened this time in Qalandia). There is no gun control in those places and there is no real police force.
Therefore, in Israel there is a special Waze setting which, in fact, means "Please plan my route so that I always stay on the territory type C (full Israeli military and police control)".
As one of the commenters wrote above, those "soldiers" that got into trouble this time were 18-year old kids that do their service in a non-combat unit. They were off duty, travelling in a private vehicle. They got into territory type A by and on their own stupidity and you know the awful rest of it.
Showing squiggles, rather than a proper map (so that you don't really know where you are), Waze isn't really any good for driving at the best of times.
That said, it's actually not bad for cycling. Due to its habit of taking me through narrow, speed-bump laden residential roads, I tend only to use it when I'm on my bike... where it's really rather good - it even has a speedometer...
Waze doesn't have the option to avoid "bad" areas, because Microsoft had a patent on it. I don't think MS has a navigation product any more, but they have a patent on avoiding high crime areas and because of that Waze have stated that they won't implement anything remotely similar.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A bunch of baboons got hurt, and one got killed. Meanwhile you are siding with the baboons.
At the core of evil is the process of dehumanization by which certain other people or collectives of them, are depicted as less than human, as non comparable in humanity or personal dignity to those who do the labeling. Prejudice employs negative stereotypes in images or verbally abusive terms to demean and degrade the objects of its narrow view of superiority over these allegedly inferior persons. Discrimination involves the actions taken against those others based on the beliefs and emotions generated by prejudiced perspectives.
Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanization is like a “cortical cataract” that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture, and even annihilation.
Hitler’s “final solution” of genocide of all European Jews began by shaping the beliefs of school children through the reading of assigned texts in which Jews are portrayed in a series of increasingly negative scenarios. At the end of these lessons in civics or geography, we see the “reasonable” discriminatory actions that Germans should take toward Jews.
http://www.lucifereffect.com/dehumanization.htm
This seems a bit similar to yesterdays discussion on people following a robot out of a burning building. They trusted the robot, and got burned...these guys trusted the app, and (figuratively) got burned.
Just another day in Paradise
Problem Exists Between Steering Wheel And Bucket Seat
Well the issue with that is it night not have been filled with bad guys an hour ago... Jussayin.
All modern military organizations spend time and money on two major things.
Up to date maps of the area they are working in.
Training in map reading and orienteering so that you know where you are at all times. *
Someone using a phone app to invalidate the care and time spent to insure that a troop knows
where they are in at least a general sense at all times? That shits on them man.
Common stupidity; there isn't an app for that.
* Don't get me wrong, people can get lost at any time, ask people on active Borders like the Korean DMZ.
But you don't sidestep the issue by trusting a freaking phone app to insure you live to see another day ffs.
Extermination or extirpation is the Israeli mantra as the solution to the Palestinian problem.
I've always wondered. If enough people drive off a bridge while using Google Maps, or Waze, or any app that uses crowd sourced data, would it then suggest others follow and also drive off the bridge? It should clearly label it as a fast moving road based on gps data until they hit the end of the bridge, and accelerometer data once they're falling off.
I'm sorry, but simply because some silicon and radio waves are involved, I don't see why that elevates this to newsworthy status. How about a headline from 1952 Korea, or 1944 Russia, or 1776 Virginia, where a poorly rendered paper map led to an ambush? Does it make the front page of a firearms journal of the day? I hope not.