this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
608 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
81161 readers
4697 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I also despise everything this would mean in terms of state surveillance, but if you could isolate this capability, it 100% would help recover lost dogs. Speaking from experience. We lost our dog for 6 days and didn't have any idea where he was until 3 days passed. The most effective way to recover lost dogs is by knowing their current location and setting out live traps with food for them to find at night. Scared dogs don't recognize their owners by sound so driving around calling for them wouldn't help.
So if it this technology could work solely as a lost pet sighting tool and not a dystopian state surveillance tool, it would be immensely helpful.
Slap an air tag on their collar if you're that concerned. I'd rather have less surveillance.
Yeah, I would too. The argument wasn't that it's a net good. The argument is that if it were to work as they claim and only identify animals matching the description of lost pets using a mesh network, then that helps pets and pet owners. That's objectively true.
And air tags rely on Bluetooth signaling. Lost pets often avoid people so they don't work very well in most cases. The only options that do work are subscription based(gross) GPS trackers that use cell towers and GPS signals to determine their location. Which we have now, but thanks.
Air tags use UWB radio, not Bluetooth.
You have a subscription based collar tracker for your dog?
That's the only way to do it properly. There's no other way to get the GPS location without using cell towers to transmit and cell phone companies refuse to offer that service for free.
Put a collar with a tag with your phone number on it. You will get a call if they run off. Unless, well you will probably get a call.
If the dog is able to be corralled sure, but most dogs when they're loose actively avoid interaction.
It really depends on the type of dog and it's personality. I've returned several over the years, including one old black lab sitting on a sort of highway, a super busy 4 lane road at maybe 45 mph. And I had mine returned from there too almost immediately when she ran off.
But hound dogs, or other hunting breeds are probably less likely to allow a person to approach.