Considering GPS was originally created for military purposes, I find it fascinating that the largest holes are over the north and south poles. The northern polar region is where the US-launched missiles and bombers would travel. Does the lesser orbital coverage in that area not negatively affect GPS precision?
GPS
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Re: GPS
#52Considering GPS was originally created for military purposes, I find it fascinating that the largest holes are over the north and south poles. The northern polar region is where the US-launched missiles and bombers would travel. Does the lesser orbital coverage in that area not negatively affect GPS precision?
It does affect precision, but it also isn't needed that much in an area you travel over.
Re: GPS
#53This person deserves to get filthy rich off of their patreon.
Not just filthy rich i guess. Bartosz is a one of a kind explainer of things - no matter what topic he touches, he always manages to outright nail the communication of the core concepts in a manner almost anyone can understand. Let alone the interactive visualizations. There should be some sort of Nobel Prize for people that contribute to humanity’s education - and methods therof. Kudos!
A MacArthur Fellowship would be a good award for him.
Re: GPS
#54This is very nice. Very clear, and the 3D interactives are excellent at guiding the explanation. One thing that I thought was a little confusing was right at the beginning, when we were estimating the position of the figurine and there was an area of uncertainty shown by the yellow circle. It isn't clear how you're estimating position, and why we have an area of uncertainty. At first I figured it was going to explain…
Literally left the article to come here to see if anyone addressed this yet. I can’t figure out what it means.
It's about literally looking at it (in 3D) and guessing the exact position on the 2D map, which is easier closer to the landmarks.
At least that's my interpretation.
Re: GPS
#55GPS is fascinating, especially the development period.
Due to the complexity of the signal processing (relativity means that the clocks onboard run faster than on earth) there was much scepticism. The story I heard was that they only let them launch 1 Block 1 satellite to prove that could work, and then the first block of 10 satellites was used to validate the system before spending enough to get the full 24 satellites needed.
Re: GPS
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just filthy rich i guess. Bartosz is a one of a kind explainer of things - no matter what topic he touches, he always manages to outright nail the communication of the core concepts in a manner almost anyone can understand. Let alone the interactive visualizations. There should be some sort of Nobel Prize for people that contribute to humanity’s education - and methods therof. Kudos!
A MacArthur Fellowship would be a good award for him.
That's for Americans only.
Re: GPS
#57> Naturally, large range uncertainty increases the ambiguity of position, but the relative position of the satellites also matters. If they aren’t well spread, the exactness of calculated location also suffers. (see the excellent example in OP) Fun tidbit, the resulting error is known for the system in closed form as Geometric Dilution of Precision, and is a 3x3 (edit: or 4+x4+ if you are estimating bias or quantitie…
You and I have definitively a different notion of what is fun ;)
Re: GPS
#58Considering GPS was originally created for military purposes, I find it fascinating that the largest holes are over the north and south poles. The northern polar region is where the US-launched missiles and bombers would travel. Does the lesser orbital coverage in that area not negatively affect GPS precision?
ICBMs don't use GPS. The almost universally use a inertial guidance system. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Inertial_Reference_Sp....
Bombers use a similar inertial guidance system, but with updates from GPS and star trackers as applicable. The reduced precision from GPS doesn't matter too much, as the inertial guidance systems are pretty good now.
Re: GPS
#59This person deserves to get filthy rich off of their patreon.
Yes what an absolute solid educational interactive, from presentation to code to writing and simplicity.
Additionally the code level, If you view the source you can see, nice clean, non-minified code that is clear and has no dependencies other than browser/render standards. The project simply has a base.js and a gps.js, base for common canvas tools and gps for the project/interactives.
Very nicely done and very refreshing to see and experience. We need to get back to this level, it was a simpler higher level with more innovation. Even HN's code is this way, partially why this site is great besides the contributors and curation.
Engineering/creative and good value creation is ultimately taking complexity and making it simple, this is right along those lines in every aspect.
Simple is beautiful and very difficult to achieve in a cluttered/distracting/dependency/minimal context overload world. This interactive nails it. Solid work Bartosz Ciechanowski!
Re: GPS
#60This is very nice. Very clear, and the 3D interactives are excellent at guiding the explanation. One thing that I thought was a little confusing was right at the beginning, when we were estimating the position of the figurine and there was an area of uncertainty shown by the yellow circle. It isn't clear how you're estimating position, and why we have an area of uncertainty. At first I figured it was going to explain…
I think it's as though you were the yellow figure standing in the landscape, and you were trying to position yourself on the map by going "Okay, the red landmark is quite close to me to the east, the blue landmark is a bit farther away to the north-west, and the green landmark is way over to the south-west. Now, where am I on the map?"