I never understood what motivates these people to spend so much time and effort making such an amazing blog to educate so many people in such a nice way....It's incredible!
Some people really like teaching and are very good at it.
GPS
91–100 of 296 posts
Re: GPS
#92One of my favorite engineering tech interview questions is asking an engineer how they think GPS works. You won't believe how many people start with: "Well, your cell phone sends a signal to the satellite......." Amazing that even engineers don't understand that GPS receivers don't talk to the satellites.
Why do you think it's a good question?
Re: GPS
#93I'd be interested to see an illustration of how selective availability works -- if your goal is to ensure that a position cannot be determined accurately, how do you alter the signals produced by your satellites to correctly introduce only the desired amount of error?
Selective availability worked by introducing pseudorandom variation into satellite clock used to generate C/A signal, which directly mapped into pseudorange errors.
http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/staff/pdfs/blewitt%20basics%20of%20g... (page 8)
Re: GPS
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't quite understand how such questions help in the hiring process? It reminds me of the famous "why are pothole covers round" question, still not sure what it achieves.
Some are silly, some are effective ways to measure curiosity and ability to think through an abstract problem.
Yes, but how many of them are relevant to determining if a particular candidate is a good fit for a programming position?
Re: GPS
#95One of my favorite engineering tech interview questions is asking an engineer how they think GPS works. You won't believe how many people start with: "Well, your cell phone sends a signal to the satellite......." Amazing that even engineers don't understand that GPS receivers don't talk to the satellites.
Unless you're hiring them to work in that domain, I don't understand why you'd ask that question.
You either find out the candidate knows how GPS works or you find out the candidate's willingness to say "I don't know".
It's valuable to know how someone will handle a question they don't know the answer to -- whether they recognize their own ignorance and whether they are willing to admit to it.
Re: GPS
#96So incredible!
Re: GPS
#97I never understood what motivates these people to spend so much time and effort making such an amazing blog to educate so many people in such a nice way....It's incredible!
Likely out of love to educate. And/or if you are inclined to look for less altruistic reasons, just his blog presence in HN could bring him a lot of visibility. Every of his amazing posts appeared on first page (disclaimer: I have seen and enjoyed a few, I don't know that for certain.)
Re: GPS
#98I never understood what motivates these people to spend so much time and effort making such an amazing blog to educate so many people in such a nice way....It's incredible!
Similar ones:
Re: GPS
#99I never understood what motivates these people to spend so much time and effort making such an amazing blog to educate so many people in such a nice way....It's incredible!
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!
Re: GPS
#100One of my favorite engineering tech interview questions is asking an engineer how they think GPS works. You won't believe how many people start with: "Well, your cell phone sends a signal to the satellite......." Amazing that even engineers don't understand that GPS receivers don't talk to the satellites.
I don't quite understand how such questions help in the hiring process? It reminds me of the famous "why are pothole covers round" question, still not sure what it achieves.
Actually this is a very good question for engineers, as the (wrong) idea that a smartphone regularly sends data to a satellite shows fundamental lack of knowledge in some very basic physical understanding. The basic understanding should be: transmitting/sending = emitting energy (costly if a device runs on batteries), receiving/listening for a signal = almost for free nowadays.
I also like the question because even if you have no idea how GPS actually works, you could quickly come up with the rough idea yourself given that you have a bunch of satellites that can emit arbitrary signals. Lots of room to show creative and analytical thinking here.