Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

sciencealert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 159 posts

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#51

Post by rcxdude »

arijun wrote: post #13
ck2 wrote: post #2

not just space weather, I am pretty sure the atmosphere is being disturbed by toxic human activity both by accident and on purpose I've run outside every morning for decades and used Garmin with GPS since 2015, I've never had so much trouble Garmins finally supports dual-band (L1+L5) and BeiDou on newest models but it's still not enough to compensate, I have to use a Stryd footpod to guarantee accurate distances/spee…

> BeiDou GPS blows away US GPS for number of sats and precision Both BeiDou and GPS are supposed to be limited to 10m precision for civilians. But, going down a rabbit hole, I found that BeiDou is way more accurate than 10m--3.6m and 2.6m outside and inside the Asia-Pacific region, respectively [1]. And that's with the most simple algorithm. It goes down to ~2.5m using dual-frequencies to account for atmospheric erro…

With a base station in a known position you can get to cm resolution with somewhat pricey but decidedly hobbyist-accessible gear: https://www.sparkfun.com/sparkfun-gps-rtk-sma-breakout-zed-f...

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#52

Post by chaps »

saaaaaam wrote: post #45
chaps wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone's home is 30' by 30' feet, yes, that person's device will report them having left their home and they'll get a visit if GPS suddenly shifts 30 feet to the left. I'm talking about the class of problem. It happens in normal weather conditions and things like this exacerbate the problem. Really not sure what the hostility's about.

As a neutral participant I think “the hostility” is probably because of your condescending tone when you said “hopefully it helps your confusion”. Your initial article really didn’t say anything about people being re-incarcerated for these sorts of errors. I really want to say “maybe you got CONFUSED and posted the wrong one!” but that would be snotty and condescending too. But maybe you posted the wrong one to begin…

That's totally fair, I shouldn't have said it like that!

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#54

Post by avazhi »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #46
avazhi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The trackers are part of CCSO’s pretrial house arrest program, so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes.

> so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes.

You and I have very divergent views of the type of person likely to be charged or prosecuted for a crime or indeed to participate in a diversion program that involves GPS trackers, my friend.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#55

Post by askvictor »

rzzzt wrote: post #25
arijun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that all the device manufacturers (they mention Apple, Samsung, and Google) are using BeiDou anyway. I don't know if that includes Garmin watches, though. https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-agency-probes-risks-fo...

AGPS also helps if you have cell towers nearby.

This is only to make getting a fix faster - A-GPS downloads the almanac data via the internet (fast, but needs internet) instead of directly from the GPS satellites (slow but works everywhere). It doesn't make it any more accurate.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#56

Post by z2 »

ck2 wrote: post #11
z2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For resiliency reasons alone, it's been proposed to allow (stop software-disabling) BeiDou in the US, but the last time this was brought up, the administration ran out of time. It's a shame, because when there is precise coverage, it enables things like lane-level city navigation. https://warontherocks.com/a-signal-point-of-failure-integrat...

yup that was my first link but of course this administration is never going allow China-anything like low cost electric cars even if it means saving people a fortune in gas so hopefully in 2029 it can be looked at again or maybe Dems will also get the Senate too and can be petitioned if they run out of corruption investigations before 2029 it is critical to explain to everyone who isn't technical that GPS is "read on…

Whoops I don't know how I missed that in your links!

The weird part to me is that Glonass was not approved either, yet it's as openly as allowed as Galileo that went through a tedious FCC approval process that was invented later. Grandfathered or not, we're clearly not in a worse place using Russian tech for the last 15 years.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#57

Post by ryandrake »

avazhi wrote: post #54
boomboomsubban wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trackers are part of CCSO’s pretrial house arrest program, so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes.

> so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes. You and I have very divergent views of the type of person likely to be charged or prosecuted for a crime or indeed to participate in a diversion program that involves GPS trackers, my friend.

Right, because only guilty people become involved with the justice system.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#58

Post by chaps »

dataflow wrote: post #47
chaps wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone's home is 30' by 30' feet, yes, that person's device will report them having left their home and they'll get a visit if GPS suddenly shifts 30 feet to the left. I'm talking about the class of problem. It happens in normal weather conditions and things like this exacerbate the problem. Really not sure what the hostility's about.

Do you have any examples of someone getting thrown behind bars due to a GPS error on the order of ~30ft like you're claiming? That's all I'm asking. Really don't understand why you keep avoiding it. You've essentially claimed police/judges are doing something rather stupid and terrible. I'm asking you to show example(s) of what you claimed (~30ft error → thrown behind bars), not something significantly different (~1+…

"You've essentially claimed police/judges are doing something rather stupid and terrible."

Yes, yes I am. You really need to realize just how unbelievably fucking arbitrary the criminal courts are. At every level. They're not tech people.

To answer your question, I have examples of motions by prosecutors to suspend people from the EM program where they specifically cite specific data points just barely out of their homes, where video footage provably shows they were inside the whole time. They're not mine to share.

Btw, the courts are public and you should try some criminal courts watching. Pick a random day and just go.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#60

Post by ashleyn »

Quibblingeek wrote: post #40
ashleyn wrote: post #14

Somehow, Selective Availability returned.

Maybe not intentionally (at least by the U.S. Government, but the consequences are far greater now. Now that GPS has subsumed a large part of air navigation as more VOR and ILS approaches at non-towered airports are being left to fall into disrepair, it forces more and more aircraft operating in instrument conditions to fall back to a navigation system that may not operate to the tolerances that you need to shoot an…

One of the reasons SA was discontinued was that if you knew the coordinates of a base station, you could correct for the error. Are airports not doing this already?
Post reply on HN