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Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

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Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#141
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TomTom's have for at least 15 years or so. They have accelerometers to measure the motion when cut off from the GPS satellites. I worked there, knew the guy who developed it, and saw him give a presentation about it.

That's cool... so I guess this works something along the ways of "calculate the speed via GPS before entering the tunnel, and then try to update this speed using the data from the accelerometer while in the tunnel"? Because as long a the car is moving at constant speed in a straight line, the accelerometer shouldn't register anything...

Well it registers gravity, so you can detect i.e. driving off a cliff. ;)

What helps is that tunnels don't usually branch, so once you're in it, your path is usually quite predictable.

TomTom maps also have a statistical model of what speed is expected along each stretch of road by hour and weekday/weekend (not 7 individual days, but 2 kinds of days). But I don't know if it uses that to help estimate your expected speed when dead reckoning, it's actually for route planning.

One of my co-workers came up with the great idea of gamifying driving: maintain a real time speed leader board, showing the top ten speeders along any stretch of road! So on every road in the world you could compete with other TomTom users who drove it. Kind of like checking in with 4Square, but more fun and dangerous! TomTom legal did not approve.

I suggested gamifying and monetizing driving with TomTomagotchi, a virtual pet that gets depressed if you don't drive it around enough, begs you to visit interesting landmarks and sponsored points of interest, like driving through McDonalds to feed it, or through the park to let it take a shit, or driving fast enough to make the leaderboard to entertain it. I'm sure Bandai's lawyers wouldn't approve.

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#142
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's no excuse for disbelieving GPS for extended periods of time. You've got it backwards. I was explaining why GPS should take priority over mapping data. Not the other way around.

They’re saying that not prioritising (disbelieving) GPS data is bad, hence there’s no excuse for it So that’s the same thing you’re saying

Yes, I know. And saying that as a rebuttal to a comment where I’d said the same. Hence my reply ;)

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#143
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's no excuse for disbelieving GPS for extended periods of time. You've got it backwards. I was explaining why GPS should take priority over mapping data. Not the other way around.

The technology should be resilient against GPS spoofing. If it “knows” it never left the mountain road, it’s not crazy to design it to reject an anomalous GPS signal, which might be wrong or tampered with.

I think the likelihood of that happening is significantly less than the likelihood that a car took a new road or other path not show in the cars mapping data.

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#144
post #59

While we're on the subject of maps-related bugs, I was recently borrowing a new Tesla Model Y and took it on a RORO ferry. After the crossing, the car’s GPS was convinced I was still at the port where I had departed from. I restarted it a couple of times, but nothing. I drove off using Waze on my phone instead of the car's navigation. The map on the car kept moving relative to the direction I was driving, so the navi…

> On a vaguely related note, driving 3000 kilometers through Europe in an electric car was surprisingly nice. Having done a number of multiple-thousand km trips in Europe in an EV (not a Tesla, nobody buys those anymore) — it's amusing how non-EV muggles think this is somehow an ordeal. It's just fine! There are drawbacks: you do have to use your brain and plan ahead more than you do when burning dinosaurs. But I fou…

Stray anywhere off the main roads and suddenly your 'just fine' turns back into an ordeal.

And God forbid you come across inclines!

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#145
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a vaguely related note, driving 3000 kilometers through Europe in an electric car was surprisingly nice. Having done a number of multiple-thousand km trips in Europe in an EV (not a Tesla, nobody buys those anymore) — it's amusing how non-EV muggles think this is somehow an ordeal. It's just fine! There are drawbacks: you do have to use your brain and plan ahead more than you do when burning dinosaurs. But I fou…

What is a non EV-muggle?

Muggles, in Harry Potter books, are non-magic people, who do not have magic, do not understand it, have a lot of misconceptions about it, and fear it. :-)

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#147

While we're on the subject of maps-related bugs, I was recently borrowing a new Tesla Model Y and took it on a RORO ferry. After the crossing, the car’s GPS was convinced I was still at the port where I had departed from. I restarted it a couple of times, but nothing. I drove off using Waze on my phone instead of the car's navigation. The map on the car kept moving relative to the direction I was driving, so the navi…

>On a vaguely related note, driving 3000 kilometers through Europe in an electric car was surprisingly nice.

I did 2 cross country road trips here in the US (~5000mi/8000km total) and had a similar experience. The nav's automatic charger routing did a great job, and we had 0 issues with charging.

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#148
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a non EV-muggle?

Muggles, in Harry Potter books, are non-magic people, who do not have magic, do not understand it, have a lot of misconceptions about it, and fear it. :-)

So you are the enlightened one because you drive an EV or what? I dont think that this divisive and patronizing attitude is helpful in this discussion.

Range anxiety is a fact, only recently electric vehicles have started to have more acceptable and practicable ranges and also, the charger network is evolving more and more. In winter the ranges are also reduced by about 10-20%.

So I dont think people cant see the "magic", the mass market is just risk averse and doesnt want to get stuck in the middle of the highway with 2 screaming kids in the back seat.

Also now that most European countries (and also the US) have stopped subsidizing EVs, the real costs are shining through, so maybe that 1.9L Diesel engine looks more attractive now again.

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#149
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This used to be true, but the DoD turned off "selective availability" (the intentional degrading of the civilian signal) back in 2000, and the current generation of satellites do not have the capability ( https://www.gps.gov/selective-availability ). What they do have though is a separate, encrypted, military broadcast that can be used for those purposes (I think the plan in those situations is to turn off civilian G…

Even without selective availability gps is only accurate to within about 30’ in normal urban conditions which is more than enough to punt you over to a side street without heuristics on top.

Your device will use a lot more than the Navstar constellation to get a position these days.

Re: Apple Maps claims it's 29,905 miles away

#150
post #129

I’ve had that bug a few times. I think it’s related to some roads being closed and/ or under reconstruction. I’ve seen this happen multiple times on the same route, and it always fixed itself after I passed the construction site.

So it might be a hack to get it to take another way -- rather than invent some way of marking a road section as being closed, mark it as being 1000 miles long?

Hack or not a hack, it shouldn't hit the UI. It's a bug.
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