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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

#81
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…

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As a citizen I wish cars had similar driving break requirements as trucks do: mandatory 30 minutes break after 4.5 hours, 9-ish hours per day, minimum 9~11 ish hours break between driving days.

Such minimum reasonable rest is what keeps you from killing innocents with your 2-ton weapon/tool.

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

#82

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…

One hypothesis I can offer is that your car could not, for whatever reason, use assisted gps to download the almanach which relies on mobile networks. Gps devices that download the almanac via gps itself can take up to twelve hours (in higher latitudes i think)!

It doesn't just become invalid; almanac is good enough to use for satnav for over a day.

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

#83
post #60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no excuse for disbelieving GPS for extended periods of time. Google Maps gets it right: it tried to keep you on road, but only for a few tens of seconds. After that, if you are in the middle of uncharted territory, it'll show the marker there. (This is probably because Google Maps can be used for walking/biking too)

>(This is probably because Google Maps can be used for walking/biking too) Please don't do that. The map is simply not good enough and does not have enough context (road quality, terrain, trail difficulty) for anything but very causal activity. Even then I highly recommend to use a proper map, electronic or paper.

We used the walking directions for dual sport motorcycles once. It was pretty nice. We did have a few places where it became sketchy. Those and maybe more places would be sketchy for walking too. Not that google maps could do much about it. Terrain is a living thing. These were mostly huge cracks in the earth due to rain water.

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

#84
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…

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No need to get agitated. Some people enjoy sitting in the car for multiple hours, some people don't. I found it changed for me as I got older.

However, about those 20 minutes — this, again, is a misconception. Stop at a busy rest area or a gas station and actually start your stopwatch. If you are a single male, it might take you shorter. If you are with a family, 20 minutes is pretty much the minimum.

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

#85
post #50
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distance is more than the circumference of the Earth. If you wrapped a rope around the planet at the equator, the length would be around 25k miles.

Some roads aren’t perfectly straight (not that this seems like it could explain what happened in this particular case).

That's fair, but even the commonly cited longest route [0] you could theoretically walk without intentional detours, Cape Town, South Africa to Magadan, Russia, is approximately 14k miles.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/a2mcjq/21212_km_fr...

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

#86
post #44
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that roads are continually being built and maps aren’t always as quick to be updated. There are also private paths that aren’t public roads but are still intended for vehicles.

That's no excuse for disbelieving GPS for extended periods of time. Google Maps gets it right: it tried to keep you on road, but only for a few tens of seconds. After that, if you are in the middle of uncharted territory, it'll show the marker there. (This is probably because Google Maps can be used for walking/biking too)

Well, when I’m driving in Kyiv, and there is an air raid alert, usually my car navigation starts to derp, and after a few minutes it thinks that it’s suddenly in Lima, Peru.

Not that I mind too much, I know how to get around without navigation.

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

#87

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…

Civilian GPS (as in, the DoD’s Navstar) alone isn’t accurate enough to actually place you on a specific road. To compensate, auto navigation systems will snap you to the nearest road parallel to your current heading. Tesla likely didn’t consider the edge case of ferries and other off road situations in their mapping software and you hit some corner case bug.

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

#89
post #79

Tangentially, why won't computerized maps - e.g., Apple Maps, Google, etc. - show a scale? Generally they'll show one as you pinch/zoom, but it disappears when you release your fingers. Sometimes I just want to eyeball distances, and not plug in addresses and request routes for everything. I know not everyone always wants it, but a scale is a fundamental feature of mapping! Scale almost defines mapping. Edit: One rea…

It’s purely a UI thing, the same (misguided) reason scrollbars disappear.

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

#90
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a Volvo XC90 that “jumped” off the interstate and onto a parallel mountain road east of Knoxville. It did its best to track along those roads and somehow made its way into North Carolina. But even when I was back in Chicago, it was still stuck in NC trying to find a way off those mountain roads. Dozens of on/off cycles did nothing. I disconnected the battery overnight and that didn’t work. At the next service a…

My dad used to have a crappy aftermarket GPS in his car that did the same thing. It would get lost dozens of miles away, and then hundreds of miles away. The explanation I found online at the time was that a GPS receiver needs to download data about the exact orbits of all GPS satellites from time to time. Satellites slowly lose altitude and change their orbits. Up-to-date information is constantly broadcasted by eve…

_deleted incorrect statement_
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