I'm kind of surprised that Musk hasn't proposed turning Selective Availability back on.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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This is going to kill people in order to enrich SwastiKet.
as opposed to what? can't exactly say we should use something else if the government is intent on firing everyone that isn't actively engaging in the tariff war
GPS? You mean the technology that we as a country collective maintain? And have continued to maintain since it's immediate inception?
Yeah, ok.
Call me when you start using glonass.
🤣
Who's "We"? The Government?
"Government is too reliant on Government?" (GPS is run by the US Government)
So they want to rely less on government, but relying on a corporation.
🤔
Sounds like the FCC chair is taking his orders from Musk
They're called maps. I have several in my glove box.
How many gloves are in there?
Used to be 6, now 4.
2
Don't we use Galileo now instead?
That's weird, I always viewed GPS as a form of American Imperialism. Sure, it's a bit extreme maybe, but America does own and operate it and jam it when enemies try to use it.
Calling GPS part of imperialism is a stretch. It was put in the air at no cost to another country and can be used without cost by anybody, but nobody has to use it. Other countries can launch their own satellites if they want, but they don't because that's expensive and GPS is free. The US isn't making money off of it or exploiting another country with it.
Yes, the US can jam it regionally when in conflict but of course why wouldn't we? No reason to help the enemy.
technically, originally the GPS system was private, until made public, where it had error obfuscation, until semi recently it was released fully.
It was originally funded by the US government, still is, it's just publicly accessible now.
(the original usecase being for shit like ICBMs and what not, obviously)
The one thing I miss from the TomTom era is I can't have Brian Blessed give me directions anymore.
Except for Galileo and glonass.
Other countries can launch their own satellites if they want, but they don’t because that’s expensive
They do, and they did:
EU (not a country, but still) - Galileo
Russia - GLONASS
China - BeiDou
They all have their own.
Thank you. I couldn't remember the names and was rushing my comment before a meeting. I knew someone wouldn't let that go without a correction.
America is too dependent on tech developed and operated by the american military?!
the fuck?
But Elon doesn’t own the American Military (yet) so this makes sense. Its just vertical integration, really.
Understood! Anyway, thanks to the ruzzian GPS, I made a left over the canyon. Currently dangling. I think its wrong!....oh wait, it's because I didn't tell it to not fly or avoid bodies of water. Got it!
I hope I’m not reading into this too much and thinking he just wants to use Russias standard of satellite technology. L5 GPS is better accuracy. Also if you look at 3GPP’s future planning and goals, the game is to utilize all RF technology together. 5G broadcast and LoRaWAN will make sensors happens within cities and highways and that working together with GPS and cell, you can get readings about a foot or less.
this is just some autistic shit from musk most likely.
he should explore seppuku with musk
I really hope this means another attempt to use the magnetosphere itself. MAGNAV might actually be possible at this point.
Edit: better article. AI advancements make MAGNAV a real possibility now. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3408951/magnav-project-successfully-demonstrates-real-time-magnetic-navigation/
How does that handle high tension lines and the like, doesn't it disturb the magnetosphere far too much? Kinda the reason even compasses don't work anymore in town?
this would also be susceptible to magnetic field switching as well, shouldnt be a huge technical limitation, but im not sure accuracy is going to be quite as good.
No idea. I think there's a lot of machine learning - enabled mapping up front.
No, the "better" article has a buzzword to information ratio of 3:1.
Corruption?
My phone uses the Graft Positioning System to tell me where I can go and who I can talk to.
Maps still work without GPS though. I wonder how many people could find their location on one?
A good 5 years ago or so I was getting a breakfast burrito when an older couple came in asking for directions. They had an old school mapbook. It took a minute to orient myself, but I found they were on the wrong page.
Its one of my bucket list items, but an old school road trip with nothing but a mapbook and a compass. No real destination, no time frame. Just the open road and exploring. And no GPS to make it efficient or optimized where I'll soar right past everything.
Don't really need a compass for a road trip given you are just following roads. I went on a bike ride somewhat recently following a similar idea, using a tablet instead of a book but I just had an offline map and it doesn't support GPS. I followed various paths and roads going around. Was a nice day trip.
One interesting alternative would be the Visual Positioning System (VPS) that Niantic has built from Pokemon go player data. Basically you can take a picture outside and your phone will know exactly where you are:
https://www.nianticspatial.com/locate#vps
Too bad they're getting close to being bought out by a company that's notorious for squeezing out every penny from their player base.
Edit: Correction, Pokemon Go is being bought from Niantic... The company itself is not being bought.
It's also what Google Maps live view is using. Street view imagery plus rough location plus on-phone camera sensor calibration data allows it to compute highly accurate positions relative to surroundings.
Yeah so good luck using that in the middle of the woods
Would this work in a war zone if everything that used to be there was gone now?
I doubt it would work well, but with enough training data it would be able to pick up on some areas. Especially if there are large landmarks in the frame (mountains/hills/rivers, etc.).
The article is pretty vague, but I bet stellar navigation is a strong contender. Although, it works best only when there's good visibility of the night sky
Wait til you hear about radio astronomy:
The brightest discrete radio source is the Sun (Figure 1.10), but the Sun is much less dominant than it is in visible light. The radio sky is dark even when the Sun is up because atmospheric molecules and dust particles don’t scatter radio waves whose wavelengths are much larger than these particles. Most radio observations can be made day or night. Clouds are also nearly transparent at wavelengths λ>2λ>2 cm, so long-wavelength radio observations can be made even when the sky is overcast.
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