this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
109 points (96.6% liked)

Technology

74872 readers
3024 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's very cool how these devices find their location, though. When you first boot the system up, it spends about 5 minutes measuring the rotation of the Earth. For this reason, you can't reset it when in motion. Based on what it feels it can determine your exact location on the surface of the earth.

That gets you longitude but not latitude, right?

[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don’t know how it does it but earth rotation speed will be different at different latitudes and elevations. Theoretically, a device sensitive enough might be able to determine precise location from just rotation speed and a very accurate geoid.

[–] walden@wetshav.ing 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I've been trying to think through how it would determine longitude based on rotation of the earth and I agree, that's not really possible. I wonder what other tricks it uses to find the initial location.