FCC chair says we’re too dependent on GPS and wants to explore ‘alternatives’ (read: multi billion contract with Musk)
The FCC is also set to vote on proposals regarding 911 technology.
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.
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.
🤣
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
I'm kind of surprised that Musk hasn't proposed turning Selective Availability back on.
And this is why the EU should have ignored the US when they whined that our Gallileo system used different frequencies from GPS.
As it stands now Gallileo was built to using frequencies that the US can jam using GPS.
Ooh i did not know about that, interesting. However they could just have built their GPS sats in such a way that allows a wide range of frequency jamming anyways.
there's a significant difference in jamming capability between different frequencies? Are you jamming them from space or something?
That doesn't really seem like a significant technical limitation to me.
GPS isn't just for google maps. I'm a land surveyor and we literally use GPS every single day. Without it we're basically fucked. We do hydrographic surveying and without GPS we'd have to basically go back to analog as 90% of the equipment on our boat would be useless. Good luck figuring out how much water is left in the Colorado river without it.
Im not exactly an expert on this, but i am very familiar with what my job requires. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) will be completely fucked without it as it's built on decades of data and monitoring. You can't just look for "alternatives." Whatever Elmo has is not robust enough for the precision that is required for what we use GPS for. And without shit like that you couldn't hit the broad side of a city.
These guys don't care. They're a bunch of gangsters trying to profit by dismantling the government and selling corporate replacements for its services.
We're either headed towards long term fascism or a massive civil backlash.
Without it we’re basically fucked.
Meh, there is Galileo.
You may or maynot need new equipment tho
Yeah, imma have to go through our equipment to find out if they go through with this. If we do have to replace it, this shit is not cheap.
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)
Except for Galileo and glonass.
This is going to kill people in order to enrich SwastiKet.
Most receivers already use GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and beidou.
Also QZSS, but that's just GPS not run by US (it uses GPS signalling, but it's designed to look directly down when over a small arc of Japan (which covers Tokyo) so you can get more accurate GPS inside the 'urban valley'
We get slightly better GPS in Australia (esp. Adelaide) due to it too, since the other end of the orbit is over AU.
We see it over the pole here in Sweden too!
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
Corruption?
My phone uses the Graft Positioning System to tell me where I can go and who I can talk to.
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/
No, the "better" article has a buzzword to information ratio of 3:1.
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.
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.
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.
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.).
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.
Don't we use Galileo now instead?
There's already a startup trying to get the FCC to give them half of the 915mhz band (meshtastic, smart home stuff, ELRS, ham radio) for a pay to win GPS alternative.
first time hearing about this, any more details you can provide or link to a news release? is this Ubiik?
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!
They're called maps. I have several in my glove box.
How many gloves are in there?
2
Used to be 6, now 4.
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.
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.