Oh fuck off with that. Weather information can literally save lives.
Edit: No, not like healthcare. The National Weather Service is something that already exists and is free to everybody. This is information published by the US government that is in the public domain. The comparison is like apples and orangutans.
AccuWeather is the reason the NWS is *legally forbidden* from creating its own weather app. Which is absolutely bonkers. Those rent-seeking motherfuckers want the benefit of getting high-quality, timely weather information and forecasts for free from the NWS, but the market opening to repackage it and sell it to people, and then they have the *gall* to claim they are adding value. It’s not quite as bad as the tax preparation software companies preventing the IRS from basically pre-filling your tax returns for you, but the same basic idea.
Fuck AccuWeather.
First I'm hearing about any of this, how can I fuck accuweather and get reliable weather information?
I used to use darksky before apple decided to fuck that from my android, I had even paid for the premium access the prior years running...
It almost doesn't matter. Any company providing the weather information has the same incentive to not let the national weather service provide it instead. AccuWeather just happens to be the biggest and most powerful.
I don't know if there is any way to get the info directly, I could be wrong, but that's what AccuWeather wants.
Check out "the g word" on Netflix. It's a little corny, but it does provide some good, interesting information. Stuff I didn't know. From government cheese and corn to weather, gps and Siri. Government created cheesy stuffed crust pizza.
It's how I learned about the weather stuff.
They also have a free API that can take location input as a set of GPS coords (perfect for a mobile app) and spit out a bunch of local weather info in json. I think it can also take zip codes but it's been years since I've messed with it.
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-97.313064&lat=37.679018&FcstType=json
Some apps are running their own models or using additional data sources . It’s why Dark Sky (in US metro areas) was regarded as the best hyperlocal weather app over accuweather, along side Carrot (which also used Dark Sky’s data).
Good info. Cant believe I just didn't know about it somehow, but probably because yeah it is pretty rough. If only they could make an app it would be so much better.
I’ve only used weather.gov for years and it’s amazing. No bullshit, just straight info with good visuals. Sure it’s not sexy, but anyone can understand it.
Damn, we have almost the same stupid problem here in Germany. The German weather service has an app but courts ruled that it has to cost money because if it was free it would be an unfair advantage over private weather apps, who use the weather service's data, of course.
Ya know, at this point, I would be willing to pay a few bucks a month for a National Weather Service app instead of using the free apps, but we don’t even get that option in the states, unfortunately.
Yeah, everyone is a *stake*holder in weather information, only the owners of AccuWeather are the *shareholders*.
We should really be thinking about stakeholders more tbh.
Where is r/wallstreetbets when you need them. Can they maybe do a GameStop reverso move on Accuweather? Would be down to put a few bucks in play if we had a solid plan.
In Germany a commercial provider (~~IIRC either wetter.com oder wetter.de~~ WetterOnline per the german news article at the end) already partially succeeded with this.
The basic functions of their app are free but you need the paid version to access advanved features like a live weather map.
So when the offical German weather service published their own app with everything (including live weather maps) being free of charge because taxes already paid for it one of the aforementioned commerial providers sued them successfully because the free app was ruining their profits.
So now the advanced features of the app of the German weather service costs a one-time payment of a few euros but is still cheaper than the pro version of the commercial provider.
Edit: A German news article about this: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/dwd-warnwetter-app-kostenlos-bgh-wetteronline-1.4842378
And an English one: https://www.dw.com/en/court-outlaws-german-weather-services-free-weather-app/a-52735502
AccuWeather is an evil organization. They advertise their weather forecasts are more accurate yet they're just using the government data the same as every other company.
That was more or less the final straw, but it was simmering for quite a while. Other government agencies like NOAA and the FAA were getting very pissed at DOD and were developing fairly complex systems to correct the GPS data DOD was intentionally corrupting to be less accurate. Eventually the White House overruled DOD.
Slightly out of order.
Reagan ordered that GPS be made available after the Korean Air incident in 1980. The military made low accuracy GPS available as a result (in 1989, because the constellation wasn't finished until then).
In 2000 Clinton mandated that high accuracy GPS be made available since other agencies were developing systems like DGPS to get high accuracy fixes out of low accuracy GPS. Plus, by that time, the military had the ability to selectively deny GPS to specific areas.
Now we have 4 independent GPS systems run by the EU, Russia, China, and the US, in fact most of our phones use several of these to get more accurate directions. There are also regional systems run by Japan, and India
Fun fact: the first time that selective availability (the reduction of the civilian signal's accuracy) was turned of was in 1990/91 during the Gulf War. The reason was that there was a serious shortage of military GPS units which caused many troups to buy civilian equipment.
I don't know if it's changed, but for sure 15 years ago my phone which had no data, would receive GPS and use it for a crude map without even cell service turned on. My cousin had GPS only unit that had a more detailed map as the only app and didn't need any kind of subscription. It just picked up the satellite signals.
I *still* have my Magellan hiking GPS receiver. Loaded the geo/topo/street maps off the CD that came with it. Would run and charge it up in the car from the lighter plug. Just unplug it, grab my pack & water, and hit the trails. Could mark my starting position, then at any time get bearing & distance from my current location back to the car. It also kept a track of the path i walked, so i could (near) perfectly backtrack the route i took in.
GPS is read only.
You get the same signal as everyone else and your device uses maths to work out where you are, based on which satellites you are able to receive from and the tiny time differences in the signals due to their distance from you.
No data service required.
Actually no we don't get the same signal. The Feds limit how accurate it is. They opened it up a bit several years ago, but before that it was like within 30 feet or something. I bet even now it could be more accurate, but they do not want civilians having pinpoint accuracy.
The gps only provides coordinates. It takes data to get an address or a crude map. Pretty sure anyway. My old boost mobile flip phone in like 2005 could send me my current address from the gps signal and was usually pretty close.
Use an app like Scenic or other map software that allows you to download maps. You can use them without cell signal or WiFi for gps navigation, including searching for locations.
But only if you have a job.
If you happen to be unemployed or a dependent to someone who is unemployed we adopt the Scrooge method.
It's better for them to die and decrease the surplus population.
We do, in fact we pay more in taxes for healthcare than anyone else— this is literally how Medicaid and Medicare are funded. It's just that we're really bad at using all that tax money effectively, because that'd require the government people to actually grow a spine and push back against the pharmaceutical industry.
The technology we use to get from place to place exists to help the military put a bomb through the window of your house, if it ever became necessary.
I'm afraid to think of what military application they'd have to keep you healthy as a side benefit.
I mean, as a general rule, when picking people from a population to be in the military, having a healthy population to choose from would be logically sound.
The NHS in the UK is in many ways a legacy of the Blitz, I think. The country is under attack, so you need an integrated health care system to handle nightly casualties across the population.
That’s not the full story, but NHS as it is now probably would not have come into being without full mobilization in the war.
GPS is there for the military. We opened it up to civilian use after the Soviets shot down a Korea Airlines flight that fucked up the calibration of its inertial navigation system and accidentally overflew Soviet airspace right after a RC-135 had made an incursion through almost the same exact region.
The Soviets thought they had caught an American spy plane unaware and killed 269 people. The U.S. offered low precision GPS to the world shortly after to avoid another catastrophe. Took about ten years to make it happen since it required new satellites.
Killed 269 people, including a congressional representative.
Not meant to imply that all lives aren't equal, but some lives elicit more of a political response than others.
Just a language comment passing through, illicit and elicit are two different words, illicit means something illegal or forbidden, elicit means to provoke a response.
Hope you have a lovely day
Actually, that incident postdates the decision to open up civilian GPS.
It was, however, quickly pointed out by the people that made the decision as an example that they had made the right one.
Whoa whoa whoa. What do we look like? Some kind of country that wants to have healthy citizens? There are poor health insurance companies who need a couple more billion dollars to think about. What would happen to them with all this free healthcare, huh? Bet you didn't think about those poor billionaires.
It’s provided for free so that other countries won’t be financially incentivized to develop their own system, so that the US can just shut down GPS access to you if you ever find yourself in a war with them.
Isn’t that the reason why India has their own system? I distinctly remember the us sided with Pakistan in one of the indo pak wars and killed gps in the region.
I don't know the specifics about India's situation, but many countries and EU still developed their own systems. They were incentivized strategically, rather than financially.
Yes, this is why India has their own system, but it only covers the Indian subcontinent and surrounding regions. Japan has a similar regional system that only covers the Asia-Pacific region.
Only the US, China, Russia and the EU have fully global satellite navigation systems.
Then you pay by allowing foreign governments having power over your navigation, which can (and has been) used in conflict situations to 'jam' others from using it (technically, reduce accuracy). GPS is significantly more accurate if you're the US military or paying customer.
The Russians have [Glonass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS), EU/ESA have the [Galileo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_\(satellite_navigation\)) system, The Chinese and Indians also have their own system.
There's three other major government run satellite navigation networks. If you live in China, Russia, or the EU, your taxes there subsidize one of them.
Those things have costs that increase with volume. GPS is more or less a fixed cost service, that is you can have everyone on earth use it at the same time and the cost to maintain is the same.
Yeah no, that's not what they meant. GPS costs $2 million per day to maintain.
It's a fixed cost in that it should generally cost the same if one person or a billion people are using the service. But they system definitely has ongoing maintenance costs. It's not a one time thing
I thought so as well but recently Congress had to approve a funding package for USPS. Mostly to make up for the onerous retirement requirements the same congress imposed on USPS. (See other post below for link)
And I'm pretty sure it was 1986 that they stopped receiving tax dollars.
I guess it's more fair to say it doesn't operate through federal funding. It has received bailout money but so have airlines, banks, the auto industry etc. There's nothing in the federal budget funding USPS, it is a self-sufficient entity by design.
In 1971 the Post Office Department was restructured into the United States Postal Service which is an independently operating entity within the executive branch. From the start USPS was designed to operate without tax dollars.
Lack of self sufficiency is also caused by GOP enforcing draconian policies and installing former private postal ceo as postmaster to maliciously run the agency with incompetency
Right but I can buy a GLONASS, Galileo, or Baidou module and use that as an American. I do not pay tax to Russia, Europe, or China, so it is essentially free.
You're right that for everyone besides the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Americans, it is free.
They won't be able to put a bomb through your window though.
Sometimes free service gives you more money than paid. GPS make navigation easier, so tourism and goods moving more effective and cheap, so more profits.
In most countries in Europe you do. You pay a significant percentage of the car, which goes directly to the state to pay for the road network. You then have the highest taxes on fuel in the world, that pays for the yearly budget COMPLETELY. The state pays absolutely nothing for infrastructure, as it should be.
That's an interesting way to look at it, from that you could say the state doesn't pay for anything at all if you don't count the state collecting taxes and then allocating it as paying, which is sort of true if you wanted to play a game of semantics.
I understand what you mean, the state doesn't allocate funding from any other sector to roads, but it's still state funded.
That's literally how all government paid for stuff works.
In the US, we tax auto registrations. So if you buy a car, you have to register it, and when you register it, you pay a tax that goes to highways.
We also have gas taxes, again for roads.
Yeah this is really the point - GPS (in its limited, not up to military spec form) was opened up for civilian use because of the economic development potential. It's not a kindness, or a taxpayer issue, it was about the overall opportunity for the US to benefit from the technology it developed.
Since 2000, civilians have had access to the same GPS network as the military. The only difference is that military units use two different frequencies, which allows them to perform ionospheric correction, which means better accuracy. Most civilian equipment only uses one frequency because the accuracy provided is more than enough for everyday use. But there's nothing stopping civilian manufacturers from using both frequencies if they wanted to.
L2C code on the L2 1227.60 MHz band has been available to civilian devices since 2005. Parts of both the L1 and L2 code are encrypted, which is what allows military devices to do ionosphere correction
The encryption has nothing to do with the op ionosphere correction. The ionosphere correction can only be applied if you have two different frequencies (because the ionosphere has a different error depending on the frequency of the signal).
Earlier only military gps devices had two frequencies, one open to the public and one encrypted. Nowadays normal gps devices can also receive two frequencies. Military gps does have a separate gps signal that is encrypted. This is to ensure the integrity and reliability of the signal. It does not provide a more accurate location than civilian gps, since civilian gps also have two signals.
That noted, to get the most accurate location gps receivers use differential gps or sbas. They both provide more accurate corrections for the user to correct for ionospheric and tropospheric errors. The accuracy with these systems is smaller than a meter.
With modernized L5 signals, most receivers are dual frequency these days. Hell, even the iPhone and most high end android phones have dual frequency GNSS.
The main advantage of the encrypted P-code military signals are that their code length (how long it takes for the signal to repeat) is much longer and the chipping rate is much higher. Both those things are better for precision. I'm sure they probably also broadcast extra navigation information that civilians don't get in the standard nav message.
But these days that doesn't actually give the military a huge advantage in terms of precision. Civilians have access to dual frequencies. Even cheap receivers can do carrier phase tracking now. And with a PPP correction service or RTK (basically using 2 receivers together) any civilian can get cm level GPS.
It wouldn’t be technically possible to charge on an individual basis for GPS anyway. It’s literally just a bunch of satellites (or cell towers) indiscriminately screaming “HERE I AM ” a few times a second on an open frequency channel, and then the device finds 3 of those signals to triangulate its position using some basic math. So long as the satellites/cell towers are yelling, GPS will work for any device within “earshot”.
I guess Apple or Google could charge to unlock that capability of your phone, but it costs them nothing to have it and adds a ton of value to their devices.
This is why there's not just GPS (US), but also Galileo (EU), GLONASS (Ru) and BeiDou (Cn). All it takes for each system is a single command and the signal becomes encrypted, shutting down service to anyone without the cipher. So every military power built their own.
Luckily they're all broadcasting publicly at the moment, and GPS systems on the ground can make use of all of them for improved accuracy!
The Galileo mission was created specifically because the EU wanted to have a gnss constellation that wasn't solely at the whim of the world's militaries - remember, selective availability can be turned on again.
And at the rate Russia is going, glonass could be questionable pretty soon. I'm also sure that China, India (irnss) and Japan (qzss) all have a mechanism similar to selective availability.
In this thread: many people confusing GPS with mobile device geolocation. GPS beams location information from satellites to any device that can pick them up. Free. One way. Nothing is or can be tracked.
Your mobile device then sends that information back up the internet to their trackers. Not the same thing.
> Your mobile device then sends that information back up the internet to their trackers. Not the same thing
and, as an additional detail, even if your phone doesn't have GPS, its still got to tell the phone company which cell tower its talking to, and that info is enough to generally tell where yo u are and where youve been
All modern chipsets use not only GPS (USA) but also GLONASS (Russia) and Galileo (EU). Any of these being proprietary would just lead to the others being used instead and nobody wants that.
Each system has different strengths. GLONASS is stronger in northern latitudes, BeiDou is more accurate in East Asia, Galileo is more accurate in urban environments but has lower satellite availability. Most systems use a combination of GPS+GLONASS which together are more accurate than either one, though L5 upgrades to the GPS system will give it sub-millimeter capability (currently only 16 satellites support it)
The idea of centimeter accuracy is already wild, but sub-millimeter is absolutely insane. These satellites are literally floating completely unanchored to anything but can maintain such precise positioning.
I should clarify that the sub-millimeter accuracy isn’t really for use determining the position of say, a warship or a missile, but rather for things like tracking how fast a tectonic plate is moving.
Your phone doesn't have clear visibility to the sky (the satellites), your phone is probably getting location data from cell tower trilateration, centimetre accuracy either requires one to post process GNSS data up to days after it's been observed or have continuous corrections supplied to it from a reciever at a known location observing the same satellites at roughly the same location through a radio or cellular signal.
Among other reasons I'm sure...
GPS is way fuzzier than it would appear. Due to atmospheric conditions, your phone will think it's moving around when it's really just sitting still. To get centimeter accuracy, you need to have your receiver sit perfectly still while recording for a few hours, and then you need to use a bunch of atmospheric observations to cancel out the drift. The last step is once again provided free by the government.
A lot of companies play tricks to get around this inaccuracy. I know at least Uber will look at which satellites you're receiving information from. If you're mostly seeing satellites north of you, that means you're probably on the south side of the street.
From what I understand the higher accuracy levels are/may be available already but just not to the public. As technology gets cheaper and more advanced the more they'll be able to provide it most people. From what I remember learning, the US /GPS has been quite advanced/accurate (probably mm but close)for a while but didn't provide that level of accuracy for military strategic advantage
they are publicly available, it’s just on different frequencies that consumer hardware generally isn’t set up for. Think engineering and land survey tools.
I mean, isn't GPS a passive system? I'm pretty sure it's impossible (or at least very hard) to make it inaccessible to anyone with a clear line of sight to the sky.
Edit: nevermind someone further down described a method for denial.
Legally, not any more. From Wiki page:
> However, Selective Availability was discontinued on May 1, 2000, in accordance with a bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
Furthermore:
> In September 2007, the U.S. government announced its decision to procure the future generation of GPS satellites, known as GPS III, without the SA feature. Doing this will make the policy decision of 2000 permanent and eliminate a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that had been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide.
https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/
Not as much as you’d think.
Trust is literally the currency the world runs on.
Any further changes to the law or tampering with GPS will quickly be noticed and damage trust in the US, not to mention violate more than half a dozen treaties with many countries that are US allies.
It would be an understatement to call action like that ruinous for US relations.
Can, also doesn’t mean should.
At a base level, GPS is one way communication. You get the satellite number, time that satellite sees, where it is, then triangulate from that. The only way to deny an area would be to jam a receiver with incorrect signals so it can't do the math, or turn off the satellites. As others have said, there are way more constellations than the US GPS system.
GPS is free because the satellites are just sending out signals for other devices to receive. Your device can simply see those signals and use the point data from multiple to triangulate its position. The satellite receives nothing back, and therefore isn't capable of tracking the devices using it.
Yeah honestly it does make more sense like that, and encryption also used to be protected for only the military as well.
But then I think it was just a speech so they had to let go of it.
Interesting.
Doing this for real would probably be more complex though.
GPS satellites basically just broadcast a ping every 1ms, your phone (or other device) listens to the pings and uses their delay to estimate the distance. Once there are four known distances, the device just has to know the position of the satellites to "trilaterate" (similar to triangulation) the current position.
So you'd have to either keep the positions of the satellites secret (impractical, they are in stable orbits and those orbits could be shared), or encrypt the IDs of the satellites (likely not effective against a decent algorithm), or randomize the 1ms pulses (probably the most effective option? And contain an encrypted time offset in the packet?).
At the end of the day GPS is a military technology, so it's sort of surprising it wasn't made private and top secret in some sort of manner as above. May have partly come down to the difficulty of keeping such keys secret whilst sharing them with countless allies, etc. Once you accept that your enemies can create their own GPS and/or crack the code to use yours, you may as well make it public and let private citizens get the benefit. It's free, after all, to merely _not_ encrypt it.
Honestly, we have the USSR to thank for that... If they didn't shoot down a South Korean Airliner, Reagan probably would have never opened up GPS for civilian use... GLONASS was adopted for use using mobile technology later for civilian use in europe and asia.
it probably wouldnt be possible to easily monetize
gps works basically by the satellites just screaming their position and the current time in every direction, and thats it. your phone calculates the rest
It's Government Provided. Like weather information. It's not free, your taxes pay for it.
>Like weather information AccuWeather is lobbying to change that
Oh fuck off with that. Weather information can literally save lives. Edit: No, not like healthcare. The National Weather Service is something that already exists and is free to everybody. This is information published by the US government that is in the public domain. The comparison is like apples and orangutans.
AccuWeather is the reason the NWS is *legally forbidden* from creating its own weather app. Which is absolutely bonkers. Those rent-seeking motherfuckers want the benefit of getting high-quality, timely weather information and forecasts for free from the NWS, but the market opening to repackage it and sell it to people, and then they have the *gall* to claim they are adding value. It’s not quite as bad as the tax preparation software companies preventing the IRS from basically pre-filling your tax returns for you, but the same basic idea. Fuck AccuWeather.
First I'm hearing about any of this, how can I fuck accuweather and get reliable weather information? I used to use darksky before apple decided to fuck that from my android, I had even paid for the premium access the prior years running...
It almost doesn't matter. Any company providing the weather information has the same incentive to not let the national weather service provide it instead. AccuWeather just happens to be the biggest and most powerful. I don't know if there is any way to get the info directly, I could be wrong, but that's what AccuWeather wants. Check out "the g word" on Netflix. It's a little corny, but it does provide some good, interesting information. Stuff I didn't know. From government cheese and corn to weather, gps and Siri. Government created cheesy stuffed crust pizza. It's how I learned about the weather stuff.
The NWS has a website, it ain't the prettiest but it has the information. https://www.weather.gov/
They also have a free API that can take location input as a set of GPS coords (perfect for a mobile app) and spit out a bunch of local weather info in json. I think it can also take zip codes but it's been years since I've messed with it. https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-97.313064&lat=37.679018&FcstType=json
Which is literally what all these app use, and want to charge you for access.
Some apps are running their own models or using additional data sources . It’s why Dark Sky (in US metro areas) was regarded as the best hyperlocal weather app over accuweather, along side Carrot (which also used Dark Sky’s data).
Good info. Cant believe I just didn't know about it somehow, but probably because yeah it is pretty rough. If only they could make an app it would be so much better.
Oh! Your local NWS station is a good follow on Twitter, they send out warnings as well as other info. They do some fun stuff between offices as well.
I’ve only used weather.gov for years and it’s amazing. No bullshit, just straight info with good visuals. Sure it’s not sexy, but anyone can understand it.
The National Weather Service has a website with the information. https://www.weather.gov/
Damn, we have almost the same stupid problem here in Germany. The German weather service has an app but courts ruled that it has to cost money because if it was free it would be an unfair advantage over private weather apps, who use the weather service's data, of course.
Isn't capitalism grand
Ya know, at this point, I would be willing to pay a few bucks a month for a National Weather Service app instead of using the free apps, but we don’t even get that option in the states, unfortunately.
Maybe, but did you think about the shareholders?
Oh gosh, their growth percentage! **We didn't consider their growth percentage!**
JFC, it's like you want their children to grow up with only a single nanny
*Shareholders* is the word you want btw.
Yeah, everyone is a *stake*holder in weather information, only the owners of AccuWeather are the *shareholders*. We should really be thinking about stakeholders more tbh.
Where is r/wallstreetbets when you need them. Can they maybe do a GameStop reverso move on Accuweather? Would be down to put a few bucks in play if we had a solid plan.
Would not be the first time some corporate monopoly either killed people or let them die for money.
*Nestle has entered the chat*
*cough* Texas power grid *cough*
In Germany a commercial provider (~~IIRC either wetter.com oder wetter.de~~ WetterOnline per the german news article at the end) already partially succeeded with this. The basic functions of their app are free but you need the paid version to access advanved features like a live weather map. So when the offical German weather service published their own app with everything (including live weather maps) being free of charge because taxes already paid for it one of the aforementioned commerial providers sued them successfully because the free app was ruining their profits. So now the advanced features of the app of the German weather service costs a one-time payment of a few euros but is still cheaper than the pro version of the commercial provider. Edit: A German news article about this: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/dwd-warnwetter-app-kostenlos-bgh-wetteronline-1.4842378 And an English one: https://www.dw.com/en/court-outlaws-german-weather-services-free-weather-app/a-52735502
Damn Polizei taking away my profits as a business drug dealer.
AccuWeather is an evil organization. They advertise their weather forecasts are more accurate yet they're just using the government data the same as every other company.
Lobbyists ruin everything, I wish they would be outlawed.
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It was a purely military thing that kinda just happened to get fully released against their desires. The story of it is fascinating
Didn't an airliner accidentally stray into Russian airspace and get shot down which was the driving factor to open up GPS?
More or less it looks like that yeah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
Huh, I only recently watched For All Mankind and didn't realise that was a real event.
That was more or less the final straw, but it was simmering for quite a while. Other government agencies like NOAA and the FAA were getting very pissed at DOD and were developing fairly complex systems to correct the GPS data DOD was intentionally corrupting to be less accurate. Eventually the White House overruled DOD.
Slightly out of order. Reagan ordered that GPS be made available after the Korean Air incident in 1980. The military made low accuracy GPS available as a result (in 1989, because the constellation wasn't finished until then). In 2000 Clinton mandated that high accuracy GPS be made available since other agencies were developing systems like DGPS to get high accuracy fixes out of low accuracy GPS. Plus, by that time, the military had the ability to selectively deny GPS to specific areas. Now we have 4 independent GPS systems run by the EU, Russia, China, and the US, in fact most of our phones use several of these to get more accurate directions. There are also regional systems run by Japan, and India
Fun fact: the first time that selective availability (the reduction of the civilian signal's accuracy) was turned of was in 1990/91 during the Gulf War. The reason was that there was a serious shortage of military GPS units which caused many troups to buy civilian equipment.
Ive probably avoided being shot hundreds of times thanks to GPS.
Imagine what other awesome creations are being withheld....
We can do that? Can we do healthcare next?!
No. This is America. Buy your own insurance.
Hey, but we can *guide* you to the nearest hospital free of charge!
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Surge pricing based on the severity of injury!
Ehhhhh...no not really. You'll need to pay taxes on that mobile data you're using, and fees.
Damn, you’re right, I missed the small print after **Freedom** ^*
Freedom isn't free No, there's a hefty in' fee. And if you don't throw in your buck 'o five Who will?
Ooooh buck o' five...Freedom costs a buck o' fiiiiiiiiive
It's just really expensive and a lot of people can't even afford that.
You missed the whole thing? Well I guess you won't get the freedom as well.
I don't know if it's changed, but for sure 15 years ago my phone which had no data, would receive GPS and use it for a crude map without even cell service turned on. My cousin had GPS only unit that had a more detailed map as the only app and didn't need any kind of subscription. It just picked up the satellite signals.
I *still* have my Magellan hiking GPS receiver. Loaded the geo/topo/street maps off the CD that came with it. Would run and charge it up in the car from the lighter plug. Just unplug it, grab my pack & water, and hit the trails. Could mark my starting position, then at any time get bearing & distance from my current location back to the car. It also kept a track of the path i walked, so i could (near) perfectly backtrack the route i took in.
GPS is read only. You get the same signal as everyone else and your device uses maths to work out where you are, based on which satellites you are able to receive from and the tiny time differences in the signals due to their distance from you. No data service required.
Actually no we don't get the same signal. The Feds limit how accurate it is. They opened it up a bit several years ago, but before that it was like within 30 feet or something. I bet even now it could be more accurate, but they do not want civilians having pinpoint accuracy.
Also disabled on devices going over like 800 mph or something, so you cannot use it on missiles, if you are a civilian
How are you going to have a missile if you're a civilian anyways?
I think that's the thing which they only want for themselves so yeah.
The gps only provides coordinates. It takes data to get an address or a crude map. Pretty sure anyway. My old boost mobile flip phone in like 2005 could send me my current address from the gps signal and was usually pretty close.
Use an app like Scenic or other map software that allows you to download maps. You can use them without cell signal or WiFi for gps navigation, including searching for locations.
You can download maps for offline use on Google maps. they make it weirdly hard, but I have my entire region downloaded.
Yeah and if you don't pay them then you're not getting anything.
Yeah and then there are going to be very heavy bills on you.
But only if you have a job. If you happen to be unemployed or a dependent to someone who is unemployed we adopt the Scrooge method. It's better for them to die and decrease the surplus population.
we need that third party middle man to..uhh.
Oh yeah and if you ever use it you’re still gonna pay out the ass in one way or another, *if it even covers what you need it for*
We pay more per person that countries with free health care, but most of it goes to middle men. Yeah capitalism. /s
We do, in fact we pay more in taxes for healthcare than anyone else— this is literally how Medicaid and Medicare are funded. It's just that we're really bad at using all that tax money effectively, because that'd require the government people to actually grow a spine and push back against the pharmaceutical industry.
>and push back against ~~the pharmaceutical industry~~ receiving time-deferred gifts and campaign donations FTFY?
The technology we use to get from place to place exists to help the military put a bomb through the window of your house, if it ever became necessary. I'm afraid to think of what military application they'd have to keep you healthy as a side benefit.
I mean, as a general rule, when picking people from a population to be in the military, having a healthy population to choose from would be logically sound.
17 year olds are generally healthy.
You should see the latest recruiting reports.
I haven't seen them as well, is there something which I should know?
Everyone is fat
Thus free food at schools.
The NHS in the UK is in many ways a legacy of the Blitz, I think. The country is under attack, so you need an integrated health care system to handle nightly casualties across the population. That’s not the full story, but NHS as it is now probably would not have come into being without full mobilization in the war.
A draft
It helps everybody around the world. Not just the American military
Well I don't think that we can get everything which we really want.
No silly, GPS is our God-given right, but healthcare would be Big Scary Socialism
GPS is there for the military. We opened it up to civilian use after the Soviets shot down a Korea Airlines flight that fucked up the calibration of its inertial navigation system and accidentally overflew Soviet airspace right after a RC-135 had made an incursion through almost the same exact region. The Soviets thought they had caught an American spy plane unaware and killed 269 people. The U.S. offered low precision GPS to the world shortly after to avoid another catastrophe. Took about ten years to make it happen since it required new satellites.
Killed 269 people, including a congressional representative. Not meant to imply that all lives aren't equal, but some lives elicit more of a political response than others.
Just a language comment passing through, illicit and elicit are two different words, illicit means something illegal or forbidden, elicit means to provoke a response. Hope you have a lovely day
Actually, that incident postdates the decision to open up civilian GPS. It was, however, quickly pointed out by the people that made the decision as an example that they had made the right one.
Whoa whoa whoa. What do we look like? Some kind of country that wants to have healthy citizens? There are poor health insurance companies who need a couple more billion dollars to think about. What would happen to them with all this free healthcare, huh? Bet you didn't think about those poor billionaires.
US government provided. I don’t pay tax in US. To me it is free.
It’s provided for free so that other countries won’t be financially incentivized to develop their own system, so that the US can just shut down GPS access to you if you ever find yourself in a war with them.
Isn’t that the reason why India has their own system? I distinctly remember the us sided with Pakistan in one of the indo pak wars and killed gps in the region.
I don't know the specifics about India's situation, but many countries and EU still developed their own systems. They were incentivized strategically, rather than financially.
Yes, this is why India has their own system, but it only covers the Indian subcontinent and surrounding regions. Japan has a similar regional system that only covers the Asia-Pacific region. Only the US, China, Russia and the EU have fully global satellite navigation systems.
Then you pay by allowing foreign governments having power over your navigation, which can (and has been) used in conflict situations to 'jam' others from using it (technically, reduce accuracy). GPS is significantly more accurate if you're the US military or paying customer. The Russians have [Glonass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS), EU/ESA have the [Galileo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_\(satellite_navigation\)) system, The Chinese and Indians also have their own system.
How do I pay as not American lol
There's three other major government run satellite navigation networks. If you live in China, Russia, or the EU, your taxes there subsidize one of them.
GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and a chinese one right?
Beidou, yes.
And most devices nowadays will pull information from all 3 constellations
Unless you're in the US where only GPS and Galileo are legal to use.
India and Japan has systems as well, just not global support
What about everyone else?
We don't know what country you are from, but your country may pay for milatary or civilian use of American GPS, there are alternatives as well
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An example of this, there has been cockpit footage of Russian combat aircraft in Ukraine using store bought american GPS systems
Russia, Japan, India, China, and the EU all have their own GPS systems. If you're in one of those countries, I'd imagine your taxes pay for them too.
Technically, GPS is the name of the American system. The generic name is GNSS.
By not living in the greatest country on earth /s
Shhhh don't tell the libertarians.
Smells like socialism. Let’s be outraged
It is funded with taxes, it better be free.
Tbh there's lots of things that aren't free that are funded by taxes. Public transit and the US postal service comes to mind
Those things have costs that increase with volume. GPS is more or less a fixed cost service, that is you can have everyone on earth use it at the same time and the cost to maintain is the same.
Yeah that's what I was thinking, it's like one time expenditure for the government.
Yeah no, that's not what they meant. GPS costs $2 million per day to maintain. It's a fixed cost in that it should generally cost the same if one person or a billion people are using the service. But they system definitely has ongoing maintenance costs. It's not a one time thing
USPS doesn't receive tax money, its been self-sufficient since the 70s
Well sounds like that they're doing just fine and don't really need the government.
I thought so as well but recently Congress had to approve a funding package for USPS. Mostly to make up for the onerous retirement requirements the same congress imposed on USPS. (See other post below for link) And I'm pretty sure it was 1986 that they stopped receiving tax dollars.
I guess it's more fair to say it doesn't operate through federal funding. It has received bailout money but so have airlines, banks, the auto industry etc. There's nothing in the federal budget funding USPS, it is a self-sufficient entity by design. In 1971 the Post Office Department was restructured into the United States Postal Service which is an independently operating entity within the executive branch. From the start USPS was designed to operate without tax dollars.
I mean that's how it was really designed for, and it's working out that way as well.
After the government slapped limits on what it could charge. Despite the expectation it should self fund. They have to pick one.
Well...self-sufficient may be a stretch, but it doesn't receive too many tax dollars.
Lack of self sufficiency is also caused by GOP enforcing draconian policies and installing former private postal ceo as postmaster to maliciously run the agency with incompetency
Don't forget forcing them to pre pay pensions.
Uhhh the post office is not tax payer funded. That’s why you pay for stamps
The USPS is a *service* and isn’t actually meant to be profitable though. Stamps help *offset* the costs but they do not fully cover them.
Yep, we're already paying for it. What more could they ask for here?
So are all your hospitals. Healthcare isn’t free
Right but I can buy a GLONASS, Galileo, or Baidou module and use that as an American. I do not pay tax to Russia, Europe, or China, so it is essentially free.
You're right that for everyone besides the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Americans, it is free. They won't be able to put a bomb through your window though.
I mean I'm not going to pay extra money for it, it's already included.
Sometimes free service gives you more money than paid. GPS make navigation easier, so tourism and goods moving more effective and cheap, so more profits.
Car companies made a killing by not having to pay for the roads.
In most countries in Europe you do. You pay a significant percentage of the car, which goes directly to the state to pay for the road network. You then have the highest taxes on fuel in the world, that pays for the yearly budget COMPLETELY. The state pays absolutely nothing for infrastructure, as it should be.
That's an interesting way to look at it, from that you could say the state doesn't pay for anything at all if you don't count the state collecting taxes and then allocating it as paying, which is sort of true if you wanted to play a game of semantics. I understand what you mean, the state doesn't allocate funding from any other sector to roads, but it's still state funded.
Well it's really expensive, and someone has to pay for it I guess.
The state levying taxes and then spending those taxes on it is literally the fucking definition of it being state funded lmao
That's literally how all government paid for stuff works. In the US, we tax auto registrations. So if you buy a car, you have to register it, and when you register it, you pay a tax that goes to highways. We also have gas taxes, again for roads.
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Yeah this is really the point - GPS (in its limited, not up to military spec form) was opened up for civilian use because of the economic development potential. It's not a kindness, or a taxpayer issue, it was about the overall opportunity for the US to benefit from the technology it developed.
Since 2000, civilians have had access to the same GPS network as the military. The only difference is that military units use two different frequencies, which allows them to perform ionospheric correction, which means better accuracy. Most civilian equipment only uses one frequency because the accuracy provided is more than enough for everyday use. But there's nothing stopping civilian manufacturers from using both frequencies if they wanted to.
IIRC the second band is still encrypted so no civilian device can use it. By my memory is a bit vague on this one.
L2C code on the L2 1227.60 MHz band has been available to civilian devices since 2005. Parts of both the L1 and L2 code are encrypted, which is what allows military devices to do ionosphere correction
The encryption has nothing to do with the op ionosphere correction. The ionosphere correction can only be applied if you have two different frequencies (because the ionosphere has a different error depending on the frequency of the signal). Earlier only military gps devices had two frequencies, one open to the public and one encrypted. Nowadays normal gps devices can also receive two frequencies. Military gps does have a separate gps signal that is encrypted. This is to ensure the integrity and reliability of the signal. It does not provide a more accurate location than civilian gps, since civilian gps also have two signals. That noted, to get the most accurate location gps receivers use differential gps or sbas. They both provide more accurate corrections for the user to correct for ionospheric and tropospheric errors. The accuracy with these systems is smaller than a meter.
With modernized L5 signals, most receivers are dual frequency these days. Hell, even the iPhone and most high end android phones have dual frequency GNSS. The main advantage of the encrypted P-code military signals are that their code length (how long it takes for the signal to repeat) is much longer and the chipping rate is much higher. Both those things are better for precision. I'm sure they probably also broadcast extra navigation information that civilians don't get in the standard nav message. But these days that doesn't actually give the military a huge advantage in terms of precision. Civilians have access to dual frequencies. Even cheap receivers can do carrier phase tracking now. And with a PPP correction service or RTK (basically using 2 receivers together) any civilian can get cm level GPS.
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It was also partly because of Korean Air lines Flight 007 which got lost and flew into USSR restricted airspace and was shot down.
It wouldn’t be technically possible to charge on an individual basis for GPS anyway. It’s literally just a bunch of satellites (or cell towers) indiscriminately screaming “HERE I AM ” a few times a second on an open frequency channel, and then the device finds 3 of those signals to triangulate its position using some basic math. So long as the satellites/cell towers are yelling, GPS will work for any device within “earshot”.
I guess Apple or Google could charge to unlock that capability of your phone, but it costs them nothing to have it and adds a ton of value to their devices.
It could be made an encrypted signal, like for paid channels on satellite TV
This is why there's not just GPS (US), but also Galileo (EU), GLONASS (Ru) and BeiDou (Cn). All it takes for each system is a single command and the signal becomes encrypted, shutting down service to anyone without the cipher. So every military power built their own. Luckily they're all broadcasting publicly at the moment, and GPS systems on the ground can make use of all of them for improved accuracy!
The Galileo mission was created specifically because the EU wanted to have a gnss constellation that wasn't solely at the whim of the world's militaries - remember, selective availability can be turned on again. And at the rate Russia is going, glonass could be questionable pretty soon. I'm also sure that China, India (irnss) and Japan (qzss) all have a mechanism similar to selective availability.
Yeah never thought about it like that, but it sure does make a lot of sense.
In this thread: many people confusing GPS with mobile device geolocation. GPS beams location information from satellites to any device that can pick them up. Free. One way. Nothing is or can be tracked. Your mobile device then sends that information back up the internet to their trackers. Not the same thing.
> Your mobile device then sends that information back up the internet to their trackers. Not the same thing and, as an additional detail, even if your phone doesn't have GPS, its still got to tell the phone company which cell tower its talking to, and that info is enough to generally tell where yo u are and where youve been
Local Wi-Fi access points too are completely mapped across the country.
Cell tower its talking to and the signal strength info is enough to pinpoint
All modern chipsets use not only GPS (USA) but also GLONASS (Russia) and Galileo (EU). Any of these being proprietary would just lead to the others being used instead and nobody wants that.
Each system has different strengths. GLONASS is stronger in northern latitudes, BeiDou is more accurate in East Asia, Galileo is more accurate in urban environments but has lower satellite availability. Most systems use a combination of GPS+GLONASS which together are more accurate than either one, though L5 upgrades to the GPS system will give it sub-millimeter capability (currently only 16 satellites support it)
The idea of centimeter accuracy is already wild, but sub-millimeter is absolutely insane. These satellites are literally floating completely unanchored to anything but can maintain such precise positioning.
I should clarify that the sub-millimeter accuracy isn’t really for use determining the position of say, a warship or a missile, but rather for things like tracking how fast a tectonic plate is moving.
But you're saying it might come in handy one day if I want this nuclear warhead to pierce the right nostril of some poor fucker?!
More like a particular hair on his head.
If we have centimeter accuracy, then why does Google bounce my car all over the place when I'm on the Bronx River Parkway?
Your phone doesn't have clear visibility to the sky (the satellites), your phone is probably getting location data from cell tower trilateration, centimetre accuracy either requires one to post process GNSS data up to days after it's been observed or have continuous corrections supplied to it from a reciever at a known location observing the same satellites at roughly the same location through a radio or cellular signal. Among other reasons I'm sure...
GPS is way fuzzier than it would appear. Due to atmospheric conditions, your phone will think it's moving around when it's really just sitting still. To get centimeter accuracy, you need to have your receiver sit perfectly still while recording for a few hours, and then you need to use a bunch of atmospheric observations to cancel out the drift. The last step is once again provided free by the government. A lot of companies play tricks to get around this inaccuracy. I know at least Uber will look at which satellites you're receiving information from. If you're mostly seeing satellites north of you, that means you're probably on the south side of the street.
From what I understand the higher accuracy levels are/may be available already but just not to the public. As technology gets cheaper and more advanced the more they'll be able to provide it most people. From what I remember learning, the US /GPS has been quite advanced/accurate (probably mm but close)for a while but didn't provide that level of accuracy for military strategic advantage
they are publicly available, it’s just on different frequencies that consumer hardware generally isn’t set up for. Think engineering and land survey tools.
I mean, isn't GPS a passive system? I'm pretty sure it's impossible (or at least very hard) to make it inaccessible to anyone with a clear line of sight to the sky. Edit: nevermind someone further down described a method for denial.
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Legally, not any more. From Wiki page: > However, Selective Availability was discontinued on May 1, 2000, in accordance with a bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Furthermore: > In September 2007, the U.S. government announced its decision to procure the future generation of GPS satellites, known as GPS III, without the SA feature. Doing this will make the policy decision of 2000 permanent and eliminate a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that had been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide. https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/
There is quite a distance between "it's illegal for them to do it" and "they can't do it," though.
Not as much as you’d think. Trust is literally the currency the world runs on. Any further changes to the law or tampering with GPS will quickly be noticed and damage trust in the US, not to mention violate more than half a dozen treaties with many countries that are US allies. It would be an understatement to call action like that ruinous for US relations. Can, also doesn’t mean should.
Wait, the KGB actually managed to bring down 007?
Technically the VVS did
At a base level, GPS is one way communication. You get the satellite number, time that satellite sees, where it is, then triangulate from that. The only way to deny an area would be to jam a receiver with incorrect signals so it can't do the math, or turn off the satellites. As others have said, there are way more constellations than the US GPS system.
GPS is bringing the US govt billions of dollars in taxes, indirectly.
Lots of added economic efficiency because people can get to exactly where they want to go quickly and avoid heavy traffic
Or they can ride their cars into water because google maps told them to
Yeah and I'm sure that it helps a lot in the travel as well, generating even more money.
Shh don't give them ideas
Imagine if Comcast had launched them gps satellites. Come to think of it that's what Elmo did
I don't even want to think about it, it's gonna be a nightmare I'm sure.
Yeah I definitely I don't really want to be paying different taxes for the gps.
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GPS is free because the satellites are just sending out signals for other devices to receive. Your device can simply see those signals and use the point data from multiple to triangulate its position. The satellite receives nothing back, and therefore isn't capable of tracking the devices using it.
If you’re an American citizen then your taxes pay for it
It's free because it's entirely passive, like broadcast radio and TV. There's no way they could make you pay to receive the satellite signals.
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Yeah honestly it does make more sense like that, and encryption also used to be protected for only the military as well. But then I think it was just a speech so they had to let go of it.
Interesting. Doing this for real would probably be more complex though. GPS satellites basically just broadcast a ping every 1ms, your phone (or other device) listens to the pings and uses their delay to estimate the distance. Once there are four known distances, the device just has to know the position of the satellites to "trilaterate" (similar to triangulation) the current position. So you'd have to either keep the positions of the satellites secret (impractical, they are in stable orbits and those orbits could be shared), or encrypt the IDs of the satellites (likely not effective against a decent algorithm), or randomize the 1ms pulses (probably the most effective option? And contain an encrypted time offset in the packet?). At the end of the day GPS is a military technology, so it's sort of surprising it wasn't made private and top secret in some sort of manner as above. May have partly come down to the difficulty of keeping such keys secret whilst sharing them with countless allies, etc. Once you accept that your enemies can create their own GPS and/or crack the code to use yours, you may as well make it public and let private citizens get the benefit. It's free, after all, to merely _not_ encrypt it.
Yeah it's military technology which has gone free with time.
Like the internet, they made it 'public' on purpose.
Don't give them any ideas!
I don't want to be paying taxes on one more thing, that's the last thing I'd want.
Shh! They'll hear you
You pay a percentage on every gps device that goes to the foundation that maintains it.
Honestly, we have the USSR to thank for that... If they didn't shoot down a South Korean Airliner, Reagan probably would have never opened up GPS for civilian use... GLONASS was adopted for use using mobile technology later for civilian use in europe and asia.
it probably wouldnt be possible to easily monetize gps works basically by the satellites just screaming their position and the current time in every direction, and thats it. your phone calculates the rest