
The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan - jsoc815
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-25/the-world-economy-runs-on-gps-it-needs-a-backup-plan
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savimportweb
GPS is american, Europeans have the Galileo system, and the russians have
glonass. aren't those a backup plan

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AdamJacobMuller
and many "GPS" chipsets actually read both GPS and GLONASS. In the future most
systems will probably read at least 3 of the global systems (India and China
are also deploying/planning on deploying their own systems).

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jzl
_The most insidious tactic on the ground is GPS spoofing, using malicious
software to broadcast phony signals and fool the receiver on, say, an aircraft
into thinking it’s somewhere, or somewhen, that it isn’t. Such methods “would
certainly work against Ubers, Waymo’s self-driving cars, delivery drones from
Amazon,” and more, says Todd Humphreys, an aerospace engineering professor at
the University of Texas at Austin._

Happy to see the article discuss the problem of GPS jamming and spoofing. That
could become an increasing threat, especially against self-driving cars.

Recent HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17539465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17539465)

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hcarvalhoalves
> hony signals and fool the receiver on, say, an aircraft into thinking it’s
> somewhere

I thought aviation didn’t rely on GPS for navigation?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system)

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CMCDragonkai
They still need GPS for periodic correction.

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ryanmercer
Indeed. If anyone is interested in just how much GPS is used in our daily
lives I recommend reading the book Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology,
Culture, and Our Minds by Greg Milner. It's a neat read on the development of
GPS as well as other navigation throughout history.

~~~
jsoc815
Having long ago heard that most of the satellites were long past their
intended 'expiration' dates, I'm still a little surprised to see articles like
this appearing today.

As for your book rec, does it add much substance to his Time piece?[1]

[1] [http://time.com/4309397/how-gps-is-messing-with-our-
minds/](http://time.com/4309397/how-gps-is-messing-with-our-minds/)

~~~
ryanmercer
It's a good general-history book on GPS, he does go back to the theme of it's
changing our minds (mentions the impressive sea navigation abilities of
cultures that have traditionally lived on the water spread out over hundreds
of small islands for example) and IIRC he touches on some of the people that
have died, or nearly died, trusting GPS instead of common sense, but that's by
no means the majority of the book.

It's been probably close to 2 years since I read it but I enjoyed the history
aspects of it.

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clay_the_ripper
I was surprised to learn recently that GPS can be turned off by the
government. I guess it makes sense, I just never thought of gps as inherently
controlled by the government.

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downrightmike
One of the largest reasons that we don't have highspeed wireless internet from
satellites is that the spectrum is on the lower end of the US gov's use for
old marine gps systems. It may interfere so they block the projects.

~~~
empthought
100ms or more ping time as we wait for the signal to travel thousands of miles
into space and back would also have something to do with it.

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echo-oddly
For reference, round trip time to geostationary orbit is 240 ms. But that is
36 thousand km. Compare that to the ISS which orbits less than 500 km up, so
the round trip time is less than 1.25 ms.

~~~
empthought
No communications satellites orbit at such low altitude, though.

