this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 2 points 14 hours 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 5 hours 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 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours 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.