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Google’s expanded Find My Device network might arrive in a few days (www.theverge.com)

submitted 7 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But most phones already have a fix most of the time

I can't speak as to what everyone does, but normally on my phone, with Location Services off, normally that's not the case. The GPS circuitry only gets powered up when I open an app that uses the location.

And you can still get a pretty good fix from a cell tower.

Ehh...I don't know.

I haven't tried experimenting, but the range is pretty hefty on those. If you can see a given Bluetooth device at all, you have a pretty small area that you can be in. If you get a cell tower, maybe the signal is weak because you're a long way away, or maybe it's because there's a reflection, and only part of the energy is coming back.

A cell signal will put you in the right part of the world, but...

Ah, I’m rarely downtown, so that’s probably why I haven’t run into it. But wouldn’t 5G triangulation largely solve this?

As far as I know, cell phones have no information about the direction of cell towers that they can talk to. 5G towers might use beamforming, but as far as I know, any location information that they may derive about the phone from that are not available to the phone. The phone provider might log it themselves.

I do recall watching a video of someone using a GNU Radio-based system, tracking down a radio station in a "fox hunt" using an antenna array on the top of their car. Basically, same thing in reverse. And based on the (limited) accuracy they got, I'm a little suspicious that the cell tower, even with beamforming data, isn't gonna have anything like the kind of accuracy that GPS does, even outside.

googles

This might have been it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY16y1Rl86g

indoors

I personally generally deny access, but a number of websites now request one's location to do things like provide nearby stores (e.g. look up an item, walmart.com will provide a list of nearby stores and the stock status of a given item). Being able to provide at least a general location is useful, which you can't do without a GPS fix; the accuracy doesn't have to be great for that, but you do have to be able to get it, and that's not necessarily the case indoors.

This seems pretty legitimate, but surely we can solve it with local AI (e.g. Google Pixel 8) instead of calling home. If I walk into a store and want a price for something, it should recognize the store I’m in and be able to recognize the product or whatever.

Like, use the camera to identify the location? I mean, maybe. That's a lot more passive processing that one is gonna have to do, if so. We aren't there today. And the reduction in data would have to be pretty dramatic. If you want to do something like that locally, for just walking down a street, you're talking about the Google Street View dataset. Are users gonna be expected to walk around with the camera recording and seed this thing?

Doesn’t it already? I get that even without Bluetooth enabled, so it’s only working off GPS and cell towers. And this is with a super crappy phone (2020 base Moto phone). I’ve never had a problem with a bad fix for driving directions.

I use OsmAnd, and it certainly tends to be sticky (I assume operating on the assumption that there may be error, and assumes that one is on the road that one previously was).

All I want is my things to securely connect with my other things when in range, and that’s it.

Yeah. I mean, I'm with you on that.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

cell phones have no information about the direction of cell towers that they can talk to

That's true of any radio, including Bluetooth, which is why triangulation is needed. It looks like 10 meters accurate should be feasible with 5G alone, which should be plenty for navigation purposes. Add GPS, and the article claims 1/10 meter precision. Maybe that's a little worse in a city with large buildings, but it'll probably be pretty close.

a number of websites now request one's location to do things like provide nearby stores

Yeah, I just type in a nearby zip code or city, and it works fine.

use the camera to identify the location?

It could know what store you're in, but not which particular branch of that store. As in, it would know you're in a Bath and Body Works or whatever, but not the downtown mall outlet. That should cover most use cases, and the others could request temporary location access or present a list of possibilities. That way users know when they're potentially being tracked.

I don't know why it would ever need to know your precise location, it should be able to be very helpful by just parsing the environment and data (e.g. email) you've granted it access to.

Are users gonna be expected to walk around with the camera recording and seed this thing?

Nah, just download it and cache it, and update it when home. Storage is cheap, I can get 1TB of NVMe storage in a tiny (M.2 2230) form factor for <$100. All OSM data is 100GB, so I highly doubt local storage would be an issue. The only limitations here are artificial (e.g. huge markups for phone storage now that SD storage is dead).

So from my perspective, we can solve the limitations here fairly easily, it's just Apple and Google trying to lock in customers. Maybe I'm missing something though, but avoiding most of that has gotten me pretty far.