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Australia Moved 1.5 Metres, Updating its Location for Self-Driving Cars

posted by n1 on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-have-not-reached-your-destination dept.

"exec" writes:

[Australia] is shifting its longitude and latitude to fix a discrepancy with global satellite navigation systems. Government body Geoscience Australia is updating the Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country's national coordinate system, to bring it in line with international data.

The reason Australia is slightly out of whack with global systems is that the country moves about 7 centimetres (2.75 inches) per year due to the shifting of tectonic plates.

Since 1994, when the data was last recorded, that's added up to a misalignment of about a metre and a half.

Source: CNet

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @04:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @04:35AM (#382165)

    In all likelihood, that's exactly what will happen. Many online services (e.g. Facebook, Google) that you have to give information to sell that data to various other companies and use it for advertising and lots of proprietary software spies on its users (lots of 'free' phone apps do this, as well as big players like Windows). Then there is just plain maliciousness, like the Sony rootkits, the removal of OtherOS, and digital restrictions management in general. There are plenty [stallman.org] of [stallman.org] examples [stallman.org] of companies abusing users and handing data to the government, so many that no one could remember them all.

    Or are you living in a different world where the government isn't speaking out against encryption, the government isn't conducting mass surveillance on the populace and trying to undermine computer security in countless ways, and companies don't actively abuse their users? Because while these things don't 100% prove what the future of self-driving cars will be, it is certainly reasonable to say that they will, in all likelihood, abuse users in various ways. If this turns out to be true, I won't be shocked at all. If it turns out to be false, I'll be pleasantly surprised. We live in a culture that doesn't really care much about computer security, software freedom, or privacy, so this is simply the result of that apathy.