[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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Australia Moved 1.5 Metres, Updating its Location for Self-Driving Cars
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(Score: 1) by irtza on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:45AM
I'm sure that self driving cars will eventually be able to auto adjust road locations and share them to create a dynamic "living map" of the road system. Until then, the system will probably have a high failure rate or require frequent updates. Any information on how fast the rest of the world shifts and if so, where is it found?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @01:30AM
However, self-driving cars will, right from the start, report your location to governments and companies so that they can use the information in various nefarious ways. They'll also run proprietary software, which helps to prevent the people being used (i.e. the ones who think they own the car) from inspecting what the car's software is doing and perhaps modifying it or hiring someone they trust to modify it. Self-driving cars are part of the future: The future where you own nothing and everything spies on you because the general public is too unprincipled and ignorant to do anything about it. Enjoy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @03:10AM
Source? The car having to obtain the information to function does not mean its being collected or stored anywhere. Just as healthy skepticism is vastly different from denialism, a healthy concern for one's privacy and security is vastly different from paranoia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @04:35AM
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.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday July 31 2016, @05:28AM
The car having to obtain the information to function does not mean its being collected or stored anywhere. Just as healthy skepticism is vastly different from denialism, a healthy concern for one's privacy and security is vastly different from paranoia.
(1) If information CAN be collected and stored somewhere it WILL be.
(2) Given the history of how governments and businesses collect and misuse information, healthy skepticism and a healthy concern for one's privacy and security are now indistinguishable from denialism and paranoia.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @10:11AM
Two more bullet points for your list...
(3) How cheap it is to store data these days. How much $/Exabyte? Not much these days. And getting cheaper all the time.
(4) How cost effective to scan/correlate data. In the old days, people had to sift through file cabinets. Today, its done by script. Cost to mine damned near anything from Exabytes of data almost nil. Google makes a business model of simply giving you the computer time to search, correlate, and deliver to you a list - just for the asking.
Now, if anyone thought it was being paranoid about having papers pile up in front of your house, and your lawn left unmowed, announcing to everyone driving by that no one is at home, now imagine scripts running that let anyone who has the slightest passing interest in on your doings.
If nothing else, this oughta cut down on prostitution, cuz your whereabouts is gonna be open to anyone who asks "the system", and you gonna have some 'splainin' to do.
No more "late nights at the office" covering up a night on the town.
One quick correlation and one can find out exactly where anyone was, who else was there, and did anyone buy anything.
Or that innocent little lie you told your boss about a previous family engagement... when he asks you next Monday morning how it went, when its obvious as hell he already knows you did not go to see your wife's sick mother... you only wanted to take your son fishing and were sick and tired of ignoring your family for other people's problems that could not wait till working hours.
Nothing to hide, eh?
No, I did nothing wrong, but there are a lot of details to my life I had just as soon not make public.
I would like to make a deal with the system, being they are ignoring my "copyright claims" on the details of *my* life, I will ignore their "copyright claims" to their stuff as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @03:24AM
Are self driving cars really driving from gps?
I would hope they rely on it only for relative difference, i.e. To the road edge it can see, not what some server in arizona thinks it should be at.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:53AM
Car crashes into brick wall during pursuit [perthnow.com.au]
Ashlee Mullany
PerthNow
May 16, 2013
A car being pursued by police caused this vehicle to crash into the brick wall of a Riverton home.
Five people are in custody after a car failed to stop for police and crashed in Riverton this morning.
Witnesses told PerthNow the car crashed, causing another vehicle to plough through the front brick wall of a home near Corinthian Rd and Vahland Ave.
Resident Anthony French, who lives in a nearby street, said he heard an “almighty bang” before the car went through the brick wall of a house about 11am.
“I was about to enter into Corinthian St and I heard police coming down the street so I waited until police went past,” he said.
“They went past and there was an almighty bang.”
A police spokeswoman said they did not have the full details of the incident yet and could not confirm if police had been pursuing the car before the crash.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:54AM
The penal colony longs to be back with their masters in Europe - you see, they are too good for dirty Asians like their neighboring Indonesia - so it's dragging their island off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @01:00AM
Actually it is moving closer to indonesia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @04:29AM
We're still heading North. If they don't get out of the way, we'll just run them over. Bloody asian drivers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @05:16AM
200 million Indonesian Muslims coming at ya. You had it coming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @01:48AM
Down Under And Over
(Score: 3, Informative) by dltaylor on Sunday July 31 2016, @01:58AM
SoCal is moving north at less then 2 cm/year, so it's going to take a while before before the "LA" and "Bay Area" megalopoli merge geologically.
Going to be a big crunch when the big bump on that plate hits another continent (think India and southern Asia, or the repeated hits on western North America).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anne Nonymous on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:50PM
Stupid global warming.
(Score: 3, Funny) by snufu on Sunday July 31 2016, @02:01AM
Australia always looked out of place on my globe.
(Score: 1) by stretch611 on Sunday July 31 2016, @02:46AM
Be sure to get a magic marker to fix this.
Or just wait for a few lawyers to start a class action against globe manufacturers for deception
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday July 31 2016, @03:26AM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday July 31 2016, @03:55AM
I got 1.2 μm using a mean radius of 6371 km for the Earth. On my envelope: 1.5 m*10 m/(2*6378100 m)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday July 31 2016, @04:18AM
Er, 6371000 m not 6378100 m
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 31 2016, @07:08AM
It needs to be lowered into the ocean about 150 metres.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:00PM
And turning the right way up too.
(Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Sunday July 31 2016, @08:37PM
That's Austria, you fool!
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Sunday July 31 2016, @03:52AM
China messes with maps on purpose. It is really annoying if your map thinks you are 100 m away from where you really are.
https://polastre.com/2013/02/what-the-map/ [polastre.com]