3 ms·

You mean like the house thats near the geographic center of the us and keep getting visits from the police because maxmind default to those coordinates for ip a

• LorenPechtel 3y ago
  This isn't a null problem, but a precision problem. (And it's a lot more than just that one place, the same problem exists at many levels.) All location fixes inherently have a precision component and that routinely gets ignored. There's one tower that can reach the phone, the phone must be somewhere within the footprint of the tower. If the phone didn't supply more detailed info that's the only thing you can determine. The true area is the footprint but it gets reduced to a location and a precision--which maps it to a dot and a circle. A one-tower location fix will give a circle of uncertainty that extends off the visible map in most cases and humans ignore it. (The center of the US problem is a bit different but it's the same basic concept.) What I think they need to do is prohibit any system from showing the central dot (or any equivalent to that) when the precision is too low. Only render the zone of uncertainty and only at a map scale where you see the whole zone, attempting to zoom beyond that gets you a message that the location can't be determined more accurately, do not try to find the center of the zone.
  • jimktrains2 3y ago
    I was responding to the idea that it's good nothing is at null island because it's a default. I was showing that there are aome default locations that have people and there are consequences to that.
    • LorenPechtel 3y ago
      But your case isn't a null, but rather horribly poor accuracy.
      • jimktrains2 3y ago
        (0,0) isn't null either.