Do you turn off "location access" in all the apps that don't need it?

That's interesting because I always wondered *where* Google Maps gets it's baseline map information from.

I know they have the satellite view, but I don't think they use the satellite view as a primary view - but only as an "overlay".

I actually thought they get their maps from the local county GIS office, who themselves gets their map information from the county assessor's office.

The GIS office maintains all sorts of maps (e.g., hydrology, foliage, etc) but they also cover the roads and the road status (e.g., dirt, paved, etc.).

AFAIK, GIS gets the road status from the assessor (e.g., public, private) and they put it as a property on the GIS map.

Everyone else (e.g., the police, fire department, etc.) gets their maps from the GIS office (AFAIK).

Given that system, I would *assume* that Google Maps gets their baseline maps from GIS.

I don't want to assign homework to you, but, if/when you have time (ok if that's never), you could check to see if your local GIS map has the same errors that you see in Google Maps.

That would be further evidence that the process is: a. Assessor's map b. GIS map c. Sheriff/police/fire/etc. map & Google/Delorme/Garmin/etc map

Wow. I have friends in that Mountainview HQ but even they told me to get my map corrections through the official channels! You have more clout than I do down the hill in Mountainview!

This is the official process:

1 Open Google Maps and make sure you're signed in. 2 To report a problem about an address, search for that address or click on the map to drop a pin. 3 In the bottom right, click Send feedback. 4 Choose Report a data problem. 5 Follow the instructions. 6 Click Submit.

Heh heh ... out here, there are both legal and illegal pot farms, but I try to stay away from them, if I can. They shoot to kill.

I also have put up volunteer signs, and they were defaced, within months, and some stolen, so I know what you mean when you get discouraged.

I had kids go to UCSC, so I should have stopped by when I visited them. Too late now, but it was fun sending them off to school. :)

I love that the OSM maps in my area have a certain "mistake" which is what I use to instantly tell whether a free mapping program is using OSM maps or not, since all the ones using OSM maps have the same mistake.

So that's one that I won't try to fix, as it gives me useful data. :)

I see 1 to 14, 15 is out. But the list is manually configurable. And second but, 15 is not an option to enable.

The 5 GHz band enables 36 40 44 48 149 153 157 161, but it does not appear to work.

I doubt it.

Well... for instance, to show adds for my location.

I have seen several apps ask at runtime.

Thank you very much for posting that, in your locale, the channels for WiFi Analyzer are different than they are for us in the USA (as Jeff reported it).

I presume you're in Germany?

DISCLIAMER: (Most non-USA posters seem to be in Germany, so that's just a guess, although with a name like Carlos, your heritage is likely more Mediterranean if not south Germany).

The GUI is a bit non intuitive where you have to actually press the 2.4GHz button to get 5GHz and even then, you have to scroll - so - "maybe" it's a GUI thing?

NOTE: I'm not attacking you - I'm just saying the GUI isn't intuitive and sometimes it doesn't report what you think because you have to control the GUI to get it to report what you want (at least that's my humble opinion).

Ah. I never see the ads. Maybe they are there, but I never look. So I forgot about that.

That's good information to know. I have only seen, I think, map apps ask for location access at runtime (as I recall).

But, overall, other than *map* apps and perhaps the "convenience" apps such as weather and local news, is there anyone who sees a danger or problem with simply turning off all apps' location access, and then, just turning on the location access *when* and *if* it's actually needed by you?

What apps *need* location access?

- maps

- customized apps for your location (e.g., weather & news & prices)

- anything else?

There are far more channels available in Europe.

Go to Settings -> Channel Settings -> Available Channels -> 5GHz and see if all your local wi-fi channels are enabled, or if they have defaulted to US standards.

For the US, the 5GHz band would be: 36 - 68 even numbered channels

100 - 144 even numbered channels 149 - 165 odd numbered channels

For Europe, the 5GHz band would be: 36 - 64 every other even numbered channel

100 - 140 every other even numbered channel 149 - 165 odd numbered channels (SRD)

I beg to differ.

I think you mean "accuracy" instead of "resolution". AGPS was contrived solely to meet the FCC requirements for E911 location accuracy about 12 years ago. It's been a point of contention before the FCC because it's a difficult and expensive problem. In 2015, the FCC added indoor accuracy requirements: In 2017, the basic requirement is: "All providers must achieve 50-meter horizontal accuracy or provide dispatchable location for 40 percent of all wireless

By 2021, the 50 meter accuracy is expected for 80% of the wireless 911 calls.

Simple GPS cannot meet these specifications, especially in a reflective environment. Worse, there's a tradeoff between accuracy and speed of acquisition. High Speed GPS: is a huge improvement, offering a dramatic improvement in sensitivity, but doesn't do anything for accuracy.

One of the solutions to the accuracy is augmented GPS (AGPS). AGPS uses data from multiple location sources, such as cell sites to obtain a more accurate location. It barely works, especially indoors mostly because of reflections. There are other schemes, such as triangulation between cell towers, TDOA (time difference of arrival), differential GPS using marine navigation beacons (DGPS), GLONASS, and Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS/EGNOS). All of these have their benefits, but I don't think any of them are going to meet future accuracy requirements.

There are also some cheats, such as AT&T. Their solution is to assume that anyone calling 911 is in a vehicle. This is a good assumption based on caller statistics. In California, when you call 911, you don't get the local 911 PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point). You get the Highway Patrol. So, AT&T decided to fudge to location to coincide with highways and roadways, thus improving their "accuracy". That has failed miserably when someone called 911 from a baseball field, that had no address, and where the AGPS kluge located them at the nearest major roadway, about 1/2 mile away.

One thing that should be recognized is that the position provided to the 911 PSAP by a common cell or smart phone is NOT the lat-long. It's the raw satellite delay data as received by a rather crude GPS receiver. These delays are then forwarded to the cell site, which sends them to a service provider on the internet. The data is then processed, along with any other location data available, and sent back to the cellular provider. The cellular provider then forwards the actual location to the PSAP.

Despite its complexity, it's a very fast and efficient system. You can see how it works by trying a simple experiment, probably with an unactivated smartphone. Put your smartphone into Airport mode, which turns off the Wi-Fi and Cellular sections. Make sure the GPS can be enabled, but also turn it off. Wait a day, and move the phone 15 miles or more away from where you put it into Airplane mode. The question is how quickly can it acquire a usable location. Run your favorite OFFLINE mapping program and see what happens.

When I've done it, the initial lock comes fairly rapidly because you haven't really moved that far away from your original position. However, since the phone no longer has the benefits of AGPS to get a better initial location, the time to produce a usable location is much longer. With AGPS, my phone takes about 10-20 seconds. Without AGPS, it takes about 7 minutes or more. In some reflective locations (urban canyons), it can take 15 minutes or more. If you really want to slow things down, set the clock to the wrong time. Without the cellular time to fix that, it has to wait for the satellite time code from the GPS satellites, which I think might be sent every 15 mins.

Location accuracy is a messy topic, both technically and politically. I could write all night on the topic, but not tonite. Dinner beckons.

The "boundaries" seem to vary between geographic, political, and land use designations. In my area, the green areas reflect forested areas and do not follow any artificial boundary lines, such as state and local parks. I have the feeling they were generated by scanning satellite and aerial photos.

Accuracy, quality, changes. Pick any two. If you still want to make changes, such as closed roads, it will be more accurate, but the quality of the maps will suffer as everyone makes changes based on their personal preferences. Careful what you wish for.

To this point, I never call 911 from home because I get the highway patrol in Vallejo California, about 75 miles away, which is more than an hours drive on the highway, without any traffic!

So one of my contacts is listed as "Emergency", and *that* calls the

*local* 911 dispatcher.

I guess I should make that local 911 a "speed dial" similar to "911", maybe "91" or something like that.

OT: Do any of you have a good speed-dial mechanism so that I can program the *local* 911 into my cellphone to be called when I call, say, "91"?

I guess the theory is that if you mix in all the various and diverse AUTHORITATIVE map sources, the errors will all cancel.

My guess(tm) is that most road maps were originally aerial photos, where software traced out the roads.

Fire up Google Earth and it tells you date, but not the sources or the images. I guess there are just too many now to list them on the maps. However, if you go back to older images with: View -> Historical Imagery you'll see the source of the images at the lower center of the screen. Scrolling through my home area, I find USGS, NASA, Digital Globe, USDA Farm Service Agency, Google, etc.

Incidentally, the County of Santa Cruz paid a fairly large amount of money to do a LADAR survey of the county from the air. For benchmarks, they painted a white "X" on top of all the manhole covers. Can't get much better than that.

Many years ago, I worked with CDF (Cal Fire) on jurisdictional boundary maps. The problem was that the SCZ County and San Mateo County maps did not meet neatly at the boundary. The gap left a fair number of house in the gap with fire service from either both jurisdictions, or neither jurisdiction. Roads would also appear to be skewed or broken. Rumor had it that one house burned down while fire fighters from SCZ and San Mateo argued over who should put out the fire. I don't know if that was for real. I was not involved in the inevitable compromise. All I know is that it worked and was non-violent.

Nope. The PSAPs (public safety answering points) use the telephone company property maps for 911 location. Since the call originally was expected to come in via a wired POTS phone line, these property numbers could be used for location. There's a dedicated computah of obtaining location data on 911 calls from this computer. The location is in a proprietary format which eventually produces a location on the dispatchers console. This is why giving the dispatcher your location in lat-long has been somewhat of a problem. However, I'm about 10 years behind on this technology and things may have changed.

GIS is not a company or organization. It stands for Geographic Information System. While there are now organizations for dealing with discrepancies, such as what happens with we have an earthquake, a botched surveying job, or continental drift, there is no central depository for all the nations map data.

Sigh. I don't think you realize how much work that could be. I've done this rather crudely using Google Earth, which allows for overlays. I create an overlay map and record the lat-long of the map corners. When I insert it into Google Earth as a semi-transparent overlay, I can see how the features line up. I do this often with radio and cellular coverage patterns. It's not difficult to see that the roads don't always line up very well.

That was maybe 10 to 15 years ago. I don't think I could do it today. The problem today is very different. With all the distributed companies and work at home systems, just finding the person in charge of something is difficult. Getting a consensus is impossible because I'm not on their secure work network. Dinner bribes are also difficult if the manager is somewhere in India or China.

Nope. I don't use my smartphone for phone calls. For phone, I have an ancient LG XV8300 stupid phone.

Incidentally, the big problem is what to do about 911 on my VoIP phones. I have the same number in 3 widely spaced geographic location. I register the number for one location, but what if I need to call 911 in one of the others? No solution, yet.

Nope. More to the south. Spain. Didn't you notice the ".es" in my faked email? ;-)

Ah, I see.

I don't see the 2.4 Ghz button :-? Is it in "wifi analyzer" app?

I don't really know if my tablet has that wifi band, anyway.

No problem :-)

I have those I listed above.

My list matches neither.

They disappear if you pay. Or maybe if it thinks there are no suitable adds. They display as a banner on the bottom (big tablet) and some times as popups when going out of the setup menu.

I think there are two options at that time: ask for permission, or ask you to enable location, if it is disabled at the time.

I leave on the coarse location. I do not activate the GPS because it draws the battery, and because no app really needs that precision except a map.

And I leave on the coarse location because I use some apps that need at least some location info. I have one for a supermarket that wants fine location and I refused. With the coarse location it can know good enough if I am at the supermarket and which one. So I blocked it from starting, it was using too much battery.

IIRC, VoIp doesn't support emergency calls.

Here (Spain) when I call the emergency service (112) from my cellular i get the regional emergency centre. They are responsible to register the emergency and forward or call the appropriate team to handle it.

So I typically would start "Hello, this is for the city police of CityName" to save them time and effort.