falcunculus

joined 2 years ago
[โ€“] falcunculus@jlai.lu 10 points 3 days ago

Loads of fossil power use gas turbines that do not involve steam :x

[โ€“] falcunculus@jlai.lu 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My (probably incomplete) understanding is: phones have a GNSS chip (such as GPS, Galileo, or Glonass), but getting location from that takes a long time and a lot of battery. So they estimate location based on other information such as what cell tower they are connected to and the list of available wi-fi networks. This requires a database with all that info, which Google built through its Street View cars.

So the location provider is a service to which your phone sends all the info it has and which replies with an estimate of your location; which means it handles a lot of sensitive data.