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  • Hacker News
  • > NOTE: this is a genuine human work, didnt use LLM generation.

    A million upvotes from me.

    by ohyoutravel
  • haha, thanks :D I was hesitant to whether write it or not, but I really really despise llm generated posts and blogs and im glad someone appreciated it
    by yassa9
  • Excellent read, I loved it.

    Incidentally, the image seems to be the one the resort uses on their website! https://oanresort.wixsite.com/chuuk

    by ImJasonH
  • thanks, and yea, it should be solved easily by passing the img to google lens, the website is the first result, but I found a fun opportunity to solve it in different way
    by yassa9
  • Really great article! OP, you did an awesome job breaking down a complex problem into manageable chunks and synthesizing the solution.
    by o4c
  • thanks, appreciate it
    by yassa9
  • People liking this post will probably like this [1] and especially these [2] from the channel. All solved using algorithms and map data.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/@colsto

    [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY-W9gmwxhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzytWZPyuEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkmXs_7hELg

    by sllabres
  • A help with this is the sun is to the left and it seems to be midday, so you could answer the "cardinal direction" question just from the picture with "west ish", which is what it turns out to be.
    by treyd
  • I tried to use the sun info , but honestly I couldn't at all,

    thx for the tip

    by yassa9
  • What do you mean by no LLM generation if an LLM did all the coding based on reading through the .py files? Pangram isn't kind to "your" text either.
    by phalanxx
  • "No EXIF, no GPS, no camera make or model."

    Yeah, a human definitely wrote this. Nothing fishy here. (Why would the camera make or model matter???)

    by StilesCrisis
  • I meant the blog itself, the writeup, the steps and the walkthrough all by hand , the final code u see is llm refined, of course, I wont publish my messy and spaghetti files with much tests, failures and dead ends, also vizualizations functions to produce that green maps , and faulty versions of them

    but you are right, I should add that

    by yassa9
  • I find it highly ironic that his is the second article on the main page right after "avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state".
    by deiptx
  • I don't see it, did he delete it?
    by E-Reverance
  • EVERY technology could be used by a police state
    by fhn
  • This is awesome. I worked on something similar a few months ago. It is a general purpose navigation system based on TERCOM and dead reckoning - https://github.com/deepanwadhwa/anumaan
    by dwa3592
  • Weirdly enough, I'm working on a similar system for position tracking in canyons. It's hybrid, uses a combination of Kalman filters, particle filters and GPS (EDIT: and LIDAR based DEM) and is based on the obvious (in hindsight) realisation that the view of the sky to get an accurate gps fix is inversely proportional to the constraints of the terrain. If you have a low field of view of the sky, you can use sensor data to constrain your likely position. I should have hardware samples for testing in the next month or so. Hopefully my theory stands up!
    by Intermernet
  • OpenStreetMap data really is a godsend for such OSINT purposes. Works much better in populated areas too, with more features like roads, shops, electric lines that can be used to search.
    by lexlambda
  • yea , heard about them before, but didnt know that whole treasure till I really used it , impressive
    by yassa9
  • Claude / Gemini + OSM Turbo is a crazy you can do natural language queries like "find me a bus stop in germany that's surrounded by more than 5 three story buildings"
    by GaryNumanVevo
  • Super fun! Interestingly, this is how JPL was able to significantly reduce the Mars 2020 landing radius on Mars. Cameras onboard take pictures of the terrain and match that to maps to figure out where the lander is. https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/what-we-do/flight-projects...
    by zer0x4d
  • omg wow, thats super hard, although cool ,
    by yassa9
  • For drones and missiles, this technique is known as Terrain Contour Matching. If terrain contour are measured optically, navigation is independent of RF jamming, unlike GNSS.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM

    by bmurray7jhu
  • oh, wow, I didnt know that existed, thank u, sure gonna look into it
    by yassa9
  • It’s an effective a surprisingly old technique, being used on cruise missiles as early as the 1960s. It actually precedes GPS and satellite navigation by several decades. Im continuously blown away by what engineers were able to do in that era with such limited computing power. Take a look at SAGE, for example.

    Fun fact: the usage of TERCOM in the tomahawk missile actually limited its ability to be used in Operation Desert Storm. Routes had to be planned to go around actual topographical features, instead of hundreds of miles of flat desert.

    by openasocket
  • Excellent write up and an enjoyable read! Reminds me of the “good old times” where posts on HN were written by humans and with a specific writing style like yours. You could’ve used a little bit more of geoguessing to narrow down results, or do a brute force visual check on the last hundred or so ;-)
    by NKosmatos
  • agree! AWESOME work!
    by jambalaya8
  • yea, thanks :D , I used a tiny idea from geoguessing, that I banded the search on islands only in latitude between -30 to +30 deg. based on the sky and the tropical vibes in the img , and it worked !
    by yassa9