[hn_user2]

This article is missing so many technical details. Would have been so interesting to dig into the "why" and "how".

[tapoxi]

I've had something similar happen. For devices that don't have or can't access GPS, they look the MAC address of nearby wifi base stations and see if anything correlated that with a location earlier. This is what the iphone did at launch with the skyhook database.

However in some cases your wifi MAC isn't unique and it'll think you're elsewhere. In my specific case it kept resetting my time zone to somewhere in Russia (I'm in Massachusetts) because that's what the MAC said.

It seems to be worse if there are no other networks in range for it to do sanity checking against.

[klyrs]

Expecting this random guy to deeply understand the technicalities of why Apple is directing angry people to his house, in a state where it's legal to kill people for stealing your stuff, is not terribly reasonable. If techies are interested, they could help by figuring out the reason for this.

[augment001]

Expecting journalists to have an answer before writing a piece is very reasonable.

[hn_user2]

I don't expect a random guy to deeply understand the technicalities, but I do expect a journalist to do more investigation than reaching out to a large corporation for comment.

Regardless of what is "expected" I stand by that it would have been interesting to dig in to the details. Hopefully somebody does. I doubt apple will, but I think there can be lessons learned from understanding how it happened if someone were to research it.

[augment001]

In what state is it legal to kill people for stealing your stuff?

[wilg]

Could just be in the center of whatever radius the system spits out from cell tower triangulation, I assume? Or something similar. The technical details would be fun.