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Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

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Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#91

Post by kmlx »

playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

> what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

can we corroborate this with chinese and/or non-western media? it’s hard for me to believe anything at all during a war.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#92

Post by maxerickson »

GTP wrote: post #85

I was trying to check if this is happening also on OpenStreetMap, I searched for "фермерське господарство" which returned results in Ukraine, but I wasn't able to restrict them to a single city so I don't know if those are actual farms or not. Somebody who knows OpenStreetMap better could check this?

The OSM data model is pretty free form, checking for things marked in one particular way wouldn't really rule out the system being used for coordination.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#93

Post by d82nsjk9 »

dboreham wrote: post #74
malloryerik wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the internet and electricity being on not possibly because the invaders don't have air superiority?

Also packet switched networking was invented to tolerate enemy bombing.

Makes sense, but source?

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#94

Post by pjc50 »

playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

Today I ran across a tweet from before the war about corruption in Russian comms procurement: https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1184964805565792257

Arsalov arrested: https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-sta...

It seems likely that corruption has left them with a non-working system. It happens often enough even in Western procurement.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#95

Post by garblegarble »

forum_ghost wrote: post #72
eitland wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday someone who had been right about other things told me on Twitter that Russia has been running their communication in cleartext at least until recently. I don't listen in to Ukrainian radio so I cannot verify but I am sure someone here knows more if they want to tell. It seems at this point it is already a very open secret.

until recently? they suddenly found 100,000+ digital radios?

There's been an increase in coded messages, e.g. "1st I'm 28th, 118 0130 63115 50 2183 50 2937"

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#96

Post by anentropic »

playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529

apparently some of Russian forces are using unencrypted civilian analog radio

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#97

Post by richarme »

Rastonbury wrote: post #67
qsort wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the exact opposite of a military expert, but the conflict being extremely asymmetric, a service like Google Maps helps the Ukranians side more than it helps the Russians.

It should not be too challenging to block services to phones originating in Russia but being used in Ukraine now.

Indeed. Cell phones are by definition location tracking devices so data can be routed to the right place. Ukrainian mobile network operators should be able to figure out the exact movement of every single soldier carrying a regular phone, and selectively block service at opportune moments. More trivially, wouldn't they be using russian SIM cards?

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#98

Post by dsomers »

I don’t think google maps info was ever close to 100% reliable anywhere. Once in midtown Toronto there was a giant hole where google maps said a bank was, they where building a condo there. I thought I’d be helpful and submit a correction to the map — I later got a notification my correction was not accepted and they kept the ghost bank there years after it was gone.

There’s also no way they could reasonably think I was a spammer because I had a decades old google account that existed within months of gmail existing. They probably know what I’ve eaten every day for the past 20 years.

That’s all to say, google is a giant machine, and if it decides your version of reality is wrong, don’t bother, no human on their side will probably ever look at it because humans are expensive.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#99

Post by TheAlchemist »

kmlx wrote: post #91
playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

> what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation. can we corroborate this with chinese and/or non-western media? it’s hard for me to believe anything at all during a war.

I'm extremely sceptical too - but it's pretty much well known by now that they intended to do a 'special operation' - lasting 2-3 days and hoping for Ukraine to surrender. Didn't really happened that way.

Also, Chinese media don't show any images of war as far as I know (just reading Global Times from time to time to have an opinion from 'the other side')

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#100

Post by itronitron »

AriedK wrote: post #87

Why is this immediately attributed to Russian troops as markers? Couldn't it also be Ukrainian movements using this for their organization? 'Farms' being code for supply houses?

If that were the case they should still be removed from Google Maps since the locations are correlated with later airstrikes. From the linked Buzzfeed article:

>> “The tags in Google Maps were created on Feb 28th, and people noticed that the tags match the places the missile strikes today,”

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