Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#141

Post by drusepth » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #60

> Get the following datapoints from any IP address; Again :-( I just wonder if people will ever stop making assumptions about others given their IP address or hair colours and divide the Internet on these slippery grounds. The only legitimate and valid way to determine the client's location automatically is the browser or the OS geolocation API, and for the language it is the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header. The fact I h…

Ugh, you're absolutely right and I can't speak enough about how much this annoys me. I run up against issues caused by well-intentioned "get your location from your IP" lookups at least once a week.

Completely ignoring the aspect of VPNs (which is huge), I've also been fighting this mentality for the past few months trying to prove to Coinbase that I'm a US citizen with my US bank account (however I signed up from an IP in Croatia!), and being completely unable to do mundane tasks like browsing/editing my Google Photos photobooks since I wasn't on a USA IP.

Can we please, please, please stop tying IPs to location? It's obnoxious to have to set up proxies just to prove I am who (or where) I say I am.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#142

Post by squarefoot » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 1:27 AM UTC

mtpn wrote: post #135

schlipity wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine as long as you're willing to accept that it's going to be wrong an unknown amount of the time.

Unkown, but very probably within a certain range whose boundaries are known.

In my case it gets country and city but misses completely the ZIP and area, as did all similar services tried so far. If someone threw a non nuclear missile to those coordinates I would probably just hear a distant bang.

I'm curious to know if other people noticed the same level of accuracy.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#143

Post by chatmasta » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 1:49 AM UTC

ddorian43 wrote: post #139

chatmasta wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider 100mb to be quite large. That could easily double memory consumption of an application. Most http services are light but widely replicated. Adding 100mb of memory usage to each replica is certainly a tradeoff.

Assuming mmap 100mb will happen only once in each web-server.

What exactly do you mean by web server? Generally you will have at least one server process wherever you do the maxmind lookup, which could be at the LB/proxy (Nginx) or app server (node, python, go, etc).

Nowadays these services are often heavily decoupled and therefore built to be as lightweight as possible. Think about small single purpose containers. Adding 100mb of memory requirements per instance could be quite expensive, depending which existing process is calling maxmind.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#144

Post by deathanatos » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 2:21 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #133

qwerty456127 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually right because people from these countries are trying to evade location-based discrimination and privacy infringement

Indonesia -- 47% Thailand -- 39% Brazil -- 36% Turkey -- 36% UAE -- 36% Viet Nam -- 35% Saudi Arabia -- 34% India -- 32% Malaysia -- 32% ... UK -- 14% US -- 14% https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image/3K6WrWwGrKN/crop/810

I can not for the life of me read anything in the linked image.

Here is a better version of it: http://cdni.wired.co.uk/1920x1280/g_j/infopornhorizontal_1.j...

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#145

Post by johansch » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 4:30 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #133

qwerty456127 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually right because people from these countries are trying to evade location-based discrimination and privacy infringement

Indonesia -- 47% Thailand -- 39% Brazil -- 36% Turkey -- 36% UAE -- 36% Viet Nam -- 35% Saudi Arabia -- 34% India -- 32% Malaysia -- 32% ... UK -- 14% US -- 14% https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image/3K6WrWwGrKN/crop/810

Those are clearly wildly incorrect numbers. I doubt if even 4.7% (a tenth of your figure) of internet users in Indonesia know what a VPN is.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#146

Post by simonebrunozzi » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 4:39 AM UTC

Anybody has heard about FOAM? It seems a similar use case.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#147

Post by mirimir » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 4:51 AM UTC

deathanatos wrote: post #144

mirimir wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indonesia -- 47% Thailand -- 39% Brazil -- 36% Turkey -- 36% UAE -- 36% Viet Nam -- 35% Saudi Arabia -- 34% India -- 32% Malaysia -- 32% ... UK -- 14% US -- 14% https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image/3K6WrWwGrKN/crop/810

I can not for the life of me read anything in the linked image. Here is a better version of it: http://cdni.wired.co.uk/1920x1280/g_j/infopornhorizontal_1.j...

Thanks :)

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#148

Post by boundlessdreamz » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 4:55 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #143

ddorian43 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming mmap 100mb will happen only once in each web-server.

What exactly do you mean by web server? Generally you will have at least one server process wherever you do the maxmind lookup, which could be at the LB/proxy (Nginx) or app server (node, python, go, etc). Nowadays these services are often heavily decoupled and therefore built to be as lightweight as possible. Think about small single purpose containers. Adding 100mb of memory requirements per instance could be quite…

are you passing the original ip addresses to all these containers? Why don't you just decode the ip to location at the edge of your network (typically load balancer) and add a header with location?

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#149

Post by mirimir » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 5:02 AM UTC

johansch wrote: post #145

mirimir wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indonesia -- 47% Thailand -- 39% Brazil -- 36% Turkey -- 36% UAE -- 36% Viet Nam -- 35% Saudi Arabia -- 34% India -- 32% Malaysia -- 32% ... UK -- 14% US -- 14% https://wi-images.condecdn.net/image/3K6WrWwGrKN/crop/810

Those are clearly wildly incorrect numbers. I doubt if even 4.7% (a tenth of your figure) of internet users in Indonesia know what a VPN is .

It's pretty clear that VPN usage has increased dramatically in recent years. And at least I cited something. I could point to other surveys with comparable results. What's your evidence that it's so much lower?

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#150

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 5:15 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #109

linkmotif wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just is not reality. It’s funny... Google says this same thing publicly on their various webmaster blogs, but you know how Google Analytics determines your location? Your IP.

This can be considered a reasonable way when it's about statistics rather than about an individual user experience.

[deleted]