Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

tekdeeps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 431 posts

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#351

Post by aikinai »

thraway12 wrote: post #256
Thorrez wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require you to create some association between your personal and work account right? I don't remember doing that. I guess they could match on first name and last name equality, but that sounds like a bad idea due to name collisions and impersonation.

>"That would require you to create some association between your personal and work account right?" Obtuse af. Is this default assumption that the user is the one who has to "create" associations in the company's systems based on anything? The big tech cos have been social mapping since before 2012 and they undoubtedly register when two accounts use the same IP.

You really think that Google spent the time to build a system that secretly links employees’ accounts to their personal accounts—something that Googlers would have to build and would also piss off those same Googlers—and then uses that system to prioritize feedback from Googlers just to make their own employees have a better Maps feedback experience?

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#352

Post by benhurmarcel »

Daho0n wrote: post #348
marc3842h wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Near me Google maps displays a road that has been removed in 2008. When I found that out earlier last year, I used exactly this feature to suggest a removal. As of now, the road is still on Google Maps and the only response I've ever gotten was the automated email reply.

As a counter anecdote I marked a road as changed (one end was closed off) and it was fixed in a few days. I have made quite a number of edits to Maps so to me this is not at all what I have experienced. Maybe Google is different (IE. worse)) in the US than Scandinavia.

It's very variable for each edit. I've sent about 20 edits over time, all in western Europe; some were accepted rapidly, some were rejected for some reason, some are still stuck in review after months or years.

Even in the same area. A neighborhood name was added, but the street name change in that same neighborhood wasn't.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#353

Post by [deleted] »

jonah wrote: post #114

As a tale of people in over their heads, over reliance on maps, taking the wrong road and not knowing when to quit and turn back in the American Southwest (which then turns into an international situation and doesn't have closure for 14 years) Tom Mahoud's The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans[1] is an epic and worthwhile read. It has lots of great stuff about lost person psychology, search strategy, persistence, loc…

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#354

Post by scelerat »

thret wrote: post #339
jlangenauer wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be up to people to have to spend time and money to correct Google's errors, and to stop Google inconviencing them. Somehow, it has become completely accepted for Google/FB/et al to make profits while shifting costs and externalities onto society. Why do we allow these tech giants to treat us so disgracefully?

Do you even remember what it was like trying to find your way around a foreign city before google maps? They mapped the world and provided it as a service for free.

I remember. You had to plan in advance and communicate with others.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#355

Post by chasd00 »

thret wrote: post #339
jlangenauer wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be up to people to have to spend time and money to correct Google's errors, and to stop Google inconviencing them. Somehow, it has become completely accepted for Google/FB/et al to make profits while shifting costs and externalities onto society. Why do we allow these tech giants to treat us so disgracefully?

Do you even remember what it was like trying to find your way around a foreign city before google maps? They mapped the world and provided it as a service for free.

you stopped at a gas station and bought a mapsco.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#356

Post by mbirth »

londons_explore wrote: post #305
rz2k wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried looking at Open Street Maps? If your county's GIS and OSM both exclude their driveway, it might be easier to get Google to update. In my area, it sees like some of the driveways have turned into roads because of overly helpful contributors.

Google won't look in OSM... All kinds of legal hurdles there... They can look in some government maps, depending on the licenses.

I wouldn't say so. According to [1] they're a big supporter of OSM.

[1]: https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/615/can-google-maps...

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#357

Post by scelerat »

I remember using Waze for the first time many years back and it saved me a couple minutes off a rush hour commute by routing me through a residential area and past an elementary school with a bunch of kids running around.

Great, the map app shaved a couple of minutes for some drivers in a hurry by putting hundreds of kids' lives in danger.

Mapping apps ought to be subject to some sensible regulation to avoid cases like this and the one in OP.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#358

Post by prepend »

Daho0n wrote: post #350
andi999 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal companies forward wrongly addressed requests to the correct department.

I know it is trendy to bash Google but if you get millions of support requests it would be abnormal to forward support emails for something that has a very clear built-in function right in the product. It isn't a problem with Google that they don't reply to mail for something like this. It is a clear user error.

I disagree. The whole cool part of Google is organizing data and writing good algorithms. Even if they get a million misdirected suggestions a day, they are probably one of the best organizations in the world to figure out how to redirect correctly.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#359

Post by gambiting »

yellow_postit wrote: post #206
lostlogin wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you excuse the episode where they behave like brats at not getting the bikes they wanted, the series is great (and so is “The long way down”).

Can also recommend Long Way Up the new one where they use mostly electric bikes.

In my personal opinion it's the weakest of the three - way too much time is spent on technical problems with the bikes and cars and very very little on culture and people of the countries they go through, it picks up in the last 3 episodes but that's 3 out of....11? I also hate the Americanised editing style where even in perfectly mundane situations there's extremely dramatic music playing, rapid cuts between scenes, and worst of all, episodes ending on cliffhangers like some cheap TV drama. Long way round and long way down had far more soul to them. But hey, that's just my opinion.

And the other thing - I really wish they waited just a year or two with this adventure, the tech they used was literally on the verge of maturing but 90% of their problems were due to driving prototype vehicles. Literally just a year after filming, there are both electric cars and motorcycles that don't run effectively alpha firmware.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#360

Post by prepend »

aikinai wrote: post #351
thraway12 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"That would require you to create some association between your personal and work account right?" Obtuse af. Is this default assumption that the user is the one who has to "create" associations in the company's systems based on anything? The big tech cos have been social mapping since before 2012 and they undoubtedly register when two accounts use the same IP.

You really think that Google spent the time to build a system that secretly links employees’ accounts to their personal accounts—something that Googlers would have to build and would also piss off those same Googlers—and then uses that system to prioritize feedback from Googlers just to make their own employees have a better Maps feedback experience?

No, I think Google built a system to link every email address used by an individual and all their browsing habits. Not specific to their employees but to do that on everyone in the planet.

It also makes the simple connection that a user also has a google.com account without doing anything special.

Although I suspect they do have something home built as every single company I’ve worked for with a broad customer facing product has had some flag to note employee accounts. I built this sometimes and was usually to help understand if some random suggestion was from a bigwig worth looking up. You never want to be in a situation where “Ms So and So, EVP of some department you don’t know submitted a question a week ago and got no answer. She mentioned it to me at the EVP monthly hobo hunt, yadda yadda yadda.”

Post reply on HN