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Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

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191–200 of 436 posts

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#191
post #24

This is an incredible tool. I know there are other ways to look at timelapses of aerial views but this is just so easy and useable. Watching the change of specific suburban areas in the US brings a lot of negative emotions for me. Seeing what used to be green areas slowly transform into more suburban sprawl, I can't help but think of the number of species who experienced their ecosystem's walls closing in on them. As…

What's an example that you particularly like?

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also does a lot to offset his private jets. > I have a higher-than-average carbon footprint, so I’m taking extra steps to do my part. In the book I briefly mention how I’m offsetting my own emissions. I spend about $5 million every year to offset my family’s carbon footprint. As of now, the standard calculation for carbon footprints is based on an estimate of $400 per ton of emissions. But since the way we calcula…

> I spend about $5 million every year to offset my family’s carbon footprint. It's not like this money magically got created. In order for him to have $5 million, someone had to pay it, maybe by creating even more pollution. At least he is aware that he is doing bad thing, but the attitude "I am rich, so I can" is narcissistic and wrong.

You're treating economics as a zero-sum game, which is false. The world as a whole is significantly better off than it was before, and we cannot attribute all of our productivity and qualify-of-life gains solely to the exploitation of natural resources and oppressing people.

Does terrible things happen as a result of moral hazard? Sure. But does anyone who earns a dollar take a dollar from someone else, or the world, to obtain it? No.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#193
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the same thing about ant colonies. I think it's probably just what anything that groups and branches around resource deposits looks like. If I recall slime molds are optimal planners regarding surrounding resources so it just sounds like a natural optimality to me. I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look like for an "advanced" species besides optimal? Looking at it is disparagingly is we…

I couldn’t agree more regarding misanthropy. I would like to note though that if we start mining and settling space, our growth would in fact be essentially unbounded. Combined with the fact that some types of stars are expected to continue radiating energy for trillions of years...

The sad part is that many of us have to constantly fight against those of "us" who are actively working against those improvements.

It's easy to take an outside look and say "well, see, humankind fixed it", but the personal energy and misery that goes into fighting for those fixes is enormous. I wouldn't call it "misanthropy".

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#194

I'd love to see a timelapse over the past 20 years showing Google's energy usage / consumption across all their data centers and offices.

Google has invested quite a bit into decarbonizing their data centers. They do a lot better than AWS for example.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#195
post #100

What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes. We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of…

You can say the same thing about ant colonies. I think it's probably just what anything that groups and branches around resource deposits looks like. If I recall slime molds are optimal planners regarding surrounding resources so it just sounds like a natural optimality to me. I'd be more interested in what you think it "should" look like for an "advanced" species besides optimal? Looking at it is disparagingly is we…

The level of doom and gloom and misanthropy

I's not misanthropy to note that we're not so different from other species and that our growth/behavior is in many respects similar to other natural phenomena involving complex systems. Our long term success is correlated with our ability to shift resources away from negative-sum behaviors so as not to exceed the carrying capacity of our environment.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#196
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A time-lapse of the search algorithm is what I would like to see

Given that the set of possible searches is unbounded, first instinct is that the whole system would have had to be designed around that use case from the bottom up for the problem to be remotely tractable

a git history of Google's code would suit me

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#198
post #24

This is an incredible tool. I know there are other ways to look at timelapses of aerial views but this is just so easy and useable. Watching the change of specific suburban areas in the US brings a lot of negative emotions for me. Seeing what used to be green areas slowly transform into more suburban sprawl, I can't help but think of the number of species who experienced their ecosystem's walls closing in on them. As…

Hasn't this tool been available at https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/ for several years now?

Yep, but now it’s on Google Earth instead of Google Earth Engine

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#199

What's really striking to me about timelapse videos of the Earth is how, at a grand enough scale, the growth of human settlements on Earth really looks no different than the growth of bacterial and fungal colonies on Petri dishes. We think of ourself as special, as having conquered environments, technology and more - and when zoomed out you could explain everything we've built and accomplished as the achievements of…

And just like mold this expansion will continue until we hit resource limits and then it's colony collapse.

Re: Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

#200

Google Earth may be one of the most wondrous things ever created. When else in human history can you zoom in on the entire geography of the Earth, and now the timelapsed geography of the Earth? Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton, Galileo, or Darwin would say using this tool?

> Can you imagine what someone like Socrates, Newton, Galileo, or Darwin would say using this tool?

"Does it run on Linux?"

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