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Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years

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

#331

Post by tediousdemise »

D-Coder wrote: post #275
stared wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a c…

Agent Smith is wrong. Every organism does this — that's how life works. Population crashes are common among many species, rabbits to rats. Trees produce a million seeds. Grasses expand into areas that juuuust barely support them. The "natural equilibrium" is not at all steady. And let's remember that Agent Smith is itself attempting to take over the world.

I don’t think other organisms have the capacity to destroy the planet and make it uninhabitable. That attribute is uniquely human.

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

#332

Post by remir »

amelius wrote: post #244
remir wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that from a certain distance, we look like simple bacterias doing their thing. But to me the fascinating part is that we're aware of looking like bacterias. We are matter that became conscious of itself. Isn't that the weirdest thing?

Who says bacteria don't have a (simple) form of consciousness?

Could be possible. Who knows?

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

#333

Post by jiofih »

ianbutler wrote: post #292
IgorPartola wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not proper research but this is as visual as it gets: https://xkcd.com/1732/

And here's NASA and the general gov saying what I said in my last comment, https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-cl... https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/can-we-slow... Going to need something a little stronger than xkcd here. I'm not a climate scientist but a lot of the names attached to both links seem to be and they're saying if we act decisively in the next 29 years we can avoid…

The first link says we can learn to adapt to the massive changes brought about by global warming.

The second link says we are unlikely to keep global warming in this century below 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) which has severe consequences for the environment.

I think you’re reading into their optimistic language a bit too much.

Do you watch the news? Have you seen a completely ice-free North Pole earlier in January? The ice in Norway, Russia and Iceland melting completely, permanently damaging the permafrost and releasing huge amounts of methane? Might be hard to notice from your apartment but the weather is going absolutely nuts in most of the world. Insect populations down by up to 90%. These are not “feelings”.

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

#334

Post by heartbeats »

sellyme wrote: post #330
heartbeats wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for starters. There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The idea that humanity c…

> I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. We absolutely have the resources and capability to solve these problems. We just don't have the will or the policy.

> We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring.

I'm sorry, I don't follow, who do you mean? Colonialism? The Uighurs in China? People in India/Pakistan? Possible victims of global warming? The Holocaust?

>We just don't have the will or the policy.

Right, that's what I mean. The minute things get anywhere near serious, people are gonna figure something out real quick. Restarting the nuclear power plants and closing the coal plants would take weeks, be profitable in economic terms, and hugely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it.

I mean, if you were really serious, you would just deregulate nuclear power totally. If the estimates of the harms of global warming are true, you could take 1 Chernobyl-scale incident per year and still come out on top. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it.

The combination of facts that (1) we aren't serious about this and (2) there's plenty of low-hanging fruit we could reap if we were, leads me to believe this will not really be a problem, as soon as we do get serious about it.

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

#335

Post by [deleted] »

FredPret wrote: post #248
Robotbeat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sarcastic point is kind of valid, IMHO. Humans establishing self-sufficient communities beyond Earth would prove that humans have the capability to thrive sustainably on Earth. It would silence forever any technological objections to the possibility of human sustainability on Earth. And a firm idea that humans can never establish self-sustaining communities in space is not that far from the idea that we probably…

I don’t think there’s anything more important than being an outward-looking, striving species. Once we get depressed and nihilistic and give up, the universe will be forever deprived of the colour and drama human civilization can add to all those bare rocks up there. I never considered that the implication is we could live here sustainably, but you’re right.

[deleted]

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

#336

Post by Robotbeat »

OrbitRock wrote: post #260
Robotbeat wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That “cow pasture/range” chunk is largely extremely low productivity scrub land owned by the federal government and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could convert all of it to national parks without much more than a blip in food calories produced in the US. As far as actually farmed land, productivity has increased by an order of magnitude, MUCH faster than population, so we actually farm less land than i…

> That “cow pasture/range” chunk is largely extremely low productivity scrub land owned by the federal government and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could convert all of it to national parks without much more than a blip in food calories produced in the US. Agreed! I would emphasize restoration and protection in almost every case. Just that there’s also ways we can work towards conservation on land that…

Yeah, military bases is definitely one area... I'm thinking of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center, which are both launchports AND nature reserves... and another one is nuclear power plants.

I hate mowing the lawn. I actually prefer the typical "weeds" like clover and dandelion over the typical grass. Dumb that we basically mandate weird, chemical and labor-intensive grass monoculture.

I actually think about 90% of the land ought to become basically national parks and/or protected wilderness. Maybe even more. We can live in dense cities in absolute luxury and abundance (with 10,000 square foot condos... why not? multiple stories make it possible) and then those of us who like to can go camping on the weekends. Traveling by electric motorgliders to our weekend campsite. Cars only underground (but everyone has one still).

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

#337

Post by nevster »

detritus wrote: post #106

I want to love this, but the interface is too opaque. How on GoogleEarth do I get back the timeline option that I've somehow closed? I'm probably being an idiot, but I'm not a total idiot, and it's not at all clear to me how I access the timeline now. The "I'm feeling lucky" icon is WAY too prominent. A misclick there quickly screws whatever it was I was just looking at.

I was totally confused by this as well. If you click the close button on the Timelapse panel, how do you get it back?

The trick is to click on the Voyager icon and then choose Timelapse in one of the panels that comes up.

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

#338

Post by zmmmmm »

goldenchrome wrote: post #298
joeberon wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's standard Google practise to abandon old projects and move onto fresh new ones. It's due to how the internal promotion system works. Everyone should be aware of this by now..

Technology enthusiasts (read: HN users) may not like it, but it's a business practice that's working as intended. Sometimes Google may seem shortsighted but often times they're just measuring the market correctly. I worked on AR/VR at Google and the projects have mostly paused because there's no visible financial benefit. No one in the real world cares enough about VR to justify it as a business. We prototyped hundre…

Thanks for commenting - like others, I'm a big VR fan and hugely perplexed by how Google has walked away from it. Leaving us with Facebook is a horrible outcome and locked-in Apple not much better. Even if I'm disappointed by what you say, its really helpful to know this was the thought process within Google.

I guess I think Google is taking a huge risk here by taking their hat out of the ring so early. Even if others have slowed their investment, Microsoft/Apple/Facebook are under the radar continuing very significant work and it really feels like we could flip over a tipping point and Google might be way behind. This may be more like gcloud than Android and they could find themselves a decade behind other players.

My personal use case is being able to have any number of monitors of any size and shape, eg: [0]. So far its been limited by screen resolution and lack of good hand tracking and dedicated accessories, but these are very close to being solved with the next gen. devices.

[0] https://twitter.com/oculus/status/1286345820699340801/photo/...

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

#339

Post by ehershey »

exporectomy wrote: post #314
gbrown wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. Unfortunately the science is pretty bleak.

"way way behind" and "pretty bleak" are completely subjective and thus meaningless for trying to understand nature. If you can't quantify it, you're only able to think using feelings and feelings can't tell you important answers like what we should do. They can make you believe you know what we should do, but you'll be wrong because your feelings won't be accurately tuned to the reality.

I found the “subjective” comment easier to understand than this one. Not every opinion or generalization requires citation. Your stance and reply are also subjective. I do prefer quantitative data and references, especially when the topic is at all scientific. It doesn’t automatically make qualitative or broad statements pointless though. It especially doesn’t mean they don’t contribute to understanding.

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

#340

Post by ehershey »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #145
WhompingWindows wrote: post #116

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?

Visualising the Earth at planet scale is incredible. I was blown away when the first wind map [1] made it's way onto HN almost a decade ago. I always thought of wind being localised but to see all the currents flow across the USA was soooo cool. It's inspired me to work on my own map of live mountain shadows across the Earth (link in my user profile if you're interested) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37678…

That shade map is awesome!

Does it include buildings? (Could it, if not?) I’ve been dying for this for ages.

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