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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

#361

Post by zmmmmm »

Agentlien wrote: post #353
zmmmmm wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 other…

Oculus isn't your only alternative. I've been very happy with Vive, especially the Cosmos, and I've heard great things about Valve's Index. If you're on more of a budget the PSVR is quite good if you happen to have a PS4.

Yes - its just so unfortunate all the good alternatives don't offer (easy, cheap) wireless / stand alone support. After using Virtual Desktop, I actually think there's a huge opportunity for a super "thin client" device that is just a companion for your laptop/tablet and offloads everything there.

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

#362

Post by princeb »

nate_meurer wrote: post #263
DeusExMachina wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine isn't either of those, or any other variation. The point is that since you are not them, you can't know what they would do. Your "interpretation" is just making them after your self image, thinking that that is what it means to be "advanced".

A more charitable interpretation is that an advanced civilization would be more likely to ensure it's own longevity and durability by engaging in serious, disciplined conservation of resources. Pretty simple observation, really.

the classic scifi trope of an advanced extraterrestrial race is one that is able to not merely ensure its existence but also develop and advance itself rapidly through aggressive intergalactic colonization and resource extraction.

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

#363

Post by nextaccountic »

Grimm1 wrote: post #347
jiofih wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Januar…

"It’s true that without dramatic action in the next couple of decades..." You missed the first part of their sentence. On the flipside perhaps you're a little too much into doomsday scenarios? We've quite literally transformed the entire planet and way of living inside of 30 years since personal computation technology took off. I really don't see it as particularly farfetched that we can correct for our negative cons…

Do you seriously think we actually do this "dramatic action" in the next couple of decades?

If we manage to get it started, what if another Trump gets elected and sabotage it from the top?

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

#365

Post by tppiotrowski »

ehershey wrote: post #340
tppiotrowski wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Including buildings in urban areas and choosing a custom date to see how shadows change over the course of the year are next on the backlog. Contact info is in my profile if you want to keep in touch.

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

#366

Post by Ayesh »

hobofan wrote: post #16
izolate wrote: post #9

Most striking to me is that Google registered a custom TLD (.gle) just to use as a URL shortener. Impressive use of funds.

IIRC, once you've proven that you can reliably run a registry (which Google does anyway for their other TLDs), the application and fees for an additional TLD is much cheaper than you would expect (5-low 6 figures/year)

I think I remember hearing at DNW that the uncontested TLD application fee and annual fee are flat $185K and $25K. Donuts probably owns many more TLDs than Google, but I'm pretty sure they still paid the $185K fee.

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

#367

Post by sen »

mullingitover wrote: post #105
keithwhor wrote: post #61

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…

I think of humans as a form of fire uniquely cursed with the ability to see the beauty in what it's burning, and to feel bad about it.

I truly think it’s a minority who feel bad about it, or care about it at all.

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

#368

Post by ehsankia »

Impossible wrote: post #181
ehsankia wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bailed" is a bit over the top. I would characterize it more as being at a stand still. Earth VR and Tilt Brush are still around, and as mentioned about, Tilt Brush is even open sourced. They just haven't had as much interest making new stuff. VR didn't pick up the way most hoped it would, and at this point there isn't really much to do until we get another wave of innovation that pushes the boundary forward. Also Ta…

Tiltbrush is opensource, but not actively being maintained by Google and hasn't been for a long time. Some of the original team is involved in maintaining an opensource fork, however, but this is not a Google product. Daydream was sunset a while ago and cardboard support has stopped also. VR is an interesting category for Google because there are often no services to maintain in VR apps. So, like an indie developer w…

You kinda alluded to this, and kinda got the wrong conclusion, but when a game developer releases a complete game, and then after fixing some patches, it moves on to other things, no one claims that they "bailed out" on the game. Do you think Valve "bailed out" on HL:Alyx? It just makes no sense.

Earth VR and Tilt Brush are pretty complete apps, not everything needs to be worked on forever. At some point you get diminishing return and start wasting your time.

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

#369

Post by nostrebored »

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…

As someone who has studied modeling, these situations are fundamentally unmodelable with the tools we have.

Whenever you read a study saying that 'In complex system X, Y will happen in a decade' breathe easily -- we can't model what the stock market will look like in a day. We can't model what user demand for a sale will be in a week. We can't model most complex things in any large time frame, and believing any conclusions in the XX years for something as complex as climate is bizarre.

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

#370

Post by doersino »

swyx wrote: post #210
doersino wrote: post #36

I’ve built a Twitter bot around these timelapses a while ago – just updated to use the newly released data set: https://twitter.com/earthacrosstime You can take a look at the source code here if you’re interested: https://github.com/doersino/earthacrosstime

feedback - the bot might be a bit more compelling if it reported the city it is focusing on. hard to tell.

There's reverse geocoding data at the end of each video – and most of the time, it picks spots in the middle of nowhere, which is difficult to reverse geocode in a way that's useful, so I don't show this information more prominently.
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