91–100 of 693 posts
Organizations/NGOs heavily rely on satellite imagery (i) to assist in delivering many humanitarian efforts. It would seem useful for the UN to strongly prohibit the diminishing of such capability. (i) www.hotosm.org
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And even with such a budget: geostationary satellites over the poles are not possible[1] and really hard anywhere but over the equator, really. So that means most of the south and north part of the earth cannot be covered with such a constellation; they would need to be orbiting satellites, which makes "real time" even harder, because it would require an enormously complex choreography to ensure there's at least one…
But, we could always construct a dyson sphere around earth and rely on the rigidity of the structure to provide accurate polar images. That said, it would be really difficult and quite likely not at all worth it.
That's a very bold claim with no support provided.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA is the only country on earth that recognises all of Israel’s territory claims.
Not just that. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
It's worse than that, you can't even travel as an American without people thinking you support murdering people.
Organizations/NGOs heavily rely on satellite imagery (i) to assist in delivering many humanitarian efforts. It would seem useful for the UN to strongly prohibit the diminishing of such capability. (i) www.hotosm.org
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe Starlink satellites should also feature a camera? They've already got the connectivity. You'd need a large constellation and this one seems like it will become huge.
At 1 px/m², the Earth's surface is 5×10^14 pixels, so with the full constellation of 10,000 satellites and 1 fps that'd be 5×10^10 pixels/satellite/second (about a terabit/satellite/second uncompressed). If you can shoot 30 images per second, you'd need a 1.6 gigapixel camera. It's technically possible but not feasible.
Edit: The uncompressed bitrate comment is a bit like saying 1080p network video streaming will take decades to become feasible, because the incompressed bitrate is 1.485 gigabit/s...
I zoomed into random areas like Chekka, Lebanon and Kumasi, Ghana. I hadn't heard of these places before today, but they looked big enough on Google Maps. Zooming in, the mosaics appeared as if they were shot years apart, with noticeably different resolutions. Could Gaza just be one such scan, rather than something sinister? > "Considering the importance of current events, I see no reason why commercial imagery of th…
It's one of the most heavily imaged areas in the world - on the ground, as it's an active conflict zone. In space, satellites will pass over the region every X hours no matter what. Planet's satellites have a fresh, high resolution map of the Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the very least, 7 satellites imaging the Earth in 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat . The question isn't whether the data exists. It do…
Another strange thing I found that might not be super well known (I didn't know about it) is that all GPS data in China is offset by a nonlinear psuedo-random amount. If you turn on the satellite view in Google Maps and look at various cities in China, you'll see that the road and business overlay is off by anywhere from 50m to 500m. And the strangest thing is that it's not a consistent offset from place to place.
Turns out this is very intentional, and China uses a different geographic coordinate system than the rest of the world. WGS-84 is the most common coordinate system, but China uses GCJ-02, sometimes called Mars Coordinates. Part of GCJ-02 is an algorithm that obfuscates the results. So applying any GCJ-02 coordinate to a globe using WGS-84 coordinates gets distorted like a funhouse mirror.
It's easy to find open source libraries to convert WGS-84 to GCJ-02 and vice versa. But Google Maps doesn't do it, for political reasons I suppose? I've read that if you open Google Maps within China the mapping data is correct, but have no way to test that.
I zoomed into random areas like Chekka, Lebanon and Kumasi, Ghana. I hadn't heard of these places before today, but they looked big enough on Google Maps. Zooming in, the mosaics appeared as if they were shot years apart, with noticeably different resolutions. Could Gaza just be one such scan, rather than something sinister? > "Considering the importance of current events, I see no reason why commercial imagery of th…
It's one of the most heavily imaged areas in the world - on the ground, as it's an active conflict zone. In space, satellites will pass over the region every X hours no matter what. Planet's satellites have a fresh, high resolution map of the Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the very least, 7 satellites imaging the Earth in 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat . The question isn't whether the data exists. It do…
I zoomed into random areas like Chekka, Lebanon and Kumasi, Ghana. I hadn't heard of these places before today, but they looked big enough on Google Maps. Zooming in, the mosaics appeared as if they were shot years apart, with noticeably different resolutions. Could Gaza just be one such scan, rather than something sinister? > "Considering the importance of current events, I see no reason why commercial imagery of th…
It's one of the most heavily imaged areas in the world - on the ground, as it's an active conflict zone. In space, satellites will pass over the region every X hours no matter what. Planet's satellites have a fresh, high resolution map of the Earth ~3.5 hours. Google had, at the very least, 7 satellites imaging the Earth in 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySat . The question isn't whether the data exists. It do…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UN is less a legislative body and more of an international treaty negotiation forum. If all of the UN member states agreed to such a thing then it certainly could be ratified - it sounds like it might vaguely fall under the purview of the first committee DISEC (Disarmament and International Security) and Israel might object to it but usually there's some bargaining involved in these sorts of things. To my knowled…
> there is, in fact, no strict limit on the authority the UN can have There is no strict limit to the authority I can have. That doesn’t mean I can prohibit Google from doing squat. I could theoretically get the U.S. government to pass a law, but that’s not the same thing as authority.
At a basic philosophical level laws and police have no power, nothing can stop you from committing murder. The only thing we can essentially do is give you pain in reaction - that pain could be pre-emptively acting guilt or fear of the consequences, it could be moral regret, it could also be physical restraint or torture. Given diseases like alzheimer's and essential tremors or a plethora of other physical and neurological ailments the list of people who can absolutely control your actions might be an empty set[1].
That all said, the UN has been granted some pretty wide authority to pass treaties that are generally acknowledged across the world - those treaties are generally respected and the US might hit you with a big stick if you violate them. So, honestly, I think the comparison in authority to an individual is pretty thin.
1. I think that by definition if we're talking in absolutes then it is always an empty set because there are actions you can't voluntarily execute, like, for instance, willing your heart to stop. But let's just assume that "absolute control" is a level of control achievable for most people at some point in their lifetime.