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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

bbc.com

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Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#161

The questions are: - Does Google deliberatly blurring Gaza strip? - Who benefits by artificially degraded quality of Gaza maps? - Does Google quietly taking political sides?

- Yes.

- Israel.

- Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue — the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased Palestine from the map.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#162
post #5

Is it possible to have real-time live-feed of the entire planet? If cost isn't an issue, would something like that be possible?

this exists for city-wide using planes,

from 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg

from 4 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRa-AucbN6k

makes you think what they're doing today

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#163

Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them. 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 citi…

Nitpicky, but useful for anyone interested in spatial data: WGS-84 is not a "GPS standard" but rather a geographic coordinate system and is usually paired for consumption with a projection like wgs 84 web mercator to view those 3d coordinates on a 2d plane. Super interesting stuff and reconciling these standards across the globe is a really fun problem, and one you'll likely run into if you ever find yourself dabblin…

I’m also working in the field and the Friar thing that came to mind was https://ihatecoordinatesystems.com haha

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#164
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is no. High-resolution imagery comes from low-orbit satellites, which make a complete orbit about every two hours, and image long, narrow strips with each pass, taking days to image the whole planet. There are many of these satellites: commercial, non-military (publicly-accessible) governmental, and governmental (secret), of varying resolutions. These are also supplemented by aerial (plane) imagery.…

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…

You aren't taking high res imagery from Geo sats--they are much too far away.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#165
post #75

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.

Google doesn't give a damn about you, but Google would very much care about discussions within UN to pressure modification of its products.

That's the difference. You can go on technicalities, but being technically correctt is the worst kind of correct.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#166

Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it so widely repeated (as in this article): > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and " the #1 most..." forms) many times and I don't know where it comes from. What am I missing? Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought maybe Gaza City was meant, it's dens…

You're probably missing this listing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... Where Gaza listed as its own country, it would be one of the densest, since it's basically a city and its urban sprawl and nothing more (like the other densest entries on the list). Of course, Gaza is itself arguably only part of Palestine, but the West Bank itself is pretty dense (see how high Palestine ranks on tha…

That sounds like "technically correct with caveats".

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#167

Tangentially related but where does this come from and why is it so widely repeated (as in this article): > ...Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world I've seen this claim (both in the "one of the most..." and " the #1 most..." forms) many times and I don't know where it comes from. What am I missing? Here[0] wikipedia says Gaza Strip has ~5,046/sqkm. I thought maybe Gaza City was meant, it's dens…

Gaza would have ranked 5th on population density, or 3rd if you remove places with tiny population (i.e take a "pop > 1MM" threshold).

It's basically after Singapore and Hong-Kong.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#168
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably missing this listing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... Where Gaza listed as its own country, it would be one of the densest, since it's basically a city and its urban sprawl and nothing more (like the other densest entries on the list). Of course, Gaza is itself arguably only part of Palestine, but the West Bank itself is pretty dense (see how high Palestine ranks on tha…

That sounds like "technically correct with caveats".

So does OPs entire post. Gaza is, by all reasonable accounts, among the most densely populated areas in the world. There's no real reason to start questioning the credibility and trustworthiness of a news organization over the fact that Gaza is referred to as such, it's a very bizarre thing to fixate over.

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#169

Not really related to the article at hand, but I've been on a bit of a Google Maps binge the past couple weeks. I learned a few interesting facts, blurry Israel being one of them. 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 citi…

Indeed, there's a Half As Interesting video talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Di-UVC-_4

Re: Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

#170
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government. I'm not sure who you would ask to make policy in such a situation. Just Hamas because they rule that area by force? That sounds a lot like asking Israel for the same reason. I don't think there's a good/ automatic answer for these situations.

> As far as Gaza goes, Hamas rules Gaza but they're not the recognized government. It's definitely more complicated by that, there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas, but of course they're rejected by the PNA (which rules over West Bank) and Israel.

> there is some evidence that people in the Gaza area have definitely supported Hamas

Such as when they were elected.

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