Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 693 posts

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

#351

Post by slg »

whatshisface wrote: post #345
slg wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you are getting at. If the US recognized Palestine that would also be a policy "determined by politics in its original, non-metaphorical form". There is no apolitical answer to the question of whether to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state.

If there's no apolitical answer, then going with the status quo isn't an apolitical answer.

It seems like you agree with me but are framing your comments as if you disagree. In my first comment I said:

>There is no potential choice here that isn't going to be viewed politically.

Maybe the two negatives in that sentence are throwing people off, but I can rephrase it to say "There is no apolitical choice here."

However any choice that goes against the status quo is going to be perceived as more political than a choice that accepts the status quo. That is just a general statement and isn't specific to the debate about recognition of Palestine.

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

#353

Post by stormbrew »

avip wrote: post #349
stormbrew wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Certainly, there are political factions within Israel that claim it should be part of Israel -- that's why there were settlements to remove in the first place . It would be ridiculous to deny that, honestly. Those factions seem to continue to grow in influence every year as well. The idea that Israel should be one state that covers the entirety of the former mandate of Palestine seems to actually be pretty pop…

Does Egypt also claim their land?

Not as far as I know?

Egypt does control access in and out along their own border, as every country does, but afaik the nature of that control is at least somewhat dictated by agreements between Egypt and Israel.

As far as I know Egypt does not do any of the other things I listed, like controlling what can go in and out of Gaza through borders that aren't their own, nor do they make military incursions into it or bomb it.

Also, and I think this is actually pretty key to the idea that Israel believes the land of Gaza to be part of Israel, if Egypt were to invade Gaza do you really believe that Israel would allow that to stand? If Israel truly considered Gaza a state not under its jurisdiction, Egypt annexing Gaza would likely be a welcome outcome.

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

#354

Post by betterunix2 »

mtrovo wrote: post #239
betterunix2 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is the fault of Hamas, which derailed the peace process 15 years ago after running a political campaign that delegitimized the peace process itself (they claimed that it was actually terrorism, not diplomacy and negotiated deals, that had caused the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza). As I said, their first move after taking control of Gaza was to murder political opponents. They fought a civil war against Fa…

Sure, because life on Gaza strip on 2006 was all moonlight and roses. Hell even going back 30 years ago you wouldn't find much difference [0]. I wonder what political force or nation could be benefiting from this constant chaos. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(comics)

Is that supposed to be some kind of excuse for derailing the peace process? Are you actually denying that progress toward a two-state solution happened between the Oslo Accords in 1993 and Hamas taking power in 2006?

Like it or not the government of Israel and the PLO made a good-faith effort to establish a legitimate Palestinian state. It is not an easy task, the solution is not simple and there are a lot of legitimate grievances on both sides that need to be sorted out. Unfortunately groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and various other terrorist organizations have derailed that process. There is no cabal hiding in the background and pulling the strings to sow chaos in Palestinian society (do people really need to be told that wild conspiracy theories are nonsense?).

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

#355

Post by jussij »

plaidfuji wrote: post #342

This link title is extremely misleading to the point of being disingenuous and provocative. The title of the linked article is “Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps?”... because the entire Israel / Gaza / West Bank region is blurred in the exact same way. There is no preferential blurring of Palestinian areas. The clear answer is to prevent actors on both sides from using Google’s satellite imagery to…

Israel can get all the detailed imagery it needs by just launching a reconnaissance aircraft or drone.

So on that basis I would say it only stops the Palestinians from getting imagery of the area.

Now considering the fact Palestine only has rockets and not missiles, I doubt that imagery is of much value to them.

Call me cynical, but I suspect the more important reason to keep these images blurred might be to stop the rest of the world from seeing what is going on.

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

#356

Post by dragonwriter »

avip wrote: post #349
stormbrew wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Certainly, there are political factions within Israel that claim it should be part of Israel -- that's why there were settlements to remove in the first place . It would be ridiculous to deny that, honestly. Those factions seem to continue to grow in influence every year as well. The idea that Israel should be one state that covers the entirety of the former mandate of Palestine seems to actually be pretty pop…

Does Egypt also claim their land?

> Does Egypt also claim their land?

Nope. It (or rather the United Arab Republic, of which modern Egypt is a successor but not the sole successor) temporarily occupied it (officially, pending resolution of the Israel/Palestine issue, but terminated early by force) from 1959-1967 without claiming it.

There was some ambiguity about Egypt’s stance between 1967-1978, but after 1978 they unambiguously had no claim, even administrative, over Gaza.

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

#357

Post by hellbannedguy »

mvanaltvorst wrote: post #43
deadalus wrote: 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?

planet.com can get you a ~12 images per day [1] for a reasonable price. If cost really isn't an issue, I'm confident you could strike a deal with planet.com to place their next few new satellites into the specific orbit you want to up the frequency even more. [1]: https://www.planet.com/pulse/12x-rapid-revisit-announcement/ , as of June 2020.

Could you divulge what you use the images for?

Or, anyone who buys satellite images?

I know about real estate, navigation, and I've heard that some business use them to forecast retail sales.

I curious about other uses.

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

#358

Post by alluro2 »

caf wrote: post #352

Wikipedia (of course!) has a list of locations intentionally blurred on public satellite map services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...

That's interesting - the one in Antarctica, for example, really tickles the fantasy, doesn't it.

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

#359

Post by dodobirdlord »

neumann wrote: post #340
squeaky-clean wrote: post #97

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…

Really silly question - but can't they correct for this without the GCJ-02 by just correlating the mutual of the map information with the satellite information? It seems like if you can have all the information provided to you, just randomly warped by some deliberate obfuscation you could 'trivially' (aka primitively) correct for it by using the available data of the satellite and the maps by feature matching and non…

Circumventing the obfuscation is a crime.

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

#360

Post by thepasswordis »

alluro2 wrote: post #358
caf wrote: post #352

Wikipedia (of course!) has a list of locations intentionally blurred on public satellite map services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...

That's interesting - the one in Antarctica, for example, really tickles the fantasy, doesn't it.

Whoa that is pretty interesting.
Post reply on HN