Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by tayo42 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

jussij wrote: post #355

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…

If that was the case why stop now? And why did they let parts unknown film in Palestine in 2013. The episode wasn't very pro Israel either. This a little to conspiracy theory for me.

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

#362

Post by neiman » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

Am I the only one thinking it's not a bug, it's a feature? Please also blur all the Google Maps satellite images of where I live. Took me ages to get the ones of Google Street View blurred lol. Where do I sign up?

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

#363

Post by betterunix2 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

jussij wrote: post #355

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…

I have learned to demand a very high standard of evidence for conspiracy theories, so...let's see the evidence that there is some conspiracy between Google and Israel to hide what is happening there. For that matter, I am not even sure what you think Israel is hiding -- Netanyahu is not at all shy about settlements, the IDF calls people up to tell them when a bomb is going to be dropped on their building, and there are reporters and international observers all over the Israel and the Palestinian territories.

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

#364

Post by rhizome » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #309

seniorivn wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if you have misconception about what ccp and other one party states actually are

If you think you know better what the CCP is, why don’t you educate us?

Hey, I'll bite: they are a thousands-year old country who has seen nations like the US and protectionist strategies like IP law come and go for centuries. They probably know what the US is going to do before the US knows what they're going to do, and certainly before the US knows what CCP is going to do.

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

#365

Post by chii » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #364

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you know better what the CCP is, why don’t you educate us?

Hey, I'll bite: they are a thousands-year old country who has seen nations like the US and protectionist strategies like IP law come and go for centuries. They probably know what the US is going to do before the US knows what they're going to do, and certainly before the US knows what CCP is going to do.

> they are a thousands-year old country

china, the ethnicity, is indeed thousands years old. CCP, however, is barely over 70 yrs old.

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

#366

Post by dehrmann » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #359

neumann wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In China? Is it a violation of the data source license?

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

#367

Post by mvzvm » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

jussij wrote: post #355

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…

> 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.

No, not cynical. I will call it for what it is - baseless conspiracy.

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

#368

Post by betterunix2 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #305

slg wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- Yes, see how they took a position on the heart of this issue — the occupied territories themselves. They literally erased Palestine from the map. The US government doesn't recognize Palestine. Therefore displaying the occupied territories as a distinct state would be the more politicalized option compared with displaying them as they currently do. Either way, it just goes to show that the idea of a company being a…

The UN recognizes Palestine as do many other countries. The US was motivated not to recognize it because of the Israeli diaspora in America.

The United States worked with Israel for years, and has continued to some degree even now, to establish a legitimate and functional Palestinian state. The reason the US does not recognize Palestine is that right now there is not a fully formed Palestinian government. The PA never fully exerted its influence or enforced its own laws in the West Bank and has completely lost control of Gaza to a terrorist organization.

I know it does not neatly fit your narrative about a Jewish conspiracy in America ("Israeli diaspora?" really?), but US support is one of the reasons there is any Palestinian self-governance at all, limited as it may be.

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

#369

Post by newman8r » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

csteubs wrote: post #286

newman8r wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about passengers taking photos/video out of windows?

Correct. It sounds a bit far-out (and it is) but we've proven the feasibility with a testing group of around 300 passengers using a multitude of different phones/altitudes/conditions/routes. GPS works in airplane mode, so we pre-cache target coordinates based on the filed flight plan and alert the passenger to hold the device to the window when overflying the target. The gyroscope is used to provide feedback on phone…

Interesting approach, I can see how that's the easiest path to an MVP.

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

#370

Post by ajsnigrutin » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

A lot of countries use their own coordinate systems, that make their countries look flat on a x/y plane. Eg. my country - slovenia.

Usually those coordinate systems are easy to calculate to wgs84 or web mercator projection[0], compared to the chinese solution

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Mercator_projection