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Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?

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

#681

Post by canadianfella »

Xixi wrote: post #375
chii wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are a thousands-year old country china, the ethnicity, is indeed thousands years old. CCP, however, is barely over 70 yrs old.

Nickpicking: the CCP foundational congress was held on 23 July 1921, making it 100 years old in a couple of month. The Red Army was founded on 15 July 1927, which is why it is generally assumed (seriously or not, I don't know) that China aims at reuniting with Taiwan before 2027. But the CCP has been controlling mainland China for a little bit over 70 years, indeed.

Nitpicking: couple of months, not “month”.

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

#682

Post by belorn »

DSingularity wrote: post #677
belorn wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but then my initial comment above about the Jewish population and the arab population is not confusing land and people. The Jewish population owned 2%, and the arab population owned X amount of land, while Y amount of land was owned cooperatively by individuals of both. It would be interesting to know what X and Y is. The partitioning of land was obviously unfair after world war 2. I doubt anyone actually disagr…

Its not just a land conflict from the war though. This is different than the way you are painting it -- that some British officer threw up his hands and said "I don't know whose land this is, here you have it". If you look at the history of this area, what happened was Jewish terrorist groups (haganah[2], lehi[3], Irgun[4]) started going around murdering Palestinian villagers[1]. When the Palestinian villagers ran th…

I never said "that some British officer threw up his hands and said "I don't know whose land this is, here you have it"."

Land and property was stolen after world war 2 by the allied. History has painted most of that as being acceptable because the Nazis was bad and the allied good and so anything that occurred after victory was good. Land and property was stolen and the people who lived there were forced to fleeing their lands and to never be allowed to return.

For most of those, yes, we are supposed to just accept that those people and all their dependents are condemned to eternal refugee status. It seems that most conceded land has simply been accepted as belonging to the victors as any person who actually lived there is now dead given that it been almost 100 years. What makes the Palestinians situation a bit more unique among conceded land is that the people actually did not get removed a 100 years ago and so the conflict is still alive today. People are trying to remove them today.

As a concrete example of conceded land, Finland conceded much more land to Russia than the area size of Gaza, and the Finnish population (Karelians) had to flee while people from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia settled the captured land. Today the conceded Finnish land is still owned by Russia. The conflict is however pretty dead because Finland do not want to own a bunch of land where everyone is Russian-speaking, and the cost of bringing the standard of living to the same level as in Finland would be pretty expensive. Any descendant that used to live there will just have to accept it, and the idea of forcing out the Ukraine/Belarus/Russia descendants that live there today is so far away from reality that it thankfully does not exist.

In my own opinion, trying to find a solution based on who owned what a 100 years ago is unlikely to be productive. There was a world war, a lot of people died, and most everything about it was tragic except that the Nazis lost. The conflict today is not going to be solved by trying to fix history, but rather by finding a solution for those living there today.

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

#683

Post by exikyut »

londons_explore wrote: post #531
exikyut wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. What about the sensors on my phone? For a while now I've wanted to know my realtime speed in the underground sections of the local rail/metro network. I suspect the most accurate measurements would be done using wideband SDR, iff I were able to acquire absolute position references for the signals I was seeing. Not likely, especially for something I might like to let others play with and/or generalize. Everywher…

Without wheel speed sensors, distance and speed errors quickly accumulate. With a particle filter and enough computation, that error can be eliminated after the fact . Ie. At the time you won't know where you are, but after you get out of the metro and the particle filter reconverged you'll know where you were with more accuracy at some point in the past.

Ah. I see. Thanks very much for that insight - so that's why it's possible, but not generally interesting and/or widely pursued.

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

#684

Post by eloff »

cutemonster wrote: post #678
eloff wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I feel for the plight of the Palestinian people. I don't give a rat's ass for Hamas. Don't forget Hamas is the legitimate elected government in Gaza, you cannot just say they're a fringe group not supported by the people of Gaza. Now Palestinians also encompass the West Bank where Hamas is not the government. But part of the reason for these rocket attacks is Hamas trying to demonstrate that they're the represent…

> Don't forget Hamas is the legitimate elected government What do you think is the background for that? I had a look at Wikipedia about Hamas, look how they grew more popular and became more violent: > ... Jewish settler in military fatigues, massacred 29 Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron [year 1994] in the West Bank during the month of Ramadan. An additional 19 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fo…

I'm not saying they're aren't two sides to this. But acting like Hamas and Israel are equally bad here is a stretch of the imagination. One side cares about preventing civilian casualties, the other does not. It's like comparing Isis and the US military. Very different approach and rules of engagement.

> Does it sound as if the voters voted for rocket attacks?

In 2007 not rockets, but they knew Hamas had a history of attacking civilian targets. I suppose they can't very well be blamed for what it became. I don't doubt s lot of the locals support Hamas, but many are likely caught between the two sides and want no part of it.

They're about as guilty as the Germans were for Hitler and the Nazis. They voted them in to begin with and didn't resist when they saw the monster they'd created. Seems like a very similar situation.

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

#685

Post by paulcapewell »

klyrs wrote: post #228
jrochkind1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory says that US government GPS at one point intentionally introduced reduction in accuracy/resolution as well, but they stopped, which was part of what led to the commercial GPS revolution (along with cheaper tech of course). Let's see... Wikipedia seems to confirm: > During the 1990s, GPS quality was degraded by the United States government in a program called "Selective Availability"; this was discontinued o…

Circa 1999, I was a member of a search and rescue team through the explorer scouts. We got to carry milspec GPS devices on a hike once, because the forestry service wanted accurate maps of some trails. We were under strict orders not to deviate from the trail or tamper with the devices. Very fun cloak&dagger atmosphere for what was otherwise a lovely walk in a park. Hilarious that the need for such missions was obvia…

That's really cool. So your tracked tracks (so to speak) helped inform maps of the trails you walked?

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

#686

Post by dang »

bronzeage wrote: post #562
geofft wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the phrasing you'd prefer? "Children were once again murdered in cold blood in Gaza, a metropolis that could be just like Singapore, Tokyo, or Hong Kong given its dense population and prime geographic location, were it not under constant military oppression from a country whose illegal nuclear weapons program is more successful than that of North Korea"? I think a lot of people would find that uncomfortably pa…

You mean that land which Israel withdrew from unilaterally, let it have a chance at prospering and instead of minding its own business they elected a terrorist organization, turned it into a millitary base and concentrated on firing rockets and kidnapping soldiers instead of showing they can responsibly control their land? Gaza is prime example of where Arabs and Palestinians tendencies lead them when left alone. Eve…

> prime example of where Arabs and Palestinians tendencies lead them when left alone

Whoa, you can't post slurs like that to HN, regardless of which group. No more of this, please. You've done it repeatedly in multiple comments already, and we ban such accounts.

I realize that this is an extremely emotional topic for a lot of people on all sides of the issue, but crossing the line like you did here is not acceptable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: actually this is worse than I realized. "Palestinians are bloodthirsty savages" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27193775) is beyond the pale and I've banned this account.

(Before someone inevitably accuses us of doing this for dishonest reasons, I'll add that we ban accounts for abuses in the opposite direction just the same.)

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

#687

Post by modo_mario »

belorn wrote: post #575
modo_mario wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>finding a commercial entity willing to lend access to a satellite for a few hours The vast majority of satellites aren't made for this kind of mapping as far as I know. Of the ones that are most aren't private commercial projects. Wikipedia lists 6 such projects and i doubt their time is cheap enough to make it worthwile for Palestinian resistance. Israel is another matter but they'd probably just knock on the US do…

I think that you are right that the cost is too high compared to other cheaper alternatives, like reconnaissance aircraft on the Israel side. Keeping the images blurred removes the free option so military on each side has to spend resources on the problem. I am however skeptical that it fully stops anyone from getting access to mapping data. I am a bit surprised however that there would not be more satellites that is…

>so military on each side has to spend resources on the problem.

I don't think Israel has to spend much if any. I think the blurring happens based on their request and i'm sure they still have access to unblurred satellite imagery. The only ones that could be hampered by this are the palestinians

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

#688

Post by thebiss »

URSpider94 wrote: post #648
virtue3 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so Tim. https://spacenews.com/pentagon-report-china-amassing-arsenal...

At this point, destroying the positioning network/s would be mutually assured destruction. Pretty much every country relies on those networks equally for controlling their own vehicles and weaponry.

And the debris created from a kinetic weapon would indiscriminately destroy other satellites at those altitudes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

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

#689

Post by bunfunton »

eruci wrote: post #381
freewizard wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I learned a few years back about this is the official (un)obfuscating implementation was distributed to licensed companies in binary .dll/.so/.a , and not allowed to be redistributed or reverse-engineered. Licenses are only given to local companies, and foreign companies may only buy service from them. That's why if you reverse engineer Google Map or Apple Map app, they all make real time API calls to do the con…

It is fun to see such a discussion - I've been working on my own implementation of de-obfuscating Mars Coordinates since January 2021 with very good results. And Yes, some curve fitting is involved. At the end of the day they may obfuscate coordinates and blur maps, but the truth will eventually come out.

R tree

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

#690

Post by 3v1n0 »

runarberg wrote: post #671
3v1n0 wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happens in Cuba as well. There are cheaper places where only locals can go (and till some years ago, also the other way around was true)

Wow, I travelled in Cuba in 2007 and I was completely unaware of this. I was aware of the double economy and how there are some buses that the locals don’t use and vis-versa (same is true in my country; in both cases it is more about price and convenience then access). But hotels for locals only completely missed my attention.

Yeah I got into one with my Cuban gf and they didn't like my presence so I had to "hide".
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