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Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

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Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#61

Post by sam0x17 »

masklinn wrote: post #32
steve_taylor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to restrict this activity geographically rather than based on accounts’ language?

What would be the geographic restrictions though? “In ukraine”? Russian troops might be located there, also VPNs, and non-GPS geolocation is not exactly reliable (at least in my european experience where I’m essentially never geolocalised correctly and the subsequent localisation is always incorrect, any location within a few hundred miles of a border is a crapshoot). “Out of ukraine or russia” would be trivially byp…

No you misunderstand -- disable contributions where the contribution itself is located anywhere on the map in Ukraine. No VPN concerns there...

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#62

Post by benatkin »

malloryerik wrote: post #40
qsort wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the exact opposite of a military expert, but the conflict being extremely asymmetric, a service like Google Maps helps the Ukranians side more than it helps the Russians.

Does it though? Maps in general help me more when I'm new somewhere. I wonder if it couldn't be helpful for Google Maps and other services to block out for example all small roads, inner cities, etc. Maybe I'm wrong though; why would maps help the defenders more?

It would be nice if Google Maps would distract the invading soldiers by asking them to calibrate their accelerometers all the time like it did on my phone.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#63

Post by ArnoVW »

playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

Actually, I have been trying to find some good in-depth sources. If you can share, I'd be much obliged.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#64

Post by trhway »

geoka9 wrote: post #16
playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

Same, I don't know if it's true that they are marks for Russian air strikes. But I've just tried and it does look weird (farms in the middle of the city).

beside the large painted marks on the roofs/etc., on Ukranian TV 10 minutes ago they shown some marks which are kind of plastic stick-on 1 inch square with the same cross-in-circle image. The stick-on are reflective and have numbers. Some people think it is a mark of the houses with police, military residents, etc...

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#65

Post by NicoJuicy »

ArnoVW wrote: post #63
playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

Actually, I have been trying to find some good in-depth sources. If you can share, I'd be much obliged.

Here why they are using civilian walkie talkies:

https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?t=...

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#66

Post by squarefoot »

wzyoi wrote: post #25
playpause wrote: post #10

I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

I’ve put some thoughts in edit on this. What do you think?

You're probably right about undercover saboteurs; they don't want to be caught with military/unusual equipment, so the use of normal phones/tablets and related apps makes sense. In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. Better they remove them ASAP and keep the attention for other that might surface. I'd also alert other maps service providers. If Ukraine still has enough control over the cellular network data, and Google degraded connections to their maps service in the area to plain http (so no port 443), deep packet inspection from the Ukrainian govt could reveal if someone is adding marks and near which tower.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#67

Post by Rastonbury »

qsort wrote: post #29
Rastonbury wrote: post #28

Targeting airstrikes theory aside, wonder what Google thinks of the potential that Russian soldiers are using Maps to navigate while invading Ukraine?

I'm the exact opposite of a military expert, but the conflict being extremely asymmetric, a service like Google Maps helps the Ukranians side more than it helps the Russians.

It should not be too challenging to block services to phones originating in Russia but being used in Ukraine now.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#69

Post by jonathanstrange »

I think decision makers from the Ukrainian military should get into touch with Google before anything is done, since there is a distinct possibility that removing these markers is a bad idea. Even if they are used for real targeting, they can also be used to warn civilians and the respective installations of upcoming strikes or sabotage actions. Besides, if they really need the marks, they will not stop shooting when they disappear, they will instead more likely shell indiscriminately to show their superiors they're fulfilling their objectives.

I don't know if these considerations are relevant but would urge OP to contact someone in Ukraine about it.

Re: Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?

#70

Post by rigelbm »

benatkin wrote: post #57
axiosgunnar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

k8s takes some time to roll out on a global scale i would assume

If it's an update to the Docker images, that normally takes a couple minutes, if it's a rolling deploy. It is possible to turn off the rolling deploy, but there will be downtime.

Google uses neither k8s nor Docker internally. From my knowledge, a change like this can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a few hours to roll globally, depending on how much support was already in place.
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