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Every map of China is wrong

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Re: Every map of China is wrong

#161

Post by rob74 »

oldherl wrote: post #149
rob74 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Google currently doesn't really have a presence in China (and, despite some to-and-fro, currently doesn't intend to reenter the market either), so it's probably not that important to them to fix these issues. I wonder if they actively update the map or if it's stuck at some point in the past? This isn't the first time they have done something like this, Germany was stuck with Street View imagery from 2008 (and…

Wrong. There are Google offices in Beijing and Shanghai, where local software engineers are employed to work there. They develop software for global usage for Google. Google just stopped providing services in China.

Sorry - by "presence" I meant providing services in China, not having offices there.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#162

Post by Intralexical »

trustno2 wrote: post #153
Intralexical wrote: post #75

The CCP newspaper report on this is… Interesting: > Faced with such a "hard nut", Li Chengming strengthened his confidence: "In the war years, Communists were not afraid of death. This difficulty is nothing! We must do it! And we must do it beautifully!" Under the guidance of veteran experts, he led his team to fight for a thousand years. Over many days and nights, a set of nonlinear confidentiality processing techno…

That's just hilarious honestly

Ikr? It reads like a parody of itself. You have to wonder whether anybody actually takes this seriously— The readers? Even the people writing it?

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#163

Post by petre »

Kadin wrote: post #93
hwbunny wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never had any issues. Noone cared about my camera while I was there. And I created like 5K photos there. Not that I ever use GPS, because it eats away your batter, but noone really cared about it.

In many products, there are different firmware or software loads for the PRC market (specifically PRC -- until recently not the HK versions) and the rest of the world. In some devices it's possible to lock satellite positioning to only Chinese constellation (BeiDou), or introduce error, or just not include positioning by default. Of course, some of those devices get through, or are carried in by tourists, or are enab…

It's the commie way of "fixing" things to deter "enemies of the state": eastern radio bands, inaccurate maps, neighbour spy networks, serveral people on a landline so somebody can always listen, listening rooms for secret police inside state companies, heavily wiretaping citizens, continous party propaganda etc. Most of it is bs and it doesn't work or it's easy to circumvent, but one can never be too careful.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#164

Post by brnt »

kccqzy wrote: post #68
keepamovin wrote: post #43

Here’s where it gets interesting — GCJ-02 is based on WGS-84, but with a deliberate obfuscation algorithm applied to it. The effect of this is that there are random offsets added to both latitude and longitude, ranging from as little as 50m to as much as 500m. Holy shit. I can't believe they created an adversarial mapping standard. That is insane. It really paints a picture of their worldview I think. The oppressed "…

> Wow, what it must be like to have that view that everyone else is against you This is true. Anti-Chinese sentiment right now is high worldwide. And had been high since the 19th century. Look up Chinese Exclusion Act.

It's not so much what is said, but what it is or could be used for.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#165

Post by mopsi »

_xnmw wrote: post #99
deanresin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty insane for the writer or even China/Russia to believe the US, with all of its resources, wouldn't be able to make their own accurate maps.

Pretty insane for you to believe that a foreign country from afar could produce mapping data with the same degree of accuracy, detail and realtime freshness as a local provider on the ground. Of course there's military value in protecting mapping data from foreign adversaries, at the very least it adds a a time delay and some uncertainty to the data. It also probably makes it harder for some unsophisticated terrorist…

There's no need to speculate. Even with 1960s tech and no physical access, the US military somehow managed to produce really good maps of the USSR, superior to those that were available to the public. So ironically, the intentional inaccuracy of USSR-made maps affected domestic users the most.

In 2024, with satellites producing imagery in ~10 cm resolution, the most important factor determining the quality of maps is probably the amount of money available for analyzing satellite imagery into maps, and you definitely can't hide militarily important features like roads, railways, bridges and buildings.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#166

Post by nxobject »

For what it's worth, I think people were able to reverse-engineer deviations between China's scheme and Google Maps' own scheme because Google's online services un/intentionally provided information about those deviations – which its Chinese provider somehow gave to Google – which people then scraped. [1] What that says about China's strategy of relying on indigenous mapping partners is up to you to decide.

[1] https://wuyongzheng.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/china-map-devia....

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#167

Post by brnt »

gravescale wrote: post #140
ammo1662 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Topography in the navigation app will not be distorted for Amap or Baidu map. They looks correct. Maybe people just don't know how important a navigation app is. With enough usage data, you can know the traffic status of any area. Amap and Baidu already use these data to provide the countdown of traffic light. It has 90% accuracy. You can also have a deep understanding of the economic status, or find out some hidden…

> Amap and Baidu already use these data to provide the countdown of traffic light It's often off by whole second or two. Disaster, I know! It'll also tell if it can you the ideal speed to drive to hit the next green light and join a "green wave".

I wish TomTom would get in on that.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#168

Post by jhoechtl »

For military purposes the deliberate obfuscation between geodesic datums is meaningless as detailed and correct maps of china can be derived out of traced satelity images and maped to WGS84.

Apparently Google and Bing do not have access to these "corrected" maps.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#169

Post by akira2501 »

jhoechtl wrote: post #168

For military purposes the deliberate obfuscation between geodesic datums is meaningless as detailed and correct maps of china can be derived out of traced satelity images and maped to WGS84. Apparently Google and Bing do not have access to these "corrected" maps.

They surely do and or could if they wanted. They don't want them. It would be complicated for them to openly have them.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#170

Post by amelius »

N19PEDL2 wrote: post #12
lolc wrote: post #6

So Openstreetmap must be illegal in China! And indeed it is: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China Of course that doesn't stop people from mapping every bench in China https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=China#map=3/33.99...

It seems that even taking geotagged photos is illegal in China, indeed some camera models automatically disable geotagging when inside China: https://ogleearth.com/2012/05/why-do-panasonic-leica-fujifil...

The government can use facial recognition etc, yet the people can't even make maps. What a nightmare of a country is that.
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