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Every map of China is wrong

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Re: Every map of China is wrong

#201

Post by bartekpacia »

GordonS wrote: post #127
jampekka wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That probably makes the paranoia even more founded? Especially when their (perceived) adversary has the habit of regularly starting illegal wars.

And let's not forget that the US recently stationed troops on a tiny Taiwanese island that's less than ten miles from the Chinese mainland. And at a time when the US is sabre-rattling over Taiwan, and is about to give Taiwan billions of dollars for "defence". And elsewhere in the world, the US almost seems to be trying to start WWIII. In the current climate, being paranoid is the sensible option.

> And elsewhere in the world, the US almost seems to be trying to start WWIII.

What? Where? Can you give some examples?

> is about to give Taiwan billions of dollars for "defence"

Why quote defence? You think they give it for offence?

I suppose you're a citizen of the West; then US hegemony is certainly in your best interest.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#202

Post by pookha »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #102
throwaway4good wrote: post #97

Here is an open source implementation that converts from WGS84 to GJC2: https://github.com/googollee/eviltransform/blob/master/java/... https://github.com/googollee/eviltransform/blob/master/java/... And converting the other way by a kind of binary search, I guess using a flaw in the obfuscation: https://github.com/googollee/eviltransform/blob/master/java/... All seems very silly by today standards and I would think…

As a means to keep detailed maps out of the hands of an enemy it's indeed not great. As it's all rather obvious to reverse engineer this and people have indeed done so. But as a means to force foreign companies to use Chinese data suppliers this works perfectly. Because using this software would be illegal in China and anyone looking to business there legally would end up having to use Chinese data centers, Chinese d…

Pretty nuts. The entire chinese population lives in a state of perpetual formation and "harmony" with the crony capitalist thugs that operate from behind the curtain. And this is just another case of crony capitalist bullshit. It's not at all about "protecting maps from the enemy". It's about controlling and delving out access to a good-ole boy network (party members and their cronies)...The US and Europe are heading down the same paths but they'll never get to the level of maniac cult-like manipulation that China has achieved over a billion people.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#203

Post by phkahler »

deanresin wrote: post #71
int0x29 wrote: post #46

The US having a dedicated intelligence agency for maps seems to defeat most of the military value of this system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligen...

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 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 weird to think the US is the only country they might be worried about. Maybe not right now, but in general.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#204

Post by asoneth »

toss1 wrote: post #34
Reason077 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, despite its apparent illegality, China seems to be fairly well-supported and well-mapped by OpenStreetMap, at least in major cities. And is entirely mapped in normal WGS-84 without the obfuscation problem. In any case, according to Wikipedia, open-source code is available to convert between WGS-84 and the obfuscated GJC-02 coordinates. Since technology seems to have caught up with it, is there any advantage (…

Great point. This seems like low-intelligence autocratic bullshirt more than anything. Does the CCP really think that the US military are going to use ordinary street msps to target their missiles and that this obfuscation will protect them from on-target hits? Sure, in WWII there were a few apocryphal instances of bad maps foiling an attack, but that was decades before mapping satellites. As mentioned, it's been a l…

> Does the CCP really think that the US military are going to use ordinary street msps to target their missiles and that this obfuscation will protect them from on-target hits?

In some cases using consumer-level street maps could make for more accurate targeting.

Many years ago I worked on command & control systems for a US military contractor. The mapping imagery our software used from military mapping providers were high resolution but often more out-of-date than commercial offerings. One example a warfighter showed me stuck with me because it was particularly embarrassing and egregious -- military imagery showed an area with a handful of shacks in the middle of the desert but Google's satellite imagery showed that it had become a sprawling town. Because of issues like that, army warfighters were forced to regularly cross-check with Google and/or Yahoo! maps when planning operations.

It is no longer an area I work in and I would expect that military imagery is now more up-to-date, but there are likely still datapoints uploaded to OpenStreetMap that are more timely and accurate than what government contractors provide. So I would not be surprised if there are still warfighters out there cross-checking with consumer mapping providers before ordering strikes.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#205

Post by dahart »

throwaway4good wrote: post #105
jillesvangurp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a means to keep detailed maps out of the hands of an enemy it's indeed not great. As it's all rather obvious to reverse engineer this and people have indeed done so. But as a means to force foreign companies to use Chinese data suppliers this works perfectly. Because using this software would be illegal in China and anyone looking to business there legally would end up having to use Chinese data centers, Chinese d…

Some elaborate technical trade barrier? I think that is giving them too much credit. This is thinking from a military apparatus stuck in the 1950es.

No need to speculate. The reasons for it were stated explicitly, as the article mentions. They are, briefly, to “promote mapping” for “national economic construction”, “national defense”, and “social development”.

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#206

Post by remram »

eru wrote: post #53
remram wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any reference for that? I live in NYC and was here for the whole pandemic, and this is the first I hear something like that.

I got it from Matt Levine's Money Stuff, Bloomberg email newsletter. It's the post from 2020/04/21: > Everything is mask crime > We talked last week about a hypothetical minimalist legal system with only two crimes: Wire fraud, for stuff you do in your house, and coronavirus-related curfew violations, for stuff you do outside your house. If you go to someone’s house and murder them, that’s violation of your local sta…

This doesn't appear current. I can't find it on government sites for 240.35 (ex: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/240.35)

edit: I can find it before June 2020 so maybe they repealed the ban right after they enacted the mandate?

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#208

Post by ClumsyPilot »

SeanLuke wrote: post #200
Laremere wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia had accurate maps of the UK back in the cold war, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bqzwsM6eoQ

Not just accurate: far and away the most accurate.

It’s nice that USSR dedicated more money to this than UK government did

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#209

Post by dahart »

acdha wrote: post #24
nimbius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Only the last sentence of your first paragraph is true: it’s legal to photograph the police and public spaces _but_ doing so may involve you needing to deal with lawless cops and that can be extremely risky depending on who you are and what mood they’re in. Dealing with that culture should be one of our top priorities.

Indeed, the ACLU agrees. Not sure how parent got that bad info, but there’s a rather famous pamphlet called “Photographer’s Rights” meant to carry in your pocket or camera bag to hand to abusive law enforcement, should one run into it.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/photographers-rights

https://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

Re: Every map of China is wrong

#210

Post by ClumsyPilot »

keepamovin wrote: post #160
GordonS wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let's not forget that the US recently stationed troops on a tiny Taiwanese island that's less than ten miles from the Chinese mainland. And at a time when the US is sabre-rattling over Taiwan, and is about to give Taiwan billions of dollars for "defence". And elsewhere in the world, the US almost seems to be trying to start WWIII. In the current climate, being paranoid is the sensible option.

I think in geopolitics it's probably always sensible to be a little paranoid...or have some people whose job that is. But I think the Kinmen thing is less big than it seems. It's already a militarized Taiwan island, and Taiwan and China are officially "still at war", so arguably the more provocative move is Taiwanese military presence there. A handful of US troops is not a significant deployment, and I think there's…

You misunderstand the job of these troops.

Forward deployment like this are not there to threaten China. They are there, to tie down USA politicians.

Suppose China makes a move on Taiwan, now they have to play around US troops or fear bringing USA into the war. US politicians now have troops stuck in a war zone, they can no longer just was their hands of the situation - that would be politically unacceptable.

Imagine if Russia had even symbolical amount of troops stationed in Gaza, Israel would be in a difficult position, indiscriminate fire can kill them and start an incident

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