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A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

sprocketfox.io

111–120 of 194 posts

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#111
post #71

I am part of the team which runs the OpenStreetMap.org infrastructure, we also get a lot of weird and wonderful requests / emails. .mil, .gov, .edu and GeoTLD variants. I should really do a write-up sometime.

I remember being in Tel Aviv for work, and pulling up maps to plot out a bike route from the hotel to the office. Only to find that the entire route is blurred out online. Turns out our office was a few 100 meters from something important to the IDF, so no map/route data available. Too far to reasonably walk, and didn't want to try a bike without knowing there was a reasonable route...

Why would a road or route be blocked from OpenStreetMaps? That doesn't really provide any security if the area is public.

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#112
post #90
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this idea before of sending ballons to "the space" with a collectible object and then retrieve them, saying "I have this specific object that was in space too". Is it possible or am I dreaming too much?

Lego did a video of that, they sent one of their space stations sets. I'm quite sure they glued it.

The Kraggle?!?!? Say it ain't so, Lego!

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#113
post #71

I am part of the team which runs the OpenStreetMap.org infrastructure, we also get a lot of weird and wonderful requests / emails. .mil, .gov, .edu and GeoTLD variants. I should really do a write-up sometime.

I remember being in Tel Aviv for work, and pulling up maps to plot out a bike route from the hotel to the office. Only to find that the entire route is blurred out online. Turns out our office was a few 100 meters from something important to the IDF, so no map/route data available. Too far to reasonably walk, and didn't want to try a bike without knowing there was a reasonable route...

This does remind me of driving on the western edge of the Dead Sea in 2014 with my family. The only device we had that was capable of 3G-less navigation was my Nokia Lumia 620 (windows phone) with bing maps. I had maps downloaded for all of Israel and Palestine, but they refused to work at that particular spot. Still not sure if it was some kind of GPS/map blocking or just being at a really low altitude. Pretty sure that once we passed Jericho and turned towards Jerusalem, it started working again.

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The terror setting in deeper when the consumer GPS unit stopped responding after 30,000' altitude Ah yes, the CoCom export control limits so you can't use it to build an ICBM. Legally they're supposed to stop working above 60,000 ft and 1,200 mph, but some manufacturers interpret that as an "or". The rumor was that some really cheap chips out of China failed to implement either, so if you'd bought a crappier gps mo…

Ummmm. Any country with the knowhow to make an ICBM can source or build a gps receive without said restriction. Just saying. That's like putting a sign "no burglary permitted" and leaving the door wide open.

Just cause the rule is dumb doesn't mean it can be ignored...

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#115
post #9

The part where he gets contacted over the hit-and-run reads like the curl guy’s experience with people investigating “hacking”. I wonder how often this happens outside of software? Do fence manufacturers get emails asking to identify the culprit when someone crashes through a fence?

Actually, it wasn't unreasonable. If the guy caused the damage while picking up a sonde, to know who's sonde it was would help identify the culprit.

Or if they'd been foolish enough to log the recovery on sondehub itself, which some of us do frequently (but not after causing property damage!).

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#119
post #54
post #15

In the UK a few decades ago, if you found a radiosonde from a weather balloon, it would have instructions on how to claim a recovery fee if you returned it for reuse. Sadly I never found one, but I knew this because my dad was a geophysicist and we lived at the time on a Scottish island which was one of the UK's launch spots. Looks like the recovery fee was stopped a long time ago, when the devices became cheap enoug…

reminds me of keys/badges with "drop in any mailbox" instructions that recover them.

This is an official USPS service available to anyone willing to attach their address and "a statement guaranteeing payment of postage due on delivery" to their keys! Which is neat but kind of awkward if that's also the address of the door the keys open.

(per section 1.6 of USPS DMM 133 at https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/133.htm)

Re: A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare

#120
post #71

I am part of the team which runs the OpenStreetMap.org infrastructure, we also get a lot of weird and wonderful requests / emails. .mil, .gov, .edu and GeoTLD variants. I should really do a write-up sometime.

I remember being in Tel Aviv for work, and pulling up maps to plot out a bike route from the hotel to the office. Only to find that the entire route is blurred out online. Turns out our office was a few 100 meters from something important to the IDF, so no map/route data available. Too far to reasonably walk, and didn't want to try a bike without knowing there was a reasonable route...

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