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Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#41

Post by KyleTheDev »

mdp2021 wrote: post #29
panja wrote: post #3

What I want to call this administration is unfortunately against the site rules

> What I want to call If you express something, it should have a constructive purpose. Sheerly reactive curses rarely fit in that. Edit: Again, repeating what already written here: The disagreeing part better formulate an argument. This post is consistent with the message: because again, silent disagreement is very much not constructive.

> If you express something, it should have a constructive purpose.

I feel like trying to make any expression constructive is one of those 'nice in theory' but also 'not a thing that has ever or will ever be done by any human being, because it's an insane inhumane thing to practice' ideals.

You cannot make every expression of opinion constructive. Take the case of this post. There is no need for constructive criticism or expression here, because the people doing this are not doing it out of good will. It then follows that any use of energy to provide that constructive expression is an unnecessary waste of goodwill.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#42

Post by floro »

mcv wrote: post #37
mizaru wrote: post #4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_obedience

Disgusting. At the very least drag your feet a bit. Just goes to show how on board those corporations are with this sort of narcissistic authoritarianismm

You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that.

Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable.

Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to parrot your political beliefs.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#43

Post by mcv »

floro wrote: post #42
mcv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disgusting. At the very least drag your feet a bit. Just goes to show how on board those corporations are with this sort of narcissistic authoritarianismm

You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that. Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable. Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to…

That doesn't make it any less disgusting, though.

And there are also companies that aren't quite so eager to comply.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#44

Post by morkalork »

thunky wrote: post #23
amiga386 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why die on this hill Because when the orange one is gone, people will remember what a supremely supine bastard you were, and now you're no longer protected, will punish you hard.

When he's gone we can just undo it as easily as he did it. And tear down all of his other tributes to himself. If we don't want idiots to do idiotic things we probably shouldn't make it possible/legal in the first place. But the corruption and malfeasance goes way beyond Trump so here we are.

Are you sure about that? People mildly criticised Charlie Kirk after his death and lost their jobs, there's a whole outrage over renaming streets and tearing down monuments to confederates and racists. Those same people are going to be predictably upset by any attempt to undo the man's "legacy" once he kicks the bucket.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#45

Post by blooalien »

floro wrote: post #42
mcv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disgusting. At the very least drag your feet a bit. Just goes to show how on board those corporations are with this sort of narcissistic authoritarianismm

You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that. Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable. Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to…

> Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that.

This is absolutely 100% an action (one among many over the years) that guarantees I (for one) will never give Google another thin dime of my money for any reason if there's any way I can avoid it. Permanently lost profit from at least this one user (who was at one time in the past a huge Google fanboi)...

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#46

Post by mcv »

blooalien wrote: post #45
floro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that. Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable. Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to…

> Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that. This is absolutely 100% an action (one among many over the years) that guarantees I (for one) will never give Google another thin dime of my money for any reason if there's any way I can avoid it. Permanently lost profit from at least this one user (who was at one time in the past a huge Google fanboi)...

I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago. I already wasn't planning on ever giving Google any money, so they're not losing any income from me.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#47

Post by blooalien »

mcv wrote: post #46
blooalien wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that. This is absolutely 100% an action (one among many over the years) that guarantees I (for one) will never give Google another thin dime of my money for any reason if there's any way I can avoid it. Permanently lost profit from at least this one user (who was at one time in the past a huge Google fanboi)...

I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago. I already wasn't planning on ever giving Google any money, so they're not losing any income from me.

> I was also a fanboy once, but a straw broke that particular camel's back a long time ago.

That "straw" for me was when they decided that "Don't be Evil" actually meant "be as evil as we can every chance we get"... Every evil action they've taken since then just makes me just that much more certain that I want to actively avoid Google products as much as I possibly can for the rest of my life.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#48

Post by labcomputer »

mcv wrote: post #38
Duwensatzaj wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Metric Conversion Act Of 1975 would be a better reference, but it didn’t go that far, only saying that Metric is preferred, and the choice is voluntary. The EO you referenced is about what units the federal government uses, not setting an official system of measurement for the entire US.

That's exactly what every executive order is: it's what the federal government uses. It's not binding for anyone else. It doesn't have the power of law. Google is under absolutely no obligation to do this. They do it explicitly to appease Trump.

> They do it explicitly to appease Trump

Well, actually, no.

The EO changes the official name of the geographical feature as recognized by the US government.

All the large map providers ingest a data feed from the USG (and other governments for other localizations) which names various geographical and place entities. That data goes through a pipeline (basically a CI pipeline) to build the map artifact and tiles served to users.

Google just has a particularly good and low latency pipeline. Google got there in a couple days. Apple will get there in a week or two. The USGS will get there in god-knows-when. Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky.

The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change. Unless someone at Google manually edits the entity, it will be automatically renamed with no human input (although, for very large, highly visible entities the validation stage may block the build and flag it for manual review)

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#49

Post by mcv »

labcomputer wrote: post #48
mcv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what every executive order is: it's what the federal government uses. It's not binding for anyone else. It doesn't have the power of law. Google is under absolutely no obligation to do this. They do it explicitly to appease Trump.

> They do it explicitly to appease Trump Well, actually, no. The EO changes the official name of the geographical feature as recognized by the US government. All the large map providers ingest a data feed from the USG (and other governments for other localizations) which names various geographical and place entities. That data goes through a pipeline (basically a CI pipeline) to build the map artifact and tiles serve…

It's an executive order, not a law. There is absolutely no reason for Google, MapQuest or anyone else to change the name of the lake in their map. Google chooses to do so, MapQuest chooses not to. That says nothing about the speed of their pipeline, and everything about their desire to appease the government.

Re: Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" faster than US Government

#50

Post by BizarroLand »

mcv wrote: post #43
floro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be naive to expect anything else. Corporations only exist to make profit. They will never take an action that risks that. Some people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that companies like Google who often voice support for left wing politics do that for any other reason than that it's profitable. Google relies on (corrupt) collaboration with the US government so they will never disobey their orders to…

That doesn't make it any less disgusting, though. And there are also companies that aren't quite so eager to comply.

It's honestly shocking how many people have already separated companies from the people that run them. "It's okay that they did evil, they had to! It's for profit!"

Take a step out of the cave and look around, it's all people. There is no such thing as a soulless automaton, it may just be a machine but there is a person pushing its buttons, there is a man behind the curtain, and you should pay attention to him or whatever the equivalent psychological parable is that works for you.

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