The UN challenges five centuries of cartography • Hacker News Board

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#321

Post by anon7000 » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

nickdothutton wrote: post #268

respectattentio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is insane how the big mistake lasted. After seeing each country before and after side by side on a website, it's insane how big the difference in false sizes of countries compared. Like Greenland vs Africa, come on man!! This must be a joke (and still lasted 457 years).

I thought everyone learned the Mercator use case in school? It is for marine navigation. A line of constant bearing will always appear straight on it. If you want to see the relative size of continents that's a different use case and you need a different projection.

I mean even for marine navigation, you use digital solutions now. But paper charts people would use before aren’t exactly zoomed out to show the whole world. So I feel like this whole world Mercator projection hasn’t been very relevant for a long time, even for navigation

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#322

Post by WelkinFolk » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

GJim wrote: post #320

WelkinFolk wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, of course we were shown a globe "once". My father had one at home too, though tucked away under a mountain of files and other things in his gigantic cabinet. But 99% of the time, a kid would see the world via maps in books, notebooks, projected onto the board, etc. And we didn't have a "geography classroom". We had one classroom for a set number of kids - like 8A, 8B, etc. (where "8" is the class/grade). The…

Good Lord! I can only suggest that your education system was in a state of failure.

I mean, most nations aren't as rich as the "West" + East Asia.

I come from a small town, but I still managed to do fine for myself.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#323

Post by antonvs » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #188

antonvs wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard Dymaxion projection centers on the North Pole, which doesn’t address the whole issue of favoring the northern hemisphere.

How australians see it? Is north up or bottom?

Australians are mostly the descendants of British colonists (and prisoners) - the most successful colonizers in history - so the answer is what you might expect.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#324

Post by SR2Z » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:02 AM UTC

respectattentio wrote: post #275

nickdothutton wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought everyone learned the Mercator use case in school? It is for marine navigation. A line of constant bearing will always appear straight on it. If you want to see the relative size of continents that's a different use case and you need a different projection.

Never knew that and millions are so. Why? Because it is not used just for marine navigation. It is mostly used for everything related to maps and apps with maps.

Apps with maps use a specific and different Mercator projection which produces a nice quadtree for dynamically loading data. This is possible with other projections too, but reprojection and training users to expect a different looking map is expensive.

Almost nobody plots courses of constant bearing on a map. Almost nobody uses a map to measure area either.

99% of the use cases for maps these days are for local navigation where artifacts are minor. The differences in map projection are basically irrelevant to users in these cases.