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Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

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Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#21
post #8

OpenStreetMap still has it: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063... I tried to mark it as closed, but did not find any option for that in potlatch. Can someone else with more experience with OSM help out?

I had look at this history and someone marked the roads as closed some time last night. The bridge itself was later removed by another user. Later still, another user (from Turkey) seems to have completely replaced everything back to normal for some reason. We need a local user to make the correct changes and make sure they're kept that way.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changesets?bbox=-122.345...

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#22

Apparently Google is quick to respond to infrastructural failures. So why didn't it remove calibration scores, and convert the Perf Room to something fun like an arcade (well, it already is a casino, so maybe something else) many years ago?

Well, they got you to leave.

(For the record, I feel bad saying this... but I'm also just returning snark with snark, so... oh well.)

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#23

This is a more popular story than the fact that the bridge collapsed in the first place?

I hadn't heard this story previously, so I was not sure what happened. I guess we're on the wrong site to get general news, of course a tech story would be ranked higher :)

There's a link further down. The bridge had section collapsed last night after a truck hit an overhead beam.

Edit: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#24

Apparently Google is quick to respond to infrastructural failures. So why didn't it remove calibration scores, and convert the Perf Room to something fun like an arcade (well, it already is a casino, so maybe something else) many years ago?

Well, they got you to leave. (For the record, I feel bad saying this... but I'm also just returning snark with snark, so... oh well.)

There's a difference. You know very little about me and where I come from and why I see things the way I do. Do I bring a lot of negativity into these discussions? Sure, but that's needed because I don't want thousands of people to repeat mistakes that I did. If bringing a realistic or even slightly pessimistic tone to this often out-of-touch startup discussion is the cost to prevent a thousand young kids from wrecking their careers, then good.

However, I've articulated deep managerial problems with Google that the company refuses to solve, and many of those can be fixed easily and for free.

So there's no comparison between what I say and what you said.

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they got you to leave. (For the record, I feel bad saying this... but I'm also just returning snark with snark, so... oh well.)

There's a difference. You know very little about me and where I come from and why I see things the way I do. Do I bring a lot of negativity into these discussions? Sure, but that's needed because I don't want thousands of people to repeat mistakes that I did. If bringing a realistic or even slightly pessimistic tone to this often out-of-touch startup discussion is the cost to prevent a thousand young kids from wrecki…

What are you guys talking about? What is a Perf Room?

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference. You know very little about me and where I come from and why I see things the way I do. Do I bring a lot of negativity into these discussions? Sure, but that's needed because I don't want thousands of people to repeat mistakes that I did. If bringing a realistic or even slightly pessimistic tone to this often out-of-touch startup discussion is the cost to prevent a thousand young kids from wrecki…

What are you guys talking about? What is a Perf Room?

Don't worry about it if you don't work at Google.

Every quarter, managers get together to horse-trade "performance points" (or "calibration scores") and generate a company-wide stack ranking of all engineers. If you end up in the bottom 5% (which sometimes happens to people just because their managers don't show up) then you end up on a PIP and your career at Google is over. That monstrosity is called Perf.

The "Perf Room" is a metaphor on most campuses because most of the smaller ones don't actually have a dedicated room "where it happens" for calibration.

"Take you into the Perf Room" is a common managerial threat, but actually everyone is calibrated and the meeting happens in secret (most engineers never learn their scores) so people don't actually literally get taken "into the Perf Room". It's just an expression for a bad review.

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#27

If I zoom out, I don't see it: http://puu.sh/3081u.png But at the default zoom level, I do see it: http://puu.sh/30828.png

There is some interesting stuff going on there.

The vector generated tile at the higher zoom has been redrawn while the tile below has not been redrawn yet, I would assume the redraw rate would be less frequent the more you zoom in do to decreased demand for the tiles.

The second interesting thing is that even though the raster tiles have had the bridge removed from the draw instruction the vector data for the click map on the map is still intact. That is interesting because that means that the vector data used to render tiles is operating at a different version than the vector data that is draw on the map. Which could lead to all kinds of weird scenarios.

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#28

So what's next? A camera drone quadrocopter flies out and updates street view once something notable changes? That would be classy.

Sensors in the bridge to tell when it's in a dangerous state; Google et al. consume the feed to update routing

Re: Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

#30

This is a more popular story than the fact that the bridge collapsed in the first place?

Further to this, it's a pretty interesting technical problem to think about why the bridge collapsed. A compression member or node at the top of the truss that forms the main span seems to have failed for some reason. The news story linked in another comment below says the truck hit something. This[0] secondary(tertiary?) truss looks like it might have taken a hit? It forms part of the horizontal truss above the carriageways which resists shear in the horizontal plane and therefore provides torsional stability; the bridge is effectively a braced tube, I think. Maybe the hit on that pulled the main compression member out of alignment enough for it to buckle? I'm not an engineer, but I'm pretty interested in engineering, I'd be interested to know if anyone with better knowledge can spot an obvious reason for the collapse.

[0] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...

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