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Terra Bella

terrabella.google.com

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Re: Terra Bella

#121

Post by alexbecker »

adamkaz wrote: post #42
manaskarekar wrote: post #4

This post makes me wonder about space pollution/saturation. Are there any resources that talk about what is a safe number of satellites for different altitudes and the effects of space pollution? I have heard of the Kessler Syndrome, any suggestions that discuss this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

"Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space." The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

This is called the "big sky theory". Most people thought a satellite collision would never happen. Then it did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

Re: Terra Bella

#122

Post by gkya »

kanche wrote: post #7
taylorwc wrote: post #2

This project is amazing. The site's scrolling should be memorialized in a museum of awful user experiences for posterity's sake.

Does anyone really like this kind of scrolljacking pages? Not responding properly on an MBP 2015. The project looks so interesting that I tortured myself by scrolling till the end. To me it feels similar to invasion of space.

> Does anyone really like this kind of scrolljacking pages?

Web devs. I guess it's like an accomplishment for them to create sth. like this (tho I didn't see it, just what I saw from the comments, if it's laggy on a recent macbook, I don't bother). In this context I think it is a bit like high-fructose corn syrup: The whole thing seems superfluous, what would I be able to do if I could watch a volcano eruption? Throw water from a plane? Tweet #stoplavaviolence? What benefit would I, or any construction companies would have from watching that particular gold mine? If I have a business there, I'd probably know what's going on, and I'd try to make acquaintances to get information directly, instead of trying to get it out of some pixels. If a video from high up was needed for an humanitarian situation, a helicopter can go up and take the video. All this stupidity should be marketed, and the website is the confectioner's sugar for the crap called Terra Bella. Terra bella, coeptum superfluus.

Re: Terra Bella

#123

Post by dcposch »

mmanfrin wrote: post #93
hackuser wrote: post #71

While it will have some great uses, it also brings more surveillance and predictive analytics (if that's the term) to the world, and chillingly they don't address the social issues at all. Will Google use this, or allow others to use this, to surveil me from space? How about protesters at this summer's U.S. political conventions? Will they allow me to use this to watch Google's headquarters? It also concentrates more…

Such technology is already being used in this way, and has been compared chillingly to tracking 'precrime'; there is a terrifying Radiolab episode on it: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

Thats about Gorgon Stare and similar plane / blimp / drone based survillance.

Satellites orbit at an altitude several 100 times higher and are much less invasive. There are a lot of cool applications, like cartography, monitoring farmland, monitoring the icecaps, etc.

I care deeply about civil liberties, but I think this is not the droid we're looking for.

Re: Terra Bella

#124

Post by marcelluspye »

blfr wrote: post #85
cpeterso wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an unusable page like this even pass preliminary design review? Perhaps the page works well on the 16-core desktop computers with giant monitors common in the ivory tower.

I'm not going to defend the design choices here but it performs fine on my four year old laptop running Firefox/Ubuntu, so it requires neither a very powerful hardware, nor Chrome which is a more common failure mode.

I agree. Viewed it on a chromebook and the site performance was fine.

Re: Terra Bella

#125

Post by 21 »

blfr wrote: post #85
cpeterso wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an unusable page like this even pass preliminary design review? Perhaps the page works well on the 16-core desktop computers with giant monitors common in the ivory tower.

I'm not going to defend the design choices here but it performs fine on my four year old laptop running Firefox/Ubuntu, so it requires neither a very powerful hardware, nor Chrome which is a more common failure mode.

On my very beefy computer, but with a 10 Mbps connection the experience is kind of shitty - it takes around half a second after a "scroll" for the content to appear.

Re: Terra Bella

#126

Post by btian »

hackuser wrote: post #71

While it will have some great uses, it also brings more surveillance and predictive analytics (if that's the term) to the world, and chillingly they don't address the social issues at all. Will Google use this, or allow others to use this, to surveil me from space? How about protesters at this summer's U.S. political conventions? Will they allow me to use this to watch Google's headquarters? It also concentrates more…

I'd like Google to track down highway patrol cops and integrate it with Waze / Maps.

Re: Terra Bella

#127

Post by 21 »

dhimes wrote: post #57
zzleeper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still do not know how is this actionable. So, they have satellites that take cool pictures, ok. Are they selling the stuff? Sharing an API?

This is afaict a pr buzz piece. They apparently are hiring.

I think this is also surveilance-wash so to speak. Look at our cool team, look at our wonderful use cases. Don't think about how it can track the movement of everybody in a city from space. We're good.

Re: Terra Bella

#128

Post by [deleted] »

dbcurtis wrote: post #43

Is there a readable version of the web site that doesn't have obnoxious scrolling? Someone needs to tell their designers about the Principle of Least Surprise. I'll look at this after they fix this so it doesn't give me a headache.

[deleted]

Re: Terra Bella

#129

Post by zxexz »

blfr wrote: post #85
cpeterso wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an unusable page like this even pass preliminary design review? Perhaps the page works well on the 16-core desktop computers with giant monitors common in the ivory tower.

I'm not going to defend the design choices here but it performs fine on my four year old laptop running Firefox/Ubuntu, so it requires neither a very powerful hardware, nor Chrome which is a more common failure mode.

It runs fine on my "ancient" 2008 TP X200. The problem is the hijacking of scrolling, and the back button...

Re: Terra Bella

#130

Post by zxexz »

Raphmedia wrote: post #62
dbcurtis wrote: post #43

Is there a readable version of the web site that doesn't have obnoxious scrolling? Someone needs to tell their designers about the Principle of Least Surprise. I'll look at this after they fix this so it doesn't give me a headache.

There: http://pastebin.com/raw/kYpdLgYg

Wow. That was infinitely more readable. Better UX.
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