Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 223 posts

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#201

Post by dvtv75 »

slavik81 wrote: post #169
dickbasedregex wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't everyone else pronounce and spell things however they feel is nicest? Because chaos.

I realise it could be a problem if words become unrecognised, but there's already a few spelling variations among neighbours. People are flexible. Heck, they can understand eevn wehn yuo wrte lkie tihs. You say tomato; I say tomato.

> Heck, they can understand eevn wehn yuo wrte lkie tihs.

Not aywlas. I keep sineeg tihs, and ftnrqleeuy fnid mlesyf nidneeg to dcgrusaioe (or at lesat cllhgeane) the ptsooiin. For slaml wdros it can wrok, but I fnid tihs is iltnrheeny dcfuliift (and dnniirag, as wlel as fttrrnsaiug!) to raed, and dns'eot slace to let you raed in a ceorneht fhisoan oevr a ranblaosee poierd wtih mtlui-sllibyac wrods.

Iiagnme a cueopmtr sncciee or poolsghcyy txet dylpaeisd or ogzeriand tihs way. It wulod be ulllnntiigbee, or at the vrey bset a sptmbuioal mhoted of trrrnfnseiag lraeg qnttaiiues of dlteeiad itfrimaoonn atalccurey.

Butifyou'regoingtomessupwordsandclaimreadability,whynottakeoutspacesandseehowyoumightfare?

Orsrmcablewrdosinsteeenncswhoitutseacps,too?

Hope there aren't any spelling mistakes, I tried to ensure everything was correct before I messed with it. I spent way too long on this, and since I've tried to check everything out I need a break. It was still quite enjoyable to do, although I'm sure it had a negative impact on my spelling.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#202

Post by closeparen »

adfm wrote: post #126
reaperducer wrote: post #73

I deal with this with one of the web sites I maintain. I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names from advertisements as if they are canonical. In my case, the city in question puts out a very specific, very legally defined map of each neighborhood, and has for more than a century. But real estate agents make up names for the neighborhoods, or fudge the boundaries to improve selling p…

You have to wonder if this has anything to do with their Neighborly app. Maps are how we collectively tell our stories and controlling the language used in those stories affects the outcome. Remember when everyone was calling that chunk of SOMA with the shitty overpriced condos the East Cut? What ever happened to all the people that lived there after the crash?

The build quality here is as good as it gets for multifamily, IMO.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#203

Post by closeparen »

_lqaf wrote: post #67
antoncohen wrote: post #32

Why is this Google's fault? I walk through The East Cut nearly every day, and I admit I was confused by the rebranding. But it wasn't done by Google. There are people cleaning the sidewalks in East Cut shirts, banners that say East Cut, real estate companies that call it East Cut. It would be a little weird if Google ignored the name. Yes, "The East Cut" is a strange name. But that area as never part of South Beach (…

It is not the East Cut. It will never be the East Cut. That is Rincon, and the real-estate marketeers can bite me. Put another way, you can call things whatever you want, but a marketing campaign does not obligate me to accept your silly branding nonsense.

I’ve found exactly zero people who recognize the name “Rincon Hill,” including Bay Area natives. I get stuck describing it as “east of SOMA, south of the Financial District, kinda near the Ferry Building and Salesforce Tower” before people recognize what I’m talking about. So I don’t mind the initiative to give it a single crisp name.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#204

Post by ErikAugust »

tspike wrote: post #199
ErikAugust wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names from advertisements as if they are canonical." --- "Currently the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising... We expect that commercial search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers..." - Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 1998 http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ba…

I particularly love this section: > Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" t…

"For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine."

---

If you go and search "Delta" today on Google, the top result is an advertisement for Delta that points to delta.com.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#205

Post by fjsolwmv »

bigiain wrote: post #192
daveFNbuck wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People already do that and it works fine.

For some things. Your compiler isn't going to care about your opinion of the prettiest way to spell "print". Your lawyer is going to have strong opinions about how you spell you name and address on the contract you're about to sign. Sure, if you're writing poetry, you get to choose everything. If you need what you write to be as close to unambiguously understood as possible to other people (or machines) - then you ne…

In most of the USA outside of San Francisco, authoritarianism is frowned upon. In China and SF, the government is more free to tell people how to speak and live. It's a cultural difference.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#206

Post by fjsolwmv »

extralego wrote: post #90
daveFNbuck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the maps made by the city council are superior because they're a better reflection of how popular an area is?

No. Because they are a result of democracy.

The free market has democratic power the government lacks.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#207

Post by daveFNbuck »

bigiain wrote: post #192
daveFNbuck wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People already do that and it works fine.

For some things. Your compiler isn't going to care about your opinion of the prettiest way to spell "print". Your lawyer is going to have strong opinions about how you spell you name and address on the contract you're about to sign. Sure, if you're writing poetry, you get to choose everything. If you need what you write to be as close to unambiguously understood as possible to other people (or machines) - then you ne…

My compiler doesn't allow me to make up spelling in my code, but my friends are fine with me making up alternate spelling when I text them. Not everything is computer code or legal documents.

The names that bureaucrats or real estate agents give to neighborhoods has never mattered to me. Why do you think we have to be beholden to it? My point is that you're free to call your neighborhood whatever you want. I'm sure you're capable of figuring out which name is appropriate to use depending on the context of your conversation.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#208

Post by daveFNbuck »

gt_ wrote: post #190
daveFNbuck wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't change my username, but you don't have to refer to me by my official username. Furthermore, it's ok that my government ID doesn't say daveFNbuck even though I'm using it as my name here. There are almost no situations where people refer to me by the name in my government records, and that's fine. Those records still work for their intended purpose and there's no need to update them to match my nicknames or…

> You can’t change my username. But what if they could? The issue here isn’t that Google got the name wrong, but that they actively chose a new one and could change it to the new one because the public depends on a private entity’s map system and that private entity is able to manipulate the representation in their own private interest. > If the name “The East Cut” either, but they already had one and preferred it. I…

If Google were doing something malicious that caused real and important harm, I'd probably agree with you that what they were doing was wrong. I don't see the harm here, and I don't see malice. They weren't doing this capriciously, they were doing this at the behest of a nonprofit created by the community.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#209

Post by dredmorbius »

...The pattern proposed to replace the numerical avenues in the Richmond and Sunset was simple. The streets would run Arguello, Borca, Coronado, De Soto... to Zamorano for 26th Avenue. Some of the proposed names had historical significance; others were Spanish names that fit the pattern. After the 26th letter, the pattern would be Spanish saints, so that 27th Avenue would be San Antonio and 47th Avenue would be Santa Ynez. Unable to find a saint's name for K, Q, W or Z the Commission had two streets left over and recommended Alcatraz and La Playa to end the sequence.

After the proposal had its first reading before the Board of Supervisors on November 8, 1909, the western neighborhoods had an immediate hostile reaction. The more populated Richmond District took the lead and fiery orators were chosen to speak out at the Board meeting a week later. When the Board met on November 15, the speakers from the two western neighborhoods decried the idea of changing streets to these "unpronounceable" Spanish names. Orators got up and berated the Board for "selling out" to the Spanish we had so nobly defeated only a few years previously in the Philippines. The over-riding sentiment was that the accepting of these names would be a humiliation and henceforth the Richmond and Sunset would be mocked as "Spanish Town". Despite the vigorous oratory, the Board of Supervisors voted 12 to 5 to accept the recommended changes.

Outraged, the residents of the western avenues got organized to fight this imposition of Spanish names on their streets....

"Spanish Town"

http://www.outsidelands.org/street-names.php

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#210

Post by dredmorbius »

paidleaf wrote: post #35
sonnyblarney wrote: post #3

Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders. The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one. 'Both sides' have their view of it. But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support - particularly those in modern nations that might have influence. China is aware of this and the…

> China is aware of this and they control any maps their citizens will ever see. Everyone is aware of it. Maps have always been political. Maps and borders are political creations. Why is it that whenever a controversial topic comes up, people always bring up china? Every HN thread that has a controversial topic, someone always sneaks in a reference to china? > "Of course all that ocean between Philippines and Vietna…

I encountered a gentleman on G+ who argued most stridently that "the British Isles" was an absolutely unacceptible term for the large archipelago lying to the northeast of mainland Europe.

He is, it happens, Irish.

(His view is also poorly supported, and worse argued.)

Post reply on HN