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Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#221

Post by skykooler »

vbezhenar wrote: post #176
capableweb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure where in the world you are, but accuracy depends on the satellite you're receiving data from. Commercial GPS satellites (or rather the stream you receive) also have better precision than normal "consumer" ones, and one could assume military has the most accurate ones. The new Galileo (Europe) system has a accuracy down to 1 meter, while GLONASS (Russia) has something like 3 meters. The commercial accuracy…

How commercial and normal are differentiated? Is it possible to crack it and use in your own GPS device?

Part of it is the difference in the receiver hardware. Survey-grade GPS uses the phase of the signals as well as their timestamps to measure sub-wavelength resolution. This requires larger antennas and much heavier-duty processing hardware, and generally only works when stationary as well, so it's not really feasible for a mobile device.

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#222

Post by aasasd »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #212
dudul wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think it is easier to watch as a teen 5han an adult. I watched it a lot with my buddies when I was younger, it was one of our cult movies. Today, as an adult and a dad I dont know if I could watch the kid murder scene.

I certainly noticed that fatherhood brought an emotional exploit that various stories like to push in different ways. Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, as with all stories.

Knowing that my friends, one after another, have hormones telling them to defend the newly-expanded family, I will sure try to dump a movie like ‘Funny Games’ on them in the most sneaky manner.

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#223

Post by bernardv »

cinntaile wrote: post #107
smnrchrds wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may ask, what is the story behind your name? For example, is one of your parents francophone and the other one Dutch? Do you speak both languages natively?

Very few people in Belgium speak both French and Flemish natively. It's one or the other, depending on which side of the language border you live on. In Flanders you have compulsory French classes while in Wallonia you don't have compulsory Flemish classes, but the compulsory classes don't get you anywhere near native proficiency. His last name doesn't sound very Flemish so his ancestors probably moved to Wallonia at…

Potferdoume! So much interest in Belgium! 216 comments and counting..

Having said that.. In an attempt to get me to learn Flemish, my parents placed me in a Flemish-speaking school. Most Flemish kids spoke decent French. The other way isn’t so true. Too many French-speaking Belgians don’t bother to learn Flemish.

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#224

Post by agumonkey »

smnrchrds wrote: post #45
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaah I was going to post that :D! It stars one of my favorite comedic actors, Benoît Poelvoorde who is belgian. I'd encourage anyone with a taste for foreign films to check out "C'est arrivé près de chez vous" (Man Bites Dog in english) another great movie of his (features lots of violence and serious themes, not a family movie).

> Benoît Poelvoorde It looks like a very French first name and a very Dutch last name. Is that common in Belgium? Is there a significant overlap between the linguistic communities of Belgium?

talking about dutch-belgian-french, I recently got into Dick Annegarn

His first album "Sacre Geranium" is a strange kind of masterpiece. Naive, comical, poetic, and strangely complex musically at the same time (all that mostly as a solo acoustic guitar voice act)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx4Au2Tchqw&list=OLAK5uy_kBI...

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#225

Post by incompatible »

foobarian wrote: post #119
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS. The border was likely digitized a decade or two ago. Someone noticed the stone didn't match the database.

"One does not simply use GPS to mark a spot..." I tried this at home and it turns out that easily available GPS devices have huge amounts of error, especially without unobstructed line of sight like in woods. I left a phone on a stump recording a walking trail, and it wandered around multiple tens of meters. There is value in what the surveyors do :) Although I guess they would use markers like this as references, so…

There's also the problem that the land itself is often moving, relative to the GPS coordinates, via continental drift. Over decades, or after a large earthquake, it can add up to metres.

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#226

Post by xiphias2 »

csunbird wrote: post #21

> A local history enthusiast was walking in the forest when he noticed the stone marking the boundary between the two countries had moved 2.29m (7.5ft). How do you even measure that effectively? Aren’t the stones more than hundreds of meters away from each other? edit: for example, can I do that as well with minimal equipment (e.g. with just a phone)?

Quite often the border is in the middle or a side of a path / river. I think it was in the middle of the path for a reason.

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#227

Post by tomc1985 »

markvdb wrote: post #188
azalemeth wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very good friend from Flanders. His partner is from wallonia. He told me that the word 'poopen' is nl slang in one community for 'to have sex with' and 'to defecate' in the other. This caused much hilarity.

"Poepen" is nl_nl for "to defecate", and nl_be for "to have sexual intercourse".

That reminds me of "chingar" in Spanish... Mexico/Argentina it means to have sex with, in Chile it means to change

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#228

Post by rosstex »

Wafje wrote: post #35
BerislavLopac wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure how would one really mark this with stones... https://goo.gl/maps/Nn8ygXHJKkfHGFTs9

Or this one, also Belgium: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4408275,4.9469359,14.35z

What exactly is going on here?

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#229

Post by blahedo »

lizknope wrote: post #210
gwright wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another interesting one. A part of Russia that sits on the Baltic Sea disconnected from Russia proper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast

That was basically East Prussia and they forcibly removed the Germans.

And the city of Kaliningrad might be more familiar in this crowd under its old (Prussian) name of Königsberg (as in "Bridges of").

Re: Belgian farmer accidentally moves French border

#230

Post by sellyme »

capableweb wrote: post #70
speedgoose wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says that they removed the woman rape and the kid murder scenes on the American version, 30 years ago. I don't know if people would appreciate such a movie today.

> I don't know if people would appreciate such a movie today I'm fairly certain most people outside of the north-american-cancel bubble know how to separate fantasy from reality, so while maybe hard to watch, there won't be any uproar. Edit: judging by the downvotes, HN is not outside that bubble, my mistake

Alternatively perhaps people on HN are simply aware that the most popular TV show in the last decade was a fantasy show with similar themes produced in North America, which renders your criticism somewhat nonsensical.
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