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Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

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Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#421

Post by maratc »

Thorrez wrote: post #418
maratc wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be a little more intelligent. E.g. a coffeeshop has a constant stream of accounts on its IP that appear only once or twice. So it might be considered "a public place". So no association is done over accounts arriving from that IP. Your home, OTOH, might have only two accounts on its IP for years, so the association here is stronger. A cookie shared between two accounts is even a stronger indication, as a p…

Sure it could be more intelligent, but there would always be false positives. For example a Google employee's spouse could likely get correlated. False positives sounds like a bad idea for a system that tries to match personal and work accounts. Also in my case it would be harder possibly because I have a ton of personal Google accounts. >A cookie shared between two accounts is even a stronger indication, as a person…

There is a ton of other information. E.g. for the “security” you are asked to provide a backup email address for your Google account. Also, for the same reason, everyone is now required to provide a cellphone number. If you used one of your Google accounts as a backup for another, or used the same recovery phone number for both, these two accounts can be linked to a same person. This comes in addition to other information about possible links, like geolocation or other trove of data they might have. If you added several accounts to check emails, your phone checks all of them every couple of minutes, from the same IP at the same time, whether you’re at home or not.

In short, the amount of data you are passing to Google, willingly or not, allows them to link these to a single person — you — with an extremely high certainty.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#422

Post by petre »

slickrick216 wrote: post #126

Google maps has marked my parents in laws drive way as a road. The drive way is quite long as they are on a farm. Due to a right of way for an owner of a field who owns an enclave within their land they can’t put a gate up. It’s quite unmistakable you are going into someone’s house though. This has led to countless individuals showing up and driving through their land past their home. Lots of people stop and ask for…

Errect a signpost with a discouraging message.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#423

Post by londons_explore »

mbirth wrote: post #356
londons_explore wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google won't look in OSM... All kinds of legal hurdles there... They can look in some government maps, depending on the licenses.

I wouldn't say so. According to [1] they're a big supporter of OSM. [1]: https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/615/can-google-maps...

> Google, and other companies are welcome to use OpenStreetMap Data as long as they meet their obligations in the OpenStreetMap License.

But they do not make wide use of OSM data, because one of the terms of the license is attribution, of which there is none on any Google product I have seen.

I would guess they are big supporters of OSM as a hiring thing - by supporting an opensource project, you will get young engineers interested in mapping, some of which will then go work on Google Maps.

It also helps any antitrust cases if Google isn't the only game in town, which was the case for many years.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#424

Post by Talanes »

mark-r wrote: post #415
Talanes wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need more cooperation to put a pin-code activated electronic gate up.

But at least the gate would automatically close once they went through.

Just need a gate that exerts tension when it's opened, so it'll drift back to closed if someone forgets. I've crossed a lot of back-country gates, never seen a wild breakdown of the system.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#425

Post by random5634 »

konschubert wrote: post #258
random5634 wrote: post #3

Here's a link with an image of the highway of bones: https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-12-23/perdidos-en-la-t... Here is a video of a drive along it between the cities mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98 Insane cold in this area - I'd be curious what type of preparation they had for this, and why not turn back if things were impassable? Google in the USA maps lots of roads that a…

Google suggested a side road apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25574961

Very helpful, thanks for this!

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#426

Post by garaetjjte »

thret wrote: post #339
jlangenauer wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be up to people to have to spend time and money to correct Google's errors, and to stop Google inconviencing them. Somehow, it has become completely accepted for Google/FB/et al to make profits while shifting costs and externalities onto society. Why do we allow these tech giants to treat us so disgracefully?

Do you even remember what it was like trying to find your way around a foreign city before google maps? They mapped the world and provided it as a service for free.

There were other mapping services too. Google also didn't start from blank map, they bought data from Navteq/TeleAtlas.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#427

Post by mark-r »

Talanes wrote: post #424
mark-r wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at least the gate would automatically close once they went through.

Just need a gate that exerts tension when it's opened, so it'll drift back to closed if someone forgets. I've crossed a lot of back-country gates, never seen a wild breakdown of the system.

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. You can't do that with a rope.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#428

Post by oska »

s0rce wrote: post #144
neffy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the obvious solution to this would be for Google to provide a sensible way to accept corrections to their maps. We had to get a change made to Google maps to prevent people getting killed here, and it took national news, and personal contacts within the organisation. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

In the US its pretty easy to submit corrections. I've submitted a few corrections on US public lands but now I usually don't bother and just update open street map instead.

> and just update open street map instead

I think this is the right approach. Why do free ground-proofing for a for-profit company? (Who is also so unresponsive). Better to submit fixes to a community project.

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#429

Post by Breza »

Reason077 wrote: post #337
SECProto wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've used the suggest a change feature within Maps? I've done that several times and I think it always worked for me. I've had a road that is mis-named near me. I've used the "suggest a change" feature multiple times, but have never gotten a response other than the automated "it'll be reviewed". Road is still mis-named. Other changes i've suggested have gone through in hours.

> "I've had a road that is mis-named near me. I've used the "suggest a change" feature multiple times, but have never gotten a response other than the automated "it'll be reviewed". Road is still mis-named." I wonder if it would be easier to just change the street signs rather than convince Google to make the correction.

That sounds like something Douglas Adams would suggest

Re: Google Maps changes a route after the drama of young people lost on a ghost road

#430

Post by Reason077 »

Breza wrote: post #429
Reason077 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I've had a road that is mis-named near me. I've used the "suggest a change" feature multiple times, but have never gotten a response other than the automated "it'll be reviewed". Road is still mis-named." I wonder if it would be easier to just change the street signs rather than convince Google to make the correction.

That sounds like something Douglas Adams would suggest

There is some precedent. Entire countries have had to change their name (or at least, sparked serious debate about it) because of Google:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/czech-prime-minister-wants-to-k...

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