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A comment on Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps?. Parent comment

Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by freewizard on Monday May 17, 2021 @05:30PM (#27188693)
What I learned a few years back about this is the official (un)obfuscating implementation was distributed to licensed companies in binary .dll/.so/.a , and not allowed to be redistributed or reverse-engineered. Licenses are only given to local companies, and foreign companies may only buy service from them. That's why if you reverse engineer Google Map or Apple Map app, they all make real time API calls to do the conversion on servers. Those contracts may also limit the end user who can consume these APIs to be in China, hence foreign users will see the shifts of roads/etc.

The open-sourced implementation one may find on the internet are probably thru sth like curve fitting by sampling many data points. It may have good enough approximations but may not work one day if the gov agency decides to change the algorithm. Changing algorithm is a backward compatibility hell but not a big problem for the industry actually, because most Map apps are owned by big corp which has resource and motivation to comply.

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by xkcd-sucks on Monday May 17, 2021 @05:40PM (#27188777)
> distributed to licensed companies in binary .dll/.so/.a , and not allowed to be redistributed or reverse-engineered

Such irony in CCP using licensing to protect their IP

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by seniorivn on Monday May 17, 2021 @06:48PM (#27189335)
only if you have misconception about what ccp and other one party states actually are
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by mastazi on Monday May 17, 2021 @07:51PM (#27189787)
> you have misconception

and what's the "correct-conception"?[1]

I'm curious because I get what parent means in terms of intellectual property issues in China but I don't get what do you mean from your comment, especially the fact that you include "other party states" - is it some sort of general rule that you're hinting at?

[1] funny, I just realised that there is no antonym of "misconception"

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by mncharity on Monday May 17, 2021 @11:14PM (#27190905)
Verconception? - truth, 7 hits on google. Orthoconception? - straight, also 7 hits. Benconception? - good, 80 hits off topic. What else...?

At least in science education, misconceptions are so vastly more common than correct conceptions, that it makes sense there's a compact negative form but not a positive one. /s

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[dead]
Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by mastazi on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @02:17AM (#27191742)
I had the impression that parent was implying that it’s not surprising for China to invoke IP protection - which is not the case with crime syndicates for obvious reasons.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by pjmlp on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @01:19AM (#27191483)
Like US during McCarthy era.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by leephillips on Monday May 17, 2021 @08:25PM (#27189975)
Not really funny, as nouns in general do not have antonyms.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by mastazi on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @02:22AM (#27191759)
Generally nouns prefixed with mis- do; sometimes you just remove the mis- part eg. understanding vs misunderstanding, management vs mismanagement etc.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by leephillips on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @09:21AM (#27194195)
You make my point. Your examples are not pairs of antonyms. Management is not the opposite of mismanagement.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by Tabular-Iceberg on Monday May 17, 2021 @07:51PM (#27189790)
If you think you know better what the CCP is, why don’t you educate us?
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by rhizome on Monday May 17, 2021 @09:37PM (#27190410)
Hey, I'll bite: they are a thousands-year old country who has seen nations like the US and protectionist strategies like IP law come and go for centuries. They probably know what the US is going to do before the US knows what they're going to do, and certainly before the US knows what CCP is going to do.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by chii on Monday May 17, 2021 @09:44PM (#27190447)
> they are a thousands-year old country

china, the ethnicity, is indeed thousands years old. CCP, however, is barely over 70 yrs old.

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by Xixi on Monday May 17, 2021 @10:05PM (#27190569)
Nickpicking: the CCP foundational congress was held on 23 July 1921, making it 100 years old in a couple of month. The Red Army was founded on 15 July 1927, which is why it is generally assumed (seriously or not, I don't know) that China aims at reuniting with Taiwan before 2027.

But the CCP has been controlling mainland China for a little bit over 70 years, indeed.

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by dronesoul on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @06:26AM (#27192973)
to be even more correct, china isn't one culture or one ethnicity. it covers a huge area, and especially before modern times, it was composed of a lot of different cultures and ethnicities, with a shitload of different languages and customs. CCP and other earlier powers (Emperors?) just brought them all, or large chunks, under a common flag.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by yakubin on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @06:46AM (#27193068)
Most importantly, a common writing system, common to a huge area. One that mathematicians successfully took inspiration from and repeated the success of universality at an even greater scale.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by rhizome on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @07:30PM (#27202671)
Think bigger. There is cultural knowledge going back further than any particular political or economic system. China has seen those come and go within its own borders, too.
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by eruci on Monday May 17, 2021 @10:15PM (#27190622)
It is fun to see such a discussion - I've been working on my own implementation of de-obfuscating Mars Coordinates since January 2021 with very good results. And Yes, some curve fitting is involved.

At the end of the day they may obfuscate coordinates and blur maps, but the truth will eventually come out.

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by bunfunton on Thursday May 20, 2021 @12:17PM (#27223116)
R tree
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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by humaniania on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @12:12AM (#27191178)
"they all make real time API calls to do the conversion on servers"

Can't imagine why anyone would want that to happen.....

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Re:Why is the Gaza Strip blurry on Google Maps? by sneak on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @04:35AM (#27192406)
You seem to be implying surveillance. I think the actual answer is "because if the library were downloadable, the algorithm used for military physical security would be quickly reverse-engineered."
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