4 ms·

The shirt may be less funny for some residents of Butler County, Kansas who got swatted because a mapping firm did't resolve unknown locations to Null Island, b

• martinky24 3y ago
  The implication that "unknown locations should default to Null Island", as opposed to some more robust error handling, is also questionable.
  • NoToP 3y ago
    They should default to the point at infinity.
    • dwattttt 3y ago
      I mean, they should default to an out of band error; these days, especially for something as high level as mapping, there's no good reason to need to fold "this is an error case" in with "this is a set of valid coordinates X"
      • NoToP 3y ago
        Psst, the math joke here is that "the point at infinity" is literally the mathematicians version of folding in "this is an error case" with "valid coordinates". The "error case" in question being division by zero. Turns out there is good reason to do it, because it means the co-ordinate is always defined.
        • martinky24 3y ago
          If you have to explain the joke...
          • NoToP 3y ago
            Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.
            • dwattttt 3y ago
              I'd also add that I appreciate a good maths joke, but that's far outweighed by an irrational (in degree) anger at APIs where the error case is a member of the success cases type
    • m463 3y ago
      180°0'0.0"N 180°0'0.0"E Degrees
• justinsaccount 3y ago
  Some of the fault for that issue is with the application developers and not the mapping firm. At least one of the popular data sources does NOT return a long,lat coordinate, it returns a long,lat coordinate plus an "accuracy radius". For unknown US locations this was the "center" of the US plus a 1000km radius.. but most people never used the radius value and only blindly returned the center coordinate as truth. You can see this in action if you go to https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-precision-demo https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-precision-demo and search for 17.1.2.3. it comes back with (37.751, -97.822) with a radius of 1000km. (37.751, -97.822) being the new "adjusted" center that's now in the middle of a reservoir.
• arp242 3y ago
  This is also the problem with some "zero value postcodes", at least in Netherlands[1] – I'm not sure how that works in the US. People just manually fill in "1111 AA", "1234 AB", etc. and forms blindly accept that – it is a valid postcode after all. People have had their utilities disconnected, have debts ascribed to them, are unable to register for services, etc. [1]: (In Dutch) https://www.vice.com/nl/article/wj8b4x/wonen-op-postcode-1234-ab-is-een-bureaucratische-hel-vol-neppost-en-afsluitingen https://www.vice.com/nl/article/wj8b4x/wonen-op-postcode-123...
• barryrandall 3y ago
  That sounds like bad policing being blamed on technology.
  • Calamitous 3y ago
    Why not both?
• flemhans 3y ago
  The House at 56°00'00.0"N 10°00'00.0"E was once shot at by criminals who thought it to be their target.
• lebean 3y ago
  This shirt about a computer bug may not be funny to people who have died from computer bugs.