[HN Gopher] Null Island is one of the most visited places on Ear...
___________________________________________________________________
Null Island is one of the most visited places on Earth, and it
doesn't exist
Author : pncnmnp
Score : 119 points
Date : 2023-04-21 10:32 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| ggm wrote:
| One of the richest postcodes in Britain exists because office
| workers marked uncoded addresses with a default and it wound up
| appearing in stats for GDP/income despite being a barren
| wasteland in reality.
| rhplus wrote:
| Curiously, Google Maps satellite view does show underwater
| prominences at 0E 0N that are distinctly darker and more detailed
| than those around it. Perhaps at one point in history there
| really was an island there.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/tcBMs8AviWhBdYP69
| Agentlien wrote:
| Maybe it sank due to the weight of all the concurrent visitors?
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's all the Amazon packages that were sent there, slowly
| piling up on the seabed.
| petsfed wrote:
| Looking at the the google earth projection, I wonder if that
| too is just an artifact of the origin. That is, it has features
| that seem to correspond with the latitude and longitude axes.
| Not sure if that's just apophenia at work, or if they're real.
| Anybody with access to sonar maps of the region able to report?
| bloak wrote:
| Perhaps a good API would return some coordinates plus a distance,
| to give an idea of the accuracy, and if the most likely location
| is on private property but there is a public place close to the
| most likely location within the probable region then return the
| nearest public place instead of the most likely location so as to
| avoid problems when incompetent users of the API inevitably
| ignore the accuracy number and send armed police to the given
| coordinates.
|
| In that case (South Pole, 1e6 km) or (Point Nemo, 1e6 km) would
| be a reasonable response when you have no idea of the location,
| and if some armed police freeze to death or drown, then diddums!
| Stevvo wrote:
| Things have a habit of showing up at the world origin in video
| games when something goes wrong. e.g. In older GTA games there
| was usually a big pile of cars under the map at 0,0,0. In MSFS
| multiplayer, planes are showing up at Null Island all the time,
| because the game teleports you there often when using the
| developer-mode.
| shawnz wrote:
| By causing an explosion at 0,0,0 in Ocarina of Time you can
| kill all of the unloaded skulltulas on the map:
| https://youtu.be/aMlXzCYKXDk
| qtzaz wrote:
| Doom: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/(0,0)_respawning_bug
| atomicbeanie wrote:
| Any dumbing down of end-to-end encryption will hand Russia and
| China nuclear powered hacking tools for our economy,
| infrastructure and digital integrity.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I thought that is where little Bobby Tables lived?
| stolenmerch wrote:
| It is, he works at "THAT COMPANY WHOSE NAME USED TO CONTAIN
| HTML SCRIPT TAGS LTD"
| Smaug123 wrote:
| For those who don't know, this is an actual thing: a UK
| company had a name which Companies House listed as "[NAME
| AVAILABLE ON REQUEST FROM COMPANIES HOUSE]" until the company
| changed name to "THAT COMPANY WHOSE NAME USED TO CONTAIN HTML
| SCRIPT TAGS LTD" before finally dissolving last month.
| https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/c...
| duck wrote:
| Via this How can I visit 'Null Island'? thread [0] I discovered
| the Confluence project [1] which seems to be web 1.0 at its best.
|
| 0: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/68027/how-can-
| i-v... 1: https://confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=4040
| mackman wrote:
| Go look for it on the maps Facebook renders for a fun Easter egg.
|
| https://imgur.io/a/zjzZjhQ
|
| I wonder if anyone will recognize it.
| flint wrote:
| Colonel Bleep - and it is called Zero Zero Island
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Bleep
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Let's create a mess by putting something important there.
| tgflynn wrote:
| This makes no sense to me. Generally speaking an application
| should return an error message or code when something goes wrong,
| not a potentially valid piece of data. That an entire industry
| would adopt this kind of workaround for poor software engineering
| is astonishing.
| lmc wrote:
| Welcome to GIS :D
|
| Seriously, it's a domain with huge under-the-surface complexity
| (no pun intended)[1], and most of the early efforts were spent
| in dealing with the maths and science, rather than software
| engineering. Things are getting better though.
|
| [1] here is a good jumping off point (imagine the technical
| debt this might lead to):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_reference_system
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Have you ever seen software that correctly deals with error
| conditions in all circumstances? I sure haven't.
| tgflynn wrote:
| There's a huge difference between recognizing that most
| software will have some bugs and creating a system that's so
| broken by design that you have to invent a fictitious island
| to work around it.
| sk0g wrote:
| My biggest qualm with Go is exactly this. Especially when
| deserialising data, data that wasn't sent vs empty/default data
| can be quite different things, yet you have to be very wary of
| the values you are processing. Ints default to 0, bools to
| false... Fuck.
| tgv wrote:
| Then don't use json.Decoder, or use pointers in your structs.
| smabie wrote:
| Or better solution, don't use Go.
| secretsatan wrote:
| I'm guilty of sending results to null island for various
| reasons and it can be confusing, but to give the user simply an
| error would be worse, as they have nothing rather than
| something.
|
| If for some reason we can't get a geolocation, for various
| reasons, even a user simply denying access to gps, we can still
| deliver meaningful results as while the data is improperly
| located, it still has meaningful coordinates relative to itself
| and can be transformed later.
| tgflynn wrote:
| If you can handle an error and still return meaningful data
| that's fine, but returning the coordinates 0,0 to the user
| because GPS isn't working is far worse than giving them an
| error message. At that point you're essentially lying to
| them.
| secretsatan wrote:
| You need an origin, and tbh, there's things that could be
| worse, somethings that looks close to what you expect, but
| actually subtly wrong, which is something we deal with on
| pretty much a daily basis. At least most of our customers
| are very unlikely to be doing anything at null island and
| the problem is obvious.
|
| To a certain extent, all gps data is lying to you, it's
| about figuring out how much it's lying to you, sticking
| something at 0,0 is fairly tame and much easier to detect
| than something being out by 5cm
|
| We do indicate to the user in the ui if no gps signal is
| available for example, or it's low quality, but sometimes
| we get things like the system reporting it's current
| location as the estimated location of the last wifi
| connection.
|
| We also might start something and have no gps, but acquire
| it later, could be seconds, minutes or never, the accuracy
| can increase and decrease, we don't force the user to give
| up, we record what we can. we still face limitations from
| software further down the chain that require coordinates as
| inputs.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem comes from databases. Sometimes you simply have no
| source for the data. (Say, your phone with GPS turned off and
| now towers around.)
| tgflynn wrote:
| That's what NULL (or it's various equivalents) is for.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I recall that the default place for "unknown" in the US was a
| spot just next to a farm they was raided by the police on a
| regular basis because this is where their GPS was directing them.
| They even had a document to show that explained the thing.
|
| I think that this point was ultimately moved to the center of a
| lake.
| mtmail wrote:
| Found the article. It was an IP-to-coorindates database that
| returned about the center of the United States if the real
| position was unknown or just "US".
|
| "MaxMind's database places them at the same spot:
| 38.0000,-97.0000. Which happens to be in the front yard of
| Joyce Taylor's house."
|
| https://splinternews.com/how-an-internet-mapping-glitch-turn...
| msrenee wrote:
| Those people affected must be so thankful to that reporter. I
| can't imagine what a relief it must have been for him to not
| only tell them what the problem was, but also get in contact
| with the company and get it rectified.
| bragr wrote:
| For those people sure, but apparently people that live in
| the center of other entities (states, counties, zip/postal
| codes), have this problem too, just at a smaller scale.
| tough wrote:
| They can now do whatever the journalist did and get it
| fixed hopefully
| rnk wrote:
| This is basically swatting. Everyone could live in the
| center of some random group. And almost every day there's
| a new example of the police going to the wrong address
| and killing someone. We shouldn't have to defend
| ourselves from the police visiting us so they don't kill
| us in cold blood.
| snarf21 wrote:
| A lot of this had bad fall through logic. Most times if a
| distinct place couldn't be geocoded, it would take the centroid
| of the parent object and use that as an estimate. So if you
| knew it was the US but couldn't find anything specific it might
| pick the center point of the US mainland polygon. Same follows
| for a town in a specific state that can't be found and using
| the state polygon centroid. Product would often prefer a wrong
| map to a "We couldn't find it."
|
| Source: Worked for MapQuest for many many years.
| raron wrote:
| Well, you know, maybe some accuracy numbers should be
| attached to position for emergency services or law
| enforcement... even the default maps app on my phones show a
| accuracy-circle around the got position.
|
| Or use something which represent an area not a point, like
| plus codes.
| yunruse wrote:
| I remember this! A company, MaxMind, provided GeoIP mapping,
| but the default unknown for the US was right on someone's
| property, which lead to severe distress and (quite reasonably)
| a lawsuit [0]. A horrifying example of peculiar glitches
| causing real harm :(
|
| [0]
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/09/maxmind-m...
| romwell wrote:
| > A horrifying example of ~peculiar glitches~ _incompetent
| people with monopoly on violence_ causing real harm :(
|
| The people who authorize the raids aren't supposed to blindly
| rely on tech without being aware of its limitations.
|
| A person who doesn't understand that GeoIP doesn't give you
| coordinates to raid should not be in a position to send raids
| to such coordinates, and is the one ultimately responsible
| for this.
|
| The fact that there will be no consequences for them is the
| real issue.
| treeman79 wrote:
| People are people. First responders are told to go to a
| place and do a thing. That is what they do. They do this
| dozens of times a day. Sometimes the computer is stupid.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| They are not just "people," they're people with guns and
| the power to kill innocent citizens and destroy their
| property with barely any consequences. It's reasonable to
| expect them to be a bit careful about their job.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| It is reasonable to expect, but also they won't. The
| solution is fixing the software rather than being
| indignant about how people should use it correctly.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >First responders are told to go to a place and do a
| thing.
|
| By _whom_? There 's still a human blindly trusting what
| the computer says somewhere in the loop, and we can and
| should expect them to do due diligence for a matter where
| lives are on the line, like a raid.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Sometimes the computer is stupid.
|
| Then the police SWAT teams need to take this into account
| before they go making life and death decisions, don't
| they?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| We used to get regular support calls from concerned test
| operators in military uniforms saying something like "the system
| is heading southeast instead of the direction I sent it". A bunch
| of zeros in the command was always the cause. It was our version
| of "did you try turning it off and on again?".
| pella wrote:
| 2022: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.08383 ( old discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31080519 )
|
| _" I think I discovered a military base in the middle of the
| ocean' -- Null Island, the most real of fictional places"_
|
| by: Levente Juhasz, Peter Mooney
|
| _" This paper explores Null Island, a fictional place located at
| 0[?] latitude and 0[?] longitude in the WGS84 geographic
| coordinate system. Null Island is erroneously associated with
| large amounts of geographic data in a wide variety of location-
| based services, place databases, social media and web-based maps.
| While it was originally considered a joke within the geospatial
| community, this article will demonstrate implications of its
| existence, both technological and social in nature, promoting
| Null Island as a fundamental issue of geographic information that
| requires more widespread awareness. The article summarizes error
| sources that lead to data being associated with Null Island. We
| identify four evolutionary phases which help explain how this
| fictional place evolved and established itself as an entity
| reaching beyond the geospatial profession to the point of being
| discovered by the visual arts and the general population. After
| providing an accurate account of data that can be found at (0,
| 0), geospatial, technological and social implications of Null
| Island are discussed. Guidelines to avoid misplacing data to Null
| Island are provided. Since data will likely continue to appear at
| this location, our contribution is aimed at both GIScientists and
| the general population to promote awareness of this error
| source."_
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| There's a whole Null Archipelago that spans the globe:
| https://smathermather.com/2014/09/10/null-archipelago-null-i...
| addaon wrote:
| Null Island is also the place where so many self-driving cars,
| UAVs, and navigation systems achieve their best possible
| performance.
|
| I've run across multiple products that represent latitude and
| longitude as floats internally. At double precision, this is
| suitable for most purposes... but it does mean that positional
| precision is maximized in and around Null Island, and slowly
| decays as you move away.
|
| I do wish more folks would represent latitude and longitude as
| binary angular measure, or other sane fixed point representation.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, I've "been there". Something glitched in the flight
| mapping system, it showed us coming from there.
| addaon wrote:
| Using zero as a default (the main topic of this article) is
| one thing... I'm pointing out that floating point is able to
| represent points with greater density near Null Island than
| it is in, say, Alaska, just due to the spacing between
| pronounceable coordinates.
| sk0g wrote:
| Games also have this issue, with some creative solutions.
|
| Paraphrasing a GDC talk, in Outer Wilds space travel would
| not work properly -- in that the player character would
| move around a dynamic solar system with a pivot point and
| planets moving about. Instead they made the player the
| world origin (0, 0, 0), and the player 'moving' actually
| moved the world around instead, thus moving objects were
| tracked more accurately the closer they are to you!
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Apple defined this as the middle of nowhere in Classic Mac OS I
| believe.
| karmakaze wrote:
| That's a different co-ordinate. It's the point on the ocean
| surface that is farthest from any land. Found a MacOS System 7
| pic. Seems to be at 56 S, 2 W.
|
| [0] https://www.journaldulapin.com/2017/02/02/easter-egg-
| nulle-p...
| [deleted]
| freyfogle wrote:
| Null Island is great of course, but when it comes to non-existent
| "places" in the ocean I prefer Point Nemo
| https://en.osm.town/@opencage/110207798392328927
| tialaramex wrote:
| But Nemo does exist, it's just not actually very intersting
| since it's notable only in this abstract sense. Similarly when
| the Americans build a base at the geographic South Pole
| (Amundsen-Scott base) the Russians built one at the pole of
| inaccessibility - the place furthest from the sea, which is not
| interesting in the same way as the actual South Pole, but still
| a desolate horrible place to be, grossly unsuited to human
| habitation. Unlike Amundsen-Scott, I believe that Russian base
| is no longer permanently inhabited 'cos it turns out that's
| very expensive and the Russians don't have the same budget for
| such things.
| rupellohn wrote:
| Strava shows some interesting artifacts there:
|
| https://www.strava.com/heatmap#13.00/0.00000/0.00000/hot/all
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Makes sense, as in my experience Strava defaults to 0degN 0degE
| when for whichever reason it cannot get location and it has no
| recent cached info.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Even without Tony Hoare's Billion Dollar Mistake, this sort of
| nonsense is too easy. Do not define types which unnecessarily
| have a "default" value when you know there is no meaningful
| default for the intended type.
|
| This happens way too much for numeric values. "Not applicable" or
| "None" aren't the same thing as zero, but it is seen for other
| types too.
| klysm wrote:
| Unfortunately most languages make this very difficult to avoid
| even when you are trying
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Golang default type values go brrrrrrr.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yes, all the persons in various databases that are born on
| January 1st 1900 (or 1970) because their birth date is unknown
| will agree...
| rmilk wrote:
| Or adding a middle name of "A" because some databases can't
| handle that a person might not have a middle name or middle
| initial.
| xenophonf wrote:
| I have a fairly sophisticated user registration system that
| can't handle people without family names. We had to jump
| through some hoops to be able to enroll people who just
| have given names.
| blackshaw wrote:
| Must have been tough if you rolled out this system in
| Indonesia.
| fencepost wrote:
| I'm still irritated about whatever bit or bits of sloppy
| coding ended up assigning 1/1/1970 as a birthdate for all
| contacts in my Google account that didn't have a birthdate
| specified. Combined with birthday notifications and more
| annoying alerts in older versions of Android or in the
| browser, it made for annoying New Years Day mornings with
| several hundred alerts.
| jdeibele wrote:
| Side note: I use 1/1/70 by default when entering birthdays.
| Only if it's something that I expect to matter - financial or
| medical institution - do I enter my real birthday.
|
| Entering random dates is not a great idea because I seem to
| recall one site (Yahoo!, maybe?) insisting on me entering the
| correct birthday and I had no idea what I put in.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592960 -
| April 2023 (1 comment)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34860299 -
| Feb 2023 (1 comment)
|
| _Null Island, the most real of fictional places [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31080519 - April 2022 (37
| comments)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854780 -
| Dec 2019 (56 comments)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21552176 -
| Nov 2019 (1 comment)
|
| _Null Island_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19329101 -
| March 2019 (1 comment)
|
| _If You Can't Follow Directions, You'll End Up on Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090980 - July 2016 (54
| comments)
|
| _The Republic of NULL Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11734180 - May 2016 (15
| comments)
|
| _The Geographical Oddity of Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11600396 - April 2016 (14
| comments)
|
| _The Republic of Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10952593 - Jan 2016 (2
| comments)
|
| _A Brief History of Null Island_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10949292 - Jan 2016 (7
| comments)
| b1c837696ba28b wrote:
| Null Island is where you will find Bias Beach, the "/dev/null" of
| magnetic tape recording. As in, "where is the guide vocal?" "I
| sent it to Bias Beach to make room for the cowbell."
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Seems like the perfect place to build an artificial Island for
| your anarchist hacker nation if you want to bring a sci-fi novel
| to life.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-21 23:01 UTC)