Google's Satellite Map Gets a 700-Trillion-Pixel Makeover (theatlantic.com) 70
An anonymous reader writes: On Monday, Google Maps has received a makeover with 700 trillion pixels of new data added to the service. The Atlantic reports: "The new map, which activates this week for all users of Google Maps and Google Earth, consists of orbital imagery that is newer, more detailed, and of higher contrast than the previous version. Most importantly, this new map contains fewer clouds than before -- only the second time Google has unveiled a "cloudless" map. Google had not updated its low- and medium- resolution satellite map in three years. The new version of the map includes data from Landsat 8, the newer version of the same satellite (Landsat 7, the U.S. government satellite which supplied the older map's imagery data), letting Google clear the ugly artifacts. Google's new update doesn't include imagery at the highest zoom levels, like the kind needed to closely inspect an individual house, pool, or baseball field. Those pictures do not come from Landsat at all, but from a mix of other public and private aerial and space-based cameras, including DigitalGlobe's high-resolution satellites. The image processing for this most recent map was completed entirely in Google Earth Engine, the company's geospatial-focused cloud infrastructure. In fact, the entire algorithm to create the cloudless map was written in Javascript in the Earth Engine development interface."
Reality TV (Score:2)
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Good grief - someone else who knows who Pixler was, and what his work suggests. That's a surprise!
Shouldn't this be... (Score:4, Informative)
US government releases new 700 trillion pixel images with fewer clouds. Groups using old US government data (including Google Maps) upgrade to new data.
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US government releases new 700 trillion pixel images with fewer clouds. Groups using old US government data (including Google Maps) upgrade to new data.
No... the US government released a bunch of individual, cloudy images. Google took them and make a cloud-free image out of them.
Apparently your name is misleading.
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The Government also calibrated each image, so each pixel represented the same location as that same pixel on every other map. So, that was the hard part. The fact it, it was a 3D image (3rd dimension being time) and Google compressed it down to 2D.
Look, I mean, I guess Google doing that is nice. But, given the whole "what's the government ever done" attitude, highlighting when they do the heavy lifting seems important.
Java Script? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously? This was done in Java Script? No wonder it took so long. Just sayin'.
I have a nagging feeling that where parts of this where written in Java Script (as in the user interface stuff that displays this shiny new data) the actual image processing to find and edit out the clouds was written in something else.... I don't work for Google so it's just a hunch...
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Any shitty language can be halfway usable if you throw enough computing power at it.
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Yes I know.. Java is a prime example of that.. Not that it is a bad language, but that byte-code interpreted thing is kind of a performance killer over the likes of C/C++ (And I'm only talking about performance here youngsters...)
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source --> bytecode --> native still incurs a large penalty.
Re:Java Script? (Score:5, Informative)
This is why they're called a "Just in time compiler"
Something of a mischaracterization. It is really a "Better late than never" compiler.
Re: Java Script? (Score:2)
http://blog.carlesmateo.com/20... [carlesmateo.com]
Check the difference in performance between compile once and jit compiled languages. A bunch of people here sound like theyre repeating what was true 15 years ago in very different conditions.
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Still, a *properly* written C++ program will run circles around the same Java program. It will consume less resources and run faster.
What's added to the speed of Java over the last decade? Mostly, it has come by re-coding parts of what used to be in Java using other languages and making it part of the JRE, creating more parallel threads and leveraging the improved multi-core, multiple thread execution of today's hardware. Java still consumes more CPU and memory resources, it is just easier to spread it
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CPU is cheap. Memory is cheap.
Developer Resource (especially that which knows how to write efficient decent C++ code) is expensive.
This is why most code is really a shim over a massive framework (e.g., in Java that framework would be Spring), even developing a better (i.e., better suited for the task at hand) framework would take too much time.
And Java bytecode is just an IL, a mature IL with legacy, usually running a legacy runtime and frameworks on top. So what if the final step of compilation occurs on t
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Maybe this will ease your nagging feelings: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=earth+eng... [lmgtfy.com]
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Seriously? This was done in Java Script?
Oh yeah, Google is all full of smart people, don't you know. Saved the $10K of intern salary it would have taken to recode the algorithm in C++ in order to burn $100K of datacenter power.
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Sadly, these days, most people graduate with engineering degrees without knowing how to actually program. I work with grad students and student interns all the time, it's a very poor, sad situation in Collegeville. Only a few decades ago, when I graduated, we at least knew how to program a Z80 and a good portion of TurboPascal (and in some situations even C/C++). Engineering students I interact with see exactly 1 week per programming language (Verilog, C, MATLAB, Java...) and that is supposed to teach them
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I have the CEO of Starbucks on line 3 for you, sir.
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BTW, we (USA) could probably BUY Canada
"Hey, China, how good is the US credit line?"
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They're doing Canada a favor. A guy running around yelling "CANADA RULES, US/EU DROOLS" on the internet sounds like a national embarrassment.
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Soon enough, you will all bow down to your Canadian overlords as we become the dominant economy and dominant culture throughout the world.
You guys have a head of state that doesn't even live in your own country, and you think you're going to become the dominant culture?
Well, I'll tell you what - you guys work on building a world-leading space program, and when you get there make sure to let the rest of the world know so that we can figure out if your culture is the dominant one.
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I don't know, they did bring us this guy:
http://chrishadfield.ca/ [chrishadfield.ca]
If the Canadian space program actually existed, maybe he could be a director?
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The photos over my house are fresh and new, I see my car and my horses instead of the previous owner's sheep.
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My house has my Truck I bought 2012 out front, which is new as the previous imagery was at the latest from 08. I can only assume that the image was taken on a weekend, as I don't spend much time at my house during the week since I am usually at work.
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I'm just hoping this update gets rid of the ugly sprite trees. At some point the earth view of Google Maps stopped serving actual images where it thinks trees are, and started rendering sprites instead. So you try to zoom in and get these big ugly jagged vectors instead of image data.
Kudos to JavaScript! (Score:2)
In fact, the entire algorithm to create the cloudless map was written in Javascript in the Earth Engine development interface."
Good to know Javascript is still relevant. The other day, I read some post here on Slashdot, about a fella who said TypeScript is better because it's "Java that scales." True or not, I have no clue!
the kind needed to closely inspect an individual.. (Score:1)
The assholes at my city hall have been using Google Earth for years to hunt down domestic terrorists who put up temporary sheds and carports, so that they can be taxed into safety.
It looks terrible (Score:3)
In my neighborhood, it looks like Google Earth was processed through some kind of bad Instagram filter designed to make things look blurry. I can tell the images are new because of the solar panels on our house. And I noticed that all of the trees have had geometric shaped boundaries applied, all sharp edges and precise angles, curiously not applied to the shadows cast on the ground! Nearly everyone's lawn looks like a patch of dirt. It honestly looks like something out of a 10-15 year old video game.
What does 700 million more pixels mean? (Score:2)
How many Libraries of Congress is that?
Satellites? (Score:1)
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The close-up images are, the rest is usually not.
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can afford to buy new satellite imagery to replace three-year-old images, but they can't afford to consult a human interface expert to get the UI back to a usable state?
Re:Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
So they can afford to buy new satellite imagery to replace three-year-old images, but they can't afford to consult a human interface expert to get the UI back to a usable state?
Human interface experts is how we got into this mess in the first place.
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Those are human interface "experts". I'm talking about someone who actually knows what he's doing, not someone who only thinks he knows what he's doing.
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Or maybe most people like it, and your UI desires are not representative of most people? Naaaah that can't be it!
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Given the number of complaints I've seen about Google's UI changes in Maps, that seems unlikely. Removing features while making the site much slower to load is not a way to endear users.
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Right, it's time to settle this silly debate once and for all. Slashdot poll time!
Please?