Free Republic

BREAKING: Google Maps to update 'Gulf of Mexico' to ‘Gulf of America’ after Trump order - Fox

The structure in Quebec, Canada. Image credit: Google Maps Aman browsing Google Maps whilst planning a camping trip in Quebec's Côte-Nord region has potentially discovered the site of an ancient asteroid impact. People have discovered all sorts of oddities while browsing through Google Maps, from "aliens" and camera-hogging cats to the answer to decades old cold cases. In the latest find, Joël Lapointe stumbled across an unusual, roughly spherical structure about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) across surrounding Marsal Lake in Quebec. Lapointe contacted geophysicist Pierre Rochette of the Centre de recherche en géosciences de l'environnement (CEREGE) in France for help...

Today I received a letter of cancellation of our commercial insurance based on a "virtual inspection of property". The letter also stated that I could request a hearing before the Insurance Division of the State of Oregon "for the purpose of establishing the existence of the proof or evidence for the reason given for the cancellation." They do not explain what their "virtual inspection" is comprised of, but no person contacted us or made an inperson walk through or walk around our place of business. I am further suspicious because their one paragraph inspection report states "Exterior walls of building...

The push for DEI has reached the peak of absurdity and danger, folks. We’re now risking life and limb to prove to some phantom source that we’re not racist by trekking through dangerous neighborhoods. Mr. and Mrs. Jones from the suburbs are now tiptoeing down the mean streets of urban America, dodging bullets and beatdowns just to avoid offending “low-income” communities. The hubbub started when Kasey Klimes, a senior UX researcher for Google Maps from 2017 to 2021, wrote a thread on X suggesting it’s racist to offer a “scenic route” option because it would route traffic away from low-income...

A demolition crew destroyed her building by mistake on Tuesday after Google Maps provided wrong directions. Instead of navigating workers to a duplex on Cousteau Drive in Rowlett, Texas, Google Maps took them a block away to Diaz's duplex on Calypso Drive. "[Google's] mistake caused me to lose my home," she told CNNMoney on Friday. Google acknowledged the Maps error in an email, and said it's investigating the cause. "Google Maps did indeed show incorrect information for the houses in question," a spokeswoman told CNNMoney. "Both addresses were shown as being in the same location (7601 Calypso Dr) on Google...

Two German tourists became lost in their four-wheel-drive vehicle in a remote part of Cape York after trusting Google Maps. They ended up having to camp for about a week before walking out to safety. What's next?: The pair are safe, but local rangers say it could have been so much worse and are warning people to take care. Two young men are lucky to be alive after walking for several days in the Cape York wilderness when their car became bogged after they followed Google Maps directions. German tourists Philipp Maier and Marcel Schoene left Cairns on February 4...

Google has laid off over a thousand employees across various departments since January 10th. CEO Sundar Pichai’s message is to brace for more cuts. “We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,” Pichai told all Google employees on Wednesday in an internal memo that was shared with me. “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.” So far, those “tough choices” have included layoffs and reorganizations in Google’s hardware, ad sales, search, shopping, maps, policy, core engineering, and YouTube teams. “These role eliminations are not...

Update, 5 p.m.: The Grand County Sheriff’s Office stated that County Road 1/Trough Road is reopened. Please drive with caution. A massive amount of snow has fallen across Grand County over the weekend triggering an avalanche and multiple highway closures. As of noon on Jan. 15 U.S. Highway 40 is still closed in both directions near Berthoud Pass while snow removal continues, Rabbit Ears Pass is closed in both direction on U.S. 40 and Colorado 125 is closed in both directions from mile point 0 to Forest Road 730, which is south of Walden. While everyone is trying to navigate...

San Francisco jury finds that Google ‘maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct’.. Google lost an antitrust case over the market power of its app store on Monday, a blow to the search giant as it faces other legal challenges to its search dominance and ad tech business.. Videogame maker Epic Games sued the search giant in 2020, alleging it used its dominant position to squeeze excess profits from app developers. The San Francisco jury reached a unanimous verdict after deliberating for less than four hours. The loss comes as Google battles more antitrust challenges, including a landmark trial...

Maybe this hiker should have Googled where he could buy a paper map. A hiker had to be rescued via helicopter in British Columbia after he got lost — because he followed a made-up trail on Google Maps. It was the second time in two months that a hiker got lost relying on the high-tech map app ... stranded on a cliff on the backside of Mt. Fromme, just north of Vancouver, after attempting to reach the peak’s summit. A pair of rescuers were brought in by air and dropped into the heavily forested area during the Nov. 4 rescue....

The family of a North Carolina man who died after driving his car off a collapsed bridge while following Google Maps directions is suing the technology giant for negligenceThe family of a North Carolina man who died after driving his car off a collapsed bridge while following Google Maps directions is suing the technology giant for negligence, claiming it had been informed of the collapse but failed to update its navigation system. Philip Paxson, a medical device salesman and father of two, drowned Sept. 30, 2022, after his Jeep Gladiator plunged into Snow Creek in Hickory, according to a lawsuit...

A North Carolina woman is suing Google after her husband died after driving off a collapsed bridge while following GPS directions, according to a lawsuit filed this week. Philip Paxson died after driving off "an unmarked, unbarricaded collapsed bridge" on the night of Sept. 30, 2022, in Hickory, his widow, Alicia Paxson, said in the suit filed in Wake County on Tuesday. Paxson was not aware the bridge had collapsed and was following GPS directions from Google, which had not been updated, the lawsuit says.

Russian scientist Dr. Dmitry Fedyanin seemed to die doing what he loved. German officials say the 34-year-old expert in ultra-violet light and a senior research fellow at the Nanooptics Department of Siegen University in Germany fell to his death Berchtesgadener Alps National Park after following his hiking app over a cliff. Fedyanin’s body was found at the bottom of Hoher Laafeld peak, which sits at about 7,000 feet. Fedyanin was using his hiking app to make his way down the mountain but the route he was taking didn’t have paths and the app “sent him over mountain precipice.” “Our investigators...

Looking at a map of Picacho Peak on the net. It is a mountain on the way to Tucson, South of Phoenix in Arizona. There are pics by people on there so I browse them and I see what appears to be a plane in the sky but I'm not sure. So I enlarged it. It doesn't look like any plane I'VE ever seen. What IS THAT?!

LEWISVILLE, TX — In a move privacy advocates are hailing as historic, Texas's state legislature has passed a batch of new laws allowing civilians to shoot Google Maps camera cars on sight. "These new laws will allow Texans to exercise their God-given, constitutionally guaranteed, and morally necessary rights to blow away any of these creepy-crawly Googl-y spy cars." Texas Governor Abbott spoke to members of the press outside the statehouse, resting the heels of his hands on what onlookers called "comically large guns" on a "comically large belt with a comically large belt buckle" designed to look like a longhorn...

It was easy to make jokes last summer when reports surfaced that Google Maps and other navigation systems were wrongly directing people off of Interstate 80 and rerouting drivers through Colorado. Sure, it added eight hours to a trip, but it wasn’t necessarily dangerous. But seven months later, it’s still happening. And in the winter months, it could be deadly. The problem is these navigation apps continue to send the wrong information primarily on or around Interstate 80 in southcentral Wyoming. The Rock Springs area seems to be the hot spot. On one day last month, the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s...

Depending on how paranoid you are, this research from Stanford and Google will be either terrifying or fascinating. A machine learning agent intended to transform aerial images into street maps and back was found to be cheating by hiding information it would need later in “a nearly imperceptible, high-frequency signal.” Clever girl! This occurrence reveals a problem with computers that has existed since they were invented: they do exactly what you tell them to do. The intention of the researchers was, as you might guess, to accelerate and improve the process of turning satellite imagery into Google’s famously accurate maps....

The Hickory bridge had been inoperative for about nine years, and any barricades had been washed away ... A North Carolina man is dead after his GPS led him to a defunct bridge that dropped off into a creek on Sept. 30. Phillip Paxson, a 47-year-old father of two girls, had been driving his Jeep at night from his oldest daughter's birthday party in Hickory when his GPS led him to a bridge that has been inoperative since heavy flooding in July 2013 destroyed it. "It was a dark and rainy night and he was following his GPS which led...

It’s a fan favorite scene from “The Office,” where the star of the TV show relies a little too much on GPS and ends up in a lake. The same thing is happening here in Wyoming, but without the lake. Faulty GPS directions are directing travelers in southern Wyoming to Colorado. The Wyoming Department of Transportation is warning that Google Maps is wrongly telling people that Interstate 80 near Rock Springs is closed and then rerouting the travelers to Colorado, which would add add many hours on to their drive time. WYDOT spokesman Doug McGee attributed the faulty information to...

He was draggin’ that wagon. An artist created a virtual traffic jam in Berlin by pulling a wagon with 99 cellphones in it. Simon Weckert posted a YouTube video with a split screen that showed him pulling a small red wagon through a mostly empty street. It also showed Google Maps had lit the street up red, falsely signifying that the barren thoroughfare was packed with traffic. <0p> “Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic,”...