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Google Maps Updates Will Make It Impossible for Google to Respond to Geofence Warrants

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last week I mentioned forthcoming changes to how Google Maps stores users’ location data. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, those changes could spell the end of what are known as geofence warrants, which “require a provider—almost always Google—to search its entire reserve of user location data to identify all users or devices located within a geographic area during a time period specified by law enforcement.” The EFF believes geofence warrants are unconstitutional in the United States. Defaulting to on-device storage, deletion after three months, and encrypted cloud backups means Google can’t access that data: there’s nothing for them to turn over.

“All of this is fantastic news for users, and we are cautiously optimistic that this will effectively mean the end of geofence warrants,” says the EFF. “However, we are not yet prepared to declare total victory. Google’s collection of users’ location data isn’t limited to just the ‘Location History’ data searched in response to geofence warrants; Google collects additional location information as well. It remains to be seen whether law enforcement will find a way to access these other stores of location data on a mass basis in the future.”

Via Daring Fireball (where Gruber notes that Apple has never collected location data, i.e. there’s a reason it’s “almost always Google”).

xkcd’s Geography Challenge

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
An xkcd comic by Randall Munroe called Label the States
Randall Munroe, “Label the States,” xkcd, 15 Dec 2023.

Stare at this map for a while until you figure out what Randall Munroe has done in last Friday’s xkcd. Then scream. (Kottke says: “This is evil.”) It’s not the first time that xkcd has committed mischief and violence on an outline map of the contiguous United States: see, for example this one, or this one. I worry it may not be the last.

Previously: xkcd’s United States Map; The Contiguous 41 States—Wait, What?

Anton Thomas’s Wild World Is Out in the World

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Anton Thomas's Wild World, a hand-drawn pictorial map of the world featuring wildlife.
Anton Thomas

Earlier this year Anton Thomas finished his Wild World map—a hand-drawn pictorial map of the natural world on the Natural Earth projection—and prints and posters have been shipping out. I’ve covered Wild World before on The Map Room, but this is news I somehow missed at the time.1 But this week Anton’s project has gotten some fairly significant news coverage: first from The New York Times (paywalled) and then from CBC Radio’s The Current (not).2

Previously: Anton Thomas’s Next Project: Wild World; Anton Thomas’s Wild World: A Progress Report.

Google Maps Updates Offer Users More Control Over Their Data

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Forthcoming updates to Google Maps will give users a bit more control over their location data. Location History—off by default—will have the option of being stored on-device rather than on Google’s servers, and auto-delete will default to three months instead of 18. Meanwhile, users will be able to delete activity (“searches, directions, visits, and shares”) related to a specific location—the online maps equivalent of clearing your browser history, I guess. (I can’t help but notice that announcing greater user control over this information highlights the fact that this information is being collected in the first place.)

3D-Printed Lithophane Globe Ornament

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

3D lithophane globe ornamentEvery year, for the past few years, John Nelson has released a DIY globe ornament; this year he eschews papercraft and teamed up with Ruben Bruijning to produce a 3D-printed lithophane globe: “A lithophane is a backlit 3D object that glows brighter or dimmer depending on how thick the material is. Areas where the ornament is thin, the light more readily shines through, so it appears light. Thicker areas let less light through, so they appear darker. It’s a 3D negative.” Obviously needs a light put in it (to say nothing of a 3D printer).

Previously: Orthographic Papercraft Ornament; This Year’s Papercraft Globe Ornament; John Nelson’s Cassini Globe Ornament; John Nelson’s Dymaxion Globe Ornaments; DIY Map Ornaments.

Google Maps Sends Drivers into Nevada Desert After Interstate Closure

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last month, after a dust storm shut down Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Barstow, Google Maps sent drivers off-roading, rerouting them via barely passable desert trails. Some were stuck for hours. Google has since apologized.

Jalopnik describes this as yet another case of blindly following, but I think this is a more specific failure mode. Rerouting due to road closures or traffic jams opens up routes that the algorithm would normally deprecate, and catches more drivers unprepared. It’s one thing when that means a quiet residential street gets an expressway’s worth of traffic, quite another when the second best choice is a dirt track—or a 500-mile detour. When the best answer the algorithm can give you is a bad one, it will still give you that answer.

Previously: Man Dies After Driving Across Collapsed Bridge, Family Sues Google; Google Rerouted Traffic Up Poorly Maintained Mountain Roads During a Blizzard; Google Maps Called Out for Showing ‘Potentially Fatal’ Mountain Routes.

Limited Edition Earthsea Map Print Now Available

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Original map of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin

A limited edition print of Ursula K. Le Guin’s map of Earthsea has just been released. “Starting with a high resolution photographic image of Le Guin’s original, the team digitally cleaned or reinforced each line and letter, separating each color in the drawing as a layer, to make the maps as legible as the original and to avoid the artifacts of a typical CMYK process.” The cost is $150 for the black-and-white version and $300 for the colour version, with only 50 and 250 copies of each being printed, respectively. (I suspect you shouldn’t dither too long if you’re interested.) Proceeds go to the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Freedom to Read Foundation. [Tor.com]

Thoughts on Google Maps’ New Design From a Former Google Maps Designer

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Among the recent updates to Google Maps is a new colour palette, which has been rolling out incrementally to users. Elizabeth Laraki, who worked on the design of Google Maps 15 years ago, has some thoughts.

It seems the goal was to improve usability and make the maps more readable. Admittedly, I do think major roads, traffic, and trails stand out more now. But the colors of water and parks/open spaces blend together. And to me, the palette feels colder and more computer generated. But color choices aside … If the goal was better usability, the team missed a big opportunity: Google Maps should have cleaned up the crud overlaying the map.

[Daring Fireball]

‘Where Comedy Meets Geography’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Geographical magazine has a profile of the Map Men—that is, Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, who’ve been posting funny videos on YouTube that explain some cartographical or geographical silliness since 2016, on and off.

‘As little as ten years ago, maps were something that you just had to live with and everybody had an A-to-Z in the car,’ says Jay, who is the main comedic influence behind the channel, having already found success with a series on London’s architecture called Unfinished London. ‘But now that everyone has a sat nav, I think maps have become, for want of a better word, more geeky. You get people who didn’t realise that they were interested in maps or geography until they see an episode of Map Men and they’ll say: “Oh, yeah, maps are my guilty pleasure.” And I don’t think people would have necessarily talked like that about maps ten years ago, because they used to be something that we depended on. And now they have become something that we enjoy.’

(See previous posts.)

A New Edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Product photo for The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 16th editionThe 16th edition of the granddaddy of world atlases, the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, is out this fall. It was published last month in the U.K. (on 12 October) and will ship in North American next month (on 12 December). It comes five years after the publication of the 15th edition (my review of that edition is something I’m still rather proud of). As with everything else, the price has gone up a bit, edition to edition: £175 in the U.K. (up from £150 for the 15th), $260 in the U.S. (up from $200) and $285 in Canada (up from $275).

Some of the changes since that 15th edition are listed on the publisher’s page, and a lot of them deal with updating place names:

  • New country names for Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)3 and North Macedonia (previously the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
  • More than 8000 place name changes with names comprehensively updated in Kazakhstan and Ukraine
  • Addition of Māori names in New Zealand and restored indigenous names in Australia, the most notable being the renaming of Fraser Island in Queensland to its Butchulla name K’gari
  • Administrative boundary updates in Ethiopia, Mali and Kazakhstan
  • Added road, railway and airport infrastructure across the globe including the 4km-long Dardanelles Bridge (Turkey), the Fehmarn Belt road/rail tunnel alignment (Germany/Denmark) and the Sandoy Tunnel (Faroe Islands)

Each round of Times atlases has its own cover design language: from this Comprehensive and next year’s announced Desktop we can see that this round of atlases combines dark relief backgrounds with bright title and spine colours. Neon green is an unexpected choice for the Comprehensive, especially given how restrained the 15th was. I wonder what the bookmark looks like.

Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

The Lost Subways of North America

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Book cover: The Lost Subways of North AmericaThe Lost Subways of North America, in which Jake Berman looks at the successes and failures of 23 North American transit systems, is out now from the University of Chicago Press. The book’s text is accompanied by a hundred or so of Berman’s own maps, and is based on his series of maps of discontinued and proposed subway systems: see the online index for what made it into the book. On his blog, Berman is posting “deleted scenes”: city chapters that were cut from the book for length, like Denver and Portland.

See the Guardian’s interview with Berman (thanks, Michael); the Strong Towns interview focuses specifically on Los Angeles.

Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

A Stranger Quest: A Documentary About David Rumsey

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Map collector David Rumsey—he of the eponymous website and Stanford map center—is the subject of a new documentary directed by Italian filmmaker Andrea Gatopolous. A Stranger Quest premieres at the Torino Film Festival later this month and is scheduled for a 2024 release. The trailer, above, doesn’t reveal much. [Kottke]

Earthquake Swarms and an Imminent Eruption in Iceland

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Two maps showing geological deformation in Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland, from the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
Icelandic Meteorological Office

A swarm of thousands of earthquakes have been recorded on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula over the past three weeks. It’s a strong indication that a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town of Grindavík has been evacuated as a result. The Icelandic Meteorological Office has a page with updates and maps of earthquakes and ground deformation from the magmatic intrusion (examples above). A post on Earthquake Insights has more maps, plus geological and historical context.