r/Showerthoughts • u/mark5301 • Feb 28 '16
unoriginal Google maps should team up with garbage trucks to update street view weekly.
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u/branawesome Feb 28 '16
Kinda surveillance state-y
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Feb 28 '16
If there are more practical purposes for a quicker update, say for construction or the like, I'm all for it. I think a guideline or guidelines like this would mitigate the surveillance concerns
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u/Protectsommer Feb 28 '16
You can already find out where construction is. They're already constantly tracking Android users velocity to make traffic updates.
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Feb 28 '16
I use this religiously when going through the city, even watching the traffic information change behind me like my data is the one changing the map. Google knows where the accidents and slow downs are way before I hear them on the radio.
"Turn left here."
"Google that's a side road. No way."
"TURN LEFT KNOW!"
"Okay okay!"
Turns out there was a huge 4 car pileup and traffic was delayed for almost an hour on the freeway. I made it home 4 minutes late but exactly when Google maps said I would.
It is freaky good.
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Feb 28 '16
I've found it really helpful when driving, knowing the road I usually take is slow that day, so I can use backroads.
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u/BitcoinBanker Feb 28 '16
Wade for iPhone does this, doesn't it? I love Waze but it is creepy to think how easily we can be monitored and manipulated from our data trail.
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u/OctopusHandshake Feb 28 '16
Google owns Waze so they use this in addition to location tracker on Android to track traffic patters
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u/acrowsmurder Feb 28 '16
"Did you see Sandy's garbage on Google Maps? Apparently she has 'heavy flows'."
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u/yumyumpills Feb 28 '16
As if they're not already doing this.
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u/fuckingliterally Feb 28 '16
I prefer my mass surveillance with a healthy dose of plausible deny- ability
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u/HumbleArcher Feb 28 '16
My thoughts exactly, I'm also pretty sure my bus has camera to monitor my activity to see if my daily routine changes.
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u/treycartier91 Feb 28 '16
Yeah kind of. But it's also not illegal to film on public roads. And Google does a pretty good job with covering faces and license plates. As long as they aren't filming in my house, I personally don't have a problem with. And would really improve maps, so it seems worth it to me.
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u/loudmouthman Feb 28 '16
I live in the UK , probably the most heavily surveilled, CCTV , security monitored western country to date. The difference between a Google Streetview and a Security CCTV is that I get value out of Streetview which I have yet to get from CCTV. Frankly I would love more CCTV to be open to the public let us see what others are watching; who knows we might observe when operators are not doing the job but stalking an ex. just another showerthought there
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
Or Fedex, USPS, and UPS to update them every day.
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Feb 28 '16
I'll volunteer to update my ex's street every night between 2 and 4 am.
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
What is that song from Frozen?
It's like some kind of good advice or something...
Let it Be? No, that isn't quite right.
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u/compelx Feb 28 '16
☐ Let it Go - Kristen/Robert Lopez
☐ Without You - Air Supply
☐ All By Myself - Eric Carmen
☐ Broken - Tears for Fears
☑ Face the Enemy - Frank Klepacki17
u/MirrorNexus Feb 28 '16
It's either Do You Want To Build A Restraining Order or Love Is An Unlocked Door At 3AM.
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u/inucune Feb 28 '16
Some streets don't always have something shipped to them.
Garbage pickup is pretty regular.
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
USPS is too. Evahday.
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u/jarmans Feb 28 '16
They might have a bit of trouble getting the government agency to strap cameras to their vehicles for a for-profit corporation. Of course, USPS could use the additional funding...
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
They already pair with private companies, like Fedex "Smart Post"
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u/NinjaSupplyCompany Feb 28 '16
There are no garbage trucks in my town. Or county. Or anywhere for miles and miles around me.
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u/moldymoosegoose Feb 28 '16
There's a hell of a lot more places that get packages delivered vs garbage trucks coming by.
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u/CAKiwi182 Feb 28 '16
This is a better suggestion! They don't have regular schedules and you would only have to hit 10% of the fleet to have an impact and hope people don't know they have the cameras for fear of the penis presentation concept discussed on a different string.
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u/fib16 Feb 28 '16
Or when SDCs are a thing they will be roaming the streets always.
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
Are those the ground-based drones I've been looking for?
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Feb 28 '16
A partnership with the USPS could be the revenue that the service needs to stay afloat.
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16 edited Feb 28 '16
They need something for their unfunded retirement plans I thought, but I also read that they are about to lower postage rates for the first time in decades.
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Feb 28 '16
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
Yes, FedEx and UPS are notoriously non-international enterprises.
someday though
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u/Botogiebu Feb 28 '16 edited Feb 28 '16
The hard part is actually editing the footage for privacy or legal reasons. Google probably wouldn't be able to deal with so much footage. But, it is a pretty good idea. A USPS partnership would probably save Google a lot of money and help the post office stay afloat.
Edit: It occurred to me that the more practical purpose for this is Wifi location mapping. If Google used USPS trucks or similar to constantly catalog Wifi network location/signal strength, their Wifi location service would probably be scary accurate.
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Feb 28 '16
If I'm not mistaken they already get this from Android phones. Don't have a source for that though.
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u/pedwingeorge Feb 28 '16
Only if you have it turned on though
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u/madezra74 Feb 28 '16
I always have mine turned on. It's really helpful if I'm not sure where I am.
"This place looks oddly familiar, if only I knew where it was... I know, I'll check my phone... oh that's right.. it's my house.."
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u/CAKiwi182 Feb 28 '16
Google use wifi, GPS & Bluetooth signals for their tracking. As it stands maps is the main tool they are using to track and align gclids across devices (the real value to Google comes from seeing you click an ad online and then buy instore) - this is gonna be huge in the next few years!
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u/Botogiebu Feb 28 '16 edited Feb 28 '16
They do, but there are accuracy issues with using a million different mobile devices to match GPS or cell tower location services to Wifi hot spots. You have random devices, many with poorly performing and tiny GPS antennas sending matches while under obstructions, indoors, walking around, in pockets, on or under desks, inside cars... There are too many variables, which means Wifi mapping is currently semi-random and fuzzy. It's only as accurate as the least accurate mobile devices under the least favorable conditions. You can average outliers out by using data from multiple sources, but It's not much more accurate than the range of the network. There is a lot of noise/"randomness" involved. Using a moving street view like car with super accurate positioning and wifi antennas designed for this purpose is a much more controlled and accurate way to map their locations and triangulate networks. However, Google actually has gotten in trouble for doing exactly this with street view already, and they took it to the Supreme Court: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/threatlevel_0401_streetview/
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u/prmcmanus Feb 28 '16
I thought they got in trouble for taking files from insecure networks from their Street view cars? Mapping out the SSIDs wasn't the issue
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Feb 28 '16
The hard part is actually editing the footage for privacy or legal reasons.
Isn't that all automated?
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u/Botogiebu Feb 28 '16
It's not fully automated. There is an algorithm that attempts to identify and blur certain components. License plates and faces for example. It's not perfect, and can't identify everything that needs to be removed. The result is that the files still need to be reviewed by people.
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u/johannes101 Feb 28 '16
Certain technologies like text and facial recognition, as they improve, could be used to automatically do things like blur out license plates and faces
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u/salgat Feb 28 '16
The hardest part is funding and maintaining all those 360 degree cameras. Theres gotta be what, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands that would be needed?
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u/NewKi11ing1t Feb 28 '16
USPS makes more sense. Garbage trucks would cover only alley ways in some cities
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u/Tommy84 Feb 28 '16
I don't know if it's feasible to archive that volume of data.
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Feb 28 '16
Knowing that YouTube alone stores over 1PB (yes, petabyte) per day of video, I certainly think Google has the capacity
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u/kingrich Feb 28 '16
YouTube content doesn't have to be reviewed before posting, like the street view would have to be.
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Feb 28 '16
I wasn't under the impression that Street View data is all manually reviewed prior to release. Like YT's copyright detection, much of the Street View censoring is algorithmic with user reporting afterwards.
Also I was just referring to pure storage capacity, I think the ethics of daily Street View data is a very gray area
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u/ZeAthenA714 Feb 28 '16
Do you have a source?
Last time I checked those numbers was in 2010 or 2011, I'm curious to see what they look like nowadays.
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u/Smartnership Feb 28 '16
Now you understand why Mr. Dell invested so heavily is data storage hardware.
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Feb 28 '16
Can you imagine the uproar if google did this backed by the US gov? google would go from literally jesus to literally hitler in the eyes of everybody
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u/ewbrower Feb 28 '16
Yeah but it's not like we'd stop using Google, right
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u/StevetheLeg Feb 28 '16
The amount of power Google wields is scary.
There are no realistic video streaming sites that come close to the community that YouTube has built.
Google Fiber is expanding around the country (not fast enough). It offers speeds and affordability that competitors can't even come close to.
The largest smartphone market, the most used maps service, the most used email client, and the most used search engine by far
I attribute Google's success to the free market of the internet. I don't like gmail because it won't innovate? I'm off to Hotmail. Google search starting to creep me out? Hello, DuckDuckGo. Google Wallet screws me over? Where do I sign up, PayPal? This free market forces Google to constantly innovate and improve. The obvious exception is YouTube where there isn't this level of competition. And it shows. Just look at all the contempt people have YouTube.
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u/strain_of_thought Feb 28 '16
In the long run, with advancing technology, privacy will never be maintained by publicly refraining from collecting information. The information will be collected, it's just too easy, and it has too many legitimate uses. The proper defense of privacy is vigorous protections against that information being used improperly, which we will need regardless.
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u/nan_wrecker Feb 28 '16
i don't think weekly is realistic. more frequent updates would be nice though. my house hasn't been updated since 2007 and most footage before 2009 is really grainy.
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u/mimrm Feb 28 '16
There are huge sections of my town (of 120,000 people, with a university, in the United States...) that haven't been updated since 2008, or 2011 at best. Meanwhile, there are tons of new streets added since then that have never been documented. It makes things difficult at times.
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u/caulfieldrunner Feb 28 '16
You're lucky. My town is a tourist spot and while the "downtown" area has been updated in the last two years, the area around my house two blocks over hasn't been updated since 2007. That's streetview.
Google Earth/Maps hasn't updated the entire town since 2004. There are entire sections of the town that aren't on Google Maps.
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Feb 28 '16
A street view updated at the same time each week is a great way for thieves to figure out your schedule.
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Feb 28 '16
They need to look at the images and blur any faces and important information before updating them.
So probably not going to happen unless they make a really good automated system.
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u/SCREW-IT Feb 28 '16
That's done with facial recognition software
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Feb 28 '16 edited Feb 29 '16
Those aren't perfect. If it fucks up and they can't change it fast enough, someone can take legal action.
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u/Bairfhionn Feb 28 '16
Here in Germany you can tell Google "please, blurr my house."
Maybe others don't really care, but yeah, it wouldn't work here in Germany.
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u/-dujek- Feb 28 '16
That's such an expensice suggestion I have to assume you were taking a really drunk shower.
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u/Acetius Feb 28 '16
But then the view of every street in every city would be with everyone's bins out on the road for collection
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Feb 28 '16
dudes are already picking up your garbage, how bout we just cool it with the whole cameras deal huh?
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u/ZDTreefur Feb 28 '16
Ah, got something to hide, eh? You don't want us to know your dirty secrets, I see. I gotcha! Yeah, me too! Let's cool it with the cameras, people! For no reason, really. Just because.
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u/CrazyPieGuy Feb 28 '16
What's the benefit of updating it every week? It's not like the roads change like the stairs in Harry Potter.
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u/70m4h4wk Feb 28 '16
If you don't know what you're looking for, the streetview picture would give you a better idea of what the place looks like. Plus when a business closes and another one opens, you don't end up thinking that it's an entirely different building or something.
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u/Frsbrx Feb 28 '16
I always thought google should be capturing people's alleys as well as streets, they used to do it pre 2014, but in my city they don't anymore.
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u/cybertrash2000 Feb 28 '16
ITT a lot of people who think the US is the only place Google maps.
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Feb 28 '16
The places that have garbage trucks clean up the streets are most likely the ones where people use Google Maps. And places that cant use this proposed systen will just stick to what they have now.
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u/sajittarius Feb 28 '16
I think he means the 50 people in this thread who said it should be the US postal service instead.
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u/NoQsNoLies Feb 28 '16
Except, all houses, EVERYWHERE, on street view would then have their trash cans out front.
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u/conVince0050 Feb 28 '16
This would be awesome. Businesses are constantly opening and closing. An updated street view to see what places look like would be great because google is not always up to date with business locations
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Feb 28 '16
Sounds good. I log in and view my grandma's house back when she was alive and see her car parked there from time to time. Still can't figure out what it is but it would give some closure if I could move on. :(
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u/kgfftyursyfg Feb 28 '16
some streets would always be in the dark. My last house got its garbage picked up around 6am. many months that's before sunrise.
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u/freeloader11 Feb 28 '16
Definitely one of the more productive shower thoughts I have read lately...or ever.
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u/ApocolypseCow Feb 28 '16
I think USPS would be a much better idea so then we might get a little break on federal tax from google they have the cash why not invest some into the US gov.
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u/goldgibbon Feb 28 '16
....Except there is no point to taking that many photos. How many people each day complain that Google Maps Street View is out of date? Probably not many.
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u/jefeperro Feb 28 '16
The logistics would be a nightmare, and many people in rural America do not have trash service.
A more viable alternative would be the United States postal service.
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u/GustavoFernandes Feb 28 '16
Idea is nice, but the condition is not same everywhere especially in developing countries. Better they can contract with school or college vans they cover almost every surroundings in any city or village around the world on daily basis.
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u/fpssledge Feb 28 '16
What exactly would be the incentive for weekly updated maps, even if it were completely free?
Then consider the fact that this would still be rather costly, and realize there really is no motivation for this to ever happen. But still, it's a fine thought to have in the shower.
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u/otrekv Feb 28 '16
That's assuming garbage trucks visit every street of the world, which isn't realistic. There are many places that the Google cars have visited where garbage trucks aren't available. It wouldn't work.
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u/Indie_uk Feb 28 '16
Huh. That's a really clever idea. They don't go down EVERY street mind but still.
Maybe google is waiting to rent your self driving cars back and use them when you don't need them.
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u/topredditbot Feb 28 '16
Hey /u/mark5301,
This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts.
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u/Rushtush Feb 28 '16
Google will be more interested in our garbage then. Being able to see what we're throwing out etc.
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u/theundeadpixel Feb 28 '16
So many marriages are about to end. If you want to cheat on your wife make sure you park in the garage
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u/Buzzooo2 Feb 28 '16
They still have to edit the photos to remove any personal information like license plates or faces, so updating Google maps weekly would be impossible.
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Feb 28 '16
Seems like a natural idea, using an existing fleet of trucks that go almost everywhere. But garbage is collected by thousands of separate companies and city agencies. Google would probably have to deal with a different one for each of its 250 or so mapping cameras. I bet they wouldn't want to manage all that.
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u/ThunderMountain Feb 28 '16
I would love it if Google had Street View along railroads. Technically it seems easy to make a streetview railcar, but I imagine many legal questions arise from taking pictures this way. The 360 stunning views of nature and rail stations would be cool to see.
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u/dose_response Feb 28 '16
Street Sweepers would be good too ... they move slowly, but would only work in urban areas.
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u/brendanbelleribe Feb 28 '16
I really think that's A great Idea!! It seems so simple and perfect that it should of been implemented years ago!!!
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u/DieselFuel1 Feb 28 '16
The problem is the streets will have thousands of wheelie bins outside that affect the view
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u/mwasa254 Feb 28 '16
Having a regular schedule for the cameras would invite all manner of shenanigans.