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Earth Science

Geohashing Conquers the South Pole 40

New submitter Kjellander writes "Randall, of xkcd fame, and inventor of Geohashing, has commented on the recent successful expedition of a Globalhash less than 1 km from the Amundsen-Scott research station by 5 brave scientists staying there over winter. The last continent has been conquered and many records broken."
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Geohashing Conquers the South Pole

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    People must be frantically looking up exactly what "records" were "broken"

  • Winter? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eevee ( 535658 ) on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @10:01AM (#39185033)

    staying there over winter

    It may be cold at the South Pole, but it's Summer there.

    • It may be cold at the South Pole, but it's Summer there.

      The information would have been here sooner, but it was carried IP over Spheniscidae Carrier, and the polar bears kept eating them.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        Polar bears in Antarctica?
        • Re:Winter? (Score:4, Funny)

          by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @10:14AM (#39185175)

          Polar bears in Antarctica?

          Yet penguins carrying data packets to mainland US is fine, right? That's what you're telling me.

          • There are polar bears in the Southern hemisphere and penguins in the northern hemisphere.

            True, they're all in zoos... but they exist. Maybe there are polar bears in the South Pole national zoo. I wonder how long till penguins became extinct if someone released a breeding pair of polar bears in antartica.

            • Funnily enough, our penguins are the second of that name. The originals (now often referred to as Great Auks) lived in the northern hemisphere, and were eaten by polar bears. Unfortunately, they were also eaten by humans - who drove them to extinction.

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Auk [wikipedia.org]

            • There are polar bears in the Southern hemisphere and penguins in the northern hemisphere.

              True, they're all in zoos... but they exist. Maybe there are polar bears in the South Pole national zoo. I wonder how long till penguins became extinct if someone released a breeding pair of polar bears in antartica.

              There are zoos in Antarctica?

          • Off coarse not. There is a router at South Africa. There the packets are routed to swallows (African ones off course. Everyone knows they are stronger than European ones).
            • that they're faster is an established fact, but what's their unladden air speed ?

            • Off coarse not. There is a router at South Africa. There the packets are routed to swallows (African ones off course. Everyone knows they are stronger than European ones).

              But then, African swallows are non-migratory, aren't they? That explains your 100% packet loss.

        • by readin ( 838620 )

          Polar bears in Antarctica?

          Immigration laws are notoriously weak in Antarctica .

    • by vlm ( 69642 )

      staying there over winter

      It may be cold at the South Pole, but it's Summer there.

      No winter lasts from mid feb thru mid october at amunseon-scott. I donno anything about the schedule this year specifically, but its almost March... last trip out was probably a couple weeks ago and they're stuck there until almost Halloween. They have limited internet access, so I'm told, would be hilarious if someone there posted in this thread.

      • by vlm ( 69642 )

        They have limited internet access, so I'm told, would be hilarious if someone there posted in this thread.

        Dang its early in the morning here. Of course they have access, or we wouldn't have seen their uploaded picture...

        • They have limited internet access, so I'm told, would be hilarious if someone there posted in this thread.

          Dang its early in the morning here. Of course they have access, or we wouldn't have seen their uploaded picture...

          They have very low bandwidth and only connection when a satellite is overhead so it is very spotty.

      • staying there over winter

        It may be cold at the South Pole, but it's Summer there.

        No winter lasts from mid feb thru mid october at amunseon-scott. I donno anything about the schedule this year specifically, but its almost March... last trip out was probably a couple weeks ago and they're stuck there until almost Halloween. They have limited internet access, so I'm told, would be hilarious if someone there posted in this thread.

        Exactly. It is still light there but the weather is so tough they can't fly in or out. So it is technically winter there already.

  • I forgot all about the concept of geohashing. With spring on its way, I'm daydream about getting my motorcycle back out and cruising around for hours.

    Geohashing on a Saturday afternoon sounds like the perfect compliment!
  • When I read the headline I knew I must have misunderstood as /.ers never get off the couch. I thought they were talking about the Hash House Harriers [wikipedia.org]. A drinking club with a running problem [gthhh.com].
  • What is the advantage of geohashing over longitude + latitude.

    • by muridae ( 966931 ) on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @03:05PM (#39188589)

      geohashing is creating a random lat/long pair based on data that can only be known a little while ahead of time. Take the string "YYYY-MM-DD-#" where # is the opening of the DOW stock exchange, and create a 32bit MD5 checksum of that string. Convert the first 16 bits to decimal 0.XXXXX (convert hex to decimal, prepend 0.####) and the second 16 bits to 0.YYYYY. Now, take your current location, say 37.4215 -122.0855. Well, the location for that day's gathering near you would be at 37.XXXXX by -122.YYYYY. So you can see it isn't really a replacement for latitude and longitude, it's just a way to find a random place to gather.

      Globalhashing is nearly the same. Take (180*0.XXXXX)-90 for latitude, (360*0.YYYYY)-180 longitude. Greater than a 70% chance that the day's globalhash will be in the ocean.

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

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