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Geohashing Conquers the South Pole

Posted by timothy on from the another-reason-to-want-to-visit-the-pole dept.

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."

7 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Winter? by Eevee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    staying there over winter

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

    1. Re:Winter? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    2. Re:Winter? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Polar bears in Antarctica?

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

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    3. Re:Winter? by SMoynihan · · Score: 2

      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

    4. Re:Winter? by rocket+rancher · · Score: 2

      There was a warning on the box in an ancient script that someone translated as "do not open this box or you will die"- we figured we would open it for a lark.

      If truth in advertising laws were enforced, that would be on engagement ring boxes.

      ...and religions would have to find some other way to market their product.

    5. Re:Winter? by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2

      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).

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  2. Re:Can someone explain it to me? by muridae · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.