[HN Gopher] The True Size Of Countries (Mercator projection)
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       The True Size Of Countries (Mercator projection)
        
       Author : parsecs
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2020-11-15 21:00 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thetruesize.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thetruesize.com)
        
       | usr1106 wrote:
       | Technically nice, but could be called a violation of the
       | principle of least surprise that countries change in size as you
       | drag.
       | 
       | Why not
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection ?
        
         | mdpm wrote:
         | I think that's the point? It's trying to display the difference
         | between the most commonly used projection and the actual
         | relative sizes of territories.
         | 
         | (Forgive me if my snark detectors are misfiring, and have an
         | xkcd)
         | 
         | https://xkcd.com/977/
        
         | gsich wrote:
         | Gall-Peters is not a pleasant map. If you want equal area, try
         | Eckert IV.
        
       | grecy wrote:
       | I spent three years driving 54,000 miles around Africa. [1]
       | 
       | At 30 million square km, it's more than 3 times bigger than the
       | US (which is 9.8 million square km including Alaska)
       | 
       | This gives a brilliant visualization of how enormous it truly is.
       | All of the US, China, India and a good bit of Europe fit inside
       | it.
       | 
       | https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-true-size-of-africa/
       | 
       | [1] youtube.com/theroadchoseme
        
       | amanzi wrote:
       | It's fun to drag Antarctica around to see the true size of it.
       | Slightly bigger than China but not by too much.
        
       | eyelidlessness wrote:
       | Requisite West Wing scene[1] on the subject (which is probably
       | always going to be my top YouTube search because it's fantastic).
       | 
       | [1]: https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY
        
         | gpanders wrote:
         | Cartographers for Social Equality was the very first thing I
         | thought of when I saw this post!
        
         | pg_bot wrote:
         | The west wing should have had a map nerd on their writing
         | staff. It's hard to believe a group of 4300 cartographers would
         | come together and choose Gall-Peters over Robinson, Winkel-
         | Tripel, or Kavraisky 7 as a replacement for Mercator. /s
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | the_only_law wrote:
       | I knew Alaska was big, but holy crap! If you move the continental
       | US from the southern most Alaska Islands to the top, it stretches
       | nearly the entire east coast.
        
         | nostromo wrote:
         | I like that you can overlay Alaska over Europe and it can touch
         | Turkey, Spain and Sweden.
        
       | guidedlight wrote:
       | Australia is really interesting. It's about the same size as the
       | USA or the entirety of Europe.
        
         | cm2187 wrote:
         | And even rescaled russia is brutal
        
       | Exmoor wrote:
       | Cool tool. I must say that I didn't expect to be surprised by
       | anything here, and initially I wasn't. Yea, Africa is huge, I
       | know. But then I grabbed the average size American state I live
       | in south Central America for no particular reason and I was
       | really shocked at how much larger some of those countries were
       | than I expected.
        
       | swrobel wrote:
       | Anybody found contact info? I think I found a bug...
        
       | strstr wrote:
       | I added in some missing pieces [1]. There are probably others.
       | 
       | [1]:
       | https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTI3MTAzMDM.NDg4OTk2MQ*...
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | Mercator useful for navigation as it has nice properties.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | leovailati wrote:
       | I wish there was a way to move Antarctica around.
        
         | computerphage wrote:
         | There is! Just type "antarctica" into the search box
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | It's neat, but it breaks the back button, something fierce.
        
       | eutropia wrote:
       | This spams your browser history something fierce. Can that be
       | optional?
        
         | Orou wrote:
         | Agreed, it's a neat little app but having URL parameters work
         | like this is very anti-user.
        
           | neolog wrote:
           | Disagree. The app's url scheme is stateless, which is great.
           | Linear views of browser history is the problem.
        
             | javawizard wrote:
             | The problem is not so much that it stores state in the URL
             | as that it uses window.history.pushState instead of
             | window.history.replaceState.
        
         | lol768 wrote:
         | It's not implemented correctly:                     function
         | t() {             b().then(function (e) {
         | n.search('borders', e)             })           }
         | o.$watch('map.borders', t, !0),
         | 
         | triggers a pushState instead of a replaceState.
         | 
         | The fix is straight-forward, I think:
         | function t() {             b().then(function (e) {
         | n.replace()               n.search('borders', e)             })
         | }           o.$watch('map.borders', t, !0),
        
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       (page generated 2020-11-15 23:00 UTC)