HN

Comments (49)

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  walrus01
  I think a more important question is whether Yemen still exists as as single coherent political entity with the same borders as seen on ANY of those maps, which given the present situation, it clearly does not.edit: map here https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-updat...and here: https://yemen.liveuamap.com/
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  em-bee
  this was posted on 27. of november 2024. on the 3rd of december someone found a correct looking number in a yemen government document which was published in 2005 and updated wikipedia. so at least the country itself was not under any illusion of being bigger than they actually are.
• theteapot
  I suppose it's not worth checking whether Google maps areas are measured using spherical geometry?
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  burlesona
  What I wonder is why anyone noticed this in the first place. Who saw the size of the country in Wikipedia and thought, “really? Let me trace that in Google maps, just to be sure…”
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  asveikau
  I remember hearing from a Yemeni American in the late 90s that the border with Saudi was not defined (mentioned in the article). I wonder if this could be explained more simply that a few sources didn't bother to update this over time due to the ambiguity, they just carried over what had been published before.
• bambax
  Great article. I wonder if the sum of the land areas of all countries on earth matches the global size of emerged land? Or are there other similar errors?
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  Aerroon
  I did not expect this to just be a simple mistake, especially one that's been around for decades. Makes you wonder what other kind of basic facts are wrong.In the age of satellites, computers, Google maps and the like you would think a mistake like this would be impossible to persist for so long.
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  lappet
  Great article. Somehow, this gives me hope that curiosity can still be rewarded in this age of information at our fingertips.
• f055
  Human civilisation is built on such lies ;)
• dehrmann
  This is why you read the code, not the documentation.
• hbroom
  Always picture it larger, but it's roughly the size of France. Makes you wonder about logistical challenges there.
• kqr
  This reminds me of what Deming used to say: there is no correct value for any measurement, there are only the outcomes of methods chosen to measure something.
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  reassess_blind
  I wonder if you sum every countries claimed size, how far off it is from the actual total land on Earth.
• mc32
  This happens more frequently then one imagines. Quite a few things fail to start from scratch and instead rely on compounded errors over time. Projections, budgets, etc., are sometimes based on stale information.
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  thr0waway001
  15 Yemen Road, Yemen
• aaron695
  [dead]
• mikelitoris
  Ye man, this is crazy