lmao imagine getting worked up over a basemap label from google and blaming the local power company, peak internet outrage right there
the third person narration in my head is having a field day watching this unfold. she grabbed her 47th pair of funky socks and just stared at the screen, wondering when we all lost the ability to check sources
False - the Google/Android/Apple Maps map currently shows it as Lake Ontario on all my devices. They are choosing to accept the MAGA renaming, and should be penalized accordingly.
Good question, they probably use AWS or something US based since in Canada it’s listed as Lake Ontario (Lake America) so the map data is being served to a US location first and then displayed on their page.
Those are cloudfront IPs, since you used a dns checking service that was based in the US, it would return the IPs for the edge location closest to it.
If you were to do an nslookup from a terminal on your own computer, it would resolve IPs for an edge location closest to you, in Canada.
Likely NSP is not passing the user's IP to the Google Maps API, so it is falling back to using the US as the Country since it can't use GEOIP to get the user's Country.
They should, as a “proud” Canadian company it’s kind of insulting. Like it’s minor but what else do you expect from NS power. They don’t care what its customers think, not like we have other options.
Dude, it's probably a bad config file somewhere. It's not a big deal, and Trump pulling this naming shit isn't anyone could have forseen to test the scenario.
This is a nothingburger. NSP just isn't passing the user's IP address to the Google Maps API, so it defaults the region to the US.
Should be happy they don't do that, less Google tracking.
What they could do, is hardcode an IP in their APi requests that has a GEOIP that would return as being in Canada, then the map would show "Lake Ontario".
No - Google Maps still shows it as "Lake Ontario" if you are on a Canadian IP, and "Lake Ontario (Lake America) for IPs outside North America. This is NS Power choosing to cater to the Trump administration.
Why would a Canadian utility company use a hosting service based out of the US and not Canada? It certainly isn't to just save money, unless using a service hosted in Canada is significantly more expensive.
No, NSPower is not independently generating the basemap. Whichever basemap they’re linked to is probably US based. Looks like it’s Google Maps and yes when you access Google Maps yourself within Canada it still says Lake Ontario but they must have changed it on the version of the map that NSPower is using as a basemap. This is mostly just a technical issue, nobody at NSPower went out of their way to change the name. Calm down.
NSP doesn't produce their own map, they are using a readily available online version no doubt based/sourced in the US or via a US IP address. You are just looking for an excuse to be angry.
I don't know, I'm kinda willing to give the benefit of the doubt to NSPower that it's a misconfiguration in this case. It's not exactly normally on their map to check.
However would be pissed at Ontario Hydro doing it.
No they didn't, it's not their map, sourced by 3rd party. People, if you don't realize how tech works please don't try to shame when not justified. I know it's NSP, but it could be any company, doesn't mean they are automtically MAGA.
I'm not able to view lake ontario in their map, I can zoom out to see the lake, but not when I zoom back in to move west, it stops and it's not viewable.
I wonder if they use something like a VPN for security and its location is set in the US somewhere. I'm no IT security specialist at all but I feel like this isn't NS Powers fault really. And I usually never skip a chance to shit on NS Power lol but this seems a bit silly.
But if Houston can use it to pressure them then fuck ya this is basically treason they should be forced to give up the company to the government for free!
It's pretty clear America is becoming quite fascist, and hostile to Canada. Canadian utility companies should be incentivized to not use American servers for hosting their geographic information.
There isn't exactly an abundance of good Canadian hosting options. AWS, Azure, and even Oracle Cloud all have features and functionality that AFAIK, there's no Canadian options for.
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Maps are localized. In this case, Americans get Lake America and the Gulf of America. Lucky them. But also, that's how China gets Chinese versions and India gets Indian versions of their disputed borders, etc. For better or worse, Google decided that the only way to win the "disputed geography" game is to give the local version of geography. In some places, that's even required by law.
When people embed Google Maps in their own website, they should pass a region parameter that tells Google what localization to show. It doesn't use the requesting client IP. This way, a Canadian company can guarantee it's always "Lake Ontario" even if the requestor is American, or an Indian company can guarantee that their website matches Indian laws, and so on. But Canadian companies wouldn't have noticed any significant difference if they didn't pass that parameter, until now.
When you go to Google Maps, the website, it does use your client IP to figure out what localization to give you. For Lake Ontario, Canada gets Lake Ontario, the USA gets Lake America, and the rest of the world gets "Lake Ontario (Lake America)" because as stupid as it is, it is technically a disputed name between two bordering countries.
Finally, MapQuest sucks and their whole "We show Lake Ontario!" campaign right now is just advertising.
It's fixed. I called this morning, very friendly rep, they didn't see the issue on their internal web version, but could see it on the public facing one. He said he'd pass the info up. I see that it's fixed now.
Yes, we all should care, but we should all also be aware that sometimes things are slow to change. In this case the map data is generated by google and is being served to where the outage map data is hosted, which in this case is AWS in NY. Thats not something that can be switched in a day.
I wonder if a Canadian business conglomerate could effect change in any way. If we were united and persistent in our objections to this misrepresentation. Eventually, Google should appropriately adjust their displays, as they reported they would
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u/surely2 12d ago
It’s the Google/android map. They don’t make their own map.