Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bflesch 7 days ago
This is amazing. Unfortunately the 1960s, 70s and 80s seem to have been censored in the historic aerial maps. It's a very important period in NYC construction history where buildings with interesting shapes kept popping up.

The gap between 1951 and 1996 can be seen in: https://github.com/CityOfNewYork/nyc-geo-metadata/blob/main/...
1 comments
ssl-3 7 days ago
Censored is a very strong word.

Are you sure they aren't just lost/never-digitized/unlicensable/Occam's-razor/something-else?

Because, I mean: Historic Aerials[1] seems to cover that period pretty well, despite their resolutely awful user interface and extraordinary reluctance towards allowing useful links.

[1]: https://www.historicaerials.com/

link
bflesch 7 days ago
Check out the 1951 layer [1], it has a huge gap in the rockaway beach / hammels area which is not present in the 1924 layer or any other layers. Historicaerials.com does not offer 1951 or 1924, it only offers 1954 and later.

The gap in the 1951 aerials is around the 40°34'51.42"N 73°49'54.81"W coordinates in the Rockaway Beach/Hammels area.

From an organizational perspective the gap makes sense because they took the 1951 aerial pictures, then they noticed several symbols that are definitely not aligned with US winning WW2, and then they removed/replaced those buildings and took the 1954 aerials to confirm and actually deliver an aerial without those bad symbols.

This is not baseless speculation because it neatly ties into a chain of really badly-shaped buildings and construction projects in other places - NYC would've been the most in-your-face one.

In the limited footage from 1954 onwards the shapes of new construction still resembles the original "very bad" shape (especially depending on garden layout), but any of those X-shaped building has plausible deniability and could be anything from "normal" design to a KKK cross.

[1] https://nyc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers...

link
ssl-3 6 days ago
Are you feeling OK, my dude?
link
bflesch 6 days ago
Ignorance is bliss.
link
C-x_C-f 7 days ago
> Censored is a very strong word

I believe GP is using the stats/data science meaning of the word "censor" which is a neutral term simply indicating missing/obscured data (without implication of intent) [0]

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/censor#Verb

link
bflesch 7 days ago
I'm confident it's been censored and people have been killed to keep this story under wraps.
link