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Comment by epivosism | Hacker News Reader

Looks like it passes close to null island, 0 long, 0 lat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island aka

I think they should make it wind a loop around at that point and see which GIS apps crash.

You joke, but I worked on a GPS app that would crash when crossing over the zero meridian. We didn't handle negative zero. The Degree/Minute/Second (DMS) near the meridian will be +/- 0 when degrees is zero. Signed zero is a thing.

I'm not sure if I was joking. It'd be a free unit test for everyone.

I remember there was a fighter jet that crashed (*software* crash) trying to cross the other meridian in the Pacific,

https://www.engadget.com/2007-02-27-f-22-raptors-systems-cra...

Oh man I’ve actually written unit tests for aircraft navigation in these circumstances before.

One would think they had that kind of stuff figured out much before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969323

Can you elaborate some more please? This is blowing my mind right now, -0?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero for the CS version.

This is common in maths when you approach a number 0 in this case) from either side. Your results may be dramatically different, such as "what happens when you approach 0 for f(x) = 1/x"

So there is a buoy there on a 5km cable??? wow.

That’s also amazed me. “The depth of the seabed beneath the Soul buoy is around 4,940 metres (16,210 ft).” Didn’t realize people did that sort of thing…

One of the old referenced article is interesting. They talk about the buoy attracting small fishes, and then bigger fishes, and then fishermen. And some buoys being stolen by fishermen and tracked on their return trip.

https://www.liberation.fr/sciences/1998/12/01/apres-le-pacif...

You can use DeepL.com to translate French to English if needed.

I had to have a look at the date of the article when I saw that the price of the thing is 200000 FF.

1998, all is good.

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