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Comment by wnkrshm | Hacker News Reader

This is beautiful, especially with the colors on the top right - though I have a nitpick that it is missing an entire continent (probably because it doesn't show up in a list of countries): Antarctica

Edit: I now realize it's only supposed to show the graph national borders, though on a political world map, Antarctica is still shown. In a topological fashion, it could be added as a white circle around the entire map.

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Antarctica isn’t shown for the same reason the bottom of the ocean or the surface of the moon aren’t shown: there are no countries there.

Adding cells that don’t correspond to a country (like your proposed white circle) would make the map less accurate.

Then you get onto the definition of what a country is - there are many countries claiming land in Antarctica.

Indeed, but those claims don’t really reflect any on-the-ground reality, and the majority of countries don’t recognize them.

There are many disputed territories shown - Palestine (especially the bit bordering Jordan, which bares no relation to the facts on the ground), or Taiwan which is shown when only a dozen countries recognise it. Northern Cyprus which is defacto a different state to Mainland Cyprus isn't shown, but the UK military bases are shown. Gibraltar is erroneously shown as part of the UK, but the Falklands aren't shown at all -- nor are many other island territories. Hong Kong and Macau aren't shown as separate to China.

It's difficult to know what the definition for inclusivity is.

> In a topological fashion, it could be added as a white circle around the entire map.

You know the flat earthers would run wild with that map.

You're right, better to invert it and put antarctica in the middle.

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