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.
> documents three incidents that saw ordinary people subjected to abuses, including drone strikes, torture, and arbitrary detention. In a fourth case, a fishing boat and most of its crew went missing amid signs of another attack.
That is unfortunate.
Are you going to bother to mention the millions who have been affected by imported drugs?
If you want to live somewhere suspected drug dealers get summary execution in the streets and death sentences, move to the Philippines or China. Don't try to bring that nonsense here.
Is there any evidence they are not just blowing up random people?
Edit: i have zero faith that the us government is can, let alone is willing to, control the drug trade. This seems to be an excuse to exercise violent control of the americas as an end unto itself. This is in line with our intervention in venezuela, our bullying cuba, our constant abuse of the phrase "monroe doctrine".
You, knowing absolutely nothing about the inner workings of the counter-narcotics operations, assert that there is no evidence that those people are drug runners, based only on ignorance of the facts, yet you are also apparently perfectly content to not provide any evidence to the contrary (that they are indeed systematically killing "random people"), despite the fact that such a claim is completely absurd, and you don't see any contradiction?
> knowing absolutely nothing about the inner workings of the counter-narcotics operations, assert that there is no evidence that those people are drug runners
Well, he's correct that there is no evidence known to him, so there IS no evidence known to him.
To my knowledge, the administration has not released any evidence, only claims: "We know they are drug smugglers and we have evidence that we will not show you."
So there are drug smugglers, but the US isn't targeting them, they're targeting random boats, and the US is doing this for some reason which is apparently clear to OP but hasn't been made clear to us, and that somehow is the simplest explanation for what's going on, despite being entirely absurd?
"The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy." - Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 19(1)
There is literally no evidence at all the hospitals in Gaza are used for military purpose other than Israel's claims (and their botched attempt to fabricate evidence by placing guns in MRI machine of all place).
US and Israel also bombed hospital in Iran even though it's obviously clear that Iran doesn't fire ballistic missiles and drones from it.
Inexplicably, people do tend to vote here. I do, however, condemn the state of the united states of america—the map of the world would certainly be much improved without that name on it.
I did consider writing (Shia) instead of Shia but I still think it is mistake from a long term perspective due to previous history between shia and sunni.
Are you unaware of our involvement in the area? I suggest clicking on the links in my comment. Any decent response would involve deposing both the saudi arabian government and our own, including many high-level state department officials, and charging them with crimes against humanity. Probably a few other dozen states, too.
But international law is a joke these days, so humanity will let the missiles do diplomacy instead.
...
Look, obviously violence is bad. But we have made such a farce of all other ways of negotiating conflict that it's refreshing to see people stand up for themselves without our permission.
For posterity, in response to "Idk, supporting literal terrorism is pretty trendy these days":
> Inexplicably, people do tend to vote here. I do, however, condemn the state of the united states of america—the map of the world would certainly be much improved without that name on it.
> Israel didn't lift a finger to hurt them before they attacked Israel
Israel is genociding Gaza and still killing people and stealing more lands in the West Bank. Under international law, we are required to do whatever necessary to stop a genocide. Unfortunately only Yemen that step up to actually do that. The US and other western countries keep supporting the genocide.
> Ignoring the curse upon Jews and and victory to Islam, how convenient.
Israel is the one who proclaim they represent jews all the time. Until 90% or more jews condemn Israel like how 90% muslim condemn ISIS, it's a statistically accurate statement.
Besides, let's not pretend like Israel isn't a resevoir of hate against arabs and muslims—they are defacto a jewish supremacist state. By any measure that Ansarallah is worth attacking, surely Israel deserves this many times over for acting on their violent bigotry for decades before any of us were born.
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.
Ah I'm glad. That's much better than the solution I had in mind of using the sand from the desert to expand the land into the sea to add extra 100k km of land area, to hide all this embarrassment under the rug.
That would have to be a pretty big rug. I actually know some rug merchants in New York who are having a going-out-of-business sale who might be able to help.
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…”
I actually measured the size of (parts of) Yemen on maps a week or two ago, trying to figure out the population density of the Houthi-controlled areas, which contain the majority (~70-80%, hard to say exactly as the population distribution has been changing rapidly in the past decade) of Yemen's population in about 1/3 of it's land.
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.
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.
A bunch of countries are suspected of undercounting their population because so many people are living "off the grid" or deliberately overcounting to get more funding. Probably some of the cases are real and some are just conspiracy theories.
These kinds of issues have existed since the first human started recording what they owned, and will probably continue plaguing us until the last one dies.
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.
A casual review of the satellite view of the border with Saudi Arabia shows that much of it is desolate uninhabited sand dunes, so it's not like there's border markers such as the US/Canada have. Or likely an accurate survey (you'd need high precision GNSS equipment and something that can traverse serious sand dunes as a vehicle, because no fixed markers and traditional surveying methods have any chance of success there).
Historically, borders in inhospitable regions where the government cannot project power used to be vague.
Early Medieval European kingdoms usually had border forests, sometimes quite deep (50-100 km), where one end of the forest was definitely Bohemian and the other end definitely Saxon or Austrian, but the exact demarcation within it bothered no one.
There were only two kinds of people crossing them: invading armies and long-distance traders on very few walkable paths. The latter would be taxed prior to entering the city markets, not on the border. The former would be interested in sieging strongholds deeper in the enemy territory, not in taking a slice of wooded territory on the border.
Although I do hope too that people don't lose their sense of meaning and curiosity too much, it's worth keeping in mind that this article was published in 2024 which was a very different world from now. Curiosity requires energy, and it'll be hard for a creature relying on energy for survival to justify using their own energy for some activity when there's a more energy-efficient way to reach a specific goal. But just like going to the gym makes your body healthier despite the fact that this requires energy, thinking on your own will be increasingly important for maintaining a healthy mind and the sense of self.
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?
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.
Well, this is a pretty perfect usecase for AI (although it's also easy to just get shapefiles from NE and do it yourself, obviously).
Interestingly all of UAE, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have significant discrepancies between the World Factbook and their shapefiles (in every case overestimating), probably all related to not having had a demarcated border in the Rub Al Khali.
A quick lazy calculation (including adding in Antartica) the countries totals came up ~2,000,000km2 short. I don't care enough to dive deeper, but if no one is claiming that land I'll happily take it.
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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This has to be some kind of bait
Idk, supporting literal terrorism is pretty trendy these days
Like bombing innocent people in boats for a crime that would require a trial and not be illegible for death sentence?
Eligible: qualified for
Illegible: unreadable
Which innocent people are you talking about exactly?
Were they charged and convicted with a crime? Maybe they should have been...but we'll never know now.
I think that illegally crossing a country's border, especially as part of a drug cartel's narcotics operations, tends to carry some risk
What specific border are you talking about?
Any country
Presumably they're referring to stuff like this: https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/07/21/a-dangerous-partnershi...
> documents three incidents that saw ordinary people subjected to abuses, including drone strikes, torture, and arbitrary detention. In a fourth case, a fishing boat and most of its crew went missing amid signs of another attack.
That is unfortunate.
Are you going to bother to mention the millions who have been affected by imported drugs?
Oh no drugs, good thing drug crimes come with a death sentence! Even better when it is an extrajudicial death sentence!
If you want to live somewhere suspected drug dealers get summary execution in the streets and death sentences, move to the Philippines or China. Don't try to bring that nonsense here.
Is there any evidence they are not just blowing up random people?
Edit: i have zero faith that the us government is can, let alone is willing to, control the drug trade. This seems to be an excuse to exercise violent control of the americas as an end unto itself. This is in line with our intervention in venezuela, our bullying cuba, our constant abuse of the phrase "monroe doctrine".
You, knowing absolutely nothing about the inner workings of the counter-narcotics operations, assert that there is no evidence that those people are drug runners, based only on ignorance of the facts, yet you are also apparently perfectly content to not provide any evidence to the contrary (that they are indeed systematically killing "random people"), despite the fact that such a claim is completely absurd, and you don't see any contradiction?
> knowing absolutely nothing about the inner workings of the counter-narcotics operations, assert that there is no evidence that those people are drug runners
Well, he's correct that there is no evidence known to him, so there IS no evidence known to him.
To my knowledge, the administration has not released any evidence, only claims: "We know they are drug smugglers and we have evidence that we will not show you."
So there are drug smugglers, but the US isn't targeting them, they're targeting random boats, and the US is doing this for some reason which is apparently clear to OP but hasn't been made clear to us, and that somehow is the simplest explanation for what's going on, despite being entirely absurd?
Drug smugglers.
We’ve devolved from the proverbial slap on the wrist to the practice of a pat on the back and we’ll wishes.
Anything short of that is viewed as a a crime against humanity.
I think it's a reference to the US bombing small boats in the caribbean and eastern pacific with claims that they were drug smugglers.
Legal definition reminder:
Innocent until proven guilty.
Relevance:
Legal protection in place to protect innocent people. Like you and your family.
Yeah sadly some people still supports the US and Israel considering how many hospitals they bombed so far.
"The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy." - Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 19(1)
There is literally no evidence at all the hospitals in Gaza are used for military purpose other than Israel's claims (and their botched attempt to fabricate evidence by placing guns in MRI machine of all place).
US and Israel also bombed hospital in Iran even though it's obviously clear that Iran doesn't fire ballistic missiles and drones from it.
Inexplicably, people do tend to vote here. I do, however, condemn the state of the united states of america—the map of the world would certainly be much improved without that name on it.
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The current Minister of Defence of the Houthi government is Sunni.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_al-Atifi
I did consider writing (Shia) instead of Shia but I still think it is mistake from a long term perspective due to previous history between shia and sunni.
Fortunately, I have basic media literacy and such tricks don't work on me.
Does that basic literacy include reading their flag? Or is that unrelated?
Would you care to educate us?
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> I have basic media literacy and such tricks don't work on me.
> We are the actual murderers in this situation.
Are you unaware of our involvement in the area? I suggest clicking on the links in my comment. Any decent response would involve deposing both the saudi arabian government and our own, including many high-level state department officials, and charging them with crimes against humanity. Probably a few other dozen states, too.
But international law is a joke these days, so humanity will let the missiles do diplomacy instead.
...
Look, obviously violence is bad. But we have made such a farce of all other ways of negotiating conflict that it's refreshing to see people stand up for themselves without our permission.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864963
I said that ^
For posterity, in response to "Idk, supporting literal terrorism is pretty trendy these days":
> Inexplicably, people do tend to vote here. I do, however, condemn the state of the united states of america—the map of the world would certainly be much improved without that name on it.
Given what the US and Israel did to them it's not surprising.
Ignoring the curse upon Jews and and victory to Islam, how convenient.
Israel didn't lift a finger to hurt them before they attacked Israel but nice try to confuse cause and effect.
> Israel didn't lift a finger to hurt them before they attacked Israel
Israel is genociding Gaza and still killing people and stealing more lands in the West Bank. Under international law, we are required to do whatever necessary to stop a genocide. Unfortunately only Yemen that step up to actually do that. The US and other western countries keep supporting the genocide.
> Ignoring the curse upon Jews and and victory to Islam, how convenient.
Israel is the one who proclaim they represent jews all the time. Until 90% or more jews condemn Israel like how 90% muslim condemn ISIS, it's a statistically accurate statement.
Swapping “Jews” for “Israel” like that seems a certain way.
Do you think Yemenis deserve to choose who their government is?
> Swapping “Jews” for “Israel” like that seems a certain way.
I didn't swap those, their saying includes both Jews and Israel. What is a certain way, I'm confused.
I'm against killing people until they do bad.
Besides, let's not pretend like Israel isn't a resevoir of hate against arabs and muslims—they are defacto a jewish supremacist state. By any measure that Ansarallah is worth attacking, surely Israel deserves this many times over for acting on their violent bigotry for decades before any of us were born.
This doesn't answer my clarification request from mrexcess.
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I am confused. Are you ashamed of “our” crimes (I’m not who the “our” refers to), and this is why you are fine with the atrocities done by Houthis?
You are hopelessly lost, good luck
I'll pray for you
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.
Ah I'm glad. That's much better than the solution I had in mind of using the sand from the desert to expand the land into the sea to add extra 100k km of land area, to hide all this embarrassment under the rug.
That would have to be a pretty big rug. I actually know some rug merchants in New York who are having a going-out-of-business sale who might be able to help.
The author was one of the people involved in the wikipedia discussion
They knew the figure was wrong but needed a document with the correct figure they could reference.
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…”
I actually measured the size of (parts of) Yemen on maps a week or two ago, trying to figure out the population density of the Houthi-controlled areas, which contain the majority (~70-80%, hard to say exactly as the population distribution has been changing rapidly in the past decade) of Yemen's population in about 1/3 of it's land.
Something about eyeballs and all bugs being shallow...
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.
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.
A bunch of countries are suspected of undercounting their population because so many people are living "off the grid" or deliberately overcounting to get more funding. Probably some of the cases are real and some are just conspiracy theories.
Imagine how much of published science is statistically significant only due to clerical errors and mistakes in calculation...
(See e.g. The misreporting of statistical results in psychology journals; Bakker, Wicherts; Behaviour Research Methods; 2011.)
These kinds of issues have existed since the first human started recording what they owned, and will probably continue plaguing us until the last one dies.
No - only till the second last one dies.
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.
A casual review of the satellite view of the border with Saudi Arabia shows that much of it is desolate uninhabited sand dunes, so it's not like there's border markers such as the US/Canada have. Or likely an accurate survey (you'd need high precision GNSS equipment and something that can traverse serious sand dunes as a vehicle, because no fixed markers and traditional surveying methods have any chance of success there).
Historically, borders in inhospitable regions where the government cannot project power used to be vague.
Early Medieval European kingdoms usually had border forests, sometimes quite deep (50-100 km), where one end of the forest was definitely Bohemian and the other end definitely Saxon or Austrian, but the exact demarcation within it bothered no one.
There were only two kinds of people crossing them: invading armies and long-distance traders on very few walkable paths. The latter would be taxed prior to entering the city markets, not on the border. The former would be interested in sieging strongholds deeper in the enemy territory, not in taking a slice of wooded territory on the border.
Great article. Somehow, this gives me hope that curiosity can still be rewarded in this age of information at our fingertips.
Although I do hope too that people don't lose their sense of meaning and curiosity too much, it's worth keeping in mind that this article was published in 2024 which was a very different world from now. Curiosity requires energy, and it'll be hard for a creature relying on energy for survival to justify using their own energy for some activity when there's a more energy-efficient way to reach a specific goal. But just like going to the gym makes your body healthier despite the fact that this requires energy, thinking on your own will be increasingly important for maintaining a healthy mind and the sense of self.
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?
This is why you read the code, not the documentation.
Always picture it larger, but it's roughly the size of France. Makes you wonder about logistical challenges there.
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.
I suppose it's not worth checking whether Google maps areas are measured using spherical geometry?
You could check, but it would be quite shocking if they weren’t.
A 100-year-old data bug propagated through the entire knowledge base because nobody bothered to add a test.
This makes me wonder, what's the difference between the 2D area and the 3D topographic surface area? Is the latter even ever measured?
3D topographic surface area has the "coastline problem" where the more precisely you measure it, the more it grows.
2D area is stable under increasing measurement precision.
Human civilisation is built on such lies ;)
I wonder if you sum every countries claimed size, how far off it is from the actual total land on Earth.
Well, this is a pretty perfect usecase for AI (although it's also easy to just get shapefiles from NE and do it yourself, obviously).
Interestingly all of UAE, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have significant discrepancies between the World Factbook and their shapefiles (in every case overestimating), probably all related to not having had a demarcated border in the Rub Al Khali.
A quick lazy calculation (including adding in Antartica) the countries totals came up ~2,000,000km2 short. I don't care enough to dive deeper, but if no one is claiming that land I'll happily take it.
This is such a nice article!
It's an AI hallucination in slow motion.
15 Yemen Road, Yemen
I will write you every day.
(I suppose people downvoting this don’t know the reference. Way to make us feel old :) )
HN eschews pop culture references, the down voters are almost certain to include those that are aware of US sitcoms.
> I delved into
delved
a nice article!
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Ye man, this is crazy