Interestingly, Executive Order 12770, signed in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush, established the metric system as the official system of measurement in the USA.

Google still defaults to miles for some reason.

I get that these cases have their differences, but I think it’s reasonably thought provoking and worth at least a single moment of attention if we’re already on the topic.

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Duwensatzaj a day ago | parent [-]

Not really. Metric Conversion Act Of 1975 would be a better reference, but it didn’t go that far, only saying that Metric is preferred, and the choice is voluntary.

The EO you referenced is about what units the federal government uses, not setting an official system of measurement for the entire US.

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mcv a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's exactly what every executive order is: it's what the federal government uses. It's not binding for anyone else. It doesn't have the power of law. Google is under absolutely no obligation to do this. They do it explicitly to appease Trump.

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labcomputer a day ago | parent [-]

> They do it explicitly to appease Trump

Well, actually, no.

The EO changes the official name of the geographical feature as recognized by the US government.

All the large map providers ingest a data feed from the USG (and other governments for other localizations) which names various geographical and place entities. That data goes through a pipeline (basically a CI pipeline) to build the map artifact and tiles served to users.

Google just has a particularly good and low latency pipeline. Google got there in a couple days. Apple will get there in a week or two. The USGS will get there in god-knows-when. Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky.

The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change. Unless someone at Google manually edits the entity, it will be automatically renamed with no human input (although, for very large, highly visible entities the validation stage may block the build and flag it for manual review)

	▲	mcv a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's an executive order, not a law. There is absolutely no reason for Google, MapQuest or anyone else to change the name of the lake in their map. Google chooses to do so, MapQuest chooses not to. That says nothing about the speed of their pipeline, and everything about their desire to appease the government.
	▲	FireBeyond a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Your own response isn't even internally consistent. > The USGS will get there in god-knows-when. > The article itself even acknowledges that the USGS GNIS database has already been updated to reflect the change. Yes, both USGS and the Department of the Interior's executive leadership have been replaced by this Administration with Trump lackeys who fell over themselves to boast in a memo just how quickly they'd made the change. > Mapquest has said they’re not going to update the name, which presumably means their pipeline is old and creaky. No, it means no such thing.

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insane_dreamer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

it's actually the same thing - T's EO only governs how the Fed Gov references Lake Ontario on its maps; it doesn't force private companies to use the name (it has no authority to do so)