My old neighbor was trying to sell his home for a few years and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't sell when other homes in the area were selling just fine. One day I was scrolling by my house on street view and learned why - his house was being raided by SWAT when Google drove by.
@chrislane no you don't. You can hide a lot of damage with some drywall mud and paint. If a bullet knicked wire, you'd probably never know unless it's MC or in conduit, which almost never happens in residential(high rise apartments only, basically). They can't afford to bend conduit in every half million dollar house. Your best case scenario is a problematic breaker that keeps tripping. Just as likely, you're calling the fire department and insurance.
We use Streetview a lot for my job verifying address numbers. Seen a lot of wild things. Personal favorite is a little girl chasing an escaped calf somewhere in Nebraska.
There was a picture from Google Street view of my dad sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette, and it was first noticed about a year and a half after he passed
@@greggjohnson621 Not really immortalized. The images are eventually updated the next time Google comes around. Idk if Google has an archive can look through, else might need to be manually archived by like screen recording.
I'm from San Diego. The loch ness monster one has an obvious explanation. That's an area popular with surfers and the guy seems to be wearing a wet suit. We also get a lot of big piles of kelp that wash on shore. Surfers are exactly the kind of people who would see the google maps guy coming and drop everything to throw a kelp pile on their head and photobomb him.
Some time after my mom died, a neighbour attended us on her walking the dog on streetview. It's a long road, and she can be seen for a long time. It's the closest to film that I have of her.
I was literally conducting a data analysis as Joe said: "We don't make sense of things by looking at piles of data on a spreadsheet. I guess some of you do, weirdos". I feel called out 😅
Data Engineer here who has to do data analysis as well... I felt that, too... :D (though, it's usually and hopefully not directly involving in spreadsheets!)
I've just had this "glitch in the matrix" moment - started scrolling down to the comments before the video ended, and began reading the quoted sentence at the exact same time Joe was saying it. My internal voice and his recorded one weirdly merged 🤨
Sometimes I think that the time stamp changes the comment to the comments that were posted around that time. Cause a 101 times I have looked at the comment. And it was the same thing that he's saying at the same time multiple times@@0o0eM
The information privacy thing is perplexing. I'm not allowed to run a dash cam while I deliver food because it's considered collection of peoples private information to film them walking down the street. I can do that as a private citizen but when I'm working it becomes a commercial issue and violates Canada's PIPA act. Yet Google are allowed to drive around blatantly doing the same thing, harvesting protected information and making money from it, in an objectively commercial setting. It's so weird.
Canada that's your problem. no seriously I have a very close friend that lives in New Brunswick and the stories he tells me about Y'all are absolutely wild.
What if you get into an accident? I'm dealing with the fallout of one and the litigation and I wish I'd had a dash cam. I'll definitely be getting one for my next vehicle.
My brother hides sometimes to scare us, this is a normal kid thing. Maybe the child was waiting for somebody who the camera just didnt capture. Maybe he was playing hide and seek. Sometimes the most mundane answers are the most realistic ones
The truth is quite often stranger than fiction, and what one finds mysterious isn't mysterious at all for those that know what's going on. A pretty solid campaign for us to mind our own business!
17:00 Rex Heuermann has not in fact been found guilty, his trial hasn't even started yet. He probably *will* be found guilty, but it's important to get that right.
GSM is directly behind its demise. The decade-long practice of auto-hacking everyone's wifi to improve their IP geolocation database was intentionally continued after it had been declared illegal by a judge, because it was worth the potential fines.
The nonchalance in your voice saying "That's just how it is now" is eery. That really sends chills down my spine. Orwell couldn't even imagine what's normal today and it's honestly a miracle we dont already live in a distopian hellscape.
@@tapewerm6716 We are but you can't see it. I guess it is hard for anyone younger than 50 to see this, but we old people remember what freedom and privacy was.
@@WillyKling As someone who grew up in the eighties, I would MUCH rather the sort of shit a lot of adults did when I was a kid was public knowledge. Some people don't deserve privacy.
@@johnathanmartin1504 Everyone deserves privacy and freedom. You can fight crime without having 24/7 surveillence on the entire population. I know, because this is how policing worked back then, and we had less crime.
The idea that we MUST sacrifice our privacy in order to have innovation and convenience is exactly what corporate giants like Google want people to think. I sincerely believe it's possible to have both, but improving the lives of mankind is not a goal of these governments or corporations, their goal is squeezing every penny of profit out of people. & that's easier to do if those people are complacent thinking "this is just the way things are now"
the two things are not mutually exclusive. you can the goal of helping people's lives as well as making a bunch of money. and those google services are free to use for everyone.
They can never deny truthfully that it's all about Marketing more Chinese junk,such as the ads they now double up on the popular UA-cams Capitalism one of the worst "isms"
@@ronblack7870 They absolutely are mutually exclusive! Theres only so much money ,resources and energy in the world . If its all in the hands of increasingly powerful monopolies then its a race to the bottom .
Last time I was lost in a dangerous place: Somewhere in the cellphone/GPS dead zone on the border of NH and ME I had to ask directions at a "gas station" .It was getting dark and the only business I had seen in a long time in an area was nothing but dense trees and houses with Deliverance vibes. The place only sold diesel and the general store was a sad grocery / taxidermist office / a video rental (with a missive adult section). To this day I have no idea where I was, but the ZZ Top looking dude inside was super nice and helpful.
... i may actually know exactly the location you're talking about. i ended up in a VERY similar sounding place about a year ago, in that very same area. if it is the same place, i can fully agree that it would be super creepy when it starts getting dark. especially knowing that basically EVERYTHING over there shuts down when it gets dark.
What's crazy is if you could see 99.99% of most people's final moments they'd be just as mundane You never know when you'll die hold your loved ones close
TRUE STORY HERE: In 2008 I bought a car from auction in US. It was after minor road accident. I shipped it to Europe, repaired.. and all was good. But then I found some original docs in glove box... And there was an address. When I typed it in - it was residential address of previous owners of the car. And surely, Google Earth was showing this car just outside their home. The same car was snapped by Google in my country in 2012. So for some time the same car was on google street view in 2 locations: USA (Georgia) and Lithuania (Kaunas)
My wife has been captured twice in the last 3 years on Google Street View. Both times wearing the same work shirt (she has 10+ shirts that she rotates between and only works 3 days a week at a local hospital)
My job requires alot of driving to peoples houses. Been doing it since 1997. My kid asked how we got there before iPhones. Good question. I went to the garage and pulled out my old atlas. Basically told her it was a huge map, cut up into pages. Looked up the street in the back, that told u the page, then from there you found it and saw on the map you had to go. It really was a pain in the ass, but that's what we did. I have a very keen sense of direction. My kids, however, need GPS to leave the neighborhood
I was a realtor from 2006-2009. Realtor MLS listings used to have a “grid#” which related to a book of maps called Mapsco. There was a page#, column, then row. Each page had a grid. The listing would say “247C1” - page 247 row c column 1 to find a small area. Then you’d drive there and figure out the rest. That’s not even 20 years ago.
Ditto. I used to have a whole pile of ADC maps for all sorts of counties and areas I'd use to look up places and then manually map the routes to get there, hoping roads hadn't changed since the map was printed. Some recent (young) employees have tried to cancel work because their phones were broken/data used up so they couldn't "get to the job" because they couldn't use the GPS. 🤣
I am the same way. Grew up navigating with paper maps and if you are covering a large distance in the middle of nowhere and needed to know where you were, stop at any labeled intersection and find that on a map becuase 999 out of 1000 times thier is only one place those roads intersect, X marks the spot thats where you were. I have ran into only two places where a very old state highway that was built in a long curve around something and later a new higway or an interstate made a strait path and the old highway was still in use and the interstate crossed it twice but even then I was not lost I just noticed it in passing and then later looked at the map and verified my observation.
I drove a cab in '06 & '07 and this is exactly how we found people's addresses. You could buy stand-alone GPS devices at that time, but they were super expensive, so none of us cab drivers had one. And mapping apps were definitely not available on phones yet -- hell, smartphones were barely a thing. The iPhone was released in '07, and Blackberrys had been around for a bit, but both of those were too expensive for a cab driver to own at the time. Plus I don't think they had mapping apps with GPS on them that early.
Joe you really need to do something about this you’re putting your viewers at risk, that sponsor transition was so smooth I could have slipped and broken my ankle
When i looked up where I live last time, Google caught a picture of our old dog Zoey pooping out in the side yard. It makes me smile every time I think of it, she was a funny little dog and I like to think she would think it was hilarious.
One of my favorite Street View stories was an early street view car driving into a military base just mapping barracks etc. When the Base Commander found out and saw it, he flipped his lid. After that, Google removed such maps and also began blurring military bases from aerial view. Joe, I'd love to see you cover that story and/or things like it -- when new tech completely outpaced the world around it. Great video as always! Love you, Joe!
I was hoping to see that well known meme with a man wearing an orange jumpsuit walking down a lonely country road with the caption "Google Earth street view may catch you escaping prison, but they'll still blur out your face because Google ain't no snitch." I also remember Sigmund, but I never watched it. However, there was something similar in the show Kolchak: The Night Stalker tv series with some swamp thingy that lived in the sewer.
i used to watch that show, but i can't remember any details of a particular episode. however the guy reminded me of some irwin allen type show like lost in space or voyage to the bottom of the sea
Or that mafia boss who escaped from prison, being fugitive for 20 years, changing identy, living a low profile life and not even contacting his family for a decade as a precaution just to be caught in 2 decades later because of a random Street view picture and not because of him doing something or slipping up to give himself away. That must have hurt so bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he was caught considering who he is and what he's done, but he probably got existential crisis after that.
Google Street view captured my late grandpa sitting outside wearing a yellow tshirt but due to constant update, I never got glimpse of it again(and the house was sold after 2-3 years of his passing, so I never thought of searching it).
I did see a mini doc that showed a small town in japan where the locals ,after a wild life research scientist started wearing a pigeon helmet to see if he could get closer and feed the pigeons better idk I don't remember why he started it but the locals found it fun and interesting and to my knowledge they hold events on certain days were the locals along with children feed the pigeons wearing these pigeon masks. idk something along those lines, it is a thing and not just for the Google camera lol
The one about the execution, it is a bit of a stretch to say it was solved due to Google Maps. A renowned investigative group Bellingcat (they investigated the poisoning of russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny) worked on this, along with tens if not hundreds of OSINT experts and enthusiasts. For the longest time they could not figure out where that “distinctive” mountain range actually was. They asked volunteers to comb through thousands of photos and topographic maps. It was an insane amount of work! They talk about this extensively on their podcast, I think it was in season 2. It’s a fascinating listen.
@@alisaarama5585 Thank you so much! That podcast is really, really well made. I've already listened to the first episode about this, ah, _incident,_ and dear god it's such a horrible story... But they're some really good, amazing people in the OSINT and Bellingcat community, I'm so impressed. Subscribed.
Not lost in a scary place, but street view saved me from booking a really sketchy airbnb that was apparently inside an auto mechanic shop. Not above it, inside it. It was a single story building with the same address. You could also tell it was in a really shitty part of town. I decided to stay at a hotel instead and had a very fun trip. Thanks, street view.
A Haberdasher is not the maker of hats, but the supplier of needle craft materials, particularly fabric, threads, buttons and other notions. It is a 'milliner' who makes hats and/or fashionable headwear
I was working tech support a while back and this dude with an accent wanted help with ask jeeves. I thought he was messing with me and saying "ass cheese." This story doesn't have much of an ending.
In the late 80's, I literally got lost driving home. We had just moved and it was late at night and I took a wrong turn. I got lost for a good hour. I am so glad we have google maps on our phones today. I just moved again recently and use maps to find my way around every day.
Many years back, I stepped outside my new apartment for a second and the door locked behind me. Urban area.. It was the rear outdoor stairway on the 4th story of a 4-story building, there were no reachable windows. Can't enter the front of the building without a key. It was so sudden.. one minute I was relaxing at home and the next I'm outside with nothing -- no keys, no wallet, no ID, no money, no phone.. _no shoes_ I'd never felt so vulnerable. It's not _exactly_ "lost somewhere dangerous" but holy shit did it feel exactly like that.
For some reason, our tiny town in rural Kansas is routinely, frequently updated by Google Streetview. When we are out of town, we joke that we can check on our house live just by using Google Maps. 😅
21:24 Joe, what Google did is likely not a breach of the Wiretap Act or the FCA - in 2007, most of that private data was being broadcast by the users completely unencrypted, because WiFi encryption was rarely on by default back then. Google had a good reason to listen to WiFi signals; they were building the location service that could let your device figure out where it was without a GPS chip, just by looking up the ID of nearby WiFi signals. The fact that they overheard the digital equivalent of you talking about an embarrasing medical condition next to an open window is not a crime.
Kidnapping, holding at gun point, is not teens having a rough time. Steeling food or a car without a gun is teens having trouble. The promise of safety has been used to take away many freedoms in the past, with much more to come.
I actually know the answer to that! The car was deep enough that you couldn't see from the shore, only after flying the drone it became visible. And in the neighborhood itself there were actually a lot of such lakes so you wouldn't have a reason to fly a drone over that specific lake before either .
There was a missing woman who was gone for probably about 5 years, and she was only found during the California drought, when the lakes worse low enough for someone to finally spot her car that had gone off the road. They? Didn't search the lakes because there were no skid marks indicating an accident.She just went off the road without hitting the brakes at all 😢
It's not that unusual. I bet you could go to any region in North America and there's a story about a missing person and car that were found when lake/river/pond levels dropped during a drought. Okay, maybe not the Mojave desert, but still.
Fun video!! I must have missed the announcement/talk, but I’m very happy to see the chair spin return. When I hear the bongos, I get Maslowed every time
5:44 if he's found in London that means we found Wally, as he was only renamed Waldo for American publication. Somewhere out there the US Waldo is still in hiding...
22:20 Joe: **Transitions from Google spying on our internet history to... NOT a sponsorship from a VPN** Me: LOL, "wait, what? Joe! You had them, it was right there, you couldn't have had much lower hanging fruit. This fruit was hanging SO low... **waits for it...** It was on the ground. I literally already thought "wait did @joescott just accidentally stumble upon the SMOOTEST segway into a sponsorship EVER?"
I went to look at my mother's house on Google Street view when it became available in that area and there she was, hanging a towel out of a window to dry!
Not as annoying as that other dude who tells other people's stories, he often uses the word 'suddenly' instead of unexpectedly. It totally grinds my gears.
Is this a new phenomenon or have I just not been paying attention? This has been bugging me for about a year and this is the first time I’ve seen someone address it. I personally just say ‘suddenly’ but knew ‘all of a sudden’ was common but have been noticing a lot of people saying ‘all the sudden’ and it piques my ears every time.
Someone who I highly respect online said "Intensive purposes" the other day. I was like "Noooo, you're better than that man!" It's "Intents and Purposes". While we're on the subject, it's "Eat your cake, and have it too." Of course you can have your cake and eat it too! That's how eating works!.
@@User31129 Not so sure on the cake but what about 'The proof is in the pudding'? Makes no sense at all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, if you are going to shorten it, say 'the proof is in the eating'.
@@MrBurn360but didn’t you stop printing out Mapquest and paper maps… when digital gps became available? Not the other way around? Idk I’m 20 and google maps has been available almost my whole life
@@donnalowe292I still printed out MapQuest maps along with having a vehicle GPS. The maps on the GPS weren't the most accurate and ETA's were way off. What I knew was an 8 hour drive my few GPSs would show as being an 11-13 hour drive.
@@donnalowe292The initial launch of digital GPS devices weren’t widely used. They were often very pricy and not extremely reliable in remote areas. I’d make a guess and say it was the late 2000’s when iPhone and Android became prominently used when GPS technology really took off. The easy access to Google Maps (or other equivalents) on a device most people already used for other purposes definitely makes a good argument for that.
@donnalowe292 in 2005 GPS was not on your phone it was a entirely separate $1000 device that never had a signal when you needed it, or was just plain wrong so you still needed paper maps as a backup.
my grandmother who passed away a couple years ago is pictured outside her house weeding her garden on street view. Sometimes I look up her house just to see her in her everyday setting once again.
I can believe that he lost control of the car and crashed into the pond. I remember reading that at the time, there was no guardrail, and the complex was still being built.
Pictures of sheep on the road are so common if you live and /or drive in rural British mountain areas that there's nothing unusual about it. It just confirms to you that having lamb for dinner (something else unusual for many Americans) is just a proper thing to do.
I've lived in my house since 2014, we moved in when it was a new-build. We've watched it over the years on Google maps go from a field, to a building site, sitting in a mud-bowl, lawns appear! Trees, bushes! The technology is so amazing, and amazing it's available for free.
Pre Google Earth my friend's dad was a cartographer and aerial photographer. He was commissioned by the state gov of our state in Australia to find the exact map locations of a bunch of small, country schools. They began by flying over the regions where the schools were but found that it was hard to twll the difference between little country schools and large country properties until they realised that most of the schools would have a cricket pitch. So they looked for properties with a long rectangular bit of grass/dirt that stood out from all the other grass or dirt. Just one of the professions that has changed dramatically since Google Earth/streetview.
6:13 - "... yeah, I've got questions." not me. It's Japan. There's nothing about people with bird masks on their heads that makes me surprised. It's Japan.
Google wasn't just tracking open wifi networks, they were also marking down the signature and location of non-public wifi networks(even if your network is encrypted, or even "hidden", you can't hide certain details due to the network having to allow people to connect)....
"The Greater Good" Back in college we would go on burn rides late at night through rural Pennsylvania. The goal was to smoke until you got lost and then smoke until you found your way back. There were certain rules like no hits on roads with a center line, etc. it was pretty handy for figuring out the local area and how to navigate roads in general. Figuring out little things like that the color of a street sign means different things, paying attention to the little markers along the roads, knowing that farmers need access to fields so there must be a way around. All type of stuff. Man, fun to get high and lost too.
Yet, I really miss the old TripTiks we got from AAA when we took our family vacations. My mother couldn’t read a map so I got to navigate for my Dad. I learned a lot from those trips. Google kind of takes the fun out of driving sometimes.
My husband grew up in West Palm Beach and knew about that story, he said that the neighborhood was actually built around the car in the pond. His car went into the retention pond before the houses were even built up. It's crazy to see what street view can find without any biases.
The thing about privacy, is you lost all expectation of it once you step outside your home. When you are in public, you will be observed. If you use an open public Wi-Fi network, you are exchanging privacy for convenience. Public means public, and everything outside the front door, that's public. Pretty simple
I remember Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. I didn’t like it as a kid; I’d always change the channel for something better. :P There were a few Sid and Marty Kroft shows I _did_ enjoy: Dr. Shrinker, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Land of the Lost, Lost Saucer, Wonderbug.
Was not expecting anyone to talk about privacy, but glad you did! Sadly Big Tech companies want us to think that our only choices are privacy or lack of technology/innovation, but that's not always true. Sure, Street View requires us to expect to be seen in public, but Google didn't have to scrape our WiFi data in the process. I hope in the future more people will realize that companies need to be reasonable and kept in check and start taking their privacy more seriously. Great video though, Joe, it's awesome to see how much your channel has grown since the early days! I always enjoy when you've put out a new upload!
Last time I got lost I was in the woods at an old cabin with my family. I went on a hike and got lost. I walked in circles for 2 hours, always somehow coming back the what seem like the same place. After 2 hours I gave up and went in the opposite direction and I kid you not, I was 20 feet for the cabin.... I was so embarrassed...
My old neighbor was trying to sell his home for a few years and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't sell when other homes in the area were selling just fine. One day I was scrolling by my house on street view and learned why - his house was being raided by SWAT when Google drove by.
lol some luck
I want that house!!!!!
@chrislane no you don't. You can hide a lot of damage with some drywall mud and paint. If a bullet knicked wire, you'd probably never know unless it's MC or in conduit, which almost never happens in residential(high rise apartments only, basically). They can't afford to bend conduit in every half million dollar house. Your best case scenario is a problematic breaker that keeps tripping. Just as likely, you're calling the fire department and insurance.
😮😂
@edew9180 Your joking right? Lol
We use Streetview a lot for my job verifying address numbers. Seen a lot of wild things. Personal favorite is a little girl chasing an escaped calf somewhere in Nebraska.
sounds about right
I'm from Nebraska. This checks out.
That is so Nebraska. 😂
i want your job so bad.....................
@@lolopez8319 Look into Geographic Information Systems (GIS)!
There was a picture from Google Street view of my dad sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette, and it was first noticed about a year and a half after he passed
Awww… very sad, yet in a way, kind of a gift. To see him immortalized in that way.
My sympathies.
@@greggjohnson621 thank you…. It was very cool and provided a huge amount of closure and understanding that he’s still around
@@greggjohnson621 Not really immortalized. The images are eventually updated the next time Google comes around. Idk if Google has an archive can look through, else might need to be manually archived by like screen recording.
I'm from San Diego. The loch ness monster one has an obvious explanation. That's an area popular with surfers and the guy seems to be wearing a wet suit. We also get a lot of big piles of kelp that wash on shore. Surfers are exactly the kind of people who would see the google maps guy coming and drop everything to throw a kelp pile on their head and photobomb him.
Lol
As a surfer, I concur
For a while when you googled my property that was for sale, my realtor was standing across the street taking pictures....and he had three legs.
It was absolutely certain my old house was a few lots down the street instead of it's actual location at the end of the cul de sac
he must really enjoy his job
Damn he must be packing if it looked like a third leg on Streetview.
Why are we here in this life? Why do we die? What will happen to us after death?
So do I
Some time after my mom died, a neighbour attended us on her walking the dog on streetview. It's a long road, and she can be seen for a long time. It's the closest to film that I have of her.
Awwww😢
❤
Should probably record that in some way such as streaming of the computer screen. Eventually that area will be updated and over-written.
@@Vaeldarggoogle dos have the "history" option but I agree, record it
Street views constantly get replaced. You should screenshot those clips for safekeeping. I hope your family is doing ok❤
I was literally conducting a data analysis as Joe said: "We don't make sense of things by looking at piles of data on a spreadsheet. I guess some of you do, weirdos". I feel called out 😅
Nothing personal. 😄
🤣
Data Engineer here who has to do data analysis as well... I felt that, too... :D
(though, it's usually and hopefully not directly involving in spreadsheets!)
I've just had this "glitch in the matrix" moment - started scrolling down to the comments before the video ended, and began reading the quoted sentence at the exact same time Joe was saying it. My internal voice and his recorded one weirdly merged 🤨
Sometimes I think that the time stamp changes the comment to the comments that were posted around that time. Cause a 101 times I have looked at the comment. And it was the same thing that he's saying at the same time multiple times@@0o0eM
The information privacy thing is perplexing. I'm not allowed to run a dash cam while I deliver food because it's considered collection of peoples private information to film them walking down the street. I can do that as a private citizen but when I'm working it becomes a commercial issue and violates Canada's PIPA act. Yet Google are allowed to drive around blatantly doing the same thing, harvesting protected information and making money from it, in an objectively commercial setting. It's so weird.
Canada that's your problem. no seriously I have a very close friend that lives in New Brunswick and the stories he tells me about Y'all are absolutely wild.
What if you get into an accident? I'm dealing with the fallout of one and the litigation and I wish I'd had a dash cam. I'll definitely be getting one for my next vehicle.
Not weird, it’s by design.
I think the bigger mystery is why people think a kid hiding is mysterious. He's a kid, he's playing, more than likely!
My brother hides sometimes to scare us, this is a normal kid thing. Maybe the child was waiting for somebody who the camera just didnt capture. Maybe he was playing hide and seek. Sometimes the most mundane answers are the most realistic ones
The truth is quite often stranger than fiction, and what one finds mysterious isn't mysterious at all for those that know what's going on. A pretty solid campaign for us to mind our own business!
First thing I thought was hide and seek. Still one of the funnest games ever
Yeah, my first thought was: hide and seek
Yep, this.
17:00 Rex Heuermann has not in fact been found guilty, his trial hasn't even started yet. He probably *will* be found guilty, but it's important to get that right.
I remember when Google's motto was "Don't be evil." That's long gone.
Yeah. They just officially dropped the "Don't be Evil" as their corporate slogan. Like they're actually copping to it with no shame.
Turns out it was an order to users rather than a corporate ideal.
GSM is directly behind its demise. The decade-long practice of auto-hacking everyone's wifi to improve their IP geolocation database was intentionally continued after it had been declared illegal by a judge, because it was worth the potential fines.
@@artdonovandesign No, they only dropped the "Don't." They kept the rest of the motto.
Your definition of evil IS off or you need meds
The nonchalance in your voice saying "That's just how it is now" is eery. That really sends chills down my spine. Orwell couldn't even imagine what's normal today and it's honestly a miracle we dont already live in a distopian hellscape.
Maybe we do and we're just not aware of it. A frog slowly boiling to death kind of thing.
@@tapewerm6716 We are but you can't see it. I guess it is hard for anyone younger than 50 to see this, but we old people remember what freedom and privacy was.
@@WillyKling As someone who grew up in the eighties, I would MUCH rather the sort of shit a lot of adults did when I was a kid was public knowledge. Some people don't deserve privacy.
@@johnathanmartin1504 Everyone deserves privacy and freedom. You can fight crime without having 24/7 surveillence on the entire population. I know, because this is how policing worked back then, and we had less crime.
@@WillyKling I'm right there with ya Willy. Born in 1968
Sorry you didn't find waldo. He's called Wally in the UK.
In Portugal too.
Yup, Wally in Australia too
😂😂😂
Waldy here in New Zealand
@tomatoisred6966 that's halfway between Wally and Waldo 😂
The idea that we MUST sacrifice our privacy in order to have innovation and convenience is exactly what corporate giants like Google want people to think. I sincerely believe it's possible to have both, but improving the lives of mankind is not a goal of these governments or corporations, their goal is squeezing every penny of profit out of people. & that's easier to do if those people are complacent thinking "this is just the way things are now"
the two things are not mutually exclusive. you can the goal of helping people's lives as well as making a bunch of money. and those google services are free to use for everyone.
They can never deny truthfully that it's all about Marketing more Chinese junk,such as the ads they now double up on the popular UA-cams
Capitalism
one of the worst "isms"
@@ronblack7870 They absolutely are mutually exclusive! Theres only so much money ,resources and energy in the world . If its all in the hands of increasingly powerful monopolies then its a race to the bottom .
Well we MUST sacrifice our privacy if we want it for FREE. And to be honest, I have a very low price on my privacy in late 2024.
💯
Last time I was lost in a dangerous place: Somewhere in the cellphone/GPS dead zone on the border of NH and ME I had to ask directions at a "gas station" .It was getting dark and the only business I had seen in a long time in an area was nothing but dense trees and houses with Deliverance vibes.
The place only sold diesel and the general store was a sad grocery / taxidermist office / a video rental (with a missive adult section).
To this day I have no idea where I was, but the ZZ Top looking dude inside was super nice and helpful.
So happy for you for a moment I thought the story was going to have a grim ending 😅
This sounds like the beginning of a horror film.
You need to see: House of 1000 Corpses by Rob Zombie
Was he a sharp dressed attendant?
... i may actually know exactly the location you're talking about. i ended up in a VERY similar sounding place about a year ago, in that very same area. if it is the same place, i can fully agree that it would be super creepy when it starts getting dark. especially knowing that basically EVERYTHING over there shuts down when it gets dark.
What's crazy is if you could see 99.99% of most people's final moments they'd be just as mundane
You never know when you'll die hold your loved ones close
I miss short hair turn around Joe. Why do people fix things that ain't broke. Sigh. Joe...come back... Joe....
TRUE STORY HERE:
In 2008 I bought a car from auction in US. It was after minor road accident. I shipped it to Europe, repaired.. and all was good. But then I found some original docs in glove box... And there was an address. When I typed it in - it was residential address of previous owners of the car. And surely, Google Earth was showing this car just outside their home.
The same car was snapped by Google in my country in 2012.
So for some time the same car was on google street view in 2 locations: USA (Georgia) and Lithuania (Kaunas)
Looks like Kansas
That conclusion is kinda underwhelming for the way you built it up
@@lizzyluv96 well... Like the video tbh
The only interesting thing you see if you street view my address is my cat grooming himself in the driveway. Spicy stuff.
My wife has been captured twice in the last 3 years on Google Street View. Both times wearing the same work shirt (she has 10+ shirts that she rotates between and only works 3 days a week at a local hospital)
Slightly better than a nat 20. Noice.
"My wife has been captured twice..." I thought you were going to explain how she was kidnapped and Google maps found her.
woah
My job requires alot of driving to peoples houses. Been doing it since 1997. My kid asked how we got there before iPhones. Good question. I went to the garage and pulled out my old atlas. Basically told her it was a huge map, cut up into pages. Looked up the street in the back, that told u the page, then from there you found it and saw on the map you had to go.
It really was a pain in the ass, but that's what we did.
I have a very keen sense of direction. My kids, however, need GPS to leave the neighborhood
I was a realtor from 2006-2009. Realtor MLS listings used to have a “grid#” which related to a book of maps called Mapsco. There was a page#, column, then row. Each page had a grid. The listing would say “247C1” - page 247 row c column 1 to find a small area. Then you’d drive there and figure out the rest.
That’s not even 20 years ago.
Ditto. I used to have a whole pile of ADC maps for all sorts of counties and areas I'd use to look up places and then manually map the routes to get there, hoping roads hadn't changed since the map was printed. Some recent (young) employees have tried to cancel work because their phones were broken/data used up so they couldn't "get to the job" because they couldn't use the GPS. 🤣
I am the same way. Grew up navigating with paper maps and if you are covering a large distance in the middle of nowhere and needed to know where you were, stop at any labeled intersection and find that on a map becuase 999 out of 1000 times thier is only one place those roads intersect, X marks the spot thats where you were. I have ran into only two places where a very old state highway that was built in a long curve around something and later a new higway or an interstate made a strait path and the old highway was still in use and the interstate crossed it twice but even then I was not lost I just noticed it in passing and then later looked at the map and verified my observation.
Ah yes, the old Thomas Guide.
I drove a cab in '06 & '07 and this is exactly how we found people's addresses. You could buy stand-alone GPS devices at that time, but they were super expensive, so none of us cab drivers had one. And mapping apps were definitely not available on phones yet -- hell, smartphones were barely a thing. The iPhone was released in '07, and Blackberrys had been around for a bit, but both of those were too expensive for a cab driver to own at the time. Plus I don't think they had mapping apps with GPS on them that early.
Joe you really need to do something about this you’re putting your viewers at risk, that sponsor transition was so smooth I could have slipped and broken my ankle
When i looked up where I live last time, Google caught a picture of our old dog Zoey pooping out in the side yard. It makes me smile every time I think of it, she was a funny little dog and I like to think she would think it was hilarious.
One of my favorite Street View stories was an early street view car driving into a military base just mapping barracks etc. When the Base Commander found out and saw it, he flipped his lid. After that, Google removed such maps and also began blurring military bases from aerial view.
Joe, I'd love to see you cover that story and/or things like it -- when new tech completely outpaced the world around it.
Great video as always! Love you, Joe!
That CIA double-take-double-turn is pure UA-cam genius. I see you, Joe Scott 😂
That wasn't Waldo, it's Wally if he's in the UK.
That pigeon mask picture looks like an awesome album cover
5:56 In the UK it’s called “where’s Wally” so Wally has been found, the search for Waldo continues…
Maybe he's playing hide and seek 0:39
That’s what I thought too!
i thought tha too also nice pfp :0
Yes I did watch Sigmond and the Sea Monsters! That's why my '72 Super Beetle is named Sigmond. ;)
Yes I remember it too
I was hoping to see that well known meme with a man wearing an orange jumpsuit walking down a lonely country road with the caption "Google Earth street view may catch you escaping prison, but they'll still blur out your face because Google ain't no snitch."
I also remember Sigmund, but I never watched it. However, there was something similar in the show Kolchak: The Night Stalker tv series with some swamp thingy that lived in the sewer.
i used to watch that show, but i can't remember any details of a particular episode. however the guy reminded me of some irwin allen type show like lost in space or voyage to the bottom of the sea
@@ronblack7870 Sid & Marty Krofft put out some crazy kids shows in the 70's -- H.R Pufnstuff, Land of the Lost, etc.
19:07 imagine getting caught for war crimes because of google and facebook
Or that mafia boss who escaped from prison, being fugitive for 20 years, changing identy, living a low profile life and not even contacting his family for a decade as a precaution just to be caught in 2 decades later because of a random Street view picture and not because of him doing something or slipping up to give himself away. That must have hurt so bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he was caught considering who he is and what he's done, but he probably got existential crisis after that.
Google Street view captured my late grandpa sitting outside wearing a yellow tshirt but due to constant update, I never got glimpse of it again(and the house was sold after 2-3 years of his passing, so I never thought of searching it).
17:28 AHHH that’s exactly his victim type. 90% of them are brown hair, and he wrote down “small is good” in his murder preparation document
MapQuest really dropped the ball back in the day.
Who else remembers printing maps out on paper
@@ben_spiller 🙋🏾♂️
@@ben_spillerStill have one. A keepsake for when it was just a nice, uncrowded stretch of road, before it became the toll road form hell.
@@ben_spillerstill have a bunch in my keepsake box from road trips I took w/ friends. The handwritten notes on them are the best part.
@@ViraL_FootprinT.ex.e IIRC, they got bought by AOL and that signaled the end of MapQuest...
I did see a mini doc that showed a small town in japan where the locals ,after a wild life research scientist started wearing a pigeon helmet to see if he could get closer and feed the pigeons better idk I don't remember why he started it but the locals found it fun and interesting and to my knowledge they hold events on certain days were the locals along with children feed the pigeons wearing these pigeon masks. idk something along those lines, it is a thing and not just for the Google camera lol
The one about the execution, it is a bit of a stretch to say it was solved due to Google Maps. A renowned investigative group Bellingcat (they investigated the poisoning of russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny) worked on this, along with tens if not hundreds of OSINT experts and enthusiasts. For the longest time they could not figure out where that “distinctive” mountain range actually was. They asked volunteers to comb through thousands of photos and topographic maps. It was an insane amount of work! They talk about this extensively on their podcast, I think it was in season 2. It’s a fascinating listen.
What podcast is this? I'd love to give it a listen, fascinating story!
@@mnxs it’s called simply “The Bellingcat Podcast”. I wish they had more episodes, there are only two seasons so far.
@@alisaarama5585 Thank you so much! That podcast is really, really well made. I've already listened to the first episode about this, ah, _incident,_ and dear god it's such a horrible story...
But they're some really good, amazing people in the OSINT and Bellingcat community, I'm so impressed. Subscribed.
@@mnxsI am so happy you enjoyed it) they are def worthy of a shoutout
6:57 "I'm Old Gregg!!!!"
If you look in the background, you can see a bottle of Bailey's sitting next to a shoe.
"have you ever drunk baileys from a shoe?" 👾
would you like to see my downstairs mix-up?
Easy there fuzzy little man peach
Exactly what I yelled at the screen, right before being disappointed that Joe went in another direction.
Great, now I have to watch Hot Fuzz again. Thanks, Joe!
It's for the greater good.
One of us. One of us.
@@mrfishbulb7187 The greater good!
@@mrfishbulb7187The Greater Good
Same, lol
Always happy to hear those drums play
And the chair spin! It cracks me up that I love the drums and chair spin. Clearly, I am a simple woman with simple needs.
YES... He's back 😊
Amazing we campaigned to get the chair spin back 😀
Why are we here in this life? Why do we die? What will happen to us after death?
@@ChristopherGonzalez1280 right!!!!!
Not lost in a scary place, but street view saved me from booking a really sketchy airbnb that was apparently inside an auto mechanic shop. Not above it, inside it. It was a single story building with the same address. You could also tell it was in a really shitty part of town. I decided to stay at a hotel instead and had a very fun trip. Thanks, street view.
A Haberdasher is not the maker of hats, but the supplier of needle craft materials, particularly fabric, threads, buttons and other notions. It is a 'milliner' who makes hats and/or fashionable headwear
Oh my god, the story about the old lady that wandered off right under her husband's eye made me cry like a baby man...
OMG, another Sid & Marty Kroft watcher. Hell yeah I remember Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, also H.R. Puffinstuff. :)
One time I found my mom's literal doppelganger, I thought it was my mom, but I was on street view in Russia. She's never been to Russia.
3:00 “Ask Jeeves”. Lmao. I had completely forgotten that!!!
It's still a search engine, apparently
Alta Vista
Skip to 9:20 for the actual mysteries
I was working tech support a while back and this dude with an accent wanted help with ask jeeves. I thought he was messing with me and saying "ass cheese." This story doesn't have much of an ending.
XD I'm pretty sure I misheard Ask Jeeves but certainly not this hilariously
"this story doesn't have much of an ending." It has a cheesy one.
I’m choking
Joe, that "Love you guys, take care" helped get me through two years of pandemic. Thanks for being you.
In the late 80's, I literally got lost driving home. We had just moved and it was late at night and I took a wrong turn. I got lost for a good hour. I am so glad we have google maps on our phones today. I just moved again recently and use maps to find my way around every day.
Many years back, I stepped outside my new apartment for a second and the door locked behind me. Urban area.. It was the rear outdoor stairway on the 4th story of a 4-story building, there were no reachable windows. Can't enter the front of the building without a key.
It was so sudden.. one minute I was relaxing at home and the next I'm outside with nothing -- no keys, no wallet, no ID, no money, no phone.. _no shoes_
I'd never felt so vulnerable. It's not _exactly_ "lost somewhere dangerous" but holy shit did it feel exactly like that.
For some reason, our tiny town in rural Kansas is routinely, frequently updated by Google Streetview. When we are out of town, we joke that we can check on our house live just by using Google Maps. 😅
Maybe your tiny town is used as a testing ground for Google Map updates? A small area, in a remote (but not too remote) location?
The craziest part of this video is you have your christmas tree up in October @8:36
21:24 Joe, what Google did is likely not a breach of the Wiretap Act or the FCA - in 2007, most of that private data was being broadcast by the users completely unencrypted, because WiFi encryption was rarely on by default back then. Google had a good reason to listen to WiFi signals; they were building the location service that could let your device figure out where it was without a GPS chip, just by looking up the ID of nearby WiFi signals. The fact that they overheard the digital equivalent of you talking about an embarrasing medical condition next to an open window is not a crime.
True, I don't think you can call something private if you broadcast it openly on the radio.
Found the corporate defender. There's always one of these nerds in every comment thread on tech videos.....🙄😒😑
Kidnapping, holding at gun point, is not teens having a rough time. Steeling food or a car without a gun is teens having trouble. The promise of safety has been used to take away many freedoms in the past, with much more to come.
How did nobody notice a car there for 22 years when there are several houses and most likely boats that went near it?
Fresnel effect
Silver sphere perplexed uranium oxide probably
I actually know the answer to that! The car was deep enough that you couldn't see from the shore, only after flying the drone it became visible. And in the neighborhood itself there were actually a lot of such lakes so you wouldn't have a reason to fly a drone over that specific lake before either .
There was a missing woman who was gone for probably about 5 years, and she was only found during the California drought, when the lakes worse low enough for someone to finally spot her car that had gone off the road. They?
Didn't search the lakes because there were no skid marks indicating an accident.She just went off the road without hitting the brakes at all 😢
It's not that unusual. I bet you could go to any region in North America and there's a story about a missing person and car that were found when lake/river/pond levels dropped during a drought. Okay, maybe not the Mojave desert, but still.
This is a great idea for small series for the show....the vast sheer amount of pics could keep our youtube eyes and ears busy for months
Fun video!!
I must have missed the announcement/talk, but I’m very happy to see the chair spin return. When I hear the bongos, I get Maslowed every time
Ahhh you had the perfect lineup to say it was "a mountain of mountain bikes"
So glad I have the newsletter, people don't want to miss this!
5:44 if he's found in London that means we found Wally, as he was only renamed Waldo for American publication. Somewhere out there the US Waldo is still in hiding...
22:20 Joe: **Transitions from Google spying on our internet history to... NOT a sponsorship from a VPN**
Me: LOL, "wait, what? Joe! You had them, it was right there, you couldn't have had much lower hanging fruit. This fruit was hanging SO low... **waits for it...** It was on the ground.
I literally already thought "wait did @joescott just accidentally stumble upon the SMOOTEST segway into a sponsorship EVER?"
Segue not segway.
6:27 “What cars are these guys pooping on”. That was the best joke I’ve heard you make, Joe. 🤣🤣🤣👍
I remember Sigmund and watched it too many moons ago? Oh, and ouch on the Ask Jeeves search engine lol.
I went to look at my mother's house on Google Street view when it became available in that area and there she was, hanging a towel out of a window to dry!
All of a sudden I realised that Joe was saying 'all the sudden', and my eye started twitching. Good vid Joe ;-)
Not as annoying as that other dude who tells other people's stories, he often uses the word 'suddenly' instead of unexpectedly. It totally grinds my gears.
Is this a new phenomenon or have I just not been paying attention? This has been bugging me for about a year and this is the first time I’ve seen someone address it. I personally just say ‘suddenly’ but knew ‘all of a sudden’ was common but have been noticing a lot of people saying ‘all the sudden’ and it piques my ears every time.
Someone who I highly respect online said "Intensive purposes" the other day. I was like "Noooo, you're better than that man!"
It's "Intents and Purposes".
While we're on the subject, it's "Eat your cake, and have it too." Of course you can have your cake and eat it too! That's how eating works!.
@@User31129 Not so sure on the cake but what about 'The proof is in the pudding'? Makes no sense at all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, if you are going to shorten it, say 'the proof is in the eating'.
Thanks for forcing me to go find the Chronicles of Narnia SNL skit... that brought me back to college! We watched that non stop!
I know I know... And I wouldn't be able to travel the world the way we do now without Google maps.
I believe the modern paperless era of technology really came about when we as a society stopped printing out mapquest directions at home.
@@MrBurn360but didn’t you stop printing out Mapquest and paper maps… when digital gps became available? Not the other way around? Idk I’m 20 and google maps has been available almost my whole life
@@donnalowe292I still printed out MapQuest maps along with having a vehicle GPS. The maps on the GPS weren't the most accurate and ETA's were way off. What I knew was an 8 hour drive my few GPSs would show as being an 11-13 hour drive.
@@donnalowe292The initial launch of digital GPS devices weren’t widely used. They were often very pricy and not extremely reliable in remote areas.
I’d make a guess and say it was the late 2000’s when iPhone and Android became prominently used when GPS technology really took off. The easy access to Google Maps (or other equivalents) on a device most people already used for other purposes definitely makes a good argument for that.
@donnalowe292 in 2005 GPS was not on your phone it was a entirely separate $1000 device that never had a signal when you needed it, or was just plain wrong so you still needed paper maps as a backup.
my grandmother who passed away a couple years ago is pictured outside her house weeding her garden on street view. Sometimes I look up her house just to see her in her everyday setting once again.
Can you imagine what the parallel universe where Ask Jeeves was still king would be like?
A population that's less globally informed but more personally free
I can believe that he lost control of the car and crashed into the pond. I remember reading that at the time, there was no guardrail, and the complex was still being built.
Pictures of sheep on the road are so common if you live and /or drive in rural British mountain areas that there's nothing unusual about it. It just confirms to you that having lamb for dinner (something else unusual for many Americans) is just a proper thing to do.
Dartmoor, Devon, UK, Sheep and ponies often find the black-top of roads warmer than the grass and sleep on the roads.
It's sad for Americans. Lamb is SO good.
I always like every single one of your videos cuz it's my way of keeping track of the ones I've watched
One correction; Rex H has not been convicted or gone to trial yet.
I was going to comment the same thing. He's definitely guilty, it just hasn't been officially tried yet.
I've lived in my house since 2014, we moved in when it was a new-build. We've watched it over the years on Google maps go from a field, to a building site, sitting in a mud-bowl, lawns appear! Trees, bushes! The technology is so amazing, and amazing it's available for free.
I remember carrying a dime for emergency pay phone calls. This is an amazing advance in our lifetimes!
Pre Google Earth my friend's dad was a cartographer and aerial photographer. He was commissioned by the state gov of our state in Australia to find the exact map locations of a bunch of small, country schools.
They began by flying over the regions where the schools were but found that it was hard to twll the difference between little country schools and large country properties until they realised that most of the schools would have a cricket pitch. So they looked for properties with a long rectangular bit of grass/dirt that stood out from all the other grass or dirt.
Just one of the professions that has changed dramatically since Google Earth/streetview.
The possibility of getting lost is what makes things fun
Uhh not when it's on "E" at midnight and no street lights or signs
6:13 - "... yeah, I've got questions."
not me. It's Japan. There's nothing about people with bird masks on their heads that makes me surprised. It's Japan.
Donating the bikes to "Africa"
[exaggerated winking😉]
Google wasn't just tracking open wifi networks, they were also marking down the signature and location of non-public wifi networks(even if your network is encrypted, or even "hidden", you can't hide certain details due to the network having to allow people to connect)....
"that's just how things are now" - famous last words
Recently found your channel and have been binging ever since
Very wholesome and thoughtful way of presenting content, thank you!
You found Waldo in the UK, so his name is actually Wally.
"The Greater Good"
Back in college we would go on burn rides late at night through rural Pennsylvania. The goal was to smoke until you got lost and then smoke until you found your way back. There were certain rules like no hits on roads with a center line, etc.
it was pretty handy for figuring out the local area and how to navigate roads in general. Figuring out little things like that the color of a street sign means different things, paying attention to the little markers along the roads, knowing that farmers need access to fields so there must be a way around. All type of stuff. Man, fun to get high and lost too.
Maybe its a test to see who reads the newsletter. That's why its unlisted?
It's public now.
Yet, I really miss the old TripTiks we got from AAA when we took our family vacations. My mother couldn’t read a map so I got to navigate for my Dad. I learned a lot from those trips. Google kind of takes the fun out of driving sometimes.
Remember when Google dropped their company motto "Don't be evil"?
this is the first of your videos that i've watched where i've had no idea what to expect going into it
I remember Sigmund Joe, I remember. There are others of us who are also like a thousand years old.
My husband grew up in West Palm Beach and knew about that story, he said that the neighborhood was actually built around the car in the pond. His car went into the retention pond before the houses were even built up. It's crazy to see what street view can find without any biases.
Underrated mullet Joe. Bordering on skullet. Own it!
10:38 that image was taken by a survey airplane, commercial satellite imaging can't resolve such high detail :)
The thing about privacy, is you lost all expectation of it once you step outside your home. When you are in public, you will be observed. If you use an open public Wi-Fi network, you are exchanging privacy for convenience. Public means public, and everything outside the front door, that's public. Pretty simple
My mom is captured sitting on my grandma’s front stoop on a sunny day. It’s so wholesome.
15:16 that's way too close to home, big scary
Yeah I just thought of my grandmother
why did we need an entire history lesson on how google maps was created
I remember Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. I didn’t like it as a kid; I’d always change the channel for something better. :P
There were a few Sid and Marty Kroft shows I _did_ enjoy: Dr. Shrinker, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Land of the Lost, Lost Saucer, Wonderbug.
I have to ask... did you actually dislike H. R. Puff N Stuff?
Was not expecting anyone to talk about privacy, but glad you did! Sadly Big Tech companies want us to think that our only choices are privacy or lack of technology/innovation, but that's not always true. Sure, Street View requires us to expect to be seen in public, but Google didn't have to scrape our WiFi data in the process. I hope in the future more people will realize that companies need to be reasonable and kept in check and start taking their privacy more seriously. Great video though, Joe, it's awesome to see how much your channel has grown since the early days! I always enjoy when you've put out a new upload!
6:20 technically avians
They are "The Coo Crew" 😂 j/k
Thank you. I knew furries wasn't appropriate
Last time I got lost I was in the woods at an old cabin with my family. I went on a hike and got lost. I walked in circles for 2 hours, always somehow coming back the what seem like the same place. After 2 hours I gave up and went in the opposite direction and I kid you not, I was 20 feet for the cabin.... I was so embarrassed...