A Map of Every Lighthouse on the Planet—But You Might Get Lost Trying to Use It
A Hacker News discussion about an interactive world map of lighthouses. Commenters praise the concept but report severe usability problems: panning is slow, pinch-to-zoom jumps to random locations, and the map shows far more lighthouses than exist, including some far inland. Others share lighthouse trivia, like unique light patterns for identification.
I checked the area near my house and there are about 10x more lighthouses shown than really exist. Some are buoys but most don’t correspond to anything.
- plasticeagle
Aside from the incredibly low quality of the data, this jumps out as being vibe coded due to the unbeleviably stupid text.
"Rain as a surface; Height is millimetres of rain per day. Nothing else is encoded."
Why does AI generated ridiculous sentences like these?
- Waterluvian
I like the idea. But it was a bit jarring that panning with my finger took ages and then pinching to zoom insta-faceplanted me into the Labrador interior.
If anyone wants to mount a rescue, I’m somewhere near a lighthouse.
- bobosola
Lovely idea, and a nostalgia trip for me. The sweeping looms brought back some old memories. I worked on merchant ships prior to getting into coding and was the officer of the watch one night crossing the Bay of Biscay going north. It was a clear night with that almost unnaturally still air you get at sea sometimes. I gradually noticed the loom of a lighthouse flashing over the sky just off the starboard bow. I wasn’t expecting landfall so soon and quickly double-checked our position on the chart. I counted the flashes; it was clearly the Phare du Créac'h on the Isle of Ushant. It’s stated as visible at 32 nautical miles, but I was seeing it at almost 90 nautical miles away. The light itself was still below the horizon, but the loom was clearly identifiable (there were no other lights in that area with the same number of flashes and frequency). It must have been some weird temperature inversion effect, but I have never forgotten it. I never saw any other lighthouse from that far away in the rest of my 25-odd years at sea.
- jvdvegt
Looks nice as already mentioned: pinch to zoom is broken (Firefox on Android here). Also: why am I shown a button labeled 'lighthouses in France' when I'm not actually looking at France?
- zX41ZdbW
I have a similar project (which I created in 2024): https://adsb.exposed/
Among various datasets, it has OSM data (all of it): https://adsb.exposed/?dataset=OSM&zoom=4&lat=52.3756&lng=2.5...
And here are lighthouses: https://adsb.exposed/?dataset=OSM&zoom=3&lat=40.0444&lng=9.9...