I just told a colleague today, who asked for feedback about his recorded presentation, to turn into "static, boring PowerPoint", at least parts of it. I think most of the people this presentation was for would not appreciate a video (especially a long one).
I myself cannot absorb/remember any content from a "five minute video", but happy to locate and repeatedly, reliably retrieve the information from that "three hour document". In other words, the utility of these videos are zero in 5min, whereas the utility of those documents are more than zero, in possibly less than three hours.
With all that said the professional presentation is exactly what would help you succeed with this product, if you find the audience. Well done!
As a Hungarian, told my friends in November: "the election results, Project 2025, the newly elected president, etc... is the same old story we have already seen with Orban 10+y ago. But don't worry, the US has a much better established democracy, shit can't really go as wrong as in Eastern-Europe"
Well, I'm not so sure about that last part anymore.
As someone born just south of the Hungarian border, I feel it is important to point out just how quickly election integrity deteriorates afterwards.
Or to quote Serbian president's freudian slip (from just two days ago): "Every living soul in Kosjerić [small town that held municipal elections] came out to vote against us, but we still managed to win."
It is fucking bullshit how a country can spend decades building up its democratic institutions and all it takes is one opportunist to get elected once to undo it all and solidify himself into power for the next 15ish years. And then after they finally leave, you have to start all over again from scratch.
I'm Russian. We elected Putin fair and square back in 2000.
When it comes to consequences of such things, they take time to ramp up (during which time people are usually dismissive of any warnings). The trick is to get out of the country before it's too late.
At some point the "If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal" quote went popular among the leftists. At the same time the right wing were convinced that elections are rigged.
Turns out it's all BS. Unless it already deteriorated, and no it has not deteriorated in most of the world, votes do count and you live with the outcome which may include the eventual reality of vites stop counting. It's very weird, I can't form an opinion if its a psyop or just how the societies work.
To anyone who watched or lived through the ascension of Orbán and Erdogan in the 2000s it was very eerie how similar the playbook was for Trump.
The same steps, in the same direction, the competitive authoritarian[0] playbook was clearly in full play, during the first term Trump started to openly attack the free press, subjugate some democratic institutions, etc. but guardrails were still holding, some GOP Congress people could pushback, the VP wasn't entirely in the cult, the cabinet had some level-headed people.
Now in the second term there is nothing holding back, not the Congress nor Senate, not the Judiciary, not the cabinet, not the elites, not the press, and seemingly the people aren't able at all to comprehend and pushback on how authoritarian it all is.
The plan trudges along, crisis will keep being fabricated so Trump's grip on power increases, this one in LA is definitely going to be used to salami slice more and more power into the Executive, under the veil of "homeland security".
You're entering a new phase of Trump's authoritarianism, Americans, and there doesn't seem to have any power actually powerful enough to fight back.
I'm not from the US, so I may have get wrong, but didn't the Founding Fathers envision that people should be able to collectively rise up and overthrow a tyrant? Hence the right to keep and bear arms?
Of course, from a practical sense this does not seem possible, since the current US military, which a tyrant president would have direct control over, would be infinitely more powerful than a revolutionary group.
I don't know anything else apart from finding communities and mobilising with similar-minded people, there's power in numbers.
At the same time it feels pretty hopeless, even more when I noticed downvotes coming to my comment right after the day rose in the USA without any rebuttal, you're among people who actually support this and do not realise the path it's verging towards.
Maybe not that interesting for a non-Eastern-European, but Orbán went all mad when after his first term he lost the elections. He swore to come back and take revenge.
And then 2010-2025 happened, we saw what the revenge was.
Trump coming back feels very similar to this.
Project 2025 is just a collection of methods they used in E-Europe before. On one hand one could read and learn from history. On the other hand... It's a manual on how to do things, in case you wanna build a system like those in E-Europe.
Wikipedia says Gordon Bajnai, an entrepreneur aged about 41 at the time, who was in power for just one year, by choice:
> In his first speech as PM, he promised drastic measures to stop the negative spiral of the Hungarian economy, and to ease the burden of the international crisis. He also stated that he would remain in power until he had the solid majority of Parliament behind his austerity package, but will stay no longer than a year.
> The new cabinet formed on 29 May 2010. Bajnai was succeeded by Viktor Orbán. After that he retired from politics and returned to business life.
He was a temporary PM after the previous one (Gyurcsany) resigned after a motion of no confidence against him. Bajnai didn't do much, handled the 2008 crisis, and it was known he would not continue.
Funnily, Gyurcsany was removed after a leaked recording on which he said "we have fucked it up. Not just a bit, but much." [1] It's amazing that after 17 years, when Orban's huge lies and corruption is proven, people are fine with that, but when a former clown PM was complaining to his party members that "we should've done better", half the country was in riot.
Before his second term came, it was the Socialist party in coalition with the (left) Liberals[1] for 8 years. I don't recall to have an equivalent of Sleepy Joe, but one of the early left wing PM certainly seemed a bit dumb.
The "real" problem was that they had too many (Russia-influenced / supported?) ex-communists and some of them were doing corrupt business in the 100k USD range; Of course this is already forgotten, Orban's friends' 100M+ USD ranging businesses seem to be fine with the voters. Not to mention Orban's and the foreign minister's regular visit to Putin.
Relevant search keywords: "Hungary Orban" + any of the following: "stadium", "castle", "rich meszaros", "corruption"
Some yes, and then all sorts of mood boosters, painkillers, etc. Basically all the stuff I later saw during a commercial break at a bar during some sports game. (this should be banned, TBH)
Switzerland has something similar these days (UBS-CS merger, big tech layoffs, too expensive local workforce)
I applied to 39 jobs (mostly through LinkedIn)
Out of which 29 in Switzerland, the rest mainly fully remote in Europe and US.
I got in total around 6 companies' 20-something interviews. Exactly ONE interview ouf of those was in Switzerland. Crazy
(I might just not be enough for this competitive market, I know. Eventually I ended up with a consulting job within the EU, obviously for lower daily rate, which is fine)
Fun thing is, the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly
I remember reading around here about how many companies in Switzerland like Roche, offshore a lot of mid-tier tech jobs (like web dev) out to places like Poland due to much better performance/cost. IIRC, Acronis also has most of their devs in Bulgaria now. I also remember reading a few years ago an interview with a Swisscom exec about offshoring their devops jobs to the Netherlands on the claim they can't find local devops talent.
Now I'm not in Switzerland and even I'm not buying that reason at face value, but it's clear that offshoring is an issue in most high-CoL countries in the post WFH era as a lot of tech jobs became more of a commodity in the post ZIRP era. So I can imagine the jobs not moving out of Switzerland are those "management" type of jobs where the job itself is having coffee and networking with the other managers on how to further reduce costs and increase profits while relocating engineering jobs to cheaper countries.
Due to this, it seems that Eastern Europe is one of the hottest places to be in tech right now.
>the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly
This explains some of the absurd arguments I often hear from delulu googlers on this board and how out of touch they are with the real world. The sad thing is they have little introspection to realize it and would rather die on their hill.
To your main point: it feels like CH is losing a lot of "in-house" knowledge and mostly the managerial / leader positions are growing here. This is somewhat masked by the fact that the universities show top notch research (mainly with foreign students tho), and there are many startups that eventually make some noise. But classical business will suffer a lot from off-shoring literally any real knowledge and know how that is normally needed to create a product. As one of my ex-managers said: "it's crazy that we cannot even produce aspirin anymore in Switzerland".
And then some more anecdata:
I happened to be part of Acronis during the time when they tried helping escape all the Engineers in Moscow to Bulgaria. (I have stories, yes, I was in the HQ in Moscow too). The engineers, who made Acronis (the product) were always in Bulgaria for the past 5+ years, so that one is not like the other examples.
I also ended up working for a small banking startup, 20 of us tried to do business on the regional banking sphere. I left during the time when the company was inflated with 40+ offshore (Balkans) engineers.
To be precise, the ex googlers are not clueless about engineering (or at least I hope so), but about how the unemployment system in CH works, and they are also out of touch salary-wise.
>This is somewhat masked by the fact that the universities show top notch research (mainly with foreign students tho)
Yeah, but those positions require highly specialized knowledge and are therefore very niche. Say you're an unemployed tech worker, how would one get such a job without a PhD in the field? You can't. What do you do when most new positions in your area of expertise have been shipped abroad?
>As one of my ex-managers said: "it's crazy that we cannot even produce aspirin anymore in Switzerland".
I doubt they don't know anymore, but they just don't bother since it's a generic drug in the race to the bottom that Switzerland can't and doesn't want to take part in.
>To be precise, the ex googlers are not clueless about engineering (or at least I hope so), but about how the unemployment system in CH works, and they are also out of touch salary-wise.
I think you misunderstood me. I never said googles are clueless about tech, but about life in general, especially the life of those not earning 200k+.
Because living in a coddled bubble of 200k+ wages in Zurich would make one highly out of touch with the reality of most average people in Switzerland and moreso in the rest of the world, and you see this in their comments and arguments on HN. They just can't empathize or understand that your reality on the ground is different than theirs.
Even without knowing the unemployment system in Switzerland or in any other country, how the hell can you expect to receive 200K+ in unemployment benefits? That's just so entitled and out of touch, it's insane. Unemployment benefits are never a payment of 100% of your salary to continue the Googler lifestyle, but a smaller basic safety net to cover your vital expenses till you find another job. That's just common sense everywhere.
Also, I'm not saying that it's great to have these high performant researcher-founded startups, my point is simply that because of these, the "numbers" don't look too bad.
BTW, In Switzerland "you get 80% of your last salary", as most of the people heard from this or that. Obviously this is not the entire story (it is capped, it's not necessary 80%, etc etc) - some people think, oh I made 250k, therefore I'm entitled to 200k now. With that said, in a very optimal case, here you can get around 150k as unemployment benefit, which is still enormously high compared to other countries.
>> Eastern Europe is one of the hottest places to be in tech right now.
Market there is much better than in western countries, but I see projects are pushed from Poland further to the Asia. UBS is laying off thousands there, moving projects to the Indian office.
They had $1.7bn net profit for Q1 2025. It's good for bottom line in short term to outsource to the cheapest location. Also they have tons of internal project which does not need any quality at all. Could get a bunch of students in the cheapest location for such things.
I know a trade unionist who tried to talk ex Googlers into bargaining for a compensation package after getting laid off, but many were absolutely clueless about any of that. They had no plans and didn't even want to collaborate with unions. Unfortunately, STEM folks still see themselves as above regular workers and thus incorrectly perceive themselves as shielded from capitalists wrath and mood swings.
While just because a company wants this, I doubt this is the future, however...
Just a couple days ago I was thinking about this (and in fact, started exploring icon packs for my desktop) that all the UIs I use are reduced to "black and white" icons and widgets. Colors are missing, sophisticated shapes too. Sometimes I am actually wondering what an icon is meant to represent.
At my new gig I have to use web Outlook (not allowed to use my finger-memorized mutt setup), and I must say it's a pleasure to look at the UI. Still line drawing icons, but and elegant play with colors at least. Similar to how some LibreOffice Icon packs look like.
I rather hope this is the future. Use colors as accents, leverage a "grouping" functionality with them.
> At my new gig I have to use web Outlook (not allowed to use my finger-memorized mutt setup), and I must say it's a pleasure to look at the UI. Still line drawing icons, but and elegant play with colors at least.
What do you mean "colors"? I have been using Web Outlook for a while, and everything is blue black and grey with a ton empty space.
The ';-- in front of Pwned is a brilliant idea but less brilliant execution. Missed opportunity, I'm wondering how many people don't realize what it is
Super interesting. I recently learned that a lot of foreigners moving to Germany find that Germans are staring. It’s called the German stare. I wonder if staring is a Germanic thing.
Pro tip for everyone else: start counting with your thumb.
For some reason I don't quite understand, my pinky and ring fingers don't operate well independently of one another. This is an issue when counting on my fingers (or attempting a boy scout salute), so I've started counting 1,2,3 from the thumb, 4 with the thumb down and all four fingers up, and 5, of course, with all digits extended.
(I could start counting at my pinky, but that just makes me look totally nuts)
Edit: If you read the article the comment I replied to posted, it includes thumb first counting as one of the cultural differences people experience when visiting Germany - in addition to the "Germanic Stare" they specifically mention in their comment. Consider actually reading before assuming I'm just typing nonsense - unless responding to titles and comments without reviewing the content they contain is a cultural difference I need a guide to get used to when visiting Hacker News.
I've started counting in a very weird way, because from an open hand, I can bring my ring finger down to my palm independently, but if I try to bring just my pinky down, the ring finger comes along from the ride.
So when I count, I start with a closed fist, then open my thumb, followed by my index finger, then middle, then pinky, then ring finger.
The pinkie and ring finger share a tendon - this is why they are weaker than the other fingers.
Or, at least that’s how it was explained to me as a kid learning to play the double bass. The standard technique is to use those two fingers together to press the string on the upper part of the fingerboard where the most strength is required.
You will never convince Europeans of this. They simply seem to be unable to grasp that (1) cultural norms about introversion/extroversion and friendliness are not universal, and so the default baseline IS more outgoing, social, friendly, and extraverted in North America, and (2) because of the other differences in service industry culture [not necessarily themselves all positives but nevertheless relevant], the service industry in America optimizes for extraverted and friendly people.
So yeah, when the super friendly waitress comes over and asks the table "how is your day going", they're not forcing a smile for a tip. It helps, but they're most likely naturally outgoing and friendly and genuinely curious.
When you grow up with this environment, moving to Europe is adaptable (have done so), but whenever you go back home it is a breath of fresh air.
That's because the reference point of most Europeans is not the actual lived experience of people in the US but the picture painted by the media.
When I visited the US the smiles seemed sincere‚ no doubt about it. The interactions also felt strangely shallow, which was of course to be expected and even sensible in the cultural context (why go into depth with someone you barely know and will never see again), but that is the real reason it felt jarring compared to what I was used to, and often made it confusing to make sense of whether the politeness was sincere or not.
This was in California, and I have to add that I was 17 at the time so "making sense of other people" wasn't a highly developed skill yet to begin with.
It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.
That’s interesting. I’ve been told every time (so far) to keep a “neutral face”. I smiled once and the guy let out a heavy sigh and made me take the photo again (Redwood City, CA DMV).
Can confirm. US passport photos want a neutral expression and explicitly say (not in the below page, but elsewhere during the renewal process) not to smile.
Strange, one of the example photos has a person smiling. I’ve seen several US passports recently with the person smiling. It must not be an important rule if it’s not clearly communicated or enforced. Especially since some (all?) US states allow smiling in ID photos I would think they would be more explicit about not smiling in passport photos.
It’s not a requirement, just a suggestion. The most i ever got was “say cheese!” once at one of my DL renewals, but that was it.
In the US, I had to take photos for driver’s license at least 4 times, for green card 1 time, and for passport 1 time, not in a single one of them I am smiling. Saw the DLs of my friends more than a few times (either at bars or clubs or while crossing the border or when the topic arrived naturally), and the breakdown of smiling vs not smiling is 40/60 at most (with a heavy lean towards not smiling)[0].
I partially agree though about the US being a bit special in the aspect of even just allowing people to smile in ID photos. In the previous country I lived in and where I had to take ID photos, it was explicitly prohibited to smile in those photos, and they would reject applications if someone did.
0. Purely anecdotal, as it could totally be the case that I just accidentally ended up befriending mostly those who don’t smile for ID photos.
It is not often that a photo is required of me for some ID, so I believe the MVD here in Arizona has got two photos from me in 26 years. If I recall correctly, the instructions were "smile if you prefer to." My expression is cheerful but not overly smiling; I'm wearing a full beard, and the photo has been converted to monochrome - why, I have no idea.
However, the camera used at MVD is clearly more sophisticated than it appears, because if you install the Mobile ID app, your photo goes full "Harry Potter mode" and animates in a 3D rotation!
I don't recall any directions about my expression for the US Passport photo at the USPS station. However, they did attempt to reject the photo for strange technical reasons. I could not fathom the rejection because the photo had been entirely handled by the professional USPS clerk and I wasn't involved in generating it. I insisted on submitting exactly the same way a second time around and it was approved. It must've been a procedural glitch of some kind. Or the government knew I shouldn't be traveling to an ill-fated vacation, and was trying to gently dissuade me?
I actually don't like his tone in the article. Why should the Swiss even care what is perceived as rude other countries, staring or whatever? There's this common view that immigrants from poor countries should adapt and integrate, but if they're from western(er) lands they get to judge?
Sad to see the current state of mobile OSM-based apps. Maps.me becoming OrganicMaps, now this. Lot of development effort, great work going into it, but somehow, after years, the apps don't feel more user-friendly.
I was pushing hard to replace Google Maps, but eventually, I gave up. OsmAnd is great if you need that "swiss army knife of OSM apps" on your phone, but I rarely do. Same with Maps.me/Organic Maps, try to search for something, mistype only one letter (surprise, surprise, that happens a lot on mobile), and you have no chance to get results. Alternative path for your bike route? Forget about it. Rendering is awful, either ugly, or slow, or both.
I am trying to switch to Mapy.com (Mapy.cz before), it's a surprisingly user friendly app, however, not sure how they are going to monetize soon. So far the best on phone, I hope they will push and really become a Maps-replacement. They recently switched from a Czech-focused concept to a proper world-wide map (mapy.com); both web and mobile is great so far. (I am not Czech, and have no relation to mapy, simply really like their app)
If OsmAnd got a new rendering engine (no, not that "3D" sluggish thing it has for a couple years now), like streetcomplete has (or the Strava-built-in mapbox renderer), it would be possibly the best.
OSMAnd and OrganicMaps both have the limitation (and big advantage) of functioning offline by default. The routing will be much more powerful (with alternatives on by default) and faster if you enable an online routing service. For OSMAnd this is possible with e.g. GraphHopper: https://www.graphhopper.com/blog/2024/02/27/osmand-with-grap...
The same is true for address search. If you have an online address search like photon the search can be more user friendly. We've put together photon and GraphHopper routing on GraphHopper Maps: https://graphhopper.com/maps/ which you could self-host on your own (i.e. also use offline): https://github.com/karussell/local-maps
GraphHopper Maps is also available on fdroid store or you can install the website as PWA in iOS.
> (and big advantage) of functioning offline by default.
I don't know about others but that's the main reason I use it. My day to day mapping app is still Google Maps but I always keep a copy of Organic Maps with downloaded maps of wherever I'm going as a backup. While I do not use it often, it's gotten me out of a couple of sticky situations while camping and roadtripping.
Organic Maps (and other offline mapping providers) are far from perfect and the UX is just not the same as it is on Google Maps for example. But with it being a backup app, if I need to open it I don't really care about the limitations, I just need an offline map.
I know this probably doesn't solve the same issue, but google maps has a offline feature. Click your profile picture (on mobile), pick offline maps, ....
It has a huge limitation in that it only allows you to pick a certain area to download and those maps "expire" after a period of time. The key advantage that Organic Maps (and other OSM providers) has is that I can download an entire state, province or even country and that data will never "expire".
I think this is less Organic vs Google than OpenStreetMap's data set vs Google's. I don't know why Google does so much worse with trails than OSM, but it really does.
> I don't know why Google does so much worse with trails than OSM, but it really does.
I expect that Google never saw a market in trail mapping. I also assume no Google employee took an interest in trails as a 10% project. Google Maps doesn't really do much for topography either.
Google Earth can be good for trail mapping, but that has basically atrophied since it was acquired from Keyhole.
Yeah, but the thing is that I don't think any of this data is "self-collected". I suspect that OSM gets most of its US trail data (or at least western state trail data) from the National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. I also suspect that incorporating such a data source into Google Maps is relatively trivial, but they just seemed to have done so.
I map many trails on osm from personal site surveys and a combination of sat imagery and my gpx files. No way google is doing that because there is no one to steal the data from. It was me, the enthusiast that put it in osm directly. That’s just me and the trails I load tho. Example - Latest was short one at monkeyface falls. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/34.098058/-116.955639
I hike on trails in New Mexico, and I find the existing trail data on osmand/OSM to be astoundingly accurate. I had concluded that NSF/BLM must have data.
So few people hike these trails that I do not believe they were entered one by one. The one "trail" I hiked that was entered by someone I deleted later that day, because it should not have been shown as a trail.
I happened to work for a car navigation software development company 15+y ago. Cool stuff, Windows CE / PDAs as devices, android and ios nowhere. These were totally offline devices (map updates through usb / sdcard).
Even then, this offline navigation was super fast, across countries. Today I managed to wait a whole minute for a 5km bike navigation in OsmAnd. Then I uninstalled (after years of hoping for improvement. Yes, I was regularly donating money.)
In my experience, OsmAnd is mostly slow for very long routes.
Maybe it is a matter of quality. Because of course you can find routes fast if they are not the fastest or best routes.
But there is room for improvement.
brouter could be integrated even better. Or a router like that could be used directly in OsmAnd.
And long routes could be handled more flexible.
E.g., when I go from Copenhagen to Barcelona, it is not super important at first to find the optimal way into Barcelona, or shortcuts in France using regional roads. It will take several days, but I would like to start with a reasonable route giving me an estimate of distance and time. At first I just need a good route to the Great Belt Bridge or the Rødby ferry -- Copenhagen is on an island.
When I drive long distances, I sometimes use several devices.
The Xzent system is much faster for longer distances, but the map is not as good, especially it is missing may POI's.
Often they disagree, especially if one is optimizing for distance and other for fuel or time. Then if there is an obstacle or a bad road, I instantly have a good alternative at an intersection.
Just that comparing Google and OSMAnd/OrganicMaps in terms of routing alternatives & speed and powerful address search is not 100% fair (even when they'd use the same data source which they don't)
> The routing will be much more powerful (with alternatives on by default) and faster if you enable an online routing service.
What is the essential reason that online routing has an advantage over local routing, if the data is all available locally anyway? Is it that you need an index, and that index is large and/or very time-consuming to produce, and hence not viable to store/generate on-device after each map data update?
At least for bycicle routing, Brouter also runs offline and is much more performant than both OSMAnd and OrganicMaps (and can be integrated into OSMAnd).
To me it feels like OSMAnd heavily prioritizes feature develompent over performance, which is fair enough but still annoying.
And their choices in features they wish to develop confuses. 50% of the time I still have to translate an address into GPS coordinates before I can find a place, and yet I have an OBD-II plugin that allows me to monitor my car's performance?
Offline navigation is really nice. The fact that I can use maps and find routes regardless of where I am and what connection I have, is great.
It would be nice to have slightly smarter search, though. That definitely requires improvement. Even just the ordering of the results is terrible sometimes.
> try to search for something, mistype only one letter
Photon is quite good at this, coming with english/french/german plug-and-play. But it's online, so very hard to implement on each user's phone, which is the limitation of Organic and Osmand.
Once you're using Photon or an equivalent project, you need to do a lot more to provide Google's experience :
- itinerary suggestions like "from london to winchester"
- coordinates detection
- handle abbreviations like blvd, in all the languages (Nominatim does it better than Photon, from what I know)
- handle category search, e.g. typing "coffee in Marais" -> a full-text-search won't work taking only the features' name, you need to do some semantic separation of terms
- etc.
> Alternative path for your bike route? Forget about it.
Same pb : offline routing is harder. BRouter is excellent, with lots of alternatives, but online (can be installed on OSMand but it's nerdy).
Disclaimer : I'm working on https://cartes.app, a Web map app. We're using Photon and Brouter, but lots need to be done, including i18n to english, soon I hope !
Wow, thanks for mentioning https://streetcomplete.app! This looks very intuitive to use for edits on openstreetmaps.
Would someone here know a similiar tool for iOS or MacOS? Or any recommendations to edit roads.
We are currently driving with a 4.5 tonne motorhome in Europe and the road weight and height limits are usually marked properly in osmand+ but when they are not we waste multiple hours rerouting in the alps and I would really want to help the next person in similar situation.
Mentioning it just in case, but openstreetmap.org's web editor (iD) is a good start on Desktop.
There's also EveryDoor [1] which is very nice to edit OSM and they do seem to have an iOS version. Depending on what you want to edit, it can be very handy.
I have not tried the numerous other, more advanced options [2].
Agreed. I use organic maps for hiking, because its just simple offline trail mapping. I want a mapping program in my car to easily be offline, have map overlays that are easy to read like more pronounced lane/route arrows and can re route if there is a road shut down or a backup on the expressway and I go to get off.
But my biggest gripe with using organic maps with driving is its search function. I couldnt care if it doesnt have all the online social features like google maps and come up with the police/safety warnings and restaurant ratings. I just want its seach to actually find the place I want to go.
Most of the time I try and avoid using google maps, but then I go back and try organic maps. Notice it doesnt have where i want to go listed in its search, so i google the address to plug in. I can enter in the exact address and it wont find it and then go back to google maps.
> Notice it doesnt have where i want to go listed in its search
I live in an area where OSM is really good with that (just because people contributed the data). If your area is less complete, it feels like it's a good opportunity to contribute!
There are many apps that will help you contribute to the map, or you can do it directly from the website: https://www.openstreetmap.org.
It doesn't mean you need to spend tons of time on it: I contribute data a few times a year. It's better than nothing :-).
It's not only about being tagged in Openstreetmap, it's about the search algorithm finding the relevant entry from ambiguous entry. Dealing with cases where things are spelled slightly differently (abbreviations etc.) or finding the relevant entry when common terms are used in names or search just by category.
Another alternative to mapy.com you could try is Here WeGo. I prefer it to any other Google Maps alternative I have tried. And there are some things, like the car navigation, that I prefer on it over Google Maps. I don't find their privacy policy creepy, and the most creepy parts are opt-in and the toggle clearly explains what you'd be opting into and what feature you are missing out on by not opting in. Mapy's privacy policy is less creepy than Here's in some aspects, but some of the creepiness that's opt-in in Here, like location data sharing for traffic, it's on with no opting-out on Mapy.
I'd prefer an open-source alternative, but as you said, there isn't any that currently fits my needs.
Plus one for everything you said! I've been using WeGo in place of Google maps for a good few months and it's been an easy drop in swap without any compromises for me.
It would be immense for an open source project to exist, but I'll happily settle for a non-google one.
The biggest for me is definitely the lack of public transportation. This is something even gnome-maps support. Global search (eg. things that are not downloaded yet) only works for some bigger entities, that are part of the world map (although I understand that this would need some server-side support). Not having a satellite map is also a bummer.
Point-to-point navigation at places where you already downloaded maps is alright (same with osmand), but for exploration, or public trasnport, I would need to use moovit, mapy, osmand (wikipedia overlay is awesome), or google maps.
Oh that's a great callout. I did some quick research and it appears Gnome's public transport feature is powered by https://transitous.org/ - I wonder how much work it would be to add this to Organic Maps?
They seem to have some sort of experimental support for GTFS [1], and one important part of Transitous is being a GTFS aggregator, so maybe they are not too far away from being able to use that part of Transitous.
Although it'd probably be good to be able to query Transitous itself when online.
There is a lot one could do offline. Highlight close by stations, have overlays/styles for transport focus (they got an overlay for "Subway", which in some areas includes commuter trains but not for bus/tram/light rail/...)
And in theory one could add bundles of data based on GTFS data which many transport organisations these days publish and do routing at least based on schedule times.
Question is what it's for. A proper transport layer on the map would be valuable to me. Even without timetable data. That's even in relations on openstreetmap already.
Next improvement might be to highlight lines based on frequency of service. Still possible to precalculate with little need on device.
We'd love to have your input for improved transit in CoMaps! I agree it's an important priority. Last GSoC there was a project for ingesting GTFS feeds against OSM data, since local agencies are often much better about their details than OSM is, but as a student project it was slow and limited in scope.
Not an UX thing, but I find myself going back to Google Maps to find restaurants, reviews and reliable opening hours all the time. Neither Apple Maps nor Organic Maps offers the same level of quality (not to say that Google Maps reviews can be problematic in themselves).
It's almost impossible for anything to compete with Google Maps on business information because they have built such a vast commercial ecosystem around it with advertising, Maps users etc.
And at least back when I tried it a long time ago, it wouldn't pull in updates from OSM in a timely manner. Like I updated something in OSM and a month later it still wasn't available in organic maps. Maybe it is better now?
Search. I've wanted to like Organic Maps, but the search function is the absolute pits and forces me to still use Google Maps. Without good search, there's next to no point in me using it.
I'm working on https://github.com/styluslabs/maps/ including a new 3D map engine (based on Tangram-ES) and JS plugin support, so while there is no offline routing yet, support for additional online routing services can be added by users.
> I am trying to switch to Mapy.com (Mapy.cz before), it's a surprisingly user friendly app, however, not sure how they are going to monetize soon
They now sell premium. Presumably some features (offline maps? or offline navigation? suggest a hike?) will be locked behind premium :-/ They do have great UX though
> If OsmAnd got a new rendering engine (no, not that "3D" sluggish thing it has for a couple years now), like streetcomplete has (or the Strava-built-in mapbox renderer), it would be possibly the best.
Edit : sorry, I read Organic. Indeed OSMand is sluggish for me as well. I don't know why they went for something other than MapLibre. It's probably in-house and entangled in their code :/
Streetcomplete is amazing; I understand it provides less polygons to render but it does an absolutely amazing job at it, even when there are thousands of quests.
It most likely involves a lot more than "just swapping the maps engine". Everything is built on top of their stack. It would basically mean rewriting an app from scratch.
I started using osmand a lot more lately while biking and I agree route calculation on the phone (hi Pixel 4a :) ) are super slow but for that reason you can configure alternative (online) routing engines in the settings https://osmand.net/docs/user/navigation/routing/online-routi.... I use https://openrouteservice.org/ which generates long routes in seconds and works great in general.
There's a lot of discussion about bicycle routing improvements, as well as displaying alternate routes. I expect these conversations to be continued in CoMaps, so your input is valued and welcome there! https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/9748
Slightly off topic but I would really want to see DuckDB based alternative of https://pgrouting.org.
It's so easy to embed duckdb anywhere. Current smartphones already have enough CPU juice to handle almost anything and duckdb can query and cache geoparquet files eg from the Overture maps.
I'm not that worried about Mapy.cz/.com becoming useless unless you pay, to be honest. (Maybe they'll make me look foolish for that.) The developer is Seznam, which is kind of like the Czech homegrown equivalent of Google/Craigslist/Zillow. I assume they monetize in pretty much the same way: ads, enterprise, API fees.
I've been using a do-googled LineagoOS fan for the last few months with Organic maps, and not only do I find it super user friendly, I actively like it more than Google Maps. It works offline so much better.
For Android, I have used Locus Maps for many years. It has a somewhat confusing, but very powerful, interface. And I feel the team behind it is committed and engaged. Very worthwhile to try if you haven't.
I'm Czech, and a long time user of Mapy.cz / Mapy.com. Monetization of Mapy.com has been a question for some time. It's part of the Seznam conglomerate, which makes most of its money through various news sites (including a TV channel) and an ad platform. Other "side projects" of Seznam, like their e-mail service, serve as drivers for their homepage and stay completely free. Mapy.cz contained affiliate Booking.com links for some time, but recently they added a paid subscription and moved the ability to download offline maps for more than two countries at a time behind a paywall. It seems that they are just now trying to figure out a more sustainable way to monetize, and everyone is hoping they won't destroy the great app in the process.
Mapy.cz was profitable before, they have practical monopoly on Czech market due shop data (opening hours, menus, user reviews). Recent monetization is just squeeze.
Btw hiking data are a bit obsolete for other countries. They have fork from OSM that is a few years behind.
That's not my experience at all, for shops and restaurants (opening hours, menus, photos, ratings) I always need to use Google Maps. And even then, a "practical monopoly" does not mean anything unless you monetize it...
Other map apps offer different routes between two points, showing the trade-off in time. Organic Maps calculates one route, and it doesn't matter if it's through a deadly car-congested highway.
My example is going from Zürich West to Downtown. Here is my experience:
* Organic maps: calculates fast, although through a street with a lot of traffic, no alternatives offered.
* OsmAnd: takes 5 seconds on a flagship phone to RENDER the current view. I try to avoid zoom and pan. What the hell. Calculating the navigation is either a couple seconds or a minute. The whole UX is totally broken, however, at least you can select to prefer byways / bicycle routes.
* Mapy: fast rendering, fast pathfinding, alternatives offered, configurable to use bike paths.
* Google Maps: totally random what happens, it's a combination of the above (I guess it tries to use live traffic data, too?)
Now the funny thing is that there is an actual signaled bicycle path (which I prefer, since it avoids traffic), and OSM does have this data. None of the app would prefer that path, unfortunately (it's maybe 20 minutes instead of 18 minutes, but much safer).
It feels like most of the apps are hyperfocused on one type of navigation / exploration / feature set (being offline is huge, though), and nothing comes close to Google Maps' "not the best, but delivers alright UX across all these features" approach.
Yeah, getting a nice bike route on OrganicMaps indeed involves some manual app convincing when an obvious bike route exists, I had the exact same thing last week, I agree this could be improved especially given the data is already present in OSM.
Inflexible routing is the reason I'm not using an Organic maps derivative. On OSMAnd I have tweaked the routing algorithm to my taste and it's hard to beat.
There is often construction or other temporary issues, so having on-the-fly rerouting that I can trust is key.
Thanks - that's really interesting. Which route would you personally recommend?
(My interest is that I run cycle.travel, which currently finds this route: https://cycle.travel/map?from=&to=&fromLL=47.390987,8.478737... . I'm not entirely happy with it in this case though - for example, it's not routing onto the cycle path south of the railway on Aargauerstrasse, I think perhaps some of the paths leading onto/off it are rather fussily mapped.)
I think you'd be surprised, how many people do production code WITHOUT automated formatting / linting / static analysis.
Now these people and their managers are staring at the shiny new thing, the LLMs. They missing googling skills are fixed by LLMs ont heir everyday life, so they think a magic "code quality tool" (AI) would help them in they work.
To answer your question, obviously there are many linters/analyzers for Java (and for other languages too), both for static and dynamic code analysis, formatters, everything.
Hard situation to be in this post-LLM era, but a rebrand would probably not help at this point. The comments here tell a lot, the negative sentiment is quite strong in general.
Maybe this was it for them, but I would still want to appreciate what SO did for the global programming community (especially for people who have less means to access high quality information / education). Thanks!
Now on-prem Stackoverflow, (SO for teams?) now THAT is a cancer that should be killed.
I just told a colleague today, who asked for feedback about his recorded presentation, to turn into "static, boring PowerPoint", at least parts of it. I think most of the people this presentation was for would not appreciate a video (especially a long one).
I myself cannot absorb/remember any content from a "five minute video", but happy to locate and repeatedly, reliably retrieve the information from that "three hour document". In other words, the utility of these videos are zero in 5min, whereas the utility of those documents are more than zero, in possibly less than three hours.
With all that said the professional presentation is exactly what would help you succeed with this product, if you find the audience. Well done!
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