[HN Gopher] OpenStreetMap in Realtime
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OpenStreetMap in Realtime
Author : grey_earthling
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-02-13 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (osm-in-realtime.jwestman.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (osm-in-realtime.jwestman.net)
| dubbel wrote:
| If you want to show up in there, too, contribute data back to
| open society or simply make your Sunday walks a bit more
| engaging, then i can highly recommend the "street complete"
| Android app [0].
|
| It allows you to contribute by answering simple questions about
| your surroundings, like how many stories a building has or if a
| stairs has ramps for bikes or wheelchairs.
|
| And all that with great UX.
|
| [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete
| diggan wrote:
| As someone who recently jumped ship from FreedomDroid to
| WalledGardenOS, is there any similar apps for iOS? There is
| bunch of suggestions over at https://learnosm.org/en/mobile-
| mapping/ but seemingly nothing as simple as StreetComplete
| dheera wrote:
| It seems from the way you worded that that you actually
| preferred Android for the freedom aspect (I do as well). Why
| did you jump ship, if I may ask?
|
| (I understand wanting to use new iOS-only apps like
| Clubhouse, and for that I just have a really old test iPhone
| that i got second hand that I use just for that purpose only
| until those apps come out with Android versions.)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Sadly no.
|
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892
| - "iOS version"
|
| "So, the estimation for a MVP could be as little as 2 months
| for UI and 2 months for the core, so in total 4 months."
| Aeolun wrote:
| Go Map!! Is the best I've found for iOS so far.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Is there an iOS app available?
| habi wrote:
| Go Map!! (https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/go-
| map/id592990211?l=en) is a full fledged editor for OSM on
| iOS.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Sadly no.
|
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892
| - "iOS version"
|
| "So, the estimation for a MVP could be as little as 2 months
| for UI and 2 months for the core, so in total 4 months."
| ryandrake wrote:
| I used to edit OSM quite a bit. It's an odd community though.
| Some people can get very possessive about "their" regions. I
| remember once spending a few hours "unbraiding" the
| intersections on a few major dual carriageway avenues over 20
| city blocks or so, which I understand is best practice[1]. Well
| a day later or so, someone sent me a message very upset and
| demanding that I revert the changeset that ruined "their" work.
| I did, and it kind of turned me off from editing. Like, OK fine
| I won't try to help anymore, jeez.
|
| EDIT: I don't want to dissuade anyone else from trying editing
| --it's fun. But, beware of the personalities, it can be like
| editing Wikipedia.
|
| 1:
| https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/3194/intersecting-d...
| dheera wrote:
| Why did you revert? It would seem to me that they were in the
| wrong for being possessive, and assuming your efforts were in
| good faith, perhaps one could take delight in watching them
| running and squirming in anger. I would have probably just
| ignored the message and kept making contributions, but I
| understand the turn-off.
| tsomctl wrote:
| Speaking from personal experience, being a passive-
| aggressive asshole doesn't solve any problems.
| acct776 wrote:
| But...they weren't. They were just continuing their good
| work.
| sedgjh23 wrote:
| Neither does being a doormat.
| dheera wrote:
| Ignoring assholes, optionally having a laugh at them, and
| moving on with your life and what you want to do isn't
| passive-aggressive behavior.
| [deleted]
| politelemon wrote:
| Definitely agree about the community, there's all sorts! I've
| also encountered some very helpful individuals with immense
| patience.
|
| I noticed during a large urban area mapping on HOTOSM, one
| person was going around teaching everyone how to map tall
| buildings, he'd track down each commit and comment there with
| feedback, it was very nicely done in a non aggressive way. I
| was quite happy to learn.
|
| It isn't obvious the first time you do it, for tall buildings
| you need to map the part of the building that intersects with
| the earth.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPiGntG6fs
| jmkb wrote:
| OSM is like a bunch of volunteers refurbing a city park, all
| working different schedules, with no manager. Alice starts
| sanding off rust on one end of a swingset. Then Bob shows up
| and starting painting the other end that hasn't yet been
| sanded; consternation ensues.
|
| There are a lot of attempts to solve this problem with
| documentation on exactly how things should be done. The wiki,
| the stackoverflow-style help site, subreddit, tips in the
| editor software, mailing lists, slack... There are too many
| and they often don't agree. The information in some places
| changes quite rapidly, or in other places goes stale over
| time.
|
| So we're bound to end up with incompatible approaches now and
| then. I've found it's often (certainly not always!) useful to
| _politely_ communicate with other mappers. This works both
| ways -- I 've stepped on toes, and I've had toes stepped on.
|
| When you're staring at something ugly in OSM, the last person
| to work on it might have finished 5 minutes ago, or 5 years.
| But the tools to find out do exist. As the map gets more and
| more filled in, I expect that documentation aimed at new
| mappers will need to focus on communication and cooperation
| as much as direct editing of the map data.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| It makes me wonder if individuals like these should be
| limited from contributing, because they force a multitude of
| others out of the total pool of contributors.
|
| Maybe they're doing more damage through their obsessive
| behavior as compared to a larger group of less enthusiastic
| members.
| maxerickson wrote:
| At the extreme, people who are outright counterproductive
| or consistently refuse to collaborate are blocked from
| contributing.
|
| There's a public log of it:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Edit: Comment removed, I'm an idiot, the list is
| paginated.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's paginated. There's 20+ pages of multi year blocks.
|
| (There are many instances of a single person having
| created multiple blocked accounts though)
|
| Mostly it's a lot of effort to be a barely visible
| vandal, so people just go away.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| > There are literally 20 users on that list
|
| It lists 20 per page. The navigation is at the bottom of
| the page.
|
| There's 230 pages, so that's about 4600 banned users.
| Black101 wrote:
| As much as I don't like Google, this is the kind of app that
| Apple would block.
| pugworthy wrote:
| As someone who recently started one of those "Can I walk every
| street in my city?" endeavors, I've become much more aware of how
| OSM works, and have gained a lot of respect for it.
|
| This literally shows crowdsourcing of updates in action, and
| makes me want to contribute more where I can.
| politelemon wrote:
| I remember a similar site, or was it this one, also a 'live'-ish
| OSM showcase, where it showed the changesets being drawn, or
| appearing as they were submitted. Does this sound familiar to
| anyone?
|
| Edit: I found it! https://osmlab.github.io/show-me-the-way/
|
| As is typical I couldn't find it until I said that I couldn't
| find it. There must be a term for this.
| yorwba wrote:
| Fascinating, thanks for the link.
|
| What I don't understand is how the duration each changeset is
| shown is determined. I got to spend a while watching someone
| circle individual yurts in Mongolia, but some other places
| disappeared so quickly that the satellite tiles in the
| background hadn't even started to show up yet.
| jorams wrote:
| I think the duration for each changeset just depends on the
| number of map elements it touches. Every map element gets 1.5
| seconds. Every individual yurt is a map element so that
| changeset gets a lot of "airtime", but a changeset that just
| adds one building is only visible for 1.5 seconds.
| politelemon wrote:
| There's also a number, top left, which is counting down as
| each change occurs. It doesn't seem related to one place. I
| can't tell what it is.
| jorams wrote:
| The element ID for it is "queuesize". I think it just
| fetches a batch of recent changes then queues them up. When
| the queue gets empty enough it fetches a new batch, and the
| number still in the queue is what you see.
| tmcw wrote:
| I worked on this ages ago :). It's replaying the last
| minute's edits, and since all of the editing tools just file
| a changeset (like a commit) all at once, it has to
| reconstruct what it looked like to draw those features. That
| timing is just based on a fixed count of seconds it should
| take to draw a line, a point, etc. The code's here:
|
| https://github.com/osmlab/show-me-the-way/blob/gh-
| pages/js/s...
| politelemon wrote:
| Hello there, nice work. I like how relaxing it is...
| Watching someone somewhere contributing. I'm going to leave
| this running on my 2nd monitor full screen.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| That is kind of fun to watch. Thanks for this. It might make an
| interesting screensaver.
| macintux wrote:
| > As is typical I couldn't find it until I said that I couldn't
| find it. There must be a term for this.
|
| Rubber ducking?
| teddyh wrote:
| "L'esprit de l'escalier" is also similar.
| agumonkey wrote:
| old school shower comeback I see
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Damn, Canadians and Aussies are allergic to open data apparently.
| mtmail wrote:
| 10am in Vancouver, 5am in Syndey, I wouldn't read too much into
| that. Map of all OSM nodes, it's somewhat close to population
| density
| https://twitter.com/phil_osophie/status/1357728257316126722
| UncleBen wrote:
| Any reason why North America has such little activity compared to
| Europe?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Mostly just less contributors.
|
| Also time of day.
|
| Why there are less contributors is a harder question.
| ac29 wrote:
| I assume because Google Maps and Apple Maps are good enough
| in the US, and Americans have less of an objection to using
| products from big American tech companies.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| One reason of probably many: a lot of Europe has been mapped by
| cyclists. Much of Europe has distances that are relatively
| small enough that people can often go on some pretty productive
| mapping expeditions from a city. In the US there is less
| leisure cycling culture (people who do get out on bikes are
| often aiming for speed and exercise, not quietly spending a
| whole day out doing something), and the distances are much
| vaster so one cannot get to some places from the city and
| return in the same day.
|
| If you notice, even in Europe the completeness and up-to-
| dateness of OSM data starts to break down in areas (e.g.
| Lapland) where distances and remoteness approach that of North
| America.
| Aachen wrote:
| Nah, cycling is virtually nonexistent outside of the
| Netherlands and Denmark. E.g. Finland sees it as a hobby more
| than a transportation method, Germany doesn't see it at all.
| A train station just across the border in a town where most
| people work in the next city over (namely where that train
| goes) has three loops as their main bike parking and on a
| regular working day there is an average 0.5 bikes making use
| of it.
|
| From what I see and hear about being your kids' taxi until
| they get a driver's license (at 16yo already), I'd assume the
| difference is pedestrians. I'm nearly 30 and never owned a
| car, coming from a village and living in a town. Shops are
| walking distance, I take the bus to work (non-covid times)
| for environmental reasons, and I think a small majority of
| people I know do the same (most of my friends/acquaintances
| are in NL).
|
| Germany is already quite car-centric by my standards, yet
| they have the most contributors. There's still a lot of
| pedestrian traffic for the short distances inside of towns
| and cities, just no medium-distance cycling traffic. So why
| do they have the most contributors?
|
| Living in Germany, the mentality is different. I have been
| trying unsuccessfully for three years to find a good
| definition or concise explanation. There's something that
| drives use of Threema (paid), PGP and Linux (relatively hard
| to use), and OpenStreetMap (when sugar daddy Google gives you
| free maps already). Certainly Google's map here is worse than
| in their home market, but it's not bad either.
|
| Everyone in Germany will tell you that by the end of
| secondary education, they're just so done with the whole
| hitler thing. It's a huge topic throughout the educational
| system. So I guess morals and things like why privacy matters
| gets ingrained as well? But that doesn't hold for other
| European countries, in NL the Linux/Threema/OSM/PGP usage is
| similar to what I hear on HN.
|
| So a combination of factors, with as biggest common
| denominator probably pedestrians, plus the mindset in
| Germany, and maybe a tiny fraction the cyclists (which is
| literally everyone in NL, by the way, it's not a subgroup but
| a state of being, or at least I learned that "cyclists" is a
| laden term in North America from someone who is from there
| and moved here, but anyway OSM contributorship in NL isn't
| that huge).
| rpadovani wrote:
| What?
|
| This is far from my experience! People in Bayern are crazy
| for bikes, they do long rides on the weekend to lakes and
| pre-Alps: there are a lot of bike shops, and possibilities
| for any kind of budget.
|
| People go by bike also in these days, while the temperature
| is way below 0.
|
| Also in Italy there is quite a culture, especially outside
| the big cities. All the Alps area has amazing tracks, also
| cross countries
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| OSM mapping in Britain has been absolutely driven by
| enthusiast cyclists and walkers. That's not to say cycling
| is a mainstream mode of transport on Britain - if only -
| but there is a very high correlation between OSM mapping
| and cycling.
| chki wrote:
| To contradict your suggestion that Germany does not see any
| bike usage at all: In a somewhat recent survey (2019) 44%
| of people claimed that they were using their bicycle as a
| transportation method more than once a week (up from 38% in
| 2015). 61% were using their car as a transportation method
| more than once a week (70% in 2015). There were more sales
| of bicycles last year than diesel cars.
| pella wrote:
| check the osmstats : https://osmstats.neis-one.org/
|
| (by country): https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries
| Pinus wrote:
| Right now, it's evening in Europe, meaning that those who have
| been out collecting data during the day have now come home, had
| a shower (or brushed the snow off, in my case), relaxed a bit,
| downloaded their GPX tracks to their computers, and started
| editing. In the US, those doing boots-on-the-ground mapping are
| still out.
| fancyfish wrote:
| My guess is historically North America has had better coverage
| from Google Maps and the lie, so less incentive to build a
| crowdsourced alternative.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Noticed that too. I just signed up and added a few points of
| interest here in North America. Was surprised that I could
| create an account and see my updates appear on the realtime map
| moments later.
| petespeed wrote:
| Cool. A derivative thought: If we observe the dots versus time of
| the day at that location, it might give us interesting patterns
| of engagement.
|
| For example, for few minutes I ran, I saw more contributions from
| Saturday evening locations compared to Saturday morning.
|
| Its fun to see causation of common life patterns via data.
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(page generated 2021-02-13 23:00 UTC)