
Creating Hyper-Accurate Maps from Open-Source Maps and Real-Time Data - maxerickson
https://eng.lyft.com/how-lyft-creates-hyper-accurate-maps-from-open-source-maps-and-real-time-data-8dcf9abdd46a
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ganitarashid
If for nothing else but the sake of their open source contributions, I hope
Lyft can find a working business model

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kgwxd
Does Lyft not have the same business model as all other ride-sharing
companies?

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yodon
That's the problem - they do

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inflatableDodo
They should open source their platform and provide a variety of online
services and also support on running the platform internally, then offer it to
the global market of taxi companies, delivery providers and enterprise level
car fleets.

Become the Redhat of vehicle logistics.

They'd probably survive and it would also likely kill off Uber.

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pcr910303
> They should open source their platform and provide a variety of online
> services and also support on running the platform internally, then offer it
> to the global market of taxi companies, delivery providers and enterprise
> level car fleets.

While I would appreciate Lyft being a company like that, I suspect that most
people won't care whether the taxi-companies use open platforms; and taxi
companies would have no incentives to use Lyft's platform when the taxi
companies already have their own network.

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toomuchtodo
While I may not be a fan of Facebook, Uber, and Lyft, I absolutely am a fan of
their efforts to contribute back to OSM. Credit where credit due.

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rmc
Some of them had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing.
Facebook initally dumped a pile of computer vision generated data into OSM,
breaking everyone, and didn't tell anyone. It was entirely reverted ( more
here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856687)
). It took a lot of effort before they'd listen.

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toomuchtodo
To get better at something, you must first suck at it. I believe the OSM
oversight and governance model can support accepting contributions (data that
would otherwise cost time and money from others to collect and contribute)
from technology companies, while still ensuring guardrails exist to prevent
poor data quality from being contributed (as exhibiting by Facebook and others
working with OSM to ensure data quality contributed is high and it is done in
a controlled manner).

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rmc
There are plenty of people and groups who got good at OSM without making such
a sneaky mess. Facebook tried to move fast and break things, and consequences
be damned.

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pj_mukh
Random free idea: Grab image frames from the drivers' Phone camera and use
that to figure out if the road exists where OSM doesn't have one. Supplement
your own Kalman Filter and update your maps!

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aloknnikhil
The way iOS and Android implement image capture, you cannot have an app snap
images without showing the viewfinder on the screen. This basically means the
driver cannot do anything else except let the app take pictures while driving.
Definitely not feasible.

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cryptoz
Has this changed on Android in recent years? I remember building a Camera app
with a smaller-than-fullscreen viewfinder. I believe I got to set the
dimensions of the viewfinder myself, making it as arbitrarily small as I
wanted (or even optional?). Perhaps I remember incorrectly. I wonder if things
changed.

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DougBTX
Video chat needs to support a pretty small “viewfinder”, otherwise the other
person on the call wouldn’t be visible!

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alephnan
What's the metric to be considered "hyper" accurate?

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exogeny
Cool! Now tell me how you'll become a profitable company.

