No. Even though I navigate with Osmand regularly, I must use Gmaps to find stores' existence, address, hours, phone number, url. Gmaps is the yellow pages. Osmand is a map.
> OSM can have those details it just takes a local community on top of keeping things updated. Even Google often relies on users for that stuff.
Google has an infinitely-larger community; a local community is not sufficient in dense areas where businesses are opening and closing every day. France has the third largest OSM community and yet some neighborhoods of its largest cities are full of outdated businesses.
Interestingly, in Atlanta I've had the opposite experience. In town OSM always seems to be better (Google has a lot of outdated open hours and the like). Outside of town in the cheaper burbs which is the only place I can afford to live though few people are editing OSM and it's pretty out of date.
That being said, I switched to Organic maps years ago. For 90% of places I go, it turns out I go to them repeatedly day-to-day, so I added them to the map the first time and update them when I go there and the hours have changed. Then they're on the map the rest of the time when I need to look up hours or what not so I rarely have anywhere around here that I go to that's not on the map anymore. When I do, I add it and next time it's on there and it works well enough 99% of the time.
You highlight a function of OSM that is hard to get across to people: I can fix the map!
For example, bicycle routing in my area was unreliable, because it would try to route me over rough trails. Just adding a few tags improved the experience dramatically. And then it was fixed not only for me, but everybody else too.
Meanwhile, other people fixed other annoyances, and the map works better across many areas. Google instead decides to hide things that interest me, and shows sponsored places I don't care for. I have zero recourse.
> Just adding a few tags improved the experience dramatically.
This works for routing, but doesn’t apply to businesses: for the bare minimum you have to add one or two tags (type + name), to make that more useful you have to add the opening hours and ideally the website. Now multiply this by 60,000 (the number of businesses in Paris, France). By the time you’ve finished your neighborhood some businesses you checked last month are already closed and some new ones already opened. Go on holidays? Too bad, you have to start over again when you come back. Trust me, I’m contributing almost every day and I can’t keep the pace.
Don't do all the businesses in Paris, just do the ones you frequent the most. Google doesn't have all the businesses in Paris either (or at least, in Atlanta I run into ones that they don't have too or that they have but it's completely wrong, at an old location, etc. fairly frequently).
Yeah the idea that I should keep up with all the shops in the larger area is scary. Luckily, I'm not alone. All I can say is you're doing a good thing by adding regular updates.
And I think even partially complete OSM is helpful. If I add just one ATM, that can already help somebody looking for one. That might even be me, when I know it's there somewhere, but not exactly where.
> a local active community of 2 active persons for every 260 residents is sufficient
That would be huge. For a city with 2M inhabitants, that would mean 8k active contributors. Remember that there are ~40-50k active OSM contributors in the whole world.
In Paris we have ~100 contributors with >100 edits for a population of 2M and 60.8k businesses. Most notes are fixed under a day, infrastructure changes are quick as well, but businesses are often out of date because they change so often that some people don’t take the time to update them.
The point the parent comment made still stands, why did the US fund so many coups/regime changes up until the modern day? Your answer as to why seems to be “communism is antidemocratic and authoritarian”.
If that’s the case, why were so many Western backed regimes also antidemocratic and authoritarian?
American interventionism in the Cold War largely got started under Eisenhower. His administration’s policy could be best described as a reaction against Soviet moves (or perceived Soviet moves) in the countries affected. And so by engaging in regime change, the rationale was that this prevented that state from aligning with the Soviets. This seems to have worked in many cases but not in others, but I won’t get into the historical details here.
The point is that lot of people seem to forget that the USSR wasn’t sitting at home, either, and was deliberately funding political actions around the world as a part of the Cold War. Whether that “justifies” US interventionism is a different question, but people seem to talk about it as if the US was acting in a vacuum.
> people seem to talk about it as if the US was acting in a vacuum
The Cold War ended more than 30 years ago, yet the same “interventionism” continues? This is isn’t ancient history, we fought two whole imperial wars since the with the same exact thought process without the USSR even existing anymore.
I don’t deny that there was some kind of context to American imperialism and I have no interest in whitewashing what the Soviets were doing. But to say that these “interventions” were a purely defensive/reactionary measure against communism is silly, the US has a vested interest in protecting its hegemony control. It’s that simple.
I don’t think I’d categorize Iraq and Afghanistan as “imperial wars” and as remotely similar things as the regime change operations during the Cold War. Very different context and reasoning.
But sure, powerful states want to protect their hegemony. Part of that includes not letting your allies turn into hostile enemy states. I’m not sure what else you’re suggesting such a power do? Let the oppositional force just take everything?
The opinion you’ve expressed here is just the typical cynical approach that seems to lack any understanding of real world politics, or the basic fact that people in the Western “free” world might actually have a legitimate interest in promoting freedom and defending their values.
I recommend reading biographies of presidents during that era, especially Eisenhower. You’ll learn about the difficult (and often wrong) choices those in power had to make. To treat their actions as simply some kind of imperial bloodlust is not even remotely historically accurate.
Again, I am in no way arguing that these various interventions were “good” or “justified” or what have you, just that the framing of them as purely militaristic imperial conquests is flat out wrong and uninformed.
I’m firm on my claim that they were imperial wars, but we can lay that to the side.
> I’m not sure what else you’re suggesting such a power do? Let the oppositional force just take everything?
This is precisely my problem. If the US/West wants to maintain a moral high ground by claiming that their “freedom” and values are simply the best and everyone needs them, then why is there an incessant need to subjugate? There is no moral high ground with continuously destabilizing countries and making half the world’s life a living hell.
I’m happy to talk about the actual realities of geopolitics. Of course the US wants to maintain control, but that desire is a not a “moral” one.
Saying that the US has put “half of the world’s life a living hell” is really hyperbolic and not at all conducive to a real discussion, because again, that’s not how history actually happened.
To give you an example: the Korean War officially started when communist-backed North Korea invaded the Western-backed South. Had the South not been backed by the US, they would have lost - and indeed almost did lose.
Are you therefore suggesting that if the entire Korean Peninsula were under the control of the North today, they’d be better off? Because the reality is that South Korea today is more free and economically successful because the US intervened there.
Or what about Germany? If the US let the Soviets take the entire country, do you think Germany today would be the economic leader of Europe?
Of course, there are situations in which that defense turned out in the opposite way - Vietnam for example.
As to your last comment, again, this is just the typical cynical line that assumes everyone in the government is an evil imperialist that only pretends to care about their values.
You are ignoring the very basic fact that many of these interventions were done in order to prevent the very anti-free USSR from defeating the West. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that communism would be defeated, or atomic war avoided. And so the people in power in the West needed to make very difficult decisions about navigating this game theory situation.
I don't know, I am not an expert, but I can say for sure it wasn't just "they did something left wing".
My main point the attacks happened for some other reason, it could be more noble but could also be more ulterior like economic control etc. They aren't a raging lunatic that attacks anyone who tries to do left wing things, at worst they are a cold calculating evil villain that manipulates the world to their own benefit.
What an incredible mask-off moment. The war mongering coming from this man is insane, I still don’t get why these people even bother to say they “care about democracy” when it’s clearly a lie.
He says China is “lost” or whatever, simply because the West has been unable to control the country in the same way they have done with Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.
I hate these people that justify barbarism and imperialism as a means to a “greater good.” It has “white man’s burden” written all over it.
Western democracy is treated like a religion these days. You either adopt it or die. Seeing people claiming China should be destroyed because it's a totalitarian country is amusing to me, it reminds me of the christian crusades. In reality, most Chinese don't give a crap about democracy as long as economy is flourishing.
That's a moral argument. In the west we believe liberal values are the best , and we want them around the world. As such, authoritarianism is a priori an enemy
There's exactly one country (Japan) where establishing a liberal democracy at gunpoint worked out. The US then tried to do the same in like a quarter of the world and kept failing. At some point some people up there ought to get the message right? I don't know how else to do it but war simply isn't it.
You called China an enemy in response to Schmidt being called a war mongerer. I read that as a defense of Schmidt stance and implicit support for war with China. If I got that wrong then I agree my comment is out of context.
That is: human rights for all (Israelis and Palestinians) and reparations made to those who have been forcibly displaced and killed ever since this conflict began.
agreed, and the idf enforcing equal justice in the west bank instead of allowing settler violence against palestinians to go unpunished and only stepping in when palestinians fight back.
right now, the IDF only perpetuates injustice against palestinians. So the only alternative for them is Hamas. for all the deserved hate Hamas gets, what alternative do palestinian have? the IDF being impartial and enacting justice equally instead of allowing settlers to attack palestinians with impunity would go a long way towards pulling the teerh out of hamas.
You surely know that pasting a dictionary definition is condescending, but I'll take a swing anyway.
Jews have a legitimate and ancient claim to indigeneity in the Levant. (In fact, this week's story of Chanukkah is about Jews being persecuted and evicted from from their homes in the region by a Greek empire.) Of course, Jews eventually left the region due to forcible diaspora.
Jews are obviously not the only ethnic group with a legitimate claim to the land. At least the following groups can all claim to be native to the land, for some definition of native: Turks, Ottomans, Arabs, and yes, Palestinians.
In a very real sense, the millions of Mizrahi Jews are in fact refugees from Arab countries (especially Yemen and Morocco), who fled persecution to their ancestral homeland.
But calling Israeli Jews settlers -- especially within the UN Green Line! -- is terribly inflammatory, and not particularly accurate.
You cant run away from the crime of killing civilians by just chalking it up to “intention” or “the cost of war”. That’s called collective punishment and yes, that is a war crime.
“We also strongly condemn Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children. They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for,” they said.
the experts are making the claim that Israel's attacks are indiscriminate. They do not have the ability to make that claim.
I would argue making that claim as fact already undermines their "impartiality".
In fact, it's well known that their are not impartial in general. As one can see from the report they quickly put out on the "hospital bombing"
they are not a useful source. They repeatedly make claims of fact that they have zero ability to determine if true or not. For those that believe the IDF has zero credibility, one has to also believe they don't.
The experts quoted have no desire for the truth, as demonstrated by zero desire to correct themselves when they are shown to be spreading falsehoods.
I think it’s much the same as the US’s drone strike program in the Middle East - after so many times, it would take either incredible bias or actual irrationality to believe that these strikes were not approved with the knowledge that they would kill civilians, and potentially mostly kill civilians.
Maybe if it were just the first few dozen times, but it gets harder and harder to be charitable about their intentions…
I recommend you give it a full read as they explain (with examples) why they believe these acts are indiscriminate.
Regardless, the ex-ceo of WebSummit has made comments similar to what the UN is stating. I don’t see why that’s a cancellable offense or antisemitic. I suspect his connections to Qatar are what got him in real trouble.
they might believe they are, but they are stating as fact. They don't qualify their remarks.
And we know this from the link I shared where they talk about the hospital "bombing" as fact as what you would call "examples", which we now are generally accepting as false. That alone removes any of their credibility.
They report as fact things they do not know to be true, but only believe to be true, and even when we know that their "truth" is false, they don't correct themselves.