Sorry, I can’t agree with your characterization. Obviously nitpickers exist, but the general community can be very helpful. Some people have strange ideas and expect everyone to go along, but everything is up for discussion.
Especially for people coming from cultures where confrontation or directness is frowned upon this leads to the impression that OSM is a fighting ground, but there can be no discussion without disagreement.
No need to apologize for disagreeing! I also think the OSM community has a ton of really fantastic people, who are excited to work together to make something really neat. Unfortunately, it's not true across the board, and the tone of this article does a great job of illustrating that.
OSM is more like a community of communities: There are people mapping with very diverse value systems (ranging from underserved people to semantic data aficionados), groups and corporations building software, volunteers running the servers etc. Making a decision with such a large body of people with very different interests can be very troublesome, but this is something you have to deal with.
A central point of the ecosystem is the editing software: This is the gateway through which people will touch the data and can massively steer the data and thus the community into a certain direction. E.g. if you throw a validation error on every object which doesn't have a name, soon all objects will have names.
There are several editors available for OSM, but iD is the most prominent one at the moment, as it will be presented to you if you click the "Edit" button on osm.org. Thus people developing iD have a large burden to carry. And there is the growing disconnect that the author is writing about: A small group (in other words: two people) control in which direction the project is being steered. And with a complaint from within the community, one of the maintainers has disabled the issue tracker for the general public. (Edit: Issue tracker has been reopened now)
Making a decision with everyone involved is hard and takes a lot of effort, but at the moment we have a situation in which very few decide without the mandate of the community.
Hope I could shed some light (though it's late over here).
Just a few months ago SpaceX fanboys were telling us those satellites were no problem, because "space is so large". The problem is, they’re operated by overworked, delusional people.
People are going to die, because hype is more fun than security.
Probably because the created debris would be practically impossible to clean up later, and if we ever have consumer space travel, that debris might pose a significant risk.
Yeah, the OSM PBF format is really efficient in size, but it can be quite a pain to work with those files. Every way consists of nodes, which are usually at the very beginning of the file (first nodes, then ways, then relations). So in order to work efficiently, you'll need a node cache (which at the moment is more than 40G). Seeking is not viable because there is no indication in which block the node will be. On-disk caching is an option, but it will slow you down substantially.
So unless you are doing meta-analysis of the raw OSM data, without assembling geometries, hand-rolling an OSMPBF reader is viable, otherwise I would suggest either using something pre-processed (extracts in real geodata formats), an established parser like osmium or rather import the data into e.g. postgres and do some querying there.
Yeah, fair. I'm only working with Boston-area data so I can pretty easily load a Massachusetts OSM file from memory. However, memory would definitely be an issue for processing the entire world.
Blocks are useful, because you can distribute the workload onto several workers. Most encoders nowadays write first blocks with just nodes, then blocks with just ways and then just relations.
For me it's because they do damage their workers' rights and their fans are so insufferable: The denial that they have quality issues, the repeated lies ("we are going to build a factory in weeks", while everyone knows that it will take years), the massive overvaluation. It's either you are on team Tesla and celebrating every of Elon's brainfarts or you are "big oil" that is trying to destroy them: Just look what happens when countries try to introduce standardised charing cables.
I just wish they would be frank about what they can and cannot do.
EDIT: And by the way about that pathetic "climate change" argument. Right, they are now selling Fiat their CO2 certificates thus enabling them to do wonderful green washing.
The rest of your arguments are valid, but the CO2 credit system is working as intended there. That's why it's called a credit. That's a lot of money that gets to be directly invested into getting electric cars in the hands of more people, which is what will actually reduce emissions in the long run.
Fiat's emissions already happened; they can't turn back time. Selling the credits to them will result in a net decrease in emissions (assuming they don't spend all the money on flamethrowers or something). If they didn't sell the credits, Fiat still put out exactly the same amount of emissions, and would be likely to do so in the future even with the fines.
If you've helped accelerate climate change, you're supposed to buy credits to offset the damage you've caused. If you've helped mitigate climate change, you're supposed to sell the credits, because the credits are there in the first place to incentivize mitigating climate change. This system obviously isn't sufficient to halt climate change all by itself, and maybe there are some other reasons it's a bad system, but it seems like the credit system is working exactly as it was supposed to. At the very least, I don't see what Tesla's doing wrong when it comes to that particular area.
To be honest it really disturbs why people hate Tesla so much. Citing your reason for them being over-optimistic or over-promising, how else do people change the world? I don't mean this message as an attack but something to think about. These guys are working on something No one has EVER done in the history of mankind and we require them to stick to timetables and if they don't the punishment is we wish them failure and celebrate it? If Tesla is to succeed all our lives will be better for it, why are their mistakes and obstacles celebrated? Why do we care if the company is overvalued? This is the same sentiment towards Apple when the iPhone first came out till it no longer could be ignored. Tesla is far from a perfect company, but their mission is true and the real question we should be asking ourselves rather than if we like Elon, or if the company is overvalued or if they over promise and under deliver. the real question is, Is this company really trying to fulfill its mission statement, If yes, would we want such a mission to succeed?
All that is great. I just wish they could do it without lying through their teeth. Elon is still claiming with a straight face that fully autonomous, L5 Teslas are coming next year. This is a lie. Everyone knows it is a lie. Why is this necessary? Couldn't he change the world without engaging in that sort of behavior?
Elon blatantly lies through his teeth on many occasions.
Somewhere around 2013, he claimed Tesla would launch a "fully autonomous, L5" in 2 years, but it would take another 3 years of regulatory approval. Clearly a gross misrepresentation of facts.
Lying is perhaps the wrong word here. Sharing self-delusion is probably a more accurate way of describing it. He genuinely believes many of his own exaggerations. But to be fair without a big dose of self delusion no one would be crazy enough to try these things in the first place.
I take his claims with a massive pinch of salt, while also appreciating that trait is somewhat necessary to solve the problems he's trying to solve.
> He genuinely believes many of his own exaggerations.
Either a) he is lying, or b) the CEO of multiple companies worth a combined ~$100b is delusional to the point of being unable to recognize basic facts. Pick your poison.
He is CEO of those companies exactly because of his above average ability to make those delusions reality, no matter how impossible people considered e.g. landing rocket stages. I'd prefer him to project more of a visionary image with less harmful/psychotic aspects, but you can only get humans as a complete package and I'd have a hard time coming up with people to replace him.
Facebook’s active user growth is also a stark and plain lie; if Tesla succeeds, the world will improve. If Facebook succeeds, the world gets a lot worse.
It doesn't matter if Tesla succeeds or fails. All car companies now have to meet fleet emissions targets and the way they're going to do it is by building electric cars, either battery electric or fuel cell or both.
So, you made me realise I'd been ambiguous here, sorry.
I'll have to name companies to explain: Uber have undermined workers' rights in a systematic way, through the development of their concept of contract employees and the gig economy.
I have heard plenty of stories about SpaceX (not Tesla, but I'll assume similar stories exist) not treating their employees well. So yes, they've hurt workers rights too, so I accept your point. It's different kind of issue though, because it's particular to one company and not systemic, which is what I originally meant to say.
Disagree strongly about the climate change/greenwashing argument. I believe Tesla is a net positive in tackling climate change, which is what matters.
>they are now selling Fiat their CO2 certificates thus enabling them to do wonderful green washing.
SO they should not use the cash that the government made accessible to them (because Fiat refuse to manufacture electric vehicles) and thus, not increase their EV production capacity?
This makes no sense. That's up to regulators to prevent Fiat from selling polluting cars, not to Tesla to refuse financial help that allow them to accelerate their growth.
Tesla is singularly responsible for the destruction of workers rights? OK. If you want real worker rights bugbears, look at Uber and Lyft.
Their quality issues may exist, but they aren't that bad. They're not. Every person you talk to has lemon stories about every car in existence.
Tesla does not have a monopoly on irrational exuberance in what a company will accomplish. You are commenting on ground zero of internet startups. Tesla actually built cars.
CO2 credit sales are part of a market that actually forces companies to pay for CO2. There is nothing bad about that.
Massive overvaluation: Again, you are commenting on ground zero of wannabe unicorn internet startups. Uber's app can be replicated by a team of 10 in a month. Tesla has a competitive advantage in battery tech, vertical integration, and design, and could displace Toyota in a couple decades.
"How hard must being a bank be, it's just a few numbers in a database."
After all those new-ish, app-based banks are for people with too much time on their hands. You mostly can't talk to anyone, and when they answer it's just a copy-paste from their FAQ. They also lack features, e.g. Kontist doesn't support international bank transfers. Support will tell you "well it could work, but we can't give you any assistance". I don't have six months until your development team understands and implements some protocol!
No phone number should be a dealbreaker for banking. 99% of the time, you don’t want to talk to a banker. But that 1% of the time can make or break you for months or years.
These start-ups (e.g. Bank Simple, Revolut, et cetera) prey on consumers who have only experienced the 99%. You don’t want to have a 1% event, like fraud, or an issue overseas, or a liquidity crisis, with a service you can’t talk to. (It’s also bad enough when it’s your first time with an issue. You don’t want to be banking with someone who’s (a) never solved that problem before either and (b) not available to talk to.)
> No phone number should be a dealbreaker for banking. 99% of the time, you don’t want to talk to a banker. But that 1% of the time can make or break you for months or years.
To be fair, even having a phone number may not help. I spent four months at the beginning of the year trying to get HSBC to close a business account. When visiting the branch I was told I needed to phone head office as they deal with business accounts. After speaking to first line customer support I was told many times "someone will call you back" but nobody did.
Eventually they closed it, but I never received a refund for the account charges between when I requested the closure and it actually being closed, which I was promised.
> 99% of the time, you don’t want to talk to a banker. But that 1% of the time can make or break you for months or years.
This is why I still use my local Sparkasse (credit union) and pay ~9€ a month. They can sort out pretty much everything instantly - need a second card for your s/o, a secondary account for handling freelancer income, or a loan? No problem, show up and get what you want.
Additionally: when you're up for buying a house and all the lender bank has to look is the credit score, you will be paying more interest than if you apply for a credit at the bank that has handled your business over decades. None of the "new online banks" does real estate financing.
> Additionally: when you're up for buying a house and all the lender bank has to look is the credit score, you will be paying more interest than if you apply for a credit at the bank that has handled your business over decades.
Which country are you in? This has most definitely not been the case for me anywhere I've lived. It's irrelevant if you were a customer with the bank before the mortgage application or not.
> Additionally: when you're up for buying a house and all the lender bank has to look is the credit score, you will be paying more interest than if you apply for a credit at the bank that has handled your business over decades
[citation required]
In my experience neither credit score nor past business have a significant impact on interest rate. Price and value of the house is everything.
> you will be paying more interest than if you apply for a credit at the bank that has handled your business over decades.
Is this actually true? That would be a real reason for me to do the same, but if not I would prefer my money to stay with the GLS, which invests it ethically.
For what it's worth, Monzo seems to be the only 'challenger bank' that's getting this right. They have the 24/7 in-app chat support that's super helpful, but then also a phone number you can call if you're into that. My every interaction with them as a customer has been fantastic.
I called the phone number on the back of the Monzo card today a few times. There's a recorded message saying that they're too busy and then they hang up. That phone number is bogus.
I've had negative but acceptable experiences with Monzo and Starling. Would recommend both of them, and actively use both myself.
I've had negative and intolerable experiences with Curve, TransferWise, Tide, and Revolut. I would recommend avoiding all of them. Not all of them offer banking solutions (Curve being the odd one out in that list), but the three that do are all e-money, which I guess speaks for itself.
I was impressed at first with the chat support but each time they've been unable to solve my problem and promised to get back to me, but never did. So, while you don't have to hold for 20 mins on the phone and get passed around like a normal bank, it takes literally days to sort something out. But they're great otherwise!
Objects are dependent on each other and new, legitimate edits can happen on top of damaging ones which we would not like to revert automatically.
Yes, there are tools in place which can revert edits, but there is still manual checking required. The annoying thing is that companies sometimes go ahead and "invest" money into edits which turn out to be garbage and then volunteers need to revert or fix them up.
There are also a couple of subtle details of the OSM editing model that could make it a lot easier for a knowledgeable vandal to make changes that are rather more painful to undo than they should be.
Especially for people coming from cultures where confrontation or directness is frowned upon this leads to the impression that OSM is a fighting ground, but there can be no discussion without disagreement.