Police spies infiltrated UK leftwing groups for decades - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/15/undercover-police-spies-infiltrated-uk-leftwing-groups-for-decades <comment><USER2> Disappointed, but not surprised. I'd have expected the numbers to be higher. See also the murder of Pat Finucane: [https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish- news/mi5-can-a...](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mi5-can- authorise-agents-to-commit-crimes-tribunal- told-1.3651806#.W7cihCcrJj0.twitter)

However some of those groups actually are dangerous; not just Combat 18 but also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty) (surprising campaign of terror for which several were jailed)

There is also the question (as with some of the FBI anti-terrorist actions) as to how far the undercover agents were actually the driving conspirators.

Compare and contrast with the reports that the Electoral Commission have passed a file to the Metropolitan police about the conduct of various organisations in the Brexit referendum .. which the police are not yet investigating.

<comment><USER3> Two points of clarification (for other readers):

1\. Combat 18 is a neo-Nazi terrorist organization associated with several murders, not a left-wing political campaigning group. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_18)

2\. Undercover Police officers in related animal rights groups (the ALF, rather than SHAC) have been identified as suspects in fire-bombings, and accused of perjury during trials for terrorism offenses, for which those groups were blamed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_\(undercover_police_officer\)#Accusations_of_arson_and_perjury)

... It's hard to know how much of the animal rights movement's reputation for terrorism was based on their actual actions rather than police agent provocateurs, because police cover-ups are still on-going. And this point also applies to SHAC: we know about the police undercover agents who have been exposed, but by definition we don't know about the ones whose identities remain secret — in particular, whether the Met/ACPO infiltrated SHAC and actively incited their more outrageous actions, as they did with other groups.

<comment><USER4> For people who want to read the literature / propaganda / ephemera of the time there was a magazine called Arkangel which has some back issues available on the web.

There was considerable debate about whether fire bombing was a non-violent action: the aim was not to harm people, but to cause massive water damage (from the sprinkler systems) to shops and their stock. Other people said you know violence when you see it, and burning down a building is a violent act.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkangel_(magazine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkangel_\(magazine\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of these groups have a publicly stated goal of overthrowing British democracy - doesn't seem unreasonable for them to be monitored by the police and security services.

<comment><USER6> Why?

As long as they're not doing it violently.

<comment><USER5> They say they want to 'seize control' of the government institutions using 'mass action' instead of voting. They aren't talking about asking nicely are they, come on.

<comment><USER7> Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence.

<comment><USER5> > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough.

That cannot be what they are referring to - if the mass was a majority then they could use voting. They say they can't use voting, which implies to me they're planning some kind of minority undemocratic action.

<comment><USER8> > if the mass was a majority then they could use voting

In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority support, while the favored interest can remain dominant with a sufficient minority of support.

See, e.g., the US government, where this was dramatically demonstrated in the 2016 Presidential election, but has a more consistent impact in the federal legislature, particularly the Senate, and in the _de facto_ "Constitutional legislature"—the body that can amend the Constitution—where, as in the Sense, voting is by State.

As such, a mere majority in the US favoring certain positions cannot succeed by voting alone.

<comment><USER9> > In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic > misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have > structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to > those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority > support

In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate their will onto the majority.

That's a feature, not a bug.

<comment><USER8> > In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate > their will onto the majority.

No, exactly the opposite: a minority that is structurally favored by the biases in the system of representation, _can_ dictate their will over the objections of the majority.

<comment><USER9> > No, exactly the opposite: a minority

Nonsense. In democratic republics, which are the norm in the West, the people pick their representatives and both the legislative and executive branches are determined by that vote.

It makes no sense to try to turn around the facts to pretend that democratic governments are not voted in by the majority but instead by a minority. That's absurd and has no bearing in reality.

<comment><USER8> > In democratic republics, which are the norm in the West, the people pick > their representatives and both the legislative and executive branches are > determined by that vote.

And in real, rather than idealized, democratic republics, there are often systematic distortions in representation favoring certain identifiable interests, allowing those interests to attain controlling power with a minority of the vote.

As stated above, the US federal government provides a good example of this.

> It makes no sense to try to turn around the facts to pretend that democratic > governments are not voted in by the majority but instead by a minority.

Both the current President of the US and the current Senate majority were voted in by outright minorities. The House majority was voted in by a plurality, but still the majority faction is substantially overepresented even if you consider only the ratio of major party votes.

> That's absurd and has no bearing in reality.

The current US government may be absurd, but it is absolutely reality, and not unique among democratic republics in history in being elected despite not commanding majority support in the electorate.

Denying reality isn't productive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was quite lot of politically motivated property destruction over that period. Often by people in tight groups that would be hard to infiltrate. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pounds-15m-hawk-attack- wo...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pounds-15m-hawk-attack-women- freed-1331285.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> the new yorker did a long piece on one specific case: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who- lo...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-loved-me-2)

quite interesting and sad

</comment><comment><USER11> Left wing _and_ right wing groups I might add. The police and/or intelligence agencies spy on everything and everyone considered to be a threat to the State. Including possibly you, right now, reading this comment using those mass surveillance laws used to combat "terrorism".

And why they don't take any action against these groups you might ask? That's because some of these are _very_ useful in regard to controlling the populus (e.g. threat of violence leading to self-censorship) and enabling the removal of more and more liberties.

You might think that people managed to learn how ruthless, vile cretins like Hitler and Stalin actually got to their positions of power, and how they expanded them. But nope. We are just waiting for, and in some cases actively enabling, all that shit to happen all over again.

It is almost like human civilization keeps going round and round in a perpetuation of hate, abuse, vileness and misery. And it's so sad given the fact that we actually _have_ EVERYTHING we need to destroy this cycle once and for all.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do they also infiltrate similarly dangerous right-wing groups? I meant that as a serious question, not as a Socratic way to make a point. I don't recall that being reported but maybe it's due to my poor memory, or maybe it just hasn't been discovered.

<comment><USER13> Infiltrate? Quite a few are card carrying members.

<comment><USER9> > Infiltrate? Quite a few are card carrying members.

Do you believe no policeman was ever a card carrying member of a communist/socialist organization?

<comment><USER13> >Do you believe no policeman was ever a card carrying member of a communist/socialist organization?

If they exist I haven't met them.

I have met far more who have certain ideas on race, religion, and distrust of socialist. They aren't afraid to share with you how things were dealt with "back then."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this seemed a lot worse until the paragraf describing one of the infiltrated parties as "a Trotskyite party of a few thousand members that advocates the abolition of capitalism through revolutionary means"

It doesn't seem entirely out of place for the police to infiltrate a group that openly instigates revolution.

The article also goes into repeated occurrences of romance between undercover agents and members of the infiltrated organizations. sounds like pretty awkward family reunions.

<comment><USER15> They've infiltrated the SWP for nearly 40 years and yet have found no evidence of the organisation itself pushing violence or other crimes.

It doesn't seem entirely out of place to keep an eye on them. It does seem a bit odd to consider there to be a need to infiltrate them continuously for ~40 years when neither your infiltration or their actions shows evidence they're a threat. You'd think after a couple of years they'd scale things back. Keep an eye, maybe check in on them if they see worrying signs.

It's the amount of resources put into tiny, mostly ineffectual, fringe groups that is most staggering. I mean, in a way these groups should be flattered that they were taken so much more seriously than their activity would suggest.

<comment><USER16> Actually though, the SWP isn't a tiny ineffectual fringe group. They (or their satellite organizations) been key organizers of pretty much every big lefty demo for the last 2-3 decades. Back when I was more involved with this sort of thing, we used to find the SWP's enthusiasm for appropriating other people's issues quite annoying. _This_ is why I find the extent of police involvement in the SWP rather startling.

<comment><USER15> They were good at making noise and hijacking attention and demonstrations. But they were still tiny, and they're tinier by far now (as for 2014, some ex- members estimated there was a core of 200 or so left, after the Comrade Delta mess caused multiple splits). And they achieved very little: As you point out they were enthusiastically appropriating other peoples issues. They rarely did much of any consequence on their own.

<comment><USER16> They have / had tentacles in lots of lefty causes, which I would speculate is what made them interesting to the police. I think they largely managed this by being fairly well resourced and organized, notably they organized transport to demos for huge numbers of people. I haven't really kept up with the gossip recently though. I imagine things like the recent Stop Trump demo had a lot of input from SWP or former-SWP people, but I don't really know who organizes what these days.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker Who Leaked Scarlett Johansson Pics Gets 10 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413342,00.asp <comment><USER2> From the title it might seem like a harsh sentence (especially if you haven't heard about this case before), but considering that he hacked accounts and stole personal data from at least 50 more people, this is a very reasonable sentence.</comment>


Leadership Transition Announced for MIT Media Lab - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/media-lab-leadership-transition-0910 <comment><USER2> I'm a Media Lab alum, sort of. There may be a master's degree with my name on it, but as I see it I basically flunked out. So I used to look back on it with bittersweet feelings of what I wasn't good enough to achieve.

Now, though, after seeing what was really going on there... 30+ years of rigged demos, high-profile failures like OLPC, and maybe one or two useful inventions among the years of pointless impractical stuff that "looks cool", all funded by the largess of child molesters. Forget about a "leadership transition", the lab is unsalvageable. Burn it to the ground and salt the earth.

Now, what to do with the two-year gap on my resume...

<comment><USER3> Where can I read on the rigged demos?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal- food-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal-food- computers-dont-work-fake-staff-say-2019-9)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing this.

""It's essentially a grow box with some sensors for collecting data," Cerqueira, a dietitian who worked as a project manager at the Open Agriculture Initiative for two years [...] The boxes were not air-tight, so staff couldn't control variables like the levels of carbon dioxide and even basic environmental factors like temperature and humidity, Cerqueira and the other person said. "

Looking at [https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture- openag/pro...](https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture- openag/projects/) it looks like the food computer project was just one among several, though it might've been the more prioritized 'audacious goal' among them considering it's prominence on the main open ag site: [https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture- openag/](https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/)

The last paper I saw (2018-10-20) ( [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-02683-...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-02683-7_79) ) on food computer version 2 is more about the building process of it, not so much on results yet. [https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/faq](https://wiki.openag.media.mit.edu/faq) discusses the version differences.

Finally, Caleb comments on the BI article here: [https://forum.openag.media.mit.edu/t/can-we-get-a- comment/51...](https://forum.openag.media.mit.edu/t/can-we-get-a-comment/5186)

(sidebar: the food computer thing weirdly reminds me of reddit.com/r/spacebuckets )

<comment><USER5> The thing is, they didn't need to have a whistleblower to find out that the boxes couldn't control variables like the levels of carbon dioxide - they just had to read the latest paper published using them: [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213918) Apparently that level of control is planned for their currently-in-development larger scale facility. Also, I don't think the quotes about controlling those things even apply to the Personal Food Computer specifically - after reading the linked articles they're either forward-looking claims about the whole research that predate the PFC, or specifically refer to to the larger-scale equipment.

On top of that, the headline claim that the "personal food computer" "simply doesn't work" seems to be outright untrue. I had a look and the designs seem to be pretty widely replicated and tested - everything from an MIT-supplied version of the latest design in a New York museum operated by unaffiliated volunteers to a homebrew version of an old foam-based design built from scratch by a Baltimore school using material from Lowes. Some versions do seem to be a little temperamental on the electronics side, to the point members of the team have advised people not to built v2 on the forum, but they do work and grow things. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the photoshoots and static displays were faked, though; turnaround time for a real grow is at least a month.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, while I'm still trying to wrap my head around whether it's an effective solution, I'm not suggesting it doesn't work. It looks like some OSU students in Bend are have had success with it : [https://twitter.com/ATBF_NPO](https://twitter.com/ATBF_NPO) [https://www.aroundthebendfarms.org](https://www.aroundthebendfarms.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's actually a bit surprising as someone working in tech in SF how little I ever hear about the Media Lab. It just doesn't seem like it's something tech people here ever talk about, which maybe says something in of itself.

<comment><USER7> Do you work for a startup? Startups generally don't employ a lot of university-research tech. The people who are reading current academic papers and incorporating them into the company's products are more likely to work at big companies than small ones.

<comment><USER8> That statement surprises me. I have no experience of tech startup or big enterprise, and I would have expected large organizations to be more conservative. Granted, there may be a more research-oriented department in large orgs, but the boat is harder to sway.

<comment><USER9> From what I've heard, it takes a lot of work to translate something out of academia into a business-viable product, and working in an academic setting I can see why. The code that I write is designed to work, but not necessarily to be performant or robust. Small team sizes and specific goals don't make for something easily transferable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Context (icymi):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901572)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20891907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20891907)

</comment><comment><USER11> The first three names on that list are respected researchers and group heads who have been deeply involved in the day-to-day research of the lab, which includes mentoring/working with students and doctoral candidates, and dealing with lab sponsors.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just shut the place down. The grants won't be coming in any more. Let's not pretend otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER13> MIT CSAIL alum here, the Media lab wasn't exactly a bastion of fundamental, more known for whizz-bang demos and media interviews etc. I remember reading somewhere they were "all icing no cake" or the "MIT marketing agency".

I hope this crisis refocuses it on breakthrough research,where its talent and resources could be very well spent.

<comment><USER14> Some of that was typical inter-departmental rivalry, even jealousy. The Media Lab had the big parties, the popular press attention, the visits by pop stars and celebs. And it had its audacious claims and characters. But mostly it had the money pouring in from sources untapped by other departments that functioned in the post-WWII MIT model of government funding. Personally, I'm grateful for full funding as a graduate students and the highest stipends on campus.

But that's because the LCS and AI labs were doing different stuff from the Media Lab. They weren't comparable. Computation and networked devices were a tool towards something larger at the Media Lab. Yes, there were demos didn't work, or couldn't work. In Spatial Imaging, we couldn't fake physics, so we were somewhat immune. But with years of retrospect I look back fondly on some of those crazy "unworkable" ideas and see successful modern versions of them. Broadening one's vision is supposed to be part of academia; the Media Lab just approached it in a non-hardcore science MIT way.

I also think the Media Lab changed CSAIL (when LCS and AI merged) much more than vice versa. Start with the Geary-designed building but look at the type of research and approach to funding. There's plenty of research at CSAIL that would have fit right at home at the ML in its old days, precisely because it is aimed at technology closer to end users and aligned with corporate sponsors and interests. Maybe that's because the world has changed; it's hard to interpret cause and effect. But the Media Lab was clearly a part of that.

Disclaimer: left in 1997, not part of current controversy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And why it matters to us? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm really interested. What will this event affect?

</comment><comment><USER16> I've heard about this lab. They really have great merit!

</comment><comment><USER17> Amusing/sad how the announcement doesn't mention Joi Ito _at all_ , even with a perfunctory "thanks for your service". Apparently taking a donation from an unperson is enough to make you an unperson as well these days.

<comment><USER18> You mean breaking institutional policy and covering it up doesn't get you a gold watch and a laudatory press release?

<comment><USER19> Breaking policy, covering it up, and getting paid six digit amounts of money for it.

But no, this is obviously some kind of witch hunt. /s

Edit: six digit

<comment><USER20> Epstein paid Ito seven digits for his own personal investment fund, more than twice what he gave Media Lab.

<comment><USER21> Serious question: what does it mean that Epstein paid $1.2 million into Ito's personal investment fund? Is that an investment fund that Ito ran? Or did Ito get the money personally? I did some web searches a couple of days ago but couldn't find an explanation of this strange wording.

<comment><USER20> It means Ito's investment fund was his main gig, and Media Lab was only a side hustle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "... whose goal is to stop taking hidden donations from child sex traffickers and murderous princes for reputation building"

nope, wait, didn't see that in the press release, taps still open boys.

<comment><USER23> That was in the previous announcements by MIT, their hiring of an independent law firm to investigate what happened and all previous potential grants, and upcoming changes to how donations work.

This is about leadership transition, not everything to date. Don't over sensationalize.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A visual HN reader build with Aangular - <AUTHOR> https://hnews.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some technical details about this weekend project: -It is based on the firebase api([https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/)) -Frontend is Angularjs -uses social login from firebase, so you can save your favorites -has a thin nodejs layer -hosed on heroku and using cloudflare for cdn caching -see the code on [https://github.com/valentinvieriu/visual-hacker- news](https://github.com/valentinvieriu/visual-hacker-news)

Please consider this is as a weekend project

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool! There are so many HN clients out there. I like the visual spin of this one with pictures.</comment>


JavaScript query language to perform complex object searches - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/issuetrackapp/queryl <comment><USER2> Looks similar to MongoDB query syntax [1]. Is it inspired by that? What are similarities/differences?

[1] [http://docs.mongodb.org/master/tutorial/query- documents/](http://docs.mongodb.org/master/tutorial/query-documents/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it was inspired by MongoDB, but then deviates in some ways:

\- Conjunction and disjunction operations are defined by arrays in MongoDB, but as Objects in Queryl.

For example:

{ $or: [ { foo: { $gt: 100 } }, { bar: { $gt: 200 } } ] }

vs:

{ $or: { $gt: { foo: 100, bar: 200 } } }

\- As you can notice in the above example, in MongoDB, you declare the property and the specific query inside, while in Queryl is the opposite: you declare the operation, and then the property.

\- Of course, Queryl is still in it's infancy, and doesn't support as many operations as MongoDB does (but will be added eventually).

There are probably more differences that I'm not spotting due to lack of in depth knowledge in MongoDB queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been enjoying [https://linqjs.codeplex.com/](https://linqjs.codeplex.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been working on library that creates a queryable structure for trees like this. I prefer writing normal JS than to having some query language for it.

      var obj = minim.toElement({
        a: 1,
        b: [
          {
            c: 1,
            d: 2,
            e: [ { f: 5 } ],
            f: 6
          }
        ]
      });

      // Results are [5, 6]
      var results = obj.find(function(value, key) {
        return key.equals('f');
      });

See [https://github.com/refractproject/minim](https://github.com/refractproject/minim)

</comment><comment><USER5> An alternative approach is to use XPath-inspired DSLs that work on JS or JSON object structures. These tend to work on strings, rather than declarative query objects. Examples:

JSPath: [https://github.com/dfilatov/jspath](https://github.com/dfilatov/jspath)

JSONPath: [https://github.com/s3u/JSONPath](https://github.com/s3u/JSONPath)

(Since you don't have type safety in JS, I don't think you lose much by using strings, unless you want to wrap it in TypeScript.)

<comment><USER4> Or you could actually use XPath :)

[https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS9H2Y_7.1.0/...](https://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS9H2Y_7.1.0/com.ibm.dp.doc/json_jsonxconversionexample.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This could use a touch more intelligence to cut down on a lot of the noise.

You could eliminate `$equal` and `$match` by looking for regex types and strings.

You could also take hints from Django and add operations to the keys to eliminate instantiating a new object for `$not`, `$gt` and `$lt`.

So, instead of:

        queryl.match({
          $or: {
            $equal: {
              foo: 'bar'
            },
            $and: {
              $not: {
                $match: {
                  foo: /^baz/
                }
              },
              $gt: {
                bar: 3
              }
            }
          }, ...

...it would look like:

        queryl.match({
          $or: {
            foo: 'bar',
            $and: {
              foo__not: /^baz/,
              bar__gt: 3
            }
          }, ...

Seems like this syntax is popular; is there something about this that doesn't work when serializing, or other uses that need the pure-object approach?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there! Your second example was the original idea when building Queryl, however that required me to always inspect the properties of an object, and based on the key, check if it is a Queryl operation (e.g: starts with $ and it's recognised), or a simple property to match for equality.

Also, it had the edge case in which a user's object properties could collide with the operations defined by Queryl, which (I believe, didn't write tests for it) doesn't happen with the current approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain why you might need to store queries as JSON data with horrifying syntax, instead of just writing plain functions that search/filter/whatever?

Or if you really have to, using a sensible DSL to do the job instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there,

Objects (or DSL) are easier to encode/decode than functions.

Also notice that Queryl is a very low level way of defining queries, and can easily become horrifying and unmaintainable with very complex queries.

The idea was to provide the low level, verbose way of defining this, and provide a user friendly frontend (as a DSL, probably) that compiles to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also similar to [https://github.com/raine/ramda- cli](https://github.com/raine/ramda-cli) which was posted recently.

</comment><comment><USER9> Along similar lines, I just made this library a couple weeks ago to describe data validations programmatically (i.e., one JSON to validate another JSON document).

[https://github.com/MalcolmDwyer/json- predicate](https://github.com/MalcolmDwyer/json-predicate)

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks similar to sequelize [http://docs.sequelizejs.com/en/latest/](http://docs.sequelizejs.com/en/latest/)

<comment><USER11> Looks similar to sequelize query API, direct link: [http://docs.sequelizejs.com/en/latest/docs/querying/](http://docs.sequelizejs.com/en/latest/docs/querying/)

This kind of things looks better in homoiconic languages.

I'm wondering how that approach compares to rho/rewriting calculus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> looks very similar to siftjs: [https://github.com/crcn/sift.js/tree/master](https://github.com/crcn/sift.js/tree/master)

</comment><comment><USER4> It always feels like we keep reinventing Lisp. You could do something like:

      ['contains?', ['list', 1, 2, 3], 1]

Instead of:

      {
        $contain: {
          foo: 1
        }
      }, {
        foo: [ 1, 2, 3 ]
      }

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha definitely! You could write a small module that compiles the lisp-like syntax that you mention above to a Queryl object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> how's this better than just using lodash?

<comment><AUTHOR> The project heavily relies on lodash for it's implementation actually, so you can of course do it straight with lodash, however the benefit is that you don't have to write any code to produce complex searches (with multiple nested levels of $or and $and), which would require a lot of conditionals if done straight with JavaScript.

Another benefit (which was the reason behind the implementation), is that we can stringify the search object to easily persist and share it, which would not be that easy with plain code.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Xbox One Controller Driver for OS X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller <comment><USER2> Could you provide some technical detail on the creation process? The Xbox One controller doesn't identify itself as a Human Input Device, so it requires a Kext, yeah? Did you need to use a USB sniffer to identify the initialization sequence and button mappings?

Another OS X Kext for the (USB) Xbox One controller, if only for comparison: [https://github.com/FranticRain/Xone-OSX](https://github.com/FranticRain/Xone- OSX)

<comment><USER3> using the Xone-OSX [https://github.com/FranticRain/Xone- OSX](https://github.com/FranticRain/Xone-OSX) works quite fine for me. Anybody has an input about the differences?

<comment><USER4> how's steam support?

<comment><USER3> Castle Crashers and Guacamelee work well. Unfortunately, The Force Unleashed does not recognize it. Yet, believe it's a game specific problem (the port is terrible ...). Haven't tried other games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great! The developer of the 360 driver stopped maintaining his work quite awhile ago, and it has been difficult getting it to work on newer OS X versions. Although this means buying a new controller, it's not all bad because it's a great controller!

PC gamepads are pretty terrible so having the 2 major console controllers as options is a wonderful thing.

Worth mentioning: the PS4 controller works out of the box with nothing to install, over USB or Bluetooth.

<comment><USER6> It's not too hard. There's been a fork of the project which you can find here [https://github.com/d235j/360Controller](https://github.com/d235j/360Controller).

<comment><USER7> That one doesn't work for me on OSX 10.10.2. The one provided by OP works perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice job!

Is there a DualShock 4 Controller Driver out there for OS X? There is a great one for Windows called DS4Windows, but I haven't found on for Mac.

<comment><USER5> Just plug it right in and go! Bluetooth pairing works too, but is a little wonky. But what else is new, it's Bluetooth.

<comment><USER8> Buttons all work fine, but the track pad didn't work for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > ...the driver is unsigned and has to be installed with kext dev mode enabled > on Yosemite. If you don't know what that means it's probably not a good idea > to go further.

That's fine - but why not explain how to do this? People are going to google it anyways - may as well offer a sane tutorial on how to do it.

<comment><USER10> > why not explain how to do this? ... may as well offer a sane tutorial on how > to do it.

I'd be worried about people making inane pull requests a la "You broke my computer!" if they did something wrong.

<comment><USER9> That's why open source licenses were created (to have a no warranty clause). However, for those that don't read...licenses, having in big bold print "this may break your system" may deter most people. I think most system-breaking- software I've used has had a built in warning.

My harsh opinion - don't treat people like children. If they want to play with fire - they will. But I would feel better if the author of the software posted something like "Following these steps has been known to be successful in using this" rather than people googling some out of date information.

Using your logic - the guys at cyanogen wouldn't create a wiki describing[1] how to install their ROMs. Arguably installing ROMs on Android devices is a much more intense process than simply modifying your OS (you are hoping that the manufacturer didn't all of a sudden decide to include a kill switch in your model - rendering your $600 phone a paperweight).

[1] [http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_p880](http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_p880)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been playing with [https://github.com/guilhermearaujo/xboxonecontrollerenabler](https://github.com/guilhermearaujo/xboxonecontrollerenabler) and works like a charm on all my Steam games. Is there any major pros/cons to each of these drivers?

<comment><AUTHOR> This one polls every 5ms, so you have 5ms guaranteed latency, when mine reacts on USB async interrupts. Also it takes a hammer approach and simulates a joystick via VHID+WirtualJoy, whereas mine just maps the USB packets to sets up a HID descriptor and passes it straight to OS X's IOKit. You can't have it be more lightweight and native: connect pipes and tell OSX how to understand packets in the most standard way possible.

Latency matters a lot to me, especially in emulators as it creates a terrible uncanny valley (even more when you have the original hardware to compare to). Using Higan on OpenEmu with this controller, latency is really low and I have the feeling very similar to "native" NES when I play Megaman.

Also once you go in Big Picture mode on Steam and configure the gamepad, mine works like a charm in all games I threw at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the longest time, OS X didn't require driver signing; I was in the Hackintosh scene a few years ago and helped write a few drivers. Not surprised that it's required now, but looks like it can be disabled relatively easily. (It's unexpected and nice of Apple to do that.)

</comment><comment><USER13> _sigh_.. hacker news comments - cynical and (often unintentionally) abrasive.

this looks really cool. and the code is very readable! nice work.</comment>


It's Time to Make OpenStreetMap Your Only Street Map - <AUTHOR> http://stevecoast.com/2014/01/30/its-time-to-make-openstreetmap-your-only-street-map/ <comment><USER2> I'm currently trying to switch from Google Maps for my smartphone, not because maps are more detailed in geek-dense areas (although they are), but because Google seems to have hired a bunch of drunken lemurs as its usability team.

I mean, I value simplicity, especially on the go, and the OSM-based softwares I've tried are by no mean perfect. But with recent versions of Google Map, I have difficulties:

* bookmarking my current location, especially when offline

* getting a scale displayed on my map (a scaleless map was a mandatory Fail in geography classes)

* giving itinerary boundaries through clicks

* sharing a marker as a public URL

* getting rid of research results once I've seen them

And whenever I find a contrived way to do one of those things, more often than not, a couple of weeks later it's taken out by a new "simplification". I'll grant you that maps looks nicer and nicer, but it becomes less and less usable at an alarming speed.

<comment><USER3> There is a lot of OSM-based maps, free and paid. I'm developer of one of those apps: [http://galileo-app.com](http://galileo-app.com) It works offline. Sharing based on url-scheme and our service. Search result destroyed as soon as you clear search field. :) And many more features.

Check it and tell here or directly via email email@example.com your opinion or ideas about improvement. :)

p.s. It's iOS only.

<comment><USER4> I was super excited until I saw the iOS only. Any chance of an Android version?

<comment><USER3> May be later this year. Now we focused on best possible iOS app. Engine is written in C++, and relatively easy to port to Android, but app itself also requires lots of work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Learning more about OSM is something I've been meaning to do for a while, but I'll commit time and do it, because I think it's a great project.

That said, every time I look at an OSM map, I find them uglier and far less usable than google maps.

Here's the Sochi example using OSM's Transport layer (which is less cluttered):

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7263&layers=...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7263&layers=T)

vs:

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=sochi&aq=&sll=37.0625,-95.677...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=sochi&aq=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=58.294644,99.580078&z=16)

If I had to navigate Sochi, I would overwhelmingly prefer Google's version. It's cleaner, has better contrast and a number of subtle touches (english translations, one-way arrows, ...). When I travel, I always download offline OSM maps, in case, but eagerly get a SIM card with a data plan and switch to Google Maps (and I suddenly find myself better oriented).

<comment><USER6> The point of OpenStreetMap is that we provide the data and you provide (or you use services that provide) an interpretation of the data that's useful to you.

The rendering style you picked is certainly different than Google's. MapQuest Open's rendering style is pretty darn close to the Google Maps link you pointed at [0], and other map providers like MapBox let you build maps with styling how you like it in just a few clicks (including picking English labels when known). I made one just now [1].

We don't do a great job of making the point when you arrive at osm.org, but we aren't competing with Google Maps. We're competing with Navteq/Nokia and other map data providers.

[0] [http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7236&layers=...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.5883/39.7236&layers=Q) [1] [https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/iandees.h675i5pf/page.html?sec...](https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/iandees.h675i5pf/page.html?secure=1#16/43.5882/39.7211)

<comment><USER7> While I get your point, I don't think it's very productive.

The majority of the people who interact with OSM will get a perception of it that's biased by the presentation. Even with the MapQuest Open style, Google Maps, to me, are far more pleasant to look at and easier to understand. The text seems to be rendered in a better, more readable way, and GMaps has a better handle on decreasing contrast for things that aren't that important, allowing more important features to stand out.

You can tell me that I shouldn't care, because you provide such awesome data, and I'm tempted to agree, but my reptilian brain will give me opposite feelings every time I try to look at your maps.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure how you define 'productive' in this sense. OpenStreetMap provides data for people to make maps with. What you do with that data is (gloriously) up to you.

OSM doesn't _have_ to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need to make their maps look better.

<comment><USER9> _OSM doesn 't have to "sell" their maps. It's the folks like Telenav that need to make their maps look better._

They certainly do if " _I'd like it to get OSM to seven billion contributors in the next year or two_ "

<comment><USER10> With a world population of seven billion, that seems a little ambitious...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Criticizing OSM is at least as hazardous as criticizing Wikipedia, but...

Setting aside ideological purity, the actual rationality of switching solely to OSM depends on the actual quality and freshness of its data. And most of the world with money in play is more likely to follow rationality than ideological purity here.

But with regard to data quality, OSM is encumbered its own policy. OSM cannot (or refuses to) make use of high-quality bulk data from outside, regardless of how that data was licensed. Automation allows more frequent updates with a lot less manual labor as input - but OSM requires contributors to manually trace shapes in their weird browser app. Even where plenty of excellent liberally licensed data is available, OSM insists on making an army of unpaid monkeys re-make the SAME data in perpetuity.

That puts its pipeline at a permanent disadvantage to companies building proprietary datasets, which can take advantage of all kinds of automation. OSM simply isn't doing as much as it could to verify its data and stay fresh, and so it isn't doing as much as it could to end the status quo of proprietary data. Even if OSM reaches a usable state at a given moment, the world keeps changing to invalidate previously traced data, and OSM's policy ensures it will always be playing catch-up no matter who wants to donate data, because all the data has to come through this dopey manual process.

<comment><USER12> This viewpoint seems to be based on the assumption that proprietary datasets are going to be more up to date than a crowdsourced dataset. Having worked with proprietary datasets, often this assumption is wrong as these datasets (which could be eligible for importation) are often surprisingly poor quality and out of date. If a company can still make money selling their datasets to their same customers, there is no incentive for them to spend resources to keep it up to date.

What this viewpoint does hint at is it's comparison to Wikipedia, and the differences in geospatial data of a current map of the world. Pekk is correct, an area in OSM needs to be continually updated and refreshed, and this requires appropriate tools and a user base. Both of these exist or are being improved upon with OSM.

For example, work has happened re: Monitoring of changes, comparisons with imagery, map bug reports, automated feeds, academic and industry reports and evaluations of the quality with proprietary and national mapping agency datasets.

<comment><USER13> This is very true. My country's Government had an issue with a major internet project where they bought the best commercial address database available. Turns out that hundreds of thousands of addresses in there were incorrect, and tens of thousands just didn't exist. Caused huge problems.

Proprietary geospatial data can be very hit and miss. If you assume that the majority will be high quality, you're setting yourself up for disappointment...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tangent for bored hackers: you can torrent the entire OpenStreetMap dataset right now. It's only 23 GiB, in a simple format stored as protocol buffers.

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#BitTorrent](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#BitTorrent)

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/PBF) (format documentation)

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features) (common tag strings)

edit: This was my first render from this weekend, [http://i.imgur.com/vD9d39W.png](http://i.imgur.com/vD9d39W.png) :D

<comment><USER15> Apparently, most readers clicked on the first torrent (32GB), instead of the compressed one (22GB) below.

The deep link to the 22GB Version: [http://osm- torrent.torres.voyager.hr/files/planet-latest.osm...](http://osm- torrent.torres.voyager.hr/files/planet-latest.osm.pbf.torrent)

<comment><USER16> what can you use for viewing such maps offline?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone use OpenStreetMap on Android with any success? I'd be grateful to hear of any maps/directions apps that I can use as a replacement in this category.

<comment><USER18> I'm using [http://osmand.net/](http://osmand.net/)

The UI is not perfect, but it has lots of useful features, like bike navigation and offline usage.

<comment><USER19> The UI is horrendous! I would use OSM but it is so terrible I can't. I use it when I dont want to go online, but it is truly awful.

<comment><USER20> "Horrendous!" "truly awful"? Can you elaborate on what exactly is wrong with OsmAnd's UI to elicit such a strong reaction? I use it myself and don't have any problems with it. It seems about the same as any mobile app with comparable complexity.

<comment><USER19> To search you press the menu, select search, select search by name (not the top item), get a box called "filter" with an almost invisible search button and where enter does not do a search. If it doesn't find any matches it just leaves a blank screen as if nothing has happened. Oh and if you pressed return first it wont find anything as the carriage return is part of the query so it doesn't match.

When I finally get the results of my query for "Hammersmith" it tells me that 309km away (some mistake, more like 3.9km) there is "Subway Station District Line;Hammersmith & City Line", and then the same result repeated around 150 times some with slightly different naming, and at varying distances from 309-328km away before it gets to other results in Hammersmith.

And you are trying to use this on a phone in the rain, you just give up and go back to google maps even though the data is worse.

EDIT: And if you select one of these it appears to be in Barking, as it found every station on the Hammersmith and City Line, although that is not 300km long.

<comment><USER20> Granted, I've never used it in a hurry. Also, my previous experience with maps was Garmin's City Navigator, which I thought was okay, but it was much worse than OsmAnd. I actually still use have it as a backup because it can run continuously for two days on two AA batteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One thing I really like about OSM is the fact that it accepts pull requests from anybody. For example, I live on a road that ends in "Street", but for whatever reason, Google's online maps have it marked as "Lane". This results in delivery drivers and service people often going to the wrong address. The street name was wrong on OSM, but I submitted a pull request and saw the fix implemented immediately.

Interestingly, Apple Maps, Mapquest, and Bing maps all have the right street name. After I submitted the PR to OSM, it's correct now, too. Only Google Maps is still wrong, which is unfortunate, since that seems to be the one most people rely on (especially w.r.t phone GPS's). I've had several instances of friends calling, confused on how to reach my house, after their Google Maps App took them to a house a few blocks away.

<comment><USER22> Have you tried making the change in Google Maps? I've made 10+ changes in the last 2 years, and have found their QA team to be very responsive.

<comment><USER21> Yes, I just did earlier this morning -- for some reason it never occurred to me to try until I saw this article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have been using OSM for 7 years and I really love the project. Nevertheless, the biggest issue I have when it is compared to GMaps is not the content nor rendering (those are relatively straightforward to change)... it is the geocoder + routing. There is not a good geocoder for OSM, period. Until we can put an address, like we can in GMaps, and get a pin in the right location, it will always be an option that is not a 100% replacement. Same with routing.

Don't get me wrong, it has its uses, but those two components are too critical to ignore or even advocate for full replacement.

<comment><USER24> Until OSM _has_ all of the addresses, it can't geocode to them. So your comment doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER25> It is usually also much more finicky with regard to address syntax. Google Maps does a good job handling spelling mistakes or ambiguous addresses. OSM is not on par with GM, yet.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I've heard that. GM is better at lower qualitys. But then search is google's main skill, and addresses can be all over the place...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Typical use case for me: hitting on Google Maps to find addresses via venue names; 99% of the time. I.e. I enter the name of the restaurant etc + some fuzzy data, like part of town or name of the city. This just works.

Last time I checked (just now), this still didn't get me any useful results from OSM for the European capitals I frequent (Rome, Paris, Berlin). I guess it is even worse for smaller cities.

Yes, there is some venue/business data. But it is too sparse, at least for most of Europe, for OSM to be a useful replacement for Google Maps -- even in the medium term.

The question would be: how could this be rapidly improved? For example, I entered probably two dozen places that were missing on Google Maps, in the past. While this data is now Google's, I entered it, originally. What's more, if I would be adding it again, to OSM, I'd certainly enter the same data.

I wonder what the legal perspective would be if everyone crawled "their" data (i.e. the data they personally entered) from Google maps and forwarded it to OSM.

<comment><USER8> What you're talking about is geocoding, not mapping. OSM doesn't even have its own geocoder, and I'm yet to find one that gets anywhere near to Google's results. Sadly.

<comment><USER27> Not sure I get what you mean. The 'Edit' function on openstreetmap.org lest me add exactly this kind of information. So they do provide it, or not?

<comment><USER28> Sort of. The search box on the OSM.org site is more a data inspector than it is a search nearby box.

So going to a place and searching for 'fastfood' returns objects from around the world based on the name matching 'fastfood'. A more structured input, like 'fast food, detroit, mi' returns something more sensible (but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area).

So the machinery there provides information, but it is not set up for end user situations.

<comment><USER26> _(but it is still searching the city limits of Detroit, not the metro area)._

Not necessarily. It depends on what the geocoding software does. It might use rigid "city" borders, or might not. In Europe, we don't have these rigid "city borders", so lots of software has to cope with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I first encountered OpenStreetMap 2 years ago and was amazed at how precise it was. Moreover, the editor is simply awesome. I had a road opened last year next to where I live and it took me about 2 minutes to register, load the editor, make the change and save it.

</comment><comment><USER30> If I could find a replacement for Google Maps that hooked into Google StreetView, I'd be a happy chappie. I find Google Street View and amazing tool, but want to move away from the maps part.

I refuse to install Google Maps on iOS, because every time I've installed it on our FAMILY iPad, it keeps driving the user to sign in with MY account, which it appears to have weaseled out of the sandboxed Google+ for iOS. Sorry, but firstly I don't want to have a search history. Secondly I don't want the search history of the rest of family to be linked to my Google account.

I understand that some people might want to switch this on as a feature, byt I don't, and Google have designed the app, so that it seems like it won't work without signing in. A very dark UI pattern if you ask me. This whole assumption of one-device-one-person is naive.

<comment><USER31> I was quite surprised to see there actually are a lot of competitors for Google StreetView: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_of_Google_Street_Vi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_of_Google_Street_View)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The data isn't the problem of Openstreetmap. What's missing is one go-to site with a nice rendering that doesn't try to show off all features and offers a similar feature set as google maps (searching for locations, shops, navigation).

<comment><USER33> You forget the essential feature of Google Maps: advertising - the reason for giving you the other features.

Map data is free but serving maps is a service... Either you pay for it, suffer advertising or do it yourself - the first and last options are available from Openstreetmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would use Open Street Map, except that I find aerial photographs are often an invaluable aid to navigation because they provide a more complete model of facts on the ground. Aerial photographs allow better recognition of landmarks - how wide is the road, how big is a building's parking area, does the address resolve to a football pitch?

The level of geographic information just isn't there to make it a viable first choice for me because orientation is more difficult.

</comment><comment><USER35> My home address doesn't exist in OSM. Actually it does exist, but in the wrong city. This is due to the use of TIGER data, which doesn't align with Post Office addresses. So using my address, no one can find my house. And while I can edit the map to move the road where needed, I cannot change the city.

Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc, all have no problem finding my house.

<comment><USER6> Our existing geocoders don't do a great job (geocoding is a _hard_ problem), and have an especially hard time at guessing containment in situations like you describe.

One solution is to map your house using iD (the default editor when you click the "Edit" button on osm.org) and add the full address, including the city and postcode. With that extra information, the geocoder should be able to find your address. Feel free to e-mail me if you've got more questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Curious to understand just how Telenav will try to make money off of OSM: Will they be the "Red Hat" of OSM? Will they sell "custom add-ons"? What might they do to both benefit the community and make money from usage? Could be great improvements, or could become known as "that day that OSM started to die"...

<comment><USER6> TeleNav sells navigations apps to smartphone users. They use OpenStreetMap data for some of those apps (and presumably want to use it in all their apps), so they're interested in seeing OSM prosper.

<comment><USER37> So they hope to outsource their QC to bring OSM's data up to Navteq?

If that's the case, they need to Gameify this pronto, like Duolingo does with crowd-sourced translations.

<comment><USER6> No, they're adding their QC resources to OSM's existing 20k+ monthly active editors and not only improving the map for their own use, but for others as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm currently working on a project that uses google maps in a few places. The main reason I'm not using OSM is gmaps.js [0]. Ideally I will find / create my own simple wrapper like this on top of OSM in the near future

[0] [http://hpneo.github.io/gmaps/](http://hpneo.github.io/gmaps/)

<comment><USER39> Leaflet.js[0] is pretty nice.

[0]: [http://leafletjs.com/](http://leafletjs.com/)

<comment><USER40> Although I stalled recently I had a great time using Leaflet.js on my Edinburgh pub-exterior site:

[http://edinburgh.io/pubs/](http://edinburgh.io/pubs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Hardware Stores in Alexandria VA"

* Google Maps: everything you'd ever want, and correct.

* Open Street Map: a Home Depot in Riverside County, CA, and a Lowes which apparently resides inside the exact same building.

It is _not_ time for me to make OpenStreetMap my only street map.

<comment><USER24> You've now added the ones you know about, I trust?

<comment><USER31> Not sure I follow sir

<comment><USER24> OSM only gets better when people add their knowledge to it. Add your knowledge of hardware stores in your town and it will be less for the next person to complain about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been wanting to become an OSM contributor for a long while now as I like the idea, and there's lots of low-hanging fruit as far as map coverage of my area goes (in osm, it's just plain bad). I also like geocaching, which seems like it would go hand-in-hand with mapping.

But I still haven't found an OSM editor that doesn't suck. And right now I don't have the time to write my own, even though I've considered it more than once...

<comment><USER13> I've found the iD editor on openstreetmap.org to be very good. It's been the main editor since May last year.

Potlatch 2 was the main one before that, which wasn't as good but was adequate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not living in Sochi, the comparison is less convincing for me:

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/30.33393/-95.47847](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/30.33393/-95.47847) [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-95.4784644,...](https://email@example.com,-95.4784644,17z)

Not to mention that searching for "Conroe, TX" and taking the first, correct- sounding result got me ~10 miles south of city limits.

Now, Google has a couple of oddities, here (those two businesses apparently on the median between the freeway and the access road!), but the road data is more accurate and detailed (including street names).

I've done some editing on wikis, but I'm not going to try to jump in and correct _that_ gap.

<comment><USER26> _Not to mention that searching for "Conroe, TX" and taking the first, correct- sounding result got me ~10 miles south of city limits._

The search box on the OSM front page uses Nominatim, which also has it's own website. Here's the search results for that: [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Conroe%2C+TX...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=Conroe%2C+TX&viewbox=-119.54%2C47.7%2C119.54%2C-47.7) You can see the 2 results there [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=4274...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=42740484) and [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=9815...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=98157421) There's a "Report Problem" button to help debug issues like this. Feel free to submit a bug!

I think Nominatim tries to rank things based on how long their Wikipedia article, the the item to the south (that was at the top), is the one that links to Wikipedia. TBH it looks like bad mapping whoever put that there

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I want to like OpenStreetMap, I really do...

If I see a place on the map.. Why can't I click on it? I can't get the address, telephone number, website etc.?

And I see and picture of a shopping basket? What is it? I also see a cocktail glass, it's a fucking mystery.

<comment><USER45> Not intuitive, but zoom in and hit the edit button. You should now see all the data as vectors. Click on anything and you will see all of the metadata.

<comment><USER26> Or zoom in and show the "Data" layer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Google Maps's killer feature for me is public transit information. It would be nice if there were an open public transit schedule database that interfaced with OSM.

<comment><USER47> Which outside the US isn't that great. In Germany it only has the railway data, but no buses or trams, which makes up most of the public transport in smaller cities and even important connections in larger ones.

<comment><USER48> I can't speak for anywhere else, but Google's public transit information for Beijing is excellent. Even has correct and complete information for bus routes. (Use ditu.google.cn for best location results, may require an IP address inside the PRC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've completely migrated recently from using Google Search, and use DuckDuckGo exclusively, even if sometimes I get results of lower quality. I'm willing to compromise for better privacy.

I have a sneaking suspicion that once finally I replace Google Maps with OSM there won't be any compromises to be made.

<comment><USER50> Out our firm, we do a Navigation system specialized for bikes, and TBH, for little side-roads and everything that is not the main roads, OSM seems to win.

I would say that where some services are lacking in that regard is geocoding, the spelling correction at Google is pretty hard to beat, addresses are incredibly hard to parse and Google has definitely and edge in that sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> OSM data came in handy in Europe. Their public toilet database seems pretty complete.

I'd love to have more complete metadata. No reason in 2014 I shouldn't be able to query pet-friendly hotels near brewpubs near bike trails.

<comment><USER26> Brew pubs and bike trials are mapped. I dunno about pet friendly, but that can vary by country. IM(limited)E Austria is quite pet friendly (pets in hotels and all that), so Austrians mightn't tag that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I like OSM and have also contributed to it. However, I would be wary of using OSM for navigation. It's very easy for someone to mis-edit (accidentally or maliciously). Also, it is difficult to revert a mis-edit because, unlike Wikipedia, the data is not chunked into pages and there are no simple textual diffs which a non-geek can review.

</comment><comment><USER53> When in Tokyo lately I've used OSM and found it suprisingly good. What I did miss compared to the Google Maps app is the direction the device is pointing towards.

Routing would also be nice :-)

<comment><USER6> Routing is provided by external tools like [http://map.project- osrm.com](http://map.project-osrm.com) and [http://open.mapquest.com/](http://open.mapquest.com/). On a mobile device you can use OsmAnd to navigate.

<comment><USER53> Thanks for the links, didn't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The map comparison tool is quite excellent. I'd love to use this tool for testing generic sites.

[http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?lon=39.7203&lat=43.58538&zoom=...](http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?lon=39.7203&lat=43.58538&zoom=15&num=2&mt0=mapnik&mt1=google- map)

</comment><comment><USER55> I wish I could.

Google search and maps are the only google products I still use (well, plus youtube, but no account, and blogger, but only reading), and I use duckduckgo intermittently instead of google search, but OpenStreetMap just isn't good enough yet, primarily by nit having yet found a halfway decent mobile app.

<comment><USER56> I did like Navfree. It wasn't perfect, but neither is Google maps. Usually if one was not finding things correctly, the other would.

Now the application has gone to the trouble of upgrading itself on my phone, without upgrading the actual maps, so it was completely useless last time I tried to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> As a small data point, I used Open Street Map [OSMAnd+] only when I was in Brussels at FOSDEM this weekend. I used it _a lot_ and it was absolutely superb. Obviously this is a major city, but I've also used it in the wilds of the Japanese countryside and found it to be equally reliable.

</comment><comment><USER58> The map is still far from complete in my part of the world, so I can't really switch.

<comment><USER6> Where are you? Let's make it better for you.

<comment><USER58> Very nice of you. Here I am - [http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.0331/24.3015](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.0331/24.3015)

<comment><USER6> Hmm. You've found one of OSM's many achille's heels. You're in a part of the world that doesn't have very good satellite imagery coverage, so the only way we can map is using recorded GPS data.

You can help by wandering around with your smartphone's GPS turned on and uploading the traces to OSM.org for others to map with.

<comment><USER58> I will certainly do it. Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Anything that works towards resetting the balance of power against Google is fine by me. Not to mention I've found that Google Maps has given me erroneous directions more frequently than a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER60> The article mentions that Telenav acquired Skobbler, the makers of a pretty sweet maps app that uses OSM. I've been using it on my Android for navigation for several months now: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skobbler.f...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skobbler.forevermapng&hl=en)

I do hope that this app won't die. It's polished, it's user friendly, it's based on OSM (which for me is a feature) and worked very well for me.

</comment><comment><USER61> Seems to be having load issues -- CoralCDN link [http://stevecoast.com.nyud.net/2014/01/30/its-time-to- make-o...](http://stevecoast.com.nyud.net/2014/01/30/its-time-to-make- openstreetmap-your-only-street-map/)

</comment><comment><USER62> It would be nice to have an app that pulls data from Google Maps (or Apple Maps), and at the same time sends location trace to Open Street Maps. That way I could use high-quality maps and still support the OSM project with raw trace data.

</comment><comment><USER63> "I'd like it to get OSM to seven billion contributors in the next year or two."

Surely that's a typo. Nearly all the world's population _contributing_ to, not just using, OSM? Seven million maybe?

</comment><comment><USER64> It can't even find my city given city and state, in a state capital! I'll switch just as soon as it learns where the United States is.

<comment><USER6> Can you give the search string you typed? As I mentioned elsewhere, geocoding is a _hard_ problem, and we've certainly not solved it. We can make it better by improving the data, though. I'd love to make your search better next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> The 'future' google maps is also too taxing on my (2006) laptop. OSM UI is as good as the current google maps. Good reason to move.

<comment><USER65> For a reason I can't edit my comment. I forgot to mention that the future google maps doesn't seem to show a distance reference, the UI follows the shift from digital map to mapped services.

ps: I wonder if there's an open, possibly smartphone/crowdsourced picture database to fill the lack of photographic/streetview data in OSM. Thinking about reconstructing algorithm as shown by Microsoft Research labs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> The problem with OSM (as compared to wikipedia) is that there is less awareness about the project and contributing to OSM has to be made a lot easier. Also it needs to have enough eyeballs per sq. mile to verify that the changes made are actually good. In some places like Melbourne (and someone mentioned this earlier) OSM is horrendous.

</comment><comment><USER67> > It's Time to Make OpenStreetMap your only street map

I can't. Your new app is US only, and osmand is good but not good enough.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder if there is a way to integrate in OSM automatically gathered data from users smartphones, like Waze does. There seem to be incentives to smartphone app makers to provide that.

Is there any nice description of the ecosystem around OSM data? How do all these companies providing routing or geocoding make money?

</comment><comment><USER69> It's way too slow for me. Taking 20-30 seconds to fill in map tiles while I'm panning around.

<comment><USER70> Where are you located? Is your connection fast enough?

<comment><USER69> Yes, my connection is fast enough.

<comment><USER70> Still interesting where you are. OSM serves the standard style from multiple locations: [http://dns.openstreetmap.org/tile.openstreetmap.org.html](http://dns.openstreetmap.org/tile.openstreetmap.org.html)

<comment><USER69> Milwaukee, WI, USA (about 100 miles north of Chicago)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I live 10 minutes from the center of the third largest city in Australia.

OpenStreetMaps still doesn't have street numbers.

Where data is good, OpenStreetMaps is a fantastic tool. But for the rest of the world - it's utterly useless.

<comment><USER13> There are lots of street numbers around parts of Brisbane (probably some of the most comprehensive are around Fairfield to South Brisbane). It's pretty easy to add - I traced my neighborhood and added address data in a couple of hours.

If you want to make the world a better place, you could do some around your house as well!

<comment><USER71> I certainly could - and might - but the lack of such information is why OSM s still not a viable replacement for commercial maps. (Yet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72>
      "Why the world needs OpenStreetMap"

      "It's Time to Make OpenStreetMap your only street map"

I think somebody is trying to say something here.

</comment><comment><USER73> A thing I don't about telenav it's the fact they only release us-only applications. Why can't I use their app? The OSM maps are global...

</comment><comment><USER74> Well when it works properly for more than a week at a time (export is currently randomly broken) and has turn by turn navigation, yes.

So no.

</comment><comment><USER75> I need traffic data to switch, right?</comment>


How the Google/Verizon proposal could kill the Internet in 5 years - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5610328/how-the-googleverizon-proposal-could-kill-the-internet-in-5-years

<comment><USER2> Dramatic rehash of the old same story. Don't mistake QoS with net neutrality, please.</comment>


India's Skills Famine - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/04/16/070416ta_talk_surowiecki <comment><USER2> Has anyone here worked with an offshore dev team as part of a startup or software project? I'd love to hear some first-hand accounts.

<comment><USER3> Twice. Once with an Indian development team through Getafreelancer and then another project with an individual from Romania. The Indian team did real good job and still provide quality support. The Romanian guy took my money and left. Doesn't reply to my mails anymore.

A friend of mine hired an Indian firm for one of his projects, but he got ripped off.

If you get a good offshore team, its definitely an asset. I am lucky i have one.

Advice[not suggestion]: as far as possible get someone from local area. Outsource to offshore teams only if skills required are not locally available.Taking chances would result in real good waste of time.</comment></comment>