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jmkb

Re:Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap on Saturday September 12, 2026 @02:37PM (#49675636)
The limit is imposed by the OSM API itself, and it's a matter of how much data is already mapped in the area you're requesting -- a max of 50,000 nodes according the API docs. Of course data density varies wildly across the planet, so you can expect to fetch a lot more acreage in rural areas than in urban ones. But there's no way to know if a particular bounding box call will succeed without trying it out.

Editing software could be generally aware of high and low density locales and advise accordingly. And it could subdivide a large request into smaller ones. But the JOSM developers prefer to offer a closer-to-the-API experience.

[0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6#Retrieving_map_...

Re:Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo on Wednesday August 05, 2026 @11:35PM (#49192128)
I do not enjoy looking at a golf course. (A minigolf course is a different kettle of fish.. of course.)
Re:OpenAI – How to delete your account on Sunday March 01, 2026 @09:11AM (#47206844)
Thanks, this is a really fun way to view the data. I don't think the no-google/no-yelp filters will really accomplish this goal though. Most of the ones I examined were either variations in the restaurant name or not really restaurants (gas station convenience store, hotel with breakfast, catering LLC with no storefront, etc.) The google and yelp datasets in NYC are really quite good.
Re:Why do people leave comments on OpenBenches? on Sunday December 21, 2025 @11:21AM (#46345899)
Thanks for building and maintaining this lovely project.

I'm an OSM mapper & enjoy linking mapped benches to their profiles on OpenBenches. It gets hairy, though, when a single bench features multiple memorial plaques. Wonder if you'd consider revising your data model to permit multiple inscriptions per bench?

Re:Streets GL – 3D OpenStreetMap on Tuesday January 07, 2025 @10:07PM (#42630466)
This is a beautiful project but unfortunately the OSM data's out of date -- over a year old at this point. Based on https://github.com/StrandedKitty/streets-gl/issues/182 it seems like this might be abandonware.
Re:PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights on Tuesday July 09, 2024 @12:00PM (#40917636)
Worth it, I reckon. You can't buy this kind of advertising:

https://xkcd.com/548/

Re:PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights on Tuesday July 09, 2024 @09:40AM (#40916024)
Decades ago, my partner used Google Voice for texting -- really handy, texts just showed up in the gmail inbox, and could be replied to from there. She didn't like cellphones, but usually carried one of the old "Kindle Keyboard" models with unlimited 3G data. The Kindle had simple web browser that could load the low-spec gmail interface, so in essence she had a fully functional SMS device, with no monthly charges.

Notification of incoming texts was the only problem. I jailbroke the thing and started trying to schedule network requests, thinking I'd add some kind of new message counter on the home screen. This proved hard. But it occurred to me that the best place for the counter would be right next to the Kindle's device name, at the top of the screen. And the device name could be updated from her Amazon account.

So I automated a web browser on the home server to log into Amazon and update the device name to "My Kindle (x)" where x was the number of unread Google Voice texts. The Kindle would update the name on the home screen in less than a minute. This worked for years!

(Eventually that Kindle was stolen. I wanted to update its name to something foul but the device disappeared from her account too quickly.)

Re:Using a 1965 Dutch Rotary Phone via VoIP (T65) in 2024 on Wednesday June 19, 2024 @01:31PM (#40730450)
I grew up with rotary phones, and dialing (on a physical dial) really was fun.

Disassembling my first junk phone and playing with the rotary relay was even more fun.

But the best was learning to dial numbers by manually pulsing the switch on the handset cradle. Timing was tricky but luckily there was some leeway. (And it helped that phone numbers were shorter then.)

Re:Firefox search update on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @11:39AM (#40356372)
I guess it's time to stop searching from the url bar (sorry, "awesomebar") and create a local html file as the startup and new tab page, with search boxes for all your fav engines. Just like the good old days.
Re:Phreaking on Monday April 29, 2024 @01:02PM (#40201023)
I found that upgrading mine with a full keypad -- including the ABCD column on the right -- did wonders for my rep. And of course a switch to toggle oscillators, so I could send red box tones.
Re:NYC Lost 100K Homes in Apartment-to-House Conversions on Thursday August 24, 2023 @09:01PM (#37256568)
Just to be clear, I find conversion of viable multifamily buildings into mansions generally repugnant.

The opposite process also happens, though... not just a 3- and 4-story residential buildings demolished for large residential towers (plenty of that in NYC) but single-family brownstones carved up into smaller dwelling units.

The map caption "Conversions Have Erased Some Gains in NYC's Housing Stock" would make a less deceptive headline. The map shows data from a defined timespan ("between 2010 and 2021") and shows that there's not a single community district that hasn't added housing units. The headline, meanwhile, refers to a vague "70-plus years" timeframe. That's long enough that you could probably find hundreds of buildings that have bounced between single- and multi-family several times.

And in fact the underlying research characterizes any building that was ever recorded as multifamily and currently isn't as a "loss." I fear it risks romanticizing the 20th century's cramped tenements.

(And again, just to be clear, I find conversion of viable multifamily buildings into mansions generally repugnant.)

Brian Eno developed tape-delay audio tech, released a few mobile apps, is a founder of the Long Now Foundation... not a scientist but definitely a bit science-y.
Eventually, I imagine a new licensing concept will emerge, similar to the idea of music synchronization rights -- maybe call it "training rights." It won't matter whether the text was purchased or pirated -- just like it doesn't matter now if an audio track was purchased or pirated, when it's mixed into in a movie soundtrack.

Talent agencies will negotiate training rights fees in bulk for popular content creators, who will get a small trickle of income from LLM providers, paid by a fee line-itemed into the API cost. Indie creators' training rights will be violated willy-nilly, as they are now. Large for-profit LLMs suspected or proven as training rights violators will be shamed and/or sued. Indie LLMs will go under the radar.

Picture an analog clock and it can be 0.008 hours/hour... about one percent of an hourhand's movement.
Just to be clear: this is an individual user's "diary" (blog) hosted at openstreetmap.org, not in any way an official statement from the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

And I agree with the author that the design of Bing Map Builder looks problematic. The biggest problem being that it's segregating its contributors from the general OSM population in the name of "privacy."

Re:Paper Map Sales Are Booming on Monday January 23, 2023 @11:27AM (#34490900)
Use an app that permanently downloads maps -- I like Mapy.cz and Organic Maps. And bring a waterproof phone case, an external battery, and a charging cable.

And also bring a waterproof paper map because it's lighter, easier to read, more resilient, and more fun.

Currently only 2009 LinkNYCs, according to https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Social-Services/LinkNYC-Map/tg...

My assumption is that these kiosks log all wifi and bluetooth traffic from nearby persons and vehicles, and USB device IDs of anything plugged in for charging. And of course the new ones will be logging 5G signals as well. Maybe there's not yet a centralized effort to coordinate these logs with the camera feeds to map people's physical appearance to their electronic footprints, but I can't imagine it isn't somewhere on the roadmap.

Re:Apple Lightning on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @10:16AM (#34161752)
I've had good luck with poster-tack goo... just have to make sure not to leave any behind.
Re:Freedom to Roam in Scotland: Everything You Need to Know on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @09:10AM (#34161102)
And Switzerland features the most drop-dead-gorgeous hiking maps of any land I've visited. It feels like each mountain was hand-drawn and shaded by someone who knows and loves it, and you can often ID them from the ground based on the pictures. But the artistic details are still subtle enough not to interfere with the roads, trails, POIs, and text.
Re:The extraordinary shelf life of the deep sea sandwiches on Monday December 12, 2022 @06:05PM (#33961772)
Well maybe. I've literally grabbed handfuls of wild apples, about the size of ping-pong balls.

(Maybe better described as feral apples? Old orchards with trees unpruned for decades.)

Re:The extraordinary shelf life of the deep sea sandwiches on Monday December 12, 2022 @04:07PM (#33960286)
To me (native English a la USA) apples are in a sort of uncanny valley between things that could in fact be measured by the physical handful, like peanuts, and things that couldn't -- buildings being way off the charts, obviously.
> aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus

I've found a similar trend in the supermarket frozen aisles. I used to be able to reliably find "veggie crumbles" at most largeish stores, perfect for pizza, chili, or mapo tofu. My favorite brand was Quorn (not quite vegan, includes egg whites) but there were often several decent options. Now it's rare to find anything other than Beyond or Impossible, packaged to look and feel like ground meat, very fussy. They taste okay, but I prefer both the crumbles' flavors and form factors. I've gone back to using TVP. (I'm not vegetarian -- I'll happily brown my TVP in bacon grease.)

Warning, those urls are not y2.1k safe!
Re:Editing Binaries in DOS (2002) on Saturday November 26, 2022 @09:12AM (#33752772)
Lovely. I spent many an hour in DEBUG.EXE as a child.

Finding extra space for adding code, like the welcome message, was always fun -- although it would be better form to have the code zero out the "borrowed" bytes after the message is written, just in case. Sometimes it was necessary to rewrite the assembly to squeeze in a few more bytes, eg, zeroing a register using an XOR instead of a MOV command with a 0000 parameter.

One could save these patches as text files that were designed to be piped directly into DEBUG.EXE, and these could be distributed -- by floppy, BBS, or printout -- to other users of the same DOS version. This was also a common way to format and distribute assembly language source code, since anyone could use their local copy of DEBUG.EXE to assemble it.

Re:Self Hosting a Google Maps Alternative with OpenStreetMap on Tuesday November 22, 2022 @11:22AM (#33707458)
Yes, I was disappointed that the "bus" routing option appears to be for driving a bus.

The Valhalla pedestrian routing engine does include ferry routes, though it completely ignores ferry schedules. (Ferry use can be discouraged in the routing options... the interface for fine-tuning options for the different routing profiles is quite impressive. )

Re:Ask HN: Warm Welcomes a.k.a. Newbie Fingering on Monday August 29, 2022 @10:50AM (#32638994)
Re:Maps.earth – free and open-source web maps on Monday August 22, 2022 @02:34PM (#32555359)
But don't expect it to show up on maps.earth right away... it looks like it's at least a month behind OSM at this point.
Re:Why do so many bikes end up underwater? on Friday July 29, 2022 @08:44PM (#32283268)
Now that's what I call re-cycling! [U+1F92A]
Re:Why do so many bikes end up underwater? on Friday July 29, 2022 @04:38PM (#32281489)
One reason: It's thrilling to ride a bike into the water. When I trained as a pool lifeguard, we frequently had to "rescue" bicycles that had been ridden off the high dive the night before. I imagine it's like crash-landing a plane, but with somewhat less risk of injury. (Although this would be slightly less tempting when the target is a filthy canal.)

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