411–420 of 545 posts
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If a startup needs a giant system of subsidized roads for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable. You see where this argument leads to?
No, the roads are subsidized by those who pay for them. There is a right to use them for business purposes, unlike private map services.
"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For ex…
While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than: * shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service * changing your terms of service to forbid an ac…
Spot on. I would that if a site / application is hitting Maps' paid tier they can (somehow) monitize that traffic and cover the cost.
But monitization can't help you if / when they pull the plug.
p.s. I sometimes wonder how often Google looks at Slack and regrets mothballing Wave.
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No, it's not subpixel anti-aliasing. It's a completely different font. It looks like Roboto to me, while the rest of the email is written using Helvetica. DOM manipulation, of course. But not everybody knows about it. So most people default to Photoshop, which is what these people did. This email is FORGED, and I'd like to know why.
> DOM manipulation, of course. But not everybody knows about it. So most people default to Photoshop, which is what these people did. They're web developers, and you're suggesting they don't know how to manipulate the DOM? > This email is FORGED, and I'd like to know why. The fact you're using a throwaway account to make the accusation suggests you're not too sure yourself, and you know your "evidence" is beyond flim…
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Is Google infrastructure now? Should we fund Google with tax money? Nationalize it?
No, although of course there is the point that a lot of Google's mapping data was subsidized with tax money by virtue of using the various geodata sources the U.S makes available for free to build on.
Google does a whole lot more, and can charge whatever they want for it. OSM provides usable solutions the vast majority of users; i’ve Moved to OSM a couple of years ago in everything for privacy reasons and except for the occasional Waze route or verifications, get nothing from google that I can’t get from OSM.
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I totally recommend hosting your own tile-server using open street map if you have the resources . Creating your own tile-server is not as difficult as it may sound however it is really resource intensive, especially if you want to cover large areas. For a single EU country it shouldn't be that resource intensive. I have set it up on a Centos 7 server using more or less the instructions from here https://switch2osm.o…
Would it be possible to put Free map tiles in something like DAT or IPFS, to share the load? Kind of like Peertube, but for maps.
Source: https://github.com/peermaps/peermaps
Also writeup about the architecture: https://github.com/digidem/osm-p2p-db/blob/master/doc/archit...
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I'm always so confused by this. I switched to Feedly the day Reader went away. It was just as good then and is better now. I subscribe to way more stuff now than I did then. I've never understood how this "killed the entire medium".
If we're doing anecdata when Reader was killed off I tried Feedly, didn't like it, stopped consuming via RSS. I've recently tried Newsblur but honestly I never check the thing despite having it on every device I can. I don't think RSS is a thing for me anymore outside of technically podcasts
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Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable . I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes. As it turns out, y…
I have been doing a lot of Local Guide work, photos, verifying, etc. in a rural area. Will be switching to OSM. This was the last straw.
"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For ex…
While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than: * shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service * changing your terms of service to forbid an ac…
> we would be wary on taking free Google Analytics for granted It is not free. Your users pay for that with their privacy and Google gets your user's browsing history for free. It is unfair and you should not have used it in the first place.
Their "I am not a robot" captcha is in similar vein. If I am training your machine learning models by manually clicking on pictures, I need access to the trained model. I have refused to use dozens of service which required me to click pictures to prove that "I am not a robot" and sent the service provider an email informing them of my decision. I would urge everyone to do the same.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes
It's amazing how much you need to break free from tracking, but I'm on the war path :) Btw, taking the red pill will cut you off Facebook and Google accounts, unless you provide real phone numbers.
Matrix movie: "You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"
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If players with the resources of Apple and Microsoft are lagging here, it's not because Google "made it hard", it's because it's a hard problem. Yet they are competing, and that's a good thing. Google is just better. And you want it for free. And thus we get back to the cry-me-a-river bit.
Or is it because being in a #1 market position with a (until now) free price tag attracted thousands of volunteers submitting content and corrections for free?