@amapanda@en.osm.town just mapped (tagging needs to be refined though);
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Simon Poole
@simon@en.osm.town
mastodon 4.7.3Father, jack of many trades, open data cynic. Somewhat involved with OpenStreetMap.
Allergic to monopolies and have a knack of making myself unpopular with them.
861 Followers
88 Following
41 Posts
Joined April 26, 2022
Google just really really really likes getting money from scammers and refused to take this down.
I don't quite get this obsession with naming places after an Italian.
I hope there is a special place in hell for #OpenStreetMap mappers that split up border ways (as in administrative borders) to reuse short pieces in landuse multipolygons. For those not in the know: this saves nothing and makes boundaries very very slow to update.
This https://youtu.be/kH_bSvf7EVA is something for #OpenStreetMap to nerd out about. @standupmaths@mathstodon.xyz
No self respecting #OpenStreetMap-er would ever use the fact that they are a volunteer to justify lousy quality.
Just released version 5.100 https://github.com/simonpoole/beautified-JOSM-preset/releases/tag/5.100.0 of my @josmeditor@en.osm.town compatible #OpenStreetMap preset collection.
That is the 100th release in format 5 of more than 200 in total since I initially forked this back in August of 2012.
It is has developed from simply being the JOSM presets with different icons to the most comprehensive default preset for OSM editing for many years now with more than double the curated keys and tags than the standard OSM webeditor iD.
Upcoming changes ...
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@stragu@mastodon.indie.host that bit is complicated though, one part of it is https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SimonPoole/diary/47356
Then there is a natural and unavoidable shift from mapping terra incognita to gardening that will change activity patterns and the general attractiveness in well mapped areas. It just isn't social media and their metrics for success simply don't apply.
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@Jeremiah@alpaca.gold I need to travel in autumn, so no I'm not going to point out the obvious.
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@eliasp @beandev @BKG
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Das ist aber kein Ersatz für floating car data (sprich live Verkehrsflussdaten), da gibt es halt ein Monopol, im besten Fall ein Duopol. Man kann seit 2022 immerhin entsprechende Daten von google mit #OpenStreetMap kombinieren https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/DigitalWirtschaft/VerfahrenGegenGrosseDigitalkonzerne/Alphabet_Google/Alphabet_Google_node.html Natürlich nicht kostenlos.
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@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net @Curia@curia.social-network.europa.eu this is weird as in general what you can't do, well at least is difficult to do, is to register a descriptive trademark. Confusing.
Ok, read the ruling in detail. It -is- based on the mark being descriptive and not distinctive all along, so what would be expected, and insofar nothing extraordinary. OpenAI was arguing that it wasn't descriptive which is the kind of thing you do in such cases (guess why I know).
Preparing for the traditional Autumn Karlsruher #OpenStreetMap Hackweekend https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Karlsruhe_Hack_Weekend_November_2025hosted by @geofabrik@en.osm.town starting tomorrow .... rebased !&%!!! 8 stalled feature branches that I'm probably not going to work on, but just in case ....
BTW outside of Geofabrik providing space and pizzas, everybody is there on their own dime
One day somebody needs to explain to me why LinkedIn is the social medium of choice for "digital sovereignty" proponents, at least of those that have something to do with government(s).
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@zverik@en.osm.town but footpaths in a park and streets are different in that we explicitly want to channel motorised traffic along specific routes (for many reasons, but mainly because traffic sucks), typically there is no need to do that in a park.
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@spatialists@mapstodon.space @panoramax@mapstodon.space @SwissOSM@en.osm.town and news: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/osm-fr-panoramax-server-only-for-testing-if-outside-of-france/143428/35
This implies that there won't be a Panoramax instance that Swiss contributors can upload to in the future (ignoring the discussion of if that is even legally possible for now).
... @vespucci_editor@en.osm.town has long supported using an "area" type in the preset configuration that indicates that the preset item in question is applicable to simple polygons when used as areas and multi-polygons, but I never switched over the actual preset file to use this.
But I wrote the xslt to do this some time last year (including removing it for the JOSM backwards compatible version) and will be making the switch for one of the upcoming major Vespucci releases.
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@janl@narrativ.es @mtmail@mastodon.social mediawiki (software) != wikimedia (organisation). On the community wish list side of things the discussion is here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist#May_20_update
That said, I've, as an outsider, always considered the wish list mechanism broken and just a pseudo-democratic pacifier invented by the WMF C-level.
Jedes mal wenn ich https://www.sem.admin.ch/dam/sem/de/data/buergerrecht/einbuergerung/listen/ee-liste-unterlagen-art24a.pdf.download.pdf/ee-liste-unterlagen-art24a-d.pdf frage ich mich ja was ist daran eigentlich "erleichtert" (und ich bin in solchen Dingen jetzt nicht unbewandert).
Kontext: beide unser Kinder haben die 5 Jahre Schule Grenze geschafft und wir werden den Papierkrieg wohl diesen Sommer anfangen.
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@spatialists@mapstodon.space @panoramax@mapstodon.space
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While some of the points would be easy to comply with, others are not. And yes we (@SwissOSM@en.osm.town) have asked the EDÖB for an opinion particularly as compared to 2012 many things have changed and the threat of litigation from the federal government shouldn't make running a privacy friendly, digital sovereign service impossible. But unluckily the office refused any discussion at all.
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@spatialists@mapstodon.space running a @panoramax@mapstodon.space instance with crowd sourced content is currently not a realistic proposition in Switzerland except if you have google sized deep pockets for potential litigation.
Contrary to other countries Switzerland has highest court case law in the matter. See http://relevancy.bger.ch/php/clir/http/index.php?highlight_docid=atf%3A%2F%2F138-II-346%3Ade&lang=de&type=show_document
In particular the decision contains a catalogue of requirements that any such service must fulfil, see 14. ff.
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@peteorrall the truth is that watch, accuracy and canopy just don't go together. That doesn't even work well with expensive survey equipment, no way it will work with a watch with your body blocking half of the sky.
I would recommend dcrainmaker.com for honest reviews.
FWIW I use a Garmin.
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@utf_7 @felixcremer the easiest way to calculate this is to use the Haversine distance, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haversine_formula
Outside of that nodes are placed where they are deemed necessary to replicate the geometry of the objects. Naturally a rendering on a map can smooth that out if the designer wants to (most don't though).
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@felixcremer @utf_7 I didn't mention this, but should have: prior to OSM API 0.5 (October 2007) objects were not versioned, the original "node 1" was deleted prior to that date and therefore doesn't actually exist in the current OSM data at all. The current "node 1" is a reuse of the old id IIRC.
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@felixcremer @utf_7 because you are looking at version 43 of the node which has been subject to redaction (licence change), vandalism, and simply buggy software over 20+ years https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1/history#map=18/1.999999/2.000000
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@KoosPol keep things separate.... if you really think that the geometry is shared you can glue (aka reuse the relevant nodes in a new way that is part of your landuse or whatever). But that is typically not the thing to do either except for example for adjacent landuse objects.
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@jamesderrick while gluing to borders is bad, at least it can be automatically be undone.
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@webmink@meshed.cloud @osi@social.opensource.org it is just a completely normal "you can't register descriptive and non-distinctive trademarks" decision, the only really interesting bit is that the court ignored the arguments that the mark isn't actually descriptive, at least given OpenAIs current product.
PS: yes a certain project that I'm a bit associated with has the absolutely worst possible name to try to trademark.
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@kevin not in my experience, actually most 'senior' OSMers don't want to do exactly that (manage other mappers, if anything that is the antithesis to OSM) ... obviously there's 20+ years of context that is difficult to convey in a concise form so some friction is to be expected.
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@kevin why would any volunteer work have lower quality expectations than non-volunteer? If at all we should aspire to be better.
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@paun@digitalcourage.social @Gargron@mastodon.social @fdroidorg@floss.social IMHO it shouldn't affect F-Droid at all besides them having to register aka $25.
F-Droid is a build service for apps, not really an app store. The apps are built from source, they sign them with their own key, and then distribute the APKs (reproducible build complications ignored for now).
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@harry_wood@en.osm.town @wikimediafoundation@wikimedia.social the last post is from Nov 2025.
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And there's a corresponding peak in the monthly edits
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@Jeremiah@alpaca.gold your guess is as good as mine. That is "more time" during lockdown.
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@MBrandtner@gruene.social the active contributor number naturally includes new contributors in the same period and there is a noticeable up tick in new editors.