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Hmmm, I love OSM, consume their data in my small cycling project and regularly contribute smaller fixes.

But I also shy away from anything more complex than fixing attributes and meta data of existing objects. Especially editing relations, ways and nodes - is this possible with MapComplete? I loaded the Cyclofix map, but I can't even select cycle paths or roads, just edit POIs.


Checkout https://mapcomplete.org/cycle_infra and https://mapcomplete.org/cyclenodes.html

Editing attributes of relations is possible. Adding or deleting objects to relations might become possible one day. Editing geometries is out of scope for this project.


Thanks for the pointer! I posted here before properly exploring the other themes.

Really nice project. Thank you for contributing to the OSM community.

>Editing geometries is out of scope for this project.

Out of curiosity, may I ask why?

It's not that I have this use case regularly, cycling-related it mainly comes up dealing with tracks through forests and fields.


Excellent question!

First: editing _attributes_ of geometries is totally possible, editing the _shape_ of geometries is not possible with MapComplete.

If one allows to edit shapes (aka: geometries), this means that one can draw or move lines around - for example: add/move a cyclepath. A contributor might thus move a line into another geometry (such as a building). But as MapComplete has focused maps, they might not be shown to this contributor!

Allowing to edit geomtry shapes this implies I should show all _other_ lines and polygons (e.g. forests, streams, buildings, ...) to avoid incorrect intersection.

The point of MapComplete is to keep it simple and focussed on a single topic. Showing all geometries is counter to that. On top of that, we already have an excellent tool which handles geometry drawing: the iD editor you'll find on openstreetmap.org/edit .

One could also argue that creating/moving points (which can be done with MapComplete) could also cause data errors; but the 'add new point'-wizard has some steps to invite to add with high accuraccy. And even if someone adds a point in a wrong location (e.g. in a building instead of outside of it), the impact of a misplaced point is generally way less then that of a misplaced line or area.


FINALLY!

I never understood the issues PG had with hints. Running a non-trivial DB with a non-trivial schema and scale is, well, non-trivial at all. At some point the DB stops being a black box and starts being a tool that you have to know inside and out to avoid performance issues.

>The optimizer is usually smarter than you think.

Except for when it isn't, and moves heavy calculation inside a nested loop inside a nested loop to avoid an index scan. Nothing is perfect.


> > The optimizer is usually smarter than you think.

> Except for when it isn't, and moves heavy calculation inside a nested loop inside a nested loop to avoid an index scan. Nothing is perfect.

Yeah that's also been my experience. It's true that Postgres is usually smarter than I think, when I try to figure out why it's not using a better query plan I eventually find out that it wouldn't be better at all. But from time to time, it genuinely is taking a bad decision and having no power over that at all is a problem


Yeah, this article explains the reasons why, and how this solution avoids them.

So, how long did it take you to go 100 customers after this pitch?

In the end my co-founders and investors wanted to sell to a single specific political party exclusively. I chose not to participate as it did not align with my goals, and started a small IT company instead. The original project was dead within a couple months of me leaving given no one else had any idea what ssh was.

Was ssh essential to the product?

Being capable of sshing to servers to maintain things sure was.

Well, I am in the situation you are so afraid of. Chemo, radiation and other treatments suck big time, let alone the effects of the cancer itself.

BUT ... this is not a binary situation, where suddenly life becomes unbearable. There's so much worth living for. And not just the obvious big things in life (kids, family, friends), but also many many small things. Man, that first cup of cappuchino once the effects of chemo wear off alone is almost worth all the puking beforehand :) Or having a nice piece of cheese. Seeing my small herb garden grow. Etc. etc.

The trick is to live a peaceful, content life. Be grateful for what you have. Enjoy your short time on earth.


Of course it’s never binary. And different people value different things.

I don’t think I was clear that I’m not afraid of being simply uncomfortable in my final days, but that there are absolutely medical treatments that can extend one’s life at extreme cost to quality of life. And there’s a threshold where I hope I’ll choose quality over quantity.

Sometimes you don’t know what that cost will be before starting treatment. Sometimes you’re holding out hope that the treatment will help you actually make it out the other side alive and healthy again. Sometimes you want to make it through long enough to see a child graduate, or meet a grandchild on the way, or some other meaningful event. There’s a million reasons one might choose between treatment options. And I don’t begrudge anyone for making the choice that’s right for them.

I’m sorry to hear what you’re going through, but I’m glad that it sounds like you’ve chosen a path that brings you the most fulfillment possible.


We have a similar approach here in Germany. Anyone has the right to install a small solar system on their balcony or similar and feed up to 800W into their local grid. You just mount it and plug it into your house/apartment grid. Technically you have to get it registered, too.

The sky is not falling, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is not burning.

It's not revolutionary either, but slowly picking up traction. You see more and more installations here in Berlin. On the country side where people have their own house and enough space it's a total no-brainer to set up one of those mini solar systems.

The typical systems you can buy off the shelf (800-1000W panels + inverter) amortize after a few years already, and are getting cheaper every year. I have the feeling the main limitation in the city is having a nice balcony with good mounting points.


The sky is not falling in Germany, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is sometimes overpowered with solar electricity when the weather is sunny, there is not enough demand and grid operators can't remotely curtail small solar systems. Like during Easter Monday

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-07/germany-p...

Germany has to invest more in smart electric meters, which could project negative electricity prices to individual households.

And more investments in energy storage systems. (Even through I think that lithium batteries would better help decarbonization in EVs than in electric grid storage systems).


Totally agree, the current state of the German grid is not ideal. But I have the naive gut feeling that storage prices will also come down and we will see a similar non-political quiet revolution here as well. I.e. people and companies will simply install more and more storage because it is economically viable, not because of ideology. We'll see.


Germany’s Federal Network Agency is aware of stability issues of the German electric grid on days like Easter Monday and insufficient deployment of smart meters.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-grid-regulator-l...


It's worth noting that the common complaint about systems like this, which is that they could cause dangerous conditions during power outages when people expect the power lines to be unpowered, is addressed by electronics that only feed power when they detect an active mains.


All solar inventors connected to public electric grid have to detect this state and disconnect. You are not allowed to connect arbitrary inventors to electric grid, they have to be compliant with IEEE 1547, UL 1741.

https://www.aforenergy.com/what-is-anti-islanding-in-solar-i...

https://www.iee-business.com/knowledge/wind-solar-hybrid-sys...

The households which installed solar inverters to supply electricity in case of grid blackout really have look into anti-islanding.


> not allowed to connect arbitrary inventors to electric grid

Ghost of Thomas Edison breathes a sigh of relief


> IEEE 1547, UL 1741

And the EU ?


Right now, they're about 300 EUR at OBI (major home improvement chain in Germany and Austria) if you don't care at all about avoiding ties to specific apps, and about 1000 from solar specialists if you want to go with the more flexible Hoymiles + OpenDTU inverter setup, 4 panels and a 2kWh (or so) battery, and is one of the few things that has gotten cheaper recently.


I'm working on Cyclonauts (https://cyclonauts.net), an addon for Strava to make your commute more fun.

It maps your cycling activity data against the OpenStreetMap catalogue to generate all kinds of exploration statistics.


Fully agree. I've been through a number of code red panics in my career.

But somehow, even in startups with short remaining runway, "code red" rarely means anything.

You still have to attend all the overhead meetings, run through approval circles, deal with HR etc etc.


I'm working on a cycling app that analyzes your Strava data and matches your activities to the OSM street grid. You get cool statistics which paths in your city you've already taken. The goal is to make your commute more fun :)

https://cyclonauts.net


These points are also useful for your own photo library. Forget about your relatives going through your stuff after you die, that doesn't matter. But which of the hundreds of photos you took over the past few years would you look at again?

Right, it's the same kind of pictures mentioned in the article. Life happening. The kids helping you cooking, mom goofing around, the family hiking etc etc.

It's not the landscape, some flowers, fireworks, a beach usually. What you care about are people and the moments you spent with them.


I know exactly what you're talking about and have been in similar situations many times. For me it's not just limited to speech, but lots of other aspects. Sometimes it feels like being a ghost or some weird Star Trek like phase shift. E.g. one person walks out of a board game night to get some food, everyone stops playing to wait for the person. I walk out, things just continue.

What helped me a lot were 2 things:

1) There are ways to improve your conversation skills. Big topic, with lots of branches. Your speech matters. Your tone. Keep collecting interesting anecdotes. Culture some depth to your personality that is unrelated to work (e.g. interesting hobbies). Essentially train your charisma.

2) The big eye opener for me was the discovery that different groups of people actually react differently to me. I.e. I was simply friends with people who ... didn't care as much about me as I cared about them. The blunt fix here is to change your social circles. Not easy, but doable, slowly, over time.

The "interesting hobby" part of the charisma training actually helps there to connect to different groups of people.


The big eye opener for me was the discovery that different groups of people actually react differently to me. I.e. I was simply friends with people who ... didn't care as much about me as I cared about them

I second this. Make sure you’re in the right “layer” because this mismatch can induce the described avoidance/insignificance. And even if you want to stay there (which is absolutely fine) don’t take it as a global thing. Different groups may value completely different behavior patterns.


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