Lost one I retweeted here, so posting another to find easier later.
Remote
Ilya Zverev
@zverik@en.osm.town
mastodon 4.7.3I love OpenStreetMap and crafting virtual things. he/him.
904 Followers
149 Following
36 Posts
Joined January 20, 2022
An excellent post by @maproomblog@mapstodon.space on LLM-generated maps and why it's important to know what's behind those:
https://www.maproomblog.com/2026/07/gatekeepers-luddites-haters-and-ai-generated-maps/
What touched me is the observation that it's mostly professional cartographers who post LLM-generated stuff. Which makes me sad, because I can no longer treat them as professionals, for obvious reasons.
It's the same with programming — you use LLM, you stop being a professional. Same with writing, painting etc.
Professional is to stand by every detail.
I've played myself into a corner. Burned out from developing Every Door the entire last year. Got myself two grants, but after FOSDEM discovered I want to work on neither of them. Can't get this potentially programmable $3 badge out of my head.
Grants do solve some of the open source issues, but generally they should work like arts stipend: not tied to any specific project, just kind of life-supporting salary for unbounded R&D.
Inspired by https://blogs.gentoo.org/mgorny/2026/03/07/money-isnt-going-to-solve-the-burnout-problem/ (alt: https://planet.gentoo.org/)
Replying to
Commented: "what I’m saying is, for highway=trunk, physical properties come as a result of its class. Many cars are using it, so the government might make it wider and improve amenities. Routers tend to use the highway classification because other people are choosing their routes according to this classification, whether they are using maps or just choosing the fastest route.
So what I want is to follow where other people go, not the surface or the Swiss Alpine Club guidance for my local park."
To compensate for the vibe-coding, I've spent a couple days on a script that makes GeoJSON polygons out of topologically drawn ways in an OSM file. It should save people some tedious hours.
Now when preparing a mapping party pie, you don't have to ensure every polygon is closed, and every node is followed. Why do that, when you can just sketch some ways, intersect them, add some more, and in the end press a button to get a correct result.
https://github.com/Zverik/mapping-party-tracker/tree/main/tool
Replying to
@dank @GossiTheDog
open-source devs >> very experience corporate devs.
Because we have experience in building, while corporate devs have experience in corporate.
Today the 15 year old ticket in @josmeditor@en.osm.town was closed with "won't fix". Not the oldest one, but the second by popularity.
We won't be getting multiple accounts support in JOSM.
RE: @rikviergever@mastodon.social
TIL about https://nperf.com and https://librespeed.org as a replacement for speedtest.net and fast.com.
https://isup.me still stays as a connectivity tester.
Bought a ticket to Riga for me and my bike. A ride on 5th is a go. Join me!
Replying to
@Jbb@social.tchncs.de @transitous@en.osm.town As a person from Estonia I appeciate that! Although Elron trains are always precise :)
Replying to
@seav@en.osm.town That's basically what @pluralistic@mamot.fr pushes for in every other article :) We sure need those, but it's pretty hard to start.
The last day of @sotmeu@en.osm.town as I saw it on the way to the university. Made this little game for you to remember the conference, or to learn how it feels to be an obsessed mapper.
A hundred people have sent their votes in less than a day! Excellent, though let's get to at least 500! Please vote in #OpenStreetMap awards!
Replying to
@VolkerKrause@floss.social To be fair, flights are often chosen not for the fastest or the shortest, but by a multitude of criteria, e.g. not fully booked, not too expensive, with sane luggage options, maybe to a neighbouring cheaper airport, not overnight and with at most one change. Routing for that is practically impossible.
@NGIZero @EUCommission We need to make this a thing at @fosdem . Like, a booth where people are invited to leave their comment. Maybe with a speech-to-text thing to speed this up.
Ujaval Gandhi from @spatialthoughts@bird.makeup teams up with his daughter to uncover all the secret words you can type into #QGIS to be less bored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH9Am3FgRS0 #gischat
All QGIS Easter Eggs Explained!
In case you're thinking of an online mapping party (and you shouldn't, because the weather is excellent outside, organize an in-person party!), I have vibe-coded a web app that works on a geojson of polygons, and allows claiming pieces, grading the map quality, and releasing them. Just like HOT TM, but with arbitrary polygons and no automation.
(As requested by people in our community)
Naturally the readme mostly consists of the prompt I gave:
Replying to on mas.to
@jordangloor@mas.to Mapping is amazing, helpful and fulfilling, true.
Also I should note most good contributions to open source should include no coding: reviewing PRs, documenting, marketing, funding, networking. All vital and all overlooked.
Replying to on mastodon.social
@jamesfee@mastodon.social On the surface, it's true. When you approach GIS as engineering, you must seek contracts and workflows and pipelines.
The problem is, GIS is not engineering. Maps are politics, and GIS are politics. They do not survive growth because politics does not scale.
And it requires people.
Replying to
Replying to
@lykso@tiny.tilde.website @selfsame@tiny.tilde.website
It's only a class war if you rebel against the rich. Otherwise it's just sparkling free market.
Replying to
@grumpasaurus@infosec.exchange @grimalkina@mastodon.social YESSSSS
PRESS X TO SHRED
loved every second of it!
Replying to
@grimalkina Having read the conclusion, I wonder if the practice of people raised and forming connections mostly to mothers affects this perception. Like, a woman is the world (antropomorphised by categorizing it as warm and homely), while men are people in it.
Also I wonder how this differs between classic genders: the study does not split respondents into groups.
Sorry for being clumsy with words.
@AlSweigart@mastodon.social 1) no thank you, I've seen so many failures I don't believe that's the proper way to go (and productivity is overrated). 2) not a good one
Replying to
@merginmaps@fosstodon.org Very good case, thanks! I'll be presenting GIS plugins at @fosdem, so I need as many case studies as possible :)
Replying to
@Edent@mastodon.social In Tallinn you could just tap the credit card (works on all validators since this month). The cost is the same as buying a ticket by other means.
Anyway, great article! I'm currently working on a public transit app (we haven't got enough of those lol), and planning to add guides for buying tickets for every city.
@AlSweigart@mastodon.social If only just computer science. I'm pretty sure future medics, architects, lawyers, and writers are also passing exams with LLMs.
Replying to
@leenaars@mastodon.social @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl The design for the @everydoor@en.osm.town sticker is glorious, I stole a bunch :)
Replying to
@Jbb@social.tchncs.de @transitous@en.osm.town Do you have a similar thing for Tallinn?
https://transport.tallinn.ee/gps.txt is a GPS locations feed for every bus, tram, and trolleybus, updated every 5 seconds
https://transport.tallinn.ee/siri-stop-departures.php?stopid=1126,1127 is a real-time arrivals list for given stops (with those IDs coming from an extended column in the feed).
Replying to
@jez@mapstodon.space Glad to see you using it! I want to make a script to convert an .osm file with connected lines to a geojson with polygons, but not sure when to approach this :)