Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Vinnl's commentslogin

I get the annoyance at "ask me again later", but "maybe later" or "not now" is helpful - there's no way to trigger dialogs by yourself, so this is a promise that even if you say "no" in the dialog, you can still go into settings to change your mind. Gives me less anxiety about the choice.

How about a choice: both "no, maybe later" and "no, never"

And "no, never" would irreversibly remove the option from settings?

It would never prompt again.

That's is the same as what "Not now" and "Maybe later" would (should) do.

Only "ask me again later" is the one that prompts you again. That's why I do mind that one, and appreciate the other ones.


“Maybe later” doesn’t explicitly say that you’ll never get the prompts again, so even if it did work that way, PMs would be able to weasel out and change it back to nagging you with the next update. (In reality, the wording like that is used precisely for this reason already, and that’s why we hate it.)

And it doesn’t really help the user. If I click “Not now” and later decide that I do want the feature, how do I find it? If you want to reassure the user, just say that:

  Enable cool new feature X?

  (You can always change this in System Settings → Y.)

  [ Sure ] [ No, thanks ]

"No, thanks" is also insulting and unacceptable. I want "No, fuck off", so let's compromise on a plain "No" like we used to get in the era when computers were made for the users.

I agree that telling me exactly where I can change it can be helpful, although I'm also sure I won't remember that.

But we're comparing to the case where it just says "No", in which case "Not now" at least tells me I can look up how to change it later now - or more importantly, that I don't need to give this further thought now.

Yes, PMs (or anyone) making software doing dumb shit is dumb anyway, but that also holds true if it were labelled "No".


Have you ever seen an app where upon responding to a dialog, an option is irrevocably removed from settings? The conversation is about “no” meaning “don’t bother me again with this question unprompted” (which used to be the norm), not “rewrite your own binary to remove the choice”.

Of course not, that's why I was surprised with the suggestion - if that's not what it should do, then it's no different from what I was proposing.

I was agreeing with you that indeed, I don't want software to bother me again with the question unprompted. Additionally, I appreciate the reassurance that the dialog isn't my last opportunity to set the setting (because sometimes that is the case).

So tl;dr: label the button "Not now", and don't prompt me again.


A much better way would be “Yes” and “No” with a small message of “you can change this later in the Settings”.

Or have three buttons: “Yes”, “No”, “Remind me Later”. Apple does stuff like that in other parts of the OS, like when asking for app permissions, so they clearly know how to do it.


"Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want. I don't need to be reminded, but if I change my mind in the future, I want to be able to proactively go and change it.

Yes, more text can be another way to provide the message, but if you've ever done any user testing, you'll know that people at best scan through your UI. I know I wouldn't read that, or at least would prefer not to have to read that.

I guess I don't see why "No" combined with "You can change this later in settings" is so much less offensive than "Not now".


> "Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want.

But it is what Apple and others do, and what the conversation is about. Sounds like you want what everyone else does (a “no”) but are just arguing over the specific wording of the message.


Yes! Somehow people seem to assume I'm arguing for different behaviour, which I'm explicitly not. I'm saying "Not now", and the ability to manually go into settings or wherever to change the setting later, is better than "No", while doing the same thing as "No".

And as I said in my first post, "Ask me again later" and the associated behaviour is annoying.


Then build better interfaces. Don't ask stupid or nefarious questions.

Where I live they've been actively removing traffic lights. One strategy is to turn multi-lane roads into single-lane ones with a lower speed limit, and crossing islands for cyclists and pedestrians. Cars move slower, but more consistently, traffic is better able to self-regulate, so while I haven't timed it, I'm fairly sure traffic is actually moving faster despite driving at lower speeds.

Of course, it helps that infrastructure adjustments over the decades ensures that many people that don't need to be in cars, aren't in cars.


Sounds like you're living in a country where local government actually cares to improve things rather than doing as little work as possible while also self-enriching themselves as much as possible.

There's plenty to criticise at all levels of government here, but overall I indeed am pretty satisfied with my local government. And on the infrastructure level especially - whenever there are roadworks, they're annoying, but I'm always looking forward to what it'll end up as.

> I wonder if there's a resurgence across the world where libraries are places of community sharing.

Just last week new stats came out [1] that library attendance by young people in the Netherlands is going up again, so possibly!

[1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2630399-meer-locaties-meer-bezoekers-...


I think that's roughly what duck.ai is doing? If I type that in there I see it generating some search queries and then generating a list of links based on the different result pages.

That does mean that I would not automatically jump to conclusions about Russia or war or whatever; since much of national public policy is presented today, it's also a popular day to express disagreement, and apparently some farmers had already announced they would be doing so today.

(I'd assume the BBC reporter to be aware that Prinsjesdag is today, and that they'd mention that fact in this article, but apparently not.)


You'll find the answer in who is organizing these groups.

Egging them on online, sure, but these groups have always existed and we're plenty stupid without Russia's help.

FWIW, Excalidraw uses (or at least originally used to, I didn't check again) the similar project Rough.js: https://roughjs.com/

I'm not sure from "they could afford payroll because they laid everyone off" I would conclude that they weren't struggling for cash.

FWIW, editing OpenStreetMap is very straightforward*, and with that, you're actually contributing to an open data set that everyone is allowed to use, rather than just propping up Google.

(To be fair, on a laptop - I'm sure Google Maps is more straightforward on a phone. But for someone already prepared to invest this much effort, editing OSM should be well within range. And if you just enjoy contributing to maps, for a phone I can highly recommend https://streetcomplete.app.)


This is what I do now, got jack of Google throwing my contributions back in my face.

They also only email if your contribution is successful. If it's declined you'll only know by looking inside Google Maps.

Contributing to an open dataset also feels really good.


I think "very straightforward" is vastly overselling how easy editing OSM is.

It feels like editing a database, without any affordances for easily making common updates.

If the hours of a store are wrong on Google Maps, I just upload a photo of their store, and it'll be corrected quickly.

On OSM, well, most things are out of date. There's no simple 'update this business' flow, just a database editor. And a map that feels like I could break anything by clicking in the wrong spot.

OSM is a cool project, but it isn't straightforward. And unlike Google and Apple maps, most of the businesses in my area are years out of date, so I can't effectively use it to find information either, so I just don't have any reason to interact with it. Plus no aerial/satellite/streetview imagery, which I understand is probably infeasible, but ultimately it just means OSM is a niche product that won't replace Google.

So yeah, I'm propping up Google, but I get way more benefit out of it than having an open data set used to power Amazon's delivery driver routes or whatever.


I'm not sure what you mean...

In OrganicMaps/CoMaps I click "edit place" > "Business hours" and get a nice vidual editor with checkboxes for each day it's open and boxes to put in times.

Same in OsmAnd, but editor looks a bit different.

Cartes.app has the "imrpove this place" screen where opening hours is one of the options, but it takes a few more clicks.

Openstreemap.org's web editor also does open hours quite well, but it does have a much complex submission process (it also asks for an edit message and edit tags).

Cartes.app has sattelite imagery as a "premium" option if you donate because they probably have to pay for it. OsmAnd also does, but I don't know if it's free because I paid for it years ago.


The real issue is local business know about google maps and are often happy to update schedules themselves. The effort for them to know/care about OSM is too high and the payoff low (most clients are on google maps).

I feel like I addressed this in my comment. On a laptop, someone who went through what OP went through would surely be able to click "Edit" at the top of https://www.openstreetmap.org, and add a SuperCharger. If they make a mistake, it is likely to get corrected, rather than rejected.

When it comes to fixing opening hours, https://streetcomplete.app does really make that about as straightforward as can be.

Edit: ah, I just noticed I forgot to prepend the * to my remark in parentheses. I did mean to emphasise that generic edits are only straightforward on a laptop, and only guided edits are straightforward using StreetComplete.


> It feels like editing a database, without any affordances for easily making common updates.

have you tried StreetComplete or EveryDoor?

Or at least GoMap!! or MaComplete ?


skill issue.

there's at least three user friendly and better than google maps UX clients.

but i guess they didn't bundle with your pixel nor have all the darkpatterns you got used to.


What are they?

I daily drive CoMaps, and its UI for adding common things like businesses is excellent, just tap a point, tap "add place to OpenStreetMap", choose what you want to add (e.g. restraunt, parking, store, etc.) and fill in the relevant details. It's not a full database editor, it's got just what you need to quickly add things to the map.

Everydoor, Streetcomplete, and a secret third option

did you forget their own editor which is awesome and have overlay with fresh satelite donated by Microsoft?

Between the streetcomplete and everydoor apps, it is very very easy to do almost any OSM map editing on a mobile. Osmand (the offline map & nav app) is also useful for some edits when I don't want to leave that app.

Oh, for the simpler days when not everything required an app.


You would enjoy the Always Sunny episode 'mental health day'

Or you can use https://mapcomplete.org/charging_stations.html to add charging stations as well; data goes to OpenStreetMap too. Disclaimer: I make this

Wasn't making street plans from satellite pictures ruled transformative? So if you get an AI to make street plans from Google maps, satellite layer, you're not violating copyright are you?

Bing Maps allows the OpenStreetMap community to trace from aerial_imagery https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps#Aerial_imagery Google doesn't. How much a tool helps somebody to draw the actual roads varies by editor software used, some have plugins. Using AI in bulk isn't allowed afaik.

If you obtain the satellite images directly from Google Maps, you can still have problems because you might not have permission to use the data. That's not copyright though.

> you might not have permission to use the data

Isn't it fair use, like training data?


OpenStreetMap commmunity, for variety of reasons, avoids questionable or very novel approaches to intellectual property.

I guess that some may be calling it overdoing in direction opposite than Internet Archive did.

It is at least partially caused by fact that OpenStreetMap Foundation budget is laughably small.


Another reason might be that modifications of the map are entangled and can be hard to revert in case of a dispute. It's much easier for the Internet Archive to just drop snapshots of websites/pages (and they do so, AFAIK).

When you've got the lawyer budget of Google/OpenAI/Anthropic, you can twist and bend copyright and licences to take what you want with little consequence.

OSM doesn't have the resources to fight Google or similar if they are threatened, so it's better to just avoid using data you don't have the right license for.


I think the issue is the ToU violation, not copyright.

Violating a ToU is legal, but the corporation might ban you in return because that's legal too. All you give up is your ostensible right not to be banned.

It's a civil offense, but that's different from it being legal. It just means that it's up to the company itself to sue you to collect any damages, and government enforcement bodies aren't going to touch it.

The issue most ToU violations have with enforcement is that it's hard to show damages. If you just accessed their service with a fake name or downloaded some data for personal use, you haven't really harmed the company. So what are they gonna do, spend $10M to sue you for $0? So they just handle it internally by banning your account and discontinuing your use of the service.

But if, say, you did a DDoS attack that caused an outage costing them $100M, or you did large-scale scraping to set up a competitor that puts them out of business, and they can identify you, they absolutely will come after you in court for that money. The economics is different: now the damages they show is much more than the cost of litigating the case.


Don't terms of use depend entirely on copyright to work? Without copyright ... why would you need to agree to terms of use to use the software/site/data?

And doesn't that mean that terms of use can never impose restrictions stricter than copyright?


No. ToU is a part of contract law. Basically the website is providing a service for you. In exchange for your use of that service, you agree to be bound by the terms. This implicitly creates a contract between you and the website, with the terms laid out by the ToU. This sort of implicit contract is legally controversial - normally for a contract to be valid there needs to be affirmative signatures from both parties, as well as consideration (money) exchanged. In the U.S. at least, "click-wrap" (where you must affirmatively click "I agree") and "scroll-wrap" (where you must scroll through the whole ToU before the product unlocks) ToUs are generally considered enforceable, but "sign-in wrap" (where creating an account binds you) and "browse-wrap" (where there's a ToU link) are very dubiously enforceable. But we're talking about Google here, and they make you click through the ToU and say you agree whenever you unbox a new Android device or create a Google account, and then have it apply to all usage of Google services.

Enforcement can be quite challenging because typically if you provide a service over the Internet you don't have any idea who is using it beyond their IP address and any registration data they provide, but this also means that when companies do have a known violator and can show significant monetary damages, their legal departments come down like a ton of bricks.


Google Maps has commercial licenses to some of their data. Reusing that data without your own license can cause problems you might not like. This mostly applies in cases where it's provable that the data you used would've required a license that you do not have.

Facts cannot be copyrighted.

I would worry about trap streets. A collection of facts isn't copyrightable, and arguably the network of existing streets shown in satellite photos falls into that category. But if I were the photo licensor, I'd be tempted to Photoshop in a few fictional features that could be protected as "creative expression," or some such BS.

Trap steets (fake data with no creative expression) are not copyrightable un USA, but specific art for drawing maps is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street


I started contributing a couple of months ago, and I am amazed by the fact that there's no vandalizing going on near where I live.

There are few contributions around there, mostly automated imports from like 2012.


Worth knowing: you can also use @tabs, @history, @bookmarks, etc. now. Way easier to remember :)


I just tried it out with this page, and it gets the HN icon for me. I am on Nightly and on Linux, so possibly this is an actual bug you're running into, but no fix in sight might be too pessimistic. But definitely worth reporting otherewise.


Wonderful to hear this is fixed in Nightly on Linux; thanks for the heads up. I reported this several months ago.


Keep in mind that just because it works for me, that doesn't mean that you're not running into a bug that I'm not, so I can't make any promises about it actually being fixed for you :)


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: