Time for a repeat comment: Organic Maps does everything Google Maps does (except traffic conditions), and is FOSS. Please encourage places to contribute business information to Open Street Maps.
“Except traffic” is not a little thing. It’s like putting up an ad for a house with all the features you’d expect, except a roof.
With my daily commute, there are a dozen routes I can take and traffic conditions make it so that from day to day, there can be an hour difference between different routes. It’s literally the only reason I use navigation apps over a cheap GPS unit with no live online connection requirement to navigate.
Traffic condition can only be provided if you track millions of phones. I don’t want that, so I opt out. I don’t want Google to manage traffic for me.
Or you can do it like News stations do and just use a fucking camera feed and police acanner to have someone say “hey - there’s a lot of cars at Interstate 99 and Main” or “There’s reports of a wreck at 300 Elm street”.
Traffic reporting doesn’t require device-level tracking.
to have someone
In order to do this at scale, that’s a lot of someones who all need to be paid. You’d need several people, per city, to manually review traffic cameras and manually issue reports.
Unless you want to pay $200/mo for traffic updates, you can’t do this using humans.
Growing up, we had 5 TV stations and 20 radio stations that managed to do it just off of cereal advertisements. I’d gladly pay 5 bucks a month for it, and with millions of people in the metro area just having 1% of people use a $5/month service you’d be looking at 6 figures a month, which is plenty to pay for the service.
The only way to know if it would work would be to roll the dice and make a startup. You’ll need enough cash to cover a year or two of projected operations, the capital to develop the application and infrastructure in addition to the money required to advertise the service.
At the same time you have to realize that your proposition for potential customers is ‘You can pay us $5 to get the service that Google gives you for free and it only works in this one metro area.’ De-googling is a popular topic on nerd social media but the average person would gladly trade all of their privacy to pay less money.
If we could magic wand a company into existence and capture all of the privacy focused customer base in a large metro area then yeah, the company could pay the operating expenses. But going from ‘This is a cool idea’ to ‘We have a successful service that has a positive cash flow’ is a hard, capital intensive, process.
I think a municipal economic development corporation grant could be an answer.
EDCs exist in lots of cities. The usual setup is they’re given a percentage of local sales tax, and they provide grants to businesses to move into town or start up. When the business is sucessful, they’ll end up paying back more in taxes than was given to them initially, both through direct taxes, but also by providing higher-paying jobs for residents, who will pay more in their property taxes and spend money at local businesses, bringing in more sales tax.
The EDC could pay for the startup to provide the service locally, and then it can spread to other cities, who can either pay for it as a municipal service, or through subscriptions.
Also doesn’t do public transport routes
I think this is important. That said, traffic info is the whole ballgame for many people. People who live, work, and drive in metro areas frequently use map applications even when driving everyday routes to avoid traffic.
I don’t see Google/Waze/Apple maps getting any less popular unless there is a FOSS alternative that includes live traffic, which does not seem possible while remaining free. People will choose free every time, especially since Google maps works so well.
Personally, I would pay some amount for a privacy-minded alternative, something like OrganicMaps with live traffic. But I doubt it could ever attain the user base it would need to provide accurate traffic info.
Yea, I really wish I had more spare time. Algorithms like this are an area of expertise for me, and I’d love to build an anonymized service that works with Organic Maps. It’s annoying when I know it is something I could make that would support high volume, but just don’t have time for (mainly because of all the ongoing optimization it would require).
Talking about FOSS; I prefer OsmAnd because its licence is GPLv3, as opposed to the Apache 2 licence from Organic Maps.
Yup, big OsmAnd fan, too. We use it for backpacking and biking, but have found OM to be more driver friendly, which is why I recommended it here.
Can someone explain the 4D chess going on here? AFAIK this was just tweet diplomacy, the US hasn’t passed anything about this. So why would google want to handle all the complaints and backlash they’ll take for this?
backlash? where? did google received any complaint ever?
From official heads of state even: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-president-presents-letter-google-about-gulf-mexico-name-change-2025-01-30/
I think something official was actually signed in the last few days. Dumbest timeline.
So why would google want to handle all the complaints and backlash they’ll take for this?
Because it’s worth getting on trump’s “good side”, per Ajit Pai’s reasoning
Next thing you know they’ll change Canada’s name to Not-yet-United States of America
this is only effective in the US btw, this doesn’t apply outside of the US, why google has done this? Probably the appease trump, and honestly, anything that keeps trump busy that isn’t overthrowing the US government is good in my books.
This will make groceries cheaper
Wake up people, it’s always been the Gulf of America. /s
Organic Maps:
Organic Maps is really cool :-)
Yeah, it’s even better than GMaps for me, because GMaps doesn’t have bike navigation (where I live) while Organic Maps has all the bike lanes marked and navigatable.
Yeah it’s way better for biking and walking. I also find the map a lot more coherent, with GMaps I often had to resort to the satellite view to see what’s going on.
Organic maps updates its dataset once a month or so. It will eventually be updated to the gulf of America, as it is now, technically named the gullf of America in America. See discussion here: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/gulf-of-america-gulf-of-mexico/124571
Seems like that it is going to be not renamed but they’re adding a “official” tagged name, which is the Gulf of America.
Degoogled since 2018
hardcore mode, google domains blocked by DNS
YouTube scrap data
GrapheneOS with used Pixel
Same, same. Fuck Google.
I’m never going back.
Preferred search engine?
I’ve been using startpage floor about a year now, has worked great.
Isn’t that just Google with an extra MITM for everything? Sure it protects your privacy a little bit but the same bad actors are still getting their ad revenue from your searches, correct? Or do I just not understand how start page works?
Not sure how ad revenue works. Do they get paid, if no ads are shown? Or is it because of SEO and the search results that come up first that give ad revenue?
SearXNG, personally.
Self hosted Searxng for me
“degoogle” - uses Google phone
100% These people think they are sticking it to Google by buying a pixel and installing a custom ROM. Instead they just inflated Google’s user count.
GrapheneOS is not a custom ROM and I bought my phone second-hand, so I didn’t give my money directly to Google
This will be a problem until a non-google open OS is adopted for mobile phones. Right now that list is incredibly short and nothing competes in the flagship department. I don’t see it changing anytime soon because gen x and millenials may be the last generations that have a signifigant portion of itself that has a grasp of how computers work beyond “tap app icon, app does things”.
Thing I took for granted like how a file system works is lost on my kids (late Z early alpha). Explaining what a file extension is like teaching a new language. I used to think “training wheels” for learning computering via tablets and phones and touch screens were a good thing but there is nothing that compels people today to shed themselves of them. It feels very reminiscent of my childhood and teaching my boomer dad how to right click. I think computer literacy needs to be required education, but I’m afraid that the definition for computer literacy might be meaningless nowadays if it doesn’t go beyond open app store, install app, run app.
US public education computer literacy is dead, and it’s not going to get better for at least 5+ years, best case scenario. Even if the person that is elected after Trump is a Democrat, it will take years to rebuild to where we were before big tech started bribing school IT departments. You think Apple/Google/Microsoft give a flying fuck about computer literacy being taught in schools? Because that’s who currently decide the computer literacy program that the public school will provide. Whichever vendor they decide to go with. At this point I’m not convinced that Google is a better choice than the others, but it’s also akin to choosing the least shitty sandwich at a shit-sandwich buffet.
In hindsight, this has been a downward trend since the proliferation of smart phones circa 2012. Google (android) isn’t the best choice, but it is much better being open source over other ecosystems namely Apple. There is also an issue I strongly suspect that wireless carriers wouldn’t allow open hardware/software on their networks because they have baked in restrictions in the major OSes on how you can access the network like tethering. I don’t expect that to change for the better either because even when net neutrality was a thing wireless was exempt from the rules. Kinda reminds me how back in the day ISPs had to be forced to offer naked DSL (internet from the phone company without requiring phone service). This all has deep issues that won’t be resolved anytime soon if ever. I’m putting my money on Linux becoming an actual threat to Microsoft and Apple in the desktop, laptop, handheld space and then that spreading into the mobile and tablet space. Depending on how Apple and Google antitrust situations are handled, we could start to see a shift by the end of the decade at best. This is why the tech sector will cozy up and do the bidding of whoever is in power. They won’t run the risk of drawing the ire of the government to break up their monopolies so long as the party in power believes tech companies are in their party’s pocket. This shift happened when Biden’s election was inevitable toward Democrat favored polices and it’s happening now for Republican favord polices since the last Biden Trump debate made a Trump victory inevitable.
My points are the tech sector is blatantly doing whatever it can to keep its power and change won’t happen quickly if it happens at all.
This trend started waaaay before 2012. When I graduated highschool the only computer class that was offered was a basic MS Office and advanced MS office. The people making these type of decisions for public schools are rarely tech literate themselves, they physically cannot make an informed choice. This will not be resolved until big tech is dissolved, or strong regulations are pushed by the voting population. If anyone wants their children to be tech literate I recommend getting your kids in front of a keyboard and mouse instead of a touchscreen as early as you would allow them to use a tablet. The tablet will be easier for both of you, and that’s exactly what they want.
It’s a funny irony but a Pixel with GrapheneOS is the gold standard for mobile device security. Buy it secondhand and cut out their profit.
Sure, sure. As long as you can trust Google’s custom silicon and custom security processor. I sure as fuck don’t, regardless of what Graphene OS claims. They are going to need to go to much greater lengths to assure me of that, and I can pretty much guarantee the Graphene devs won’t be able to do that.
What’s the alternative?
Honestly? In 2025? In the real world? Apple is the only alternative. And it really actually hurts my soul to type this reply out. I hate Apple. I think they are clowns. I hate closed platforms, and I think Mac’s are trash because of it. I have used every single version of Android. All of them, even pre-stable. The only alternative to Google is 2025, in regards to a mobile OS that works with my services and devices that I already own is iOS. The only way to get that is to buy a phone from Apple. And ‘normies’ care VERY MUCH about being able to use their already purchased shit. I wish Europe or Asia would actually try to compete against US big tech. It’s a very strange marketplace, nearly the entire planet trusts US companies with basically their entire infrastructure. The only major players in computing are US based companies, aside from MAYBE Canonical/Ubuntu. In the mobile market, I don’t see a way out of the duopoly at the current moment. If my phone died today I would replace it with an iPhone. And I wouldn’t be happy about it.
Nah. If it’s a choice between GrapheneOS on a pixel or an iPhone I’d take my chances with the pixel.
It would be pretty easy to detect if there was unexpected traffic with any google services.
You do you but IMO Graphene is your best chance in 2025.
Nah. If it’s a choice between GrapheneOS on a pixel or an iPhone I’d take my chances with the pixel.
Why? Not trying to be a dick about it, I just want to hear your justification. Thanks.
Apple is the only alternative.
Nah. Fuck Apple! I know it may be too much but they’re dead to me after I bought AN OFFICIAL REFURBISHED Apple device for my dad (old had problems) and received it with a motherboard problem (?), it couldn’t read the sim for more than 1 hour straight. Contacted support multiple times and “Try this useless troubleshooting steps you already tried countless times” or "The sim is ruined so it doesn’t touch the sim pins correctly (or some bs like that) " or “It’s your carrier” or “From our remote tests, the phone works perfectly” or other Apple shit I forgot. After my last call I said “You either take my phone and check it or refund me”, they took it to check if was the phone, got it back ~2 days later FUCKING WORKING as it should. I guess was really the sim, not the phone 🤔🤔
The worst part is: They didn’t even care to give me something in return for the trouble! No, not money but they could’ve extended my warranty for a month or 2 as an apology but “Nah, we can’t. Fuck you now”
I’m reading this as Apple fixed your refurbished phone like you asked them to. I do not see how you should be entitled to extra warranty because of this, or any other compensation. I can assure you that Google would also not extend your warranty for an issue of this nature. My friend is dealing with pixel warranty support as we speak and it sure as hell doesn’t sound any better. I totally understand ‘writing off’ a company after you feel personally wronged by them, but I wasn’t including warranty issues on refurbished phones in my requirements for my next mobile device. You asked what the alternative is and realistically that’s the only one for 99.99% of the population.
deleted by creator
My choice is to just not have a smartphone. Something like an old Nokia is what I use, CatB40 specifically but the company licensed to make those no longer exists. I hope Cat find someone else and they still make a line of dumb phones not just smartphones but I don’t really expect it any time soon.
If mine dies probably just get a regular dumbphone for like £10. Can’t collect much data if all it’s capable of doing is calls and SMS which I rarely even use.
That’s super cool for you. If I didn’t work in IT I might try to achieve something similar. But honestly suggesting that the average person on the street go back in time almost 20 years in regards to their mobile device is just going to get you laughed out of the room. Do you use mobile banking? Do you carry a camera around with you at all times? Do you listen to music? For me music is a big one, I’m not listening to any god damned radio commercials and I don’t have CD player in my car anymore. How would you entertain yourself on a long car ride alone in this scenario? Do you have any IoT or smart home devices? How do you interact with them? I know a few people that are a bit older than me that don’t ‘get’ smartphones but then use a tablet on the couch pretty often. My uncle doesn’t have a smartphone, and is kinda smug about it, but also doesn’t really leave the house without his android tablet. I guess if you don’t actually want to do any computing on the go a dumb phone is fine for short texts and phone calls, but finding one that works with 5G is another challenge these days.
For me Linux has been working pretty well
Linux on a mobile phone? Which device? Which Distribution? What works 'pretty well? What doesn’t work all that well?
deleted by creator
On a phone ?
Leaked Cellbrite docs indicated they couldn’t get in. I’d consider that pretty reasonable assurance. If you’re implying that Google has a backdoor… I think the argument against large/unstable conspiracies would apply.
This is so much horseshit I can’t even begin to unpack it. You really think those docs aren’t edited? They are 100% verified truth? That is a hunch at best. And so is my claim, it’s a ‘vibe’. I have zero proof of my claims, but I wouldn’t do anything I consider ‘secure’ on any Android device.
There is no fucking way in hell I would consider any Android device a secure device, in any way shape or form. It is, at best, a controlled device that most users do not have control over.
And claiming that anyone that doesn’t buy into the cellblite ‘leaks’ is a conspiracy theorist is also horseshit. (Or any leaks for that matter)
You can literally monitor the outbound DNS on a pixel with graphene and no apps and you’ll see zero DNS requests to any Google servers. Quit spredding FUD
The rixh are trying to achieve world domination before we collectively strip them of their excess wealth to fix wealth inequality and dethrone them.
I wish i were kidding…
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Degoogled already! Installed /e/os on my Pixel 6a! A little irritated though as it seems like literally every app I’ve used is tied to Google!!
It’s not google’s fault. It was told to do so and has. Does anyone seriously expect them not to have done this?
Every American company, or company doing business in America, needs to toe the line of an unpredictable and vindictive president, especially one as fat and tempting as Google.
Now there’ll be a disconnect in mapping between what some sources say and what others do, but anyone with a little history knowledge knows this isn’t the first time.
There’s no legal requirement to comply.
This is voluntary
look, fuck google for many reasons, but not this. this is just keeping your head down and trying to survive the shit storm.
deleted by creator
Nah, fuck them 100% - and this is just icing.
look, if you’re a soulless corporation just trying to deliver profits to shareholders, this is 100% the right move.
the problem is not refusing to go along with some meaningless gesture based in ignorant nationalism. the problem is that we live in capitalism, where the right move is always the one that delivers profits. decisions lacking humanity are always going to get made. focusing on this nothingburger just distracts from the bigger picture.
if you want results, destroy capitalism.
if you want results, destroy capitalism
Says the person defending google…
You don’t destroy capitalism by making concessions to mega-corp. If you truly want to destroy capitalism, you should be constantly taking every shot you can.
i’m not defending them. i’m just trying to temper your expectations. there’s a lot of uproar of pikachu shocked face stuff. it’s all symptoms of the illness. you will be slapping band aids on shit forever if you don’t attack the root cause of the illness.
sometimes i think you all just want stuff to be outraged over. maybe you just like to post about it and get upvotes. maybe you just want to be part of an in-group.
does that assumption bother you? because it bothers me that you think i’m pro-capitalism just because i won’t join in on your circle jerk.
Reading through your post history I am inferring that you believe you’re smarter than everyone (due to pretty much a complete absence of any kind of snark for about a week. I didn’t go back further than that). I don’t believe you’re very smart. You’re the type of “leftist” that causes division amongst the left. That being said; yes, I believe you’re pro-capitalist. So with that, I block you.
The 2nd richest company on the planet is not afraid of the US government they own.
In nazi Germany they had a name for those who kept their heads down and tried to survive the shitstorm. They were called Nazis.
deleted by creator
Anne Frank wasn’t “keeping her head down to avoid the shitstorm” so I wouldn’t say that’s even close to equivalent.
not true. You should read what’s written back then
not all Germans were considered NAZIs. Heck, not all Germans were even considered Germans.
Why is everything black/white with lemmings?
ooo. somebody’s looking to score some upvotes for their virtue signaling.
well, i’ll tell ya what boss… how about you get out there and start killing nazi’s then. otherwise you are one (by your own reasoning)
That’s what a nazi would say.
Don’t worry, I’m already on the case.
good.
and if you’re implying that i’m the problem, then by all means, come and get me. i’d love to give you a lesson in getting shit done.
We found an Internet tough guy, everyone back up! While we were busy virtue signaling this guy studied deez nuts.
When they start rounding up trans people and deporting them to concentration camps, I’ll remember that the person shoving me into the train is just trying to keep his head down and weather the storm.
oh, i can hear the violins playing now.
of course you made this into something about trans people when it will likely be anyone who opposes them. ya’ll are gonna get slaughtered. wise up.
Their stated policy is to put trans people and illegal immigrants in camps.
They’re the first group being targeted.
Yeah, right. Of course it is. Ever tell a dictator no? They’re very forgiving.
That would make sense if they didn’t also change in Europe…
The renaming only applies to US federal agencies. Google is (supposedly) not a federal agency, so yes, it is their fault.
I’m not in the USA, I am not a US citizen. No reason I should be seeing this while I’m in the EU.
No bad ideas, right? How about the United States of Mexico?
deleted by creator
“There’s no saving America – we need to pull it out by the roots. Wipe the slate clean. Burn it down! And from the ashes, a new America will be born. Evolved, but untamed!”
— Senator Armstrong.
Time to make the mother of all omelettes. Can’t fret over every egg!
I will continue deadnaming the gulf with the name assigned at birth. It’s just going through a phase.
It probably had names before but what did the Mayans call it?
Apparently…
The Maya referred to the Gulf as Chactemal, meaning “the red place,” likely referencing the reddish hues of the water at sunset or its fertile coastlines. Indigenous names were often descriptive, reflecting geographical features or spiritual beliefs tied to the environment. Unfortunately, much of this indigenous nomenclature was lost or overwritten during European colonization.
Link. I’m sure there are better ones. Hard to find good sources.
