I worked on a global consumer mapping app once. Among that team, the idea that address schemes were too inconsistent to be useful was also conventional wisdom.
And yet, as I mention in the blog post, Google Maps actually does understand how Vancouver's addresses work. It can find the location where a non-existent address would be if it existed. But for addresses like 138 W 6th Ave it chooses not to, instead trusting... well, I don't know what it's trusting. But whatever it is trusting is wrong, and is resistant to being corrected through the feedback tool.
Tracking flights works better than tracking trains mainly because airlines have global technical standards (coordinated through global bodies like IATA) and rail operators don't. Most of the technical capability to track any flight, anywhere in the world, was built by the airline industry for its own needs and integrated into consumer technology later; I don't think the cultural bias of OS vendors had much to do with it.
Rail operators are also really good at tracking their trains. There are some issues because a) they started much earlier and have longer upgrade cycles, so in some places the tech is ancient; and b) there's less pressure to interoperate.
That said, there is good data with standard APIs in some places, for example across most of the European rail network. I find it very plausible that a similarly funded company from Switzerland or Estonia would add rail information before they add flight information, and if they had come out with the equivalent of Apple/Google Wallet they might have started out with cooperation with rail services to store your rail ticket in your phone.
The Swiss SBB has a public API for all trains across the European continent. Multiple websites making use of it have been featured on this very website.
There is little excuse. There is, though, quite some lack of curiosity from young American males to anything outside their own little lives
It's just true. Remember when Apple launched HealthKit with alcohol tracking and no period tracking? Tell me how that release could pass months of development and management without anyone thinking about it once.
When Apple did release period tracking it was way more feature rich than alcohol tracking. It was backed by research into the human body. It uses multiple data points to estimate a complex process that occurs in the human body, and present actionable information to the user. It’s not just a record book.
Alcohol tracking is a pretty view over a logbook. Date time quantity and that’s it.
Oh and since I know someone from the team that did this, I can guarantee you there’s at least one non “American male” that implemented it.
Putting out a new app with initial features that are relevant to people of either sex like blood alcohol content or sodium intake vs features that are only relevant to half the population doesn't seem terrible to me. How many male exclusive metrics did it roll out with on day one?
Are you seriously suggesting that the most probable reason for not implementing a feature is bigotry? This is not Verge, this is HN. We're not journalists, we actually work in this industry.
Lists and maps exist, but that doesn't mean they cover every country and train.
Also, GTFS is schedule data, not realtime data. When you click a train on such a service's map, it may or may not make it clear whether the shown location is based on the interpolation of some schedule data, whether the interpolation has been adjusted by some updated data (cancellations, delays), or whether it's actually based on realtime location data.
This is, alas, something seen again and again. The best and the brightest, working for a company that prides itself on user experience, create an health app and what does it track at lauch? Alcohol, not periods.
Tell me how this isn't a clear proof of a whole culture of navel-gazing, so strong it can defeat a prime company's culture of user experience, hardcore recrutment and management.
Before I moved away recently, I had dinner pretty regularly with the guys at Dismas House Nashville (dismas.org), which provides transitional housing for former offenders. They do a great job helping people get back on their feet with housing, jobs, etc. I don't know if they can help directly, but if Ray has roots in North Carolina perhaps the staff there (I've worked with Davey and Scott) know people in the southeast region who could help.
> Microsoft implemented it back in their glory days (irony intended) by changing the file formats in new versions of the Office suite so that documents created by newer versions of Office could not be read by older versions, thus forcing everyone to upgrade to the newer version in order to share data.
In fact, Microsoft released updates for older versions of Office (back to Word 2000, apparently!) which allowed them to read the new formats [1].
Not to mention the fundamental differences between pre-2007 and Office 2007 document formats. I tend to think that the format change wasn't a forced deprecation of older software, but rather just a simple business case. Simplify maintenance and support, and create an open-ish standard to avoid competition + support industry.
the old binary formats for office were the collected history of 20 years of software development, and even Microsoft had trouble with consistent implementation - at least OOXML had a digestible easy to use standard.
I imagine this is more talking about Word 6 and Office 97 then the later versions. The 2000 upgrade was forced by the aim of making the office XML files the new standard as opposed to the competing OASIS (OpenOffice) standard.
Windows 10 now has a built-in "Skype video" app which is much more bare-bones. Once I confirmed it worked for calling the few people I need to video chat with, I uninstalled the desktop app right away.
That part may be a feature. A bus stop next to your apartment building might be gone next week, but a light rail station is staying put and developers can more confidently build "transit-oriented" neighborhoods (denser, less parking, etc.).
Earlier versions (or fragments of earlier versions) exist for most parts of the New Testament. I believe the interesting thing about this work is that it's "complete".
The original texts are in Greek, and the King James version is an English translation. Differences between the original and a modern English version would have less to do with uncertainty about the original text than with the difficulties of doing translations. The various English versions in use take different approaches to translation: some attempt to stay true to the original wording, while others are less rigid and attempt to use phrasing that is more intelligible to a modern reader.
That chart is misleading because it shows consumption of all sources of energy, not just electricity. We don't use 28% of our electricity for transportation (yet!). Listings of electricity consumption by sector [1] show that the residential sector consumes the biggest share of electricity in the US. And the residential sector also has the highest seasonal variability in power consumption [2]. So better demand control for consumers might actually pay off pretty well.
