Arriving in Berlin – A map made by refugees | Hacker News Reader

Arriving in Berlin – A map made by refugees

umap.openstreetmap.fr

72 pointschippy95 comments

This is a bit offtopic, but Berlin is really beautifully mapped in OSM. In places the details are more than what I would have ever thought of, for example the individual pillars of the Holocaust Memorial: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/arriving-in-berlin-a-map...

For that one there should be altitude mapping.

Adding details to OSM is actually very relaxing. I do it to unwind and kill time sometimes. The job is never done, however, and there is always room for more detail.

Can OSM accept 3D laser scanner/cloud point data?

Not really. You could jam it into the data model, but it isn't meant to be a clearinghouse for arbitrary data sets where an update is making another sensor pass.

A simple rubric is whether someone standing in the street can reasonably improve the data there, another is to what extent each individual piece of data is interesting in isolation.

That doesn't mean you can't do interesting things with such data:

http://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2015/09/extracting-building-he...

(I realize that someone could reasonably fix some error in some lidar data, but I think the most likely outcome of storing such data in the OSM database is that the cumulative edits would frustrate anyone looking to use the data, to the extent that they would go to the source)

Thank you for the reply. I'm always excited to contribute whatever data I can to OSM.

The project about page is here: http://arriving-in-berlin.de/

This has the arabic and persian(I think?) versions. It confused me why it would be in english at first.

English is probably the best "common source" that things are translated from/to

I love this idea, and hope the refugees settling have a happier life in Germany.

Here is what people in Germany say about immigration in a recent survey:

http://www.atlantico.fr/sites/atlantico.fr/files/u9698/2015/...

[Sigh] Before parts of the comment section turn into a flame war, I'd like to ask that those with inflammatory opinions at least attempt to stay politically neutral here. I'd rather not know about the contentious political positions some of my technical peers have.

Please save any sweeping generalizations for Twitter/Facebook/Reddit :).

Nice! Was this done during the Berline refugee hackathon?

I don't think so, at least it seems to be completely managed by the two organisations running it & I didn't see it mentioned in context of the hackathon. It also doesn't use a custom-made interface, but is using the uMap service: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr (So the biggest need probably is data, not code)

I'm living in one of poor EU countries.

I earn less money than they pay for refugees.

Our pensioners get less money than these 'refugees' with Armani clothing...

I can understand the sentiment

However, for those who want to work in Berlin (or somewhere else) can apply for a German Blue Card (usually you apply for jobs hen the company gets you one), shouldn't be too hard

I'm from a European, but not an EU member country, and I got offered a senior software developer job in Germany. I applied for a 12 month work visa, even signed a statement that I will return when it expires, and it got denied.

So yes in theory it's "easy", but in practice it isn't always like that. (To be fair you're talking about Blue Card which I didn't apply for because I've heard it's bit harder to get since it's usually issued for period longer than 12 months)

It's easy as in "much easier than an H1B" but sometimes there are issues getting one, yes (might be the company's fault as well).

Don't forget that living expenses are higher (in "richer" EU countries), too.

You earn less than 200€?

All this statement means is that your pensioners should be getting more money, not that refugees should be getting less. Likewise, you should be making more money than you do, if your income is lower than refugee support money. I see this argument repeated ad nauseam and it's really upsetting, because it's basically saying that other people should have it worse for the sake of having it worse.

The government should start planting more money trees so they can pay for it all.

You do realize where money comes from right? That the refugees get any thing when actual tax, social security, disability was paid into by citizens for citizens and even if it was as available as you think it should be, the citizens are having their money funneled and real estate taken from them in ways that are unsettling and downright disgraceful.

The cost of the refugee crisis for Germany will be about 8 billion in 2015. That's more than postage but still less than 100€ per citizen. On the grand economic scale, it barely registers. Compared to the plight of these people (which some may argue the west is somewhat responsible for), it is hardly enough to get jealous.

And how much will the cost be by 2045?

The entire fucking country and its culture, presumably.

Yeah, I pay for it in my taxes and I am very happy the money goes to these causes. And your statement about real estate being taken from anyone is just outright false.

Your statement is extremely smug.

I looked at your other comments. You live in north England and earn £20k per year.

If you have children, you will find that this does not go very far. If that is your sole income then your standard of living will not be far above one of the recent economic migrants.

If your children is not as academically gifted as you, they will likely live a life of chronic underemployment and a far lower standard of living than you.

It is the simple rule of supply and demand. Bringing in large amounts of economic migrants will depress wages and drive up living costs.

One or two generations ago, one wage would have been enough to afford buying a house in a decent suburb.

For our generation, you need two incomes for a similar setup.

For your childrens generation it will be three incomes as you will need to significantly contribute.

Every day in Nigeria close to 20000 people are born and this is accelerating. Even if 1% chose to come over, it is demographic suicide.

It is our grandchildren that will suffer the most. We are giving away all that we have worked for.

If you looked a bit further into my comments history, you would have found that I am myself an immigrant. I come from one of the poorer countries of the EU and what I make in UK is literally 4-5x as much as I would in my own country. For me,to be against immigrants, would be to be a hypocrite. There's over 2 millions of people from my country over here in UK and you would be very hard pressed to say that it changed anything in terms of living costs or that it depressed wages.

>>One or two generations ago, one wage would have been enough to afford buying a house in a decent suburb.

That has literally nothing to do with immigration, but it seems to me that you are trying to associate all modern problems into one common cause.

>>Every day in Nigeria close to 20000 people are born and this is accelerating. Even if 1% chose to come over, it is demographic suicide.

You are making an assumption that they will continue procreating at the same rate - which is just purely wrong.

Good points, but not quite. The standards of living have fallen not because of nigerians coming over and stealing jerbs, but because the redistribution shifted from people doing the work to people owning the capital required to keep the operation going. Of course, it is much easier to blame a bunch of poor people who don't know their rights or might not even have them.

If you really want your kids to live better - work for it now, and work for yourself. Judging by your comment though this doesn't seem to be the plan. Just being blunt here.

The real estate for the refugee homes, the favoritism towards them for getting capital cheaper despite having no credit. Facilities will be set up and local citizens will be squished out. Happens now in UK, France, Germany in urban and suburbs and villages. If you read things not mainstream press you get stories not contrived from people living it.

Come on, don't be a dick. You're exactly like a child that cries because the others get "more" and it's so unfair. Boohoo.

It's hardly "being a dick" to expect his government to provide better for its own citizens than it does for foreigners.

But it's not his government, it's the German government. How Germany chooses to spend its money is a matter for the German people, and not anyone else.

That may have been the case before the EU and the euro but now it appears that he should have a voice in the greater European continent. Also is it not essential that they all raise each others livelihood before giving massive amounts of cash towards non citizens? I think Japan has it right in this case regardless of what the guardian and other liberal media want to cram down everyone's throat.

I was referring to the EU, which is supposed to serve the interests of its member states -- a radical idea, it seems.

The member states have different interests.

He's comparing apples to orange tic tacs. Germany provides 140€ per month in cash to asylum seekers plus accommodation (usually a shared dorm room). He's in "a poorer European country" and apparently earns less. He's ignoring costs of living. 140€ is a pittance in Germany. It is much less than pensioners or unemployed get. I spend 3x as much on food.

I hold governments to higher standards than parents.

Don't be a dick indeed, work more, so you can earn more and pay more taxes for the immigrants (if they were refugees they would stay whereever help was offered instead of storming to Germany), because those loans won't pay by itself and USA, IMF and the banks surely won't write that off.

Right now my country is stormed by them and can barely keep up. Schengen is a joke, same as the EU.

This will probably be down voted since Hacker News turned into a "safe space" (which is ironic considering all the whiplash about free speech on the internet around here), so let me just quote a character called Reality on the popular show "South Park": "You're sad that people are mean ? Well I'm sorry, the world isn't one big liberal arts college campus."

Just remember to keep paying your taxes, which will increase, and dont complain if your standard of living goes down, your hospitals and schools are overcrowded, or your children cannot afford a tiny apartment.

So they would stay in Hungary instead which already has more refugees per capita than Germany and is totally overwhelmed? Or in Greece which is in the middle of a crisis itself? How about Lebanon and Turkey where there are more than 10 times as much refugees, where refugees have no perspective of being able to work and where basic needs of life are not guaranteed.

Free speech is about the right to express oneself, it has nothing to with people not being allowed to disagree with you.

No, they should stay in fucking Syria.

If they're so keen on western values such as democracy and freedom of religion, they should take up arms and fight for them, just like our ancestors did.

And if they're not keen on western values such as democracy and freedom of religion, they should stay the fuck out of the west.

The right to live in a peaceful, prosperous country is not automatic. For those of us in the west, our ancestors earned that right for us. For those in the Middle East -- well, they need to work hard now to earn that right for their descendants.

Is it fair that some are born in Europe and some are born in Syria? No. Is it fair that some are born human and some are born fish? No.

Most of our ancestors did nothing to "earn that right" for us. The vast majority tried to go about their lives as before.

And a substantial number of "our" ancestors were part of messing up Syria and Iraq in the first place, going back to colonial times.

This has to be the most simplistic, nationalistic, view of history I've ever read. Ignoring that throughout history it is extremely common for groups to leave their countries and settle elsewhere when it becomes oppressive, for example America...

It's also extremely common for countries to be conquered by foreign invaders.

Refugees and immigrants are "invaders" now.

— What refugees wear does not matter. Even if they all wore genuine Armani clothing, what are they supposed to do? Sell all their clothes and buy cheaper brands before they flee? Your idea that a person who doesn’t look destitute or poor enough should not be regarded as a refugee shows how little you understand what a refugee is. The people fleeing to Europe are from all kinds of backgrounds, including workers, the middle class and highly skilled professionals. When a war breaks out and a city is destroyed, the middle class doesn’t stay behind. They sell their houses, cars and anything else they can and spend upwards of $10K to make it to somewhere safe.

— I’m sure refugees in your country get less money than pensioners, just as they do in Germany. Are you saying that Germany should give refugees less money than any pensioner in the EU gets?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

This is what happened last time refugees were turned away en masse with no option but to return to their home country: they were exterminated. The EU was formed with a "never again" attitude to this kind of catastrophe. There are already over 4 million refugees plus an estimated 6 million displaced within Syria. People have finally noticed that they're already dying trying to escape, often in the Mediterranean. The options are to take them in or send them to their deaths.

This is probably going to happen again when Yemen goes up; it doesn't help that the country is running out of groundwater while a Saudi/Iranian proxy war is being fought in it.

Poor jews. I guess they have learned from history and help others now.

How many refugee camps for Syrian people are in Israel?

They learned from history alright, just not in the way you think. Israel is one of the best defended states with some of the best social welfare for its citizens. They work six days a week to make it happen, and their public-private partnerships are top notch and generate a massive amount of real innovation (as in - life saving medical technology instead of boredom apps). If every state in the world was as self-sufficient and productive, humanity would be colonizing space by now.

They sure are good in colonizing the land of Palestine with moral and monetary support of a western country that sadly forgot how to use their resources for space exploration and are colonizing third world countries since the WWII with government coups.

I am not denying that, but you're beating up the wrong bush.

Colonization and exploitation are more than buzzwords, but in the real world they work the other way around. Look at the yearly trade balance between say Chile and South Korea. Chile is basically an enormous copper ore mine, it accounts for 50% of their exports. South Korea exports back finished goods. So who is really exploiting who, and what country is more important to the world? I'd say the imagination of South Koreans and the ability to make high quality products trump the Chileans. That doesn't mean the Chilean people are in any way lesser than the Koreans, but that they need to invest in what produces real value in 21st century - brains.

There is really not much to be gained for Israel by colonizing areas of Palestine, except better security (which is an economic bonus in itself). What I do wonder though - if Israel is magically relocated to an island nation, say in the middle of a trade route like Singapore, what would they be really capable of, unhindered by defensive considerations.

Ah yes, the white guilt.

There's a reason why Germany is targeted as the end destination - there's less chance it will deny them because of collective guilt.

The UK said it will not accept any then mere thousands, yet no one blinks an eye. Why ? Why didn't the USA (who started this shit in the first place) offered any help ? Why don't the immigrants demand that from them ?

The blind left extremism in modern western world isn't much different from the right one and there are a lot of political players who will exploit that.

I think the main issue is fear of radical islamists hiding amongst the refugees going to Europe. Haven't heard of any jews blowing stuff up and beheading germans, can't say the same for syrians and middle east in general. The somewhat lesser issue, as evident by this thread is economic competition.

What about the millions of eastern / central europeans that have lower wages and worse quality of life and have been denied to work in german markets when the countries have been allowed to join the EU ?

I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy.

Thanks Germany.

worse than getting killed by a bomb?

I'd be curious to see the percentage of migrants/refugees that are coming from war-torn regions such as Syria. My understanding is that many come from North Africa or elsewhere. Granted violence is also very high in these areas and the economic situation can be nearly as detrimental to quality of life.

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/6996925/3-180...

I volunteer in a refugee center. Right now about 70% of the people arriving are from Syria. Most others are from Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look at statistics, remember that they often lag behind and currently show a large percentage of refugees from Albania, although that wave happened early in the year and has largely passed.

a) apples and oranges

b) As far as I know none of these intra-EU restrictions are still active (not that much of the numbers changed after their end, so they probably were really pointless)

Provoke someone into bombing you for months and we'll re-consider.

You're welcome.

Germany.

> I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy.

This. The elephant in the room. It is insanely difficult to migrate legally to most European countries.

I would say something else to the people that encourage others to basically enter Europe illegally to go to Germany.

There are people, in refugee camps, in Lebanon or Turkey, that want to follow the law and apply for asylum while staying in these camps( because that's how it is supposed to work at first place, applying for asylum in the first safe country).

What about them ? So people who break the law and cross multiple European countries illegally are welcome, but those who want to respect refugee laws by staying in camps until their status is cleared will be rejected because too many coming to Europe already and all sits are taken? That doesn't sound fair at all.

This whole debacle is hypocrite on so many level, I will never support anyone who agree with it. You're not helping those who are in greatest need to be helped ( women,children, it's obvious they are not the majority of the people walking across Europe right now).

Well this is the problem any country with a large illegal immigrant population faces. Far too many in the political establishment don't want to be perceived as mean spirited and deport or block the illegals yet the unintended consequence is that those who seek legal immigration are harmed as are those who already are either citizens and recent immigrants as the pool of assistance monies and goods is diminished.

This is also a result of the current view to not interfere enough to fix the situation these illegal and legal immigrants face at home. Nation building has fallen out of favor and the result in anarchy is many parts of the world. Violence goes unchecked and with lax to no enforcement people risk their lives to get somewhere else and will try to get where the best support system exists.

>What about the millions of eastern / central europeans

Have you forgotten about the Yugoslav wars? About half a million of refugees went to Western Europe (mostly Germany and Sweden) in just a couple of years.

> have been denied to work in german markets

That is illegal and a violation of treaty obligations on Germany's part if the countries you're talking about are part of the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA).

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker...

You don't need a work visa or any sort of permission from the German government to reside and work in Germany, if you are a EU citizen or a citizen of an EEA member. It is a right.

There were laws restricting that during a temporary period after countries joining, but I think they all faded out in 2011 or so, without much changing afterwards.

The combination of "what about related controversy X" with inflammatory language ("Thanks Germany") is guaranteed to produce a political flamewar. Please don't do that here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 and marked it off-topic.

The posting of this article was guaranteed to produce a political flamewar.

That doesn't excuse the commenters who made it so.

Does it excuse the mods who let it through?

If you allow politically contentious articles, you're going to get politically charged discussion. Articles representing a left-wing worldview are let through and right-wingers are blamed for "starting flame wars" when they interject something that shows their own worldview.

HN should either commit to open discussion or declare itself officially a no-dissent-allowed Safe Space.

That description is false.

More importantly, you have no standing to argue about what's appropriate on HN when you post dreck like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453898 in violation of the site's rules. I've asked you before to stop doing this. Please follow the rules from now on.

You raise an interesting point, but the refugee 'crisis' is not driven by rationality, history, culture or even morality.

It's a sad, numb and nihilistic political game.

Why is that?

I am German - and I support the acceptance of refugees because of rationality, history, culture and especially morality.

You morally accept them but can't functionally accept them. And morals have this downside of interfering with others in an unfair and dangerous ways. Sweden and rapes for a clear example.

I also support receiving them, but it is a political game. It would have made more sense to help a much larger number closer to home in countries where we could help far more people for the same amounts of money and while putting them at less risk.

The problem is that a lot of the people talking about helping them closer to home have no intention of doing so - it's an excuse not to spend money at all. It is suddenly important to help them nearer to home now, when the problem is not "contained" anymore.

Having them come to the wealthier EU countries helps drive home the seriousness of the crisis in a completely different way. Most people in Europe seems to have had no understanding of how many people need help, and have had an easy time writing these crises of as something happening far away.

That's why this is a political game. On both sides.

Germany was struggling with the reunification, having added 20 Million people from a collapsed country, the German Democratic Republic. That was difficult enough.

Currently there are no special labor restrictions for EU citizens in Germany.

It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. The reason East Germany was merged into West Germany was that it was effectively defunct.

East Germany had mostly sustained itself by forbidding people from leaving the country (under threat of death), forcefully keeping its citizens in line (via ubiquitous surveillance and extortion) and frequently selling captives ("traitors" and "collaborators") to its next-door neighbour.

Heck, the entire country had been ransacked before it was even created. While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.

> It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together.

It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR.

> While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.

The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone.

The US soon wanted their part of Germany as a future ally against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union needed the German factories/etc., because they suffered large scale destruction in the western parts. Germany destroyed large parts of the USSR infrastructure where it could.

> It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR.

Exactly. The GDR was dissolved, the FRG simply swallowed the remnants.

> The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone.

I'm not arguing the morality of it -- Nazi Germany had wreaked havoc in the USSR (and some Germans were surprised to see how well the soldiers treated them considering how badly the Soviets had been treated by Germany).

But the industry of East Germany was demolished to a far greater extent than that of West Germany. I'm well aware of the plans for West Germany that were discussed prior to the decision to grow it into an ally (rather than to de-industrialize it beyond insignificance).

My point is simply this: while West Germany had become an economic powerhouse deeply integrated into European and international economics, East Germany's economy was largely a farce. By the time the borders were opened, the country was heading for disaster.

What's more, after the reunification most of what little industry East Germany had moved to the West. It took a ton of state funding to get the east of Germany to where it is now and it's still largely defined by large-scale unemployment and an ageing population (because the young adults always seek greener pastures).

In other words: yes, Germany is a powerful economy. But East Germany was nothing like that and naturalizing all East Germans as citizens and even exchanging their devalued currency at ridiculous rates was an enormous expense.

I really don't know what you're referring to. How have Eastern/Central EU migrants been denied access to German labour markets?

The only good thing about this "refugees crisis" is that it could finally cause the implosion and the end of the EU.

This corrupted blob in which representatives are barely elected has to go away.

And replaced by what? A more divided Europe? I know UE is not the United Federation of Planets, but at least it is a step towards it.

What was wrong with sovereign nations?

A step towards what? This is the big scam of the 21st century. People think that big blobs are stronger than smaller, more focused and cohesive entities. Smaller countries all over the world are doing just fine.

A step towards unified global government, one day, hopefully. You don't need sovereign nations to reap benefits of distribution, and some things are really better centralized (I'd agree that centralization may be the big scam of the 20th century - decentralization is the scam of 21st. People somehow forget that decentralized usually means very wasteful.).

UE is an example of a "blob" that is not much more focused or cohesive than individual nations were, but it seems at least like a step in the right direction.

Is that your best argument for the end of national sovereignty? Economies of scale?

Economies of scale, eventual ending of some unnecessary zero-sum games (a single government doesn't need to maintain much military, nor it will end up in an arms race), getting rid of nationalism, tying people's identity to the whole planet as opposed to an arbitrary subset of it. I don't really see the benefits of keeping national sovereignty. One could think that we should've grown past it already.

If a world government decides to spy on its own citizens, the whistleblower will have nowhere to run.

I'm assuming at this point we'll grow past the privacy thing as well, but I'm going to upgrade your argument to "if a world government decides to do something evil, the whistleblower will have nowhere to run", which is indeed a concern.

I'm just not sure if having a safe haven for whistleblower is worth keeping around pockets of people pointing guns at each other like we do today. Also, the "safe haven" is something a whistleblower gets for giving a gun to one side to point at another, not at the goodness of any government's collective heart.

You're right, that's a relatively minor concern.

How about the concern that the existence of a single government doesn't stop people shooting at each other, as indicated by, oh, say, the Syrian Civil War? Even in the optimal case where you somehow did achieve a one-world government that was democratic and benign (rather than resembling the average government) you would inevitably have groups of people thinking that this is a non-ideal government whose authority should be challenged. In the end you'd just wind up replacing all ordinary wars with civil wars. And the civil wars, instead of being confined to one country at a time, would rage simultaneously in all countries, always.

And its replacement by what? The Caliphate? Oh, fabulous.

What was there before? Sovereign countries composed of people sharing the same history, culture, values and lifestyle. Just because all these countries are geographically close doesn't mean that they should merge into one single entity.

Interesting. Farsi is not a major language in Syria; more people speak Kurdish than Farsi. Perhaps, and this is just a theory, that some of the refugees aren't actually coming from the Syrian civil war, but are instead attempting to simply take advantage of the largesse of the EU? If these refugees were actual refugees, they'd be in camps along the Turkish border and not applying for (and receiving) long term residency. The concept of refugee is that they go home after the hostilities. In this case, almost zero chance of that happening. It's shameful when adult men flee while many leave behind their wife and children. The women and kids ought to be the ones treated as refugees. The rest of them are simply cowards unwilling to fight for their own country.

Have a look at the pictures - it is full of chancers from all over the world.

Even the "children" often turn out to be adults. In this study, 260 of the 309 people investigated were over 18:

http://www.iofos.eu/Journals/JFOS%20sup1_Nov12/IDEALS%209-12...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com