tony_cannistra

I am not a freelancer, so you can stop reading if you want. But I'd like to validate your burnout, which is very real.

It's also incredibly refreshing to do something totally different. I would choose wisely, though. Not really the same situation, but I went and became a naturalist guide at a nature preserve between my undergrad computer science degree and my Ph.D. Working outside not only totally refreshed me but gave me much-needed perspective. I think something similar can be said for pouring beers or delivering food.

Sorry, that's not the correct link. Although that link describes the methodology and data sources, that is the version from 2022. The 2023 source is https://www.andersoneconomicgroup.com/many-gas-powered-cars-....

This is not only excellent, but has a great working example that doesn't feel like a toy and showcases the app's features. Great work! Especially on the presentation of the app's value.

You're right, I was mistaken.

You are mostly right, except that in addition to the same license, the Share-Alike provision in the OSM license (the ODbL [0]) also enables derivatives to be re-released with "A compatible license."

I am not a lawyer, but I would assume someone at Overture has deemed their license (the CDLAv2 [1]) to be "compatible" with ODbL. (edit: From the link in OP, the OSM-based data is being released with ODbL. I think I'm wrong about license compatibility. Again, not a lawyer.).

[0]: https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ [1]: https://cdla.dev/permissive-2-0/

These are all valid questions, and commonly raised concerns, about the Overture Project.

For context, Overture Maps is a project that intends to enable large players in the geospatial space (TomTom, Amazon, Microsoft, but notably _not_ Google) to leverage open data sets (OpenStreetMap among them) alongside proprietary data and processes that they own.

The consortium intends to enable a framework for enhancing geospatial data based in open data sets (e.g. OSM) with their own proprietary processes, and re-release it with a permissive license (the Community Database License Agreement - CDLAv2), but keep the data and processes required to create that dataset proprietary.

The project has created a lot of conversation in the OpenStreetMap community, but in general I think it's good to see so many resources put into the OSM-adjacent world.

> 2. There is no published tooling for how someone else can reproduce the same data.

This is true, and is actually the whole point of Overture.

Overture was developed to enable private companies to leverage open data (like OpenStreetMap) but also combine it with their proprietary data and processes.

The intention is to share the result with a relatively permissive license (a new thing called the Community Database License Agreement) but keep the process and underlying data proprietary.

> Fracking for geothermal wells will supposedly not use toxic fluids.

I'm interested in learning more about this. Could you share the source from which you learned this?

Thanks. In principle I am wholeheartedly in support for geothermal as a renewable energy source, especially compared to fossil fuels. I think these kinds of developments to expand the potential for geothermal resources are super important.

I guess I just would like to understand some of the externalities to this particular methodology. Especially since many of the parallels to oil and gas fracking are present, and the environmental track record there is poor.

From the Bloomberg article:

   In many regions, the existing rock is hot enough but there isn’t enough permeability for fluid to flow through the hot rock. Through wells drilled deep underground, EGS injects fluid to create fractures, causing the permeability needed for electricity generation.

My gut says they're using the same methodologies as hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas extraction for this, but I'm not sure.

That raises a whole host of environmental concerns, particularly with regard to the high volume use of fresh water in places where it is scarce, and the impact of toxic high-pressure fracturing fluid on aquifers.

Both are issues that have plagued communities where oil and gas fracturing takes place.

I found that right at the top.

   The Secretary of Agriculture's regulations (36 CFR 261) provide in part for regulating the occupancy and use of developed recreation sites. A violation of these regulations is subject to a penalty of not more than $5,000 or 6 months imprisonment, or both.

It's $5k, actually. You can also go to prison. https://www.fs.usda.gov/lei/forest-rules.php

Perhaps you ought to reframe your understanding of "article" in this context for the long form variety, of which this piece is an example.

Just like visual artists, good writers deliver experiences. Some don't have the luxury of doing this, or the interest.

But in order to even attempt to give a reader access to the feelings of surprise, fear, change that Nathan Keane, the opening character of the story, might have had on that morning when he first discovered a grizzly on his ranch, one needs these details.

I'd offer that perhaps you might take them in aggregate, holistically - as you might a work of art.

"Show, don't tell" is a common axiom among writers for a reason.

I like these details. Not all stories have need to have people in them. But good stories do.

A good overview of the modern grizzly story. Especially good to see an article focused on the complexity of restoring large, culturally important predators to the landscape. It's a real minefield of federal regulations, Native American rights, hunters, agricultural communities, and more. I appreciate the detail this article chooses to use.

Fly sorta does this with geographically distributed read replicas - https://fly.io/docs/postgres/

I love to see competitors to the Big Dawgs (Fly.io*, etc.), nice work taking them on, and best of luck!

Nobody is asking but I must say that I would be hard-pressed to switch to your product having seen this launch offering. Especially since I need to fill out a typeform. Even if you did have a compelling reason to switch, I'd probably only find out if I filled out your form, which I probably would only do if I didn't like my current situation, which isn't the case.

*I guess probably "big" from a popularity standpoint rather than company size, whatever

Not exactly related, but it makes me wonder what kind of metrics you can devise for tracking "regressions" on LLMs.

I feel like OpenAI definitely has thought about this at length, but I'm curious about what matters most for them / raises OpsGenie/whatever alerts. Internal model metrics? Customer usage patterns? Random test conversation diffs?

Sure, I guess so. I suppose I latched on too hard to the rather editorialized HN submission title.

I do believe generally-speaking that folks with editorial leadership are probably as good if not better as run-of-the-mill domain VCs at assessing founder quality in a journalism context, as the article suggests.

But really we're talking about asking journalists to consider a career in venture capital, which is...fine I guess?

Not sure if this guy has ever met a journalist.

Where precisely are the journalists who are paid sufficiently well for their skill that they have liquidity to invest in startups?

edit: alright turns out he's "former chief of staff at the Atlantic" but I still remain convinced he's decently out of touch with everyday journalists' financial situation.

Good advice. Implicit here is that you really need _something motivating_ to write/think about in order to follow this advice.

That's probably obvious, but perhaps relevant for someone who comes at this with an ambiguous desire to "write well" but without clarity on "about what."

Maybe a trivial point, but that's certainly the starting point of any writer's journey: a topic?

and all maps are WRONG

work, sure, but not _that_ much. It's affine transformations / some fast linear algebra, for the most part. Your second point is for sure true, though.

Thanks, I can definitely understand the classroom use-case.

I've seen a lot of bad engineering go into solving that problem, this seems like a better way.

I didn't read very deeply, but I was surprised to see something like a Jupyter notebook mentioned as a use-case. The marketing pitch seems to suggest that these hosted sessions are relatively stateless, so I'd hesitate to trust an interactive Jupyter session with one.

Accidentally closing a browser tab seems like it would end the session and wipe out my whole Jupyter session, variables and all.

right but, that's pretty straightforward if you've got some relatively basic CLI comfort and an account with a cloud provider...

Hm. Not totally sure why someone would pay for this - there are lots of readily-available open-source tools that can do this easily. GDAL/OGR[0] and Tippecanoe [1] come to mind. Maybe I'm missing a less-technical audience?

0: https://gdal.org/ 1: https://github.com/felt/tippecanoe

I totally agree with your latter assessment. I wrote off software engineering as a career that I would deeply enjoy for a few years, went to become a scientist. I came back to software when I discovered geospatial; it's way fun.

Not wrong necessarily, if "traditional GIS" is your chosen application of geospatial skills. (By "traditional GIS" I mean creating one-off analyses by interacting primarily with enterprise desktop/GUI tools like ArcGIS).

But when combined with software engineering expertise, geospatial knowledge can be as lucrative as any other software job. (I am a geospatial software engineer.)