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Although unfortunately, it doesn't understand the fairly typical non-urban "yes, you found something that's less than 10 miles from me as the crow flies, but is

Although unfortunately, it doesn't understand the fairly typical non-urban "yes, you found something that's less than 10 miles from me as the crow flies, but is about 80 miles away if I need to actually drive there because of the fact that my car can't cross a river/strait/lake on its own". Even after 25 years, that part can still do with improvement.

sleepybrett 4y ago
They wouldn't have to update the interface to do that, but they could give you 'crow-flies' and 'driving' distances for sure.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  Not really: the search parameter is "km/miles from location", not "within a radius of..." (the circle is just a visual estimate). The distance in km/miles from A to B is not as the crow flies, it's the number found in any of quite a lot of datasets that gives you all the real world distances between two places so you can do proper distance filtering.
- jaredhallen 4y ago
  Well since Facebook seems to update the user interface about every 15 seconds anyway, that shouldn't be a major roadblock. I swear if I'm on marketplace and I take a sip of coffee, the UX has changed somehow. Seems like they just have a pool of different interface designs and they just serve them up at random.
  - smegger001 4y ago
    ah facebook the AB testing hell.
rightbyte 4y ago
Careful what you whish for. That sounds exactly as one of those fuzzy algorithms that will hide posts randomly due to stupid reasons. Eg. some address has a glitched road and Google Maps believes it is only reachable by boat or helicopter.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  This is craigslist, not facebook: don't over-engineer what you don't need to over-engineer. You just look at already-made datasets that give the real world distance between two places, and remove search results based on that. Never, ever, use google maps for this, and definitely don't use it "per query, as needed". The overwhelming majority of infrastructure doesn't change on even a yearly basis: use someone else's precompiled dataset, and update whenever they push an update.
  - bolasanibk 4y ago
    >already-made datasets that give the real world distance between two places Can you point me to a source? Thanks.
    - TheRealPomax 4y ago
      I got you fam: https://www.google.com/search?q=US+distance+between+cities+datasets https://www.google.com/search?q=US+distance+between+cities+d... (aka if you actually need this for your project, you already know how to search for the things you need. If Craigslist needs one-time access to a GIS system to build an initial dataset for high volume countries, they can easily afford the limited time access and dev time to generate the dataset they need, as well as afford the dev time required to do a deep dive into which -free or paid- datasets already exists and are suitable, or not, for this purpose, as well as what licenses they come with)
hedora 4y ago
Isn't this what the map view is for?

sleepybrett 4y ago

They wouldn't have to update the interface to do that, but they could give you 'crow-flies' and 'driving' distances for sure.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
Not really: the search parameter is "km/miles from location", not "within a radius of..." (the circle is just a visual estimate). The distance in km/miles from A to B is not as the crow flies, it's the number found in any of quite a lot of datasets that gives you all the real world distances between two places so you can do proper distance filtering.
jaredhallen 4y ago
Well since Facebook seems to update the user interface about every 15 seconds anyway, that shouldn't be a major roadblock. I swear if I'm on marketplace and I take a sip of coffee, the UX has changed somehow. Seems like they just have a pool of different interface designs and they just serve them up at random.
- smegger001 4y ago
  ah facebook the AB testing hell.

rightbyte 4y ago

Careful what you whish for. That sounds exactly as one of those fuzzy algorithms that will hide posts randomly due to stupid reasons. Eg. some address has a glitched road and Google Maps believes it is only reachable by boat or helicopter.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
This is craigslist, not facebook: don't over-engineer what you don't need to over-engineer. You just look at already-made datasets that give the real world distance between two places, and remove search results based on that. Never, ever, use google maps for this, and definitely don't use it "per query, as needed". The overwhelming majority of infrastructure doesn't change on even a yearly basis: use someone else's precompiled dataset, and update whenever they push an update.
- bolasanibk 4y ago
  >already-made datasets that give the real world distance between two places Can you point me to a source? Thanks.
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    I got you fam: https://www.google.com/search?q=US+distance+between+cities+datasets https://www.google.com/search?q=US+distance+between+cities+d... (aka if you actually need this for your project, you already know how to search for the things you need. If Craigslist needs one-time access to a GIS system to build an initial dataset for high volume countries, they can easily afford the limited time access and dev time to generate the dataset they need, as well as afford the dev time required to do a deep dive into which -free or paid- datasets already exists and are suitable, or not, for this purpose, as well as what licenses they come with)

hedora 4y ago

Isn't this what the map view is for?