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It's wild how easy it is to not know that something exists. One of my pandemic trips was touring Italy by Vespa, from the Alps to Sicily. I rode right past Gi

It's wild how easy it is to not know that something exists. One of my pandemic trips was touring Italy by Vespa, from the Alps to Sicily. I rode right past Gibellina without knowing it was worth a stop. That was actually one of the challenges of the trip. If you're touring California, there's often only one road to get where you're going. In my case, I just took PCH the whole way north. Italy has thousands of years of villages and paths between them. Their road grid is a spiderweb. Even figuring out what route to take on any particular day needed a lot of research and some random luck.

epivosism 3y ago
I often wish I could tell Gemini or some other ai my general preferences & interests (unique parks, board games, bonsai, pickleball courts etc) and while I was driving, google maps would occasionally pop up a silent notice saying "did you know, just 1 mile ahead is an exit leading to a nearby world-famous bonsai exhibit that is open now) They could do this really really easily, and it would be EPIC and offer you the chance to discover things you basically NEVER would know about otherwise...
- toyg 3y ago
  On one side, yes, great. On the other side: more notifications while driving? No, thanks - bad for safety, likely to be very annoying, and extremely likely to be coopted by adsense ("did you know? Just 1 mile ahead you'll find the newest McDonald's in the city...")
  - epivosism 3y ago
    It would be opt in, obviously. I don't agree with these kind of moral hazard arguments which attempt to prove progress is impossible. It's not my problem that google may screw something up - they can do that if they want, and we can react. I do not accept any responsibility to "not think of ideas which would help me, because some other group may do something bad with them". How could you even go through the day, if you hold yourself responsible for potentially bad things other people could do? Invent new medicine? Oh that's bad, maybe an evil army would use it to keep their soldiers alive. The entire point of life is to fight bad things and support good ones; I'm not going to just stop trying to progress. My point is more that google's chokehold on mapping has meant nearly ZERO product innovation has happened in this space for 10+ years.

epivosism 3y ago

I often wish I could tell Gemini or some other ai my general preferences & interests (unique parks, board games, bonsai, pickleball courts etc) and while I was driving, google maps would occasionally pop up a silent notice saying "did you know, just 1 mile ahead is an exit leading to a nearby world-famous bonsai exhibit that is open now) They could do this really really easily, and it would be EPIC and offer you the chance to discover things you basically NEVER would know about otherwise...

toyg 3y ago
On one side, yes, great. On the other side: more notifications while driving? No, thanks - bad for safety, likely to be very annoying, and extremely likely to be coopted by adsense ("did you know? Just 1 mile ahead you'll find the newest McDonald's in the city...")
- epivosism 3y ago
  It would be opt in, obviously. I don't agree with these kind of moral hazard arguments which attempt to prove progress is impossible. It's not my problem that google may screw something up - they can do that if they want, and we can react. I do not accept any responsibility to "not think of ideas which would help me, because some other group may do something bad with them". How could you even go through the day, if you hold yourself responsible for potentially bad things other people could do? Invent new medicine? Oh that's bad, maybe an evil army would use it to keep their soldiers alive. The entire point of life is to fight bad things and support good ones; I'm not going to just stop trying to progress. My point is more that google's chokehold on mapping has meant nearly ZERO product innovation has happened in this space for 10+ years.