Hacker News: gentile

New comment by gentile in "CoMaps: The Offline App That Guided Rescuers Without a Signal in Venezuela"

gentile — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 23:03:32 +0000

You can download Osmand~ from F-droid which doesn't limit downloads. Or you could even download the map from another provider like bbbike or geofabrik, use osmandmapcreator (needs java) to convert the pbf to obf and then import it into the phone.

New comment by gentile in "Organic Maps"

gentile — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:27:28 +0000

I've been making some custom maps for both Osmand and Comaps. The main big positive for Comaps I've seen is Android Auto being available freely (but you have osmand+ so moot point). But having used both, the tooling for osmand is far more mature. Creating an obf file (osmand file type) is a lot easier than the process for an mwm file (comaps file type). Far more routing or ui customization options in osmand and routing.xml files for even more advanced custom time penalties/weighting profiles.

New comment by gentile in "Deflock hits 100k ALPRs Mapped in USA"

gentile — Sun, 31 May 2026 20:27:17 +0000

The 100k figure is an overestimate by a few percent. The OpenStreetMap data for ALPRs is pretty good, but there is some duplication. I (recently) programmatically identified ~2.5k such instances. https://pickpj.github.io/Mapping/FIock/similar.html It has openstreetmap links attached for those who want to help fix the data.

Editing PBF files to avoid Flock cameras (with Android Auto)

gentile — Wed, 20 May 2026 14:44:54 +0000

Article URL: https://pickpj.github.io/Mapping/FIock/bigbrouter.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48208751

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by gentile in "Top laptops to use with FreeBSD"

gentile — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:46:39 +0000

Consider balling up some electrical tape underneath the Ram stick. This solved this very specific issue with my laptop that was flexing too much and crashing.

New comment by gentile in "An interactive map of Flock Cams"

gentile — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:52:21 +0000

Download osm data, extract roads and surveillance, gpd overlay how=difference, remove/edit the different osmid's, write to pbf file, convert to obf file w/ osmandmapcreator, import into OsmAnd.

Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs on your phone.

Edit: link https://github.com/pickpj/Big-B-Router - I tend to find ALPRs that are missing in the OSM data, so keep on updating OSM data.

New comment by gentile in "OsmAnd’s Faster Offline Navigation (2025)"

gentile — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:51:09 +0000

To add, a bit complicated, but osm data can be edited with osmium (cpp) or pyosmium (python). Then the edited data can be put into osmandmapcreator to generate the file to use in Osmand. (I used this to route around ALPRs)

Show HN: Big B-Router – Steps to create ALPR-less maps for OsmAnd with OSM data

gentile — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:29:55 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/pickpj/Big-B-Router

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47047865

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by gentile in "Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto"

gentile — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 14:44:42 +0000

Yes, it just uses the shapefile from the tokyo open data site.

https://catalog.data.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/dataset/t000008d00000...

It's a quarto site so if you navigate to the repository of the github page you can see the python code used to generate the map/choropleth.

New comment by gentile in "Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto"

gentile — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 23:17:11 +0000

Some more context for Japan's land use (it does not differ prefecturally; some local regulations like kyoto and building colors)

The basics of Japan's Land use rules in english (only 8 pages; mostly tables/pictures and very straightforward): https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001050453.pdf

- In the "Control of Building Use by Land Use Zones" you can see how even the most exclusive of zoning enables "Houses with other small scale function", Clinics, Schools or stores with very small footprints.

- Structures are restricted by the shape, shadow, and floor area.

- No mention of "single-family" housing.

A map (of Tokyo) overlaying the gradient of zoning from least to most permissive. You can see how the up-zoning follows the major roads: https://tokyochizu.github.io/zoning.html

New comment by gentile in "Guide to Japanese Idioms"

gentile — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 22:48:27 +0000

I like:

Kaeru no tsura ni shonnbenn, カエルの面に小便, (Like) piss on a frogs face;

Basically the idiom "like water off a ducks back"

New comment by gentile in "How I Got a Digital Nomad Visa for Japan"

gentile — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 16:00:00 +0000

It's mentioned in the article, the US embassy advises against unauthorized employment. https://jp.usembassy.gov/services/visas-japan-u-s-citizens/

New comment by gentile in "Japan cracks down on use of rideable electric suitcases amid tourist boom"

gentile — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 23:12:15 +0000

A license isn't needed for an electric bicycle. The law states that it is classified as an electric bicycle if it is only pedal assist and only up to 24kph (15mph). The issue arises when either there are no pedals, or it can be operated without using pedals, like these suitcases. Electric only operation moves the classification to a scooter, thus license needed.

https://archive.ph/Fw5lX

https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/kotsu/jikoboshi/elec...

New comment by gentile in "How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes"

gentile — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 22:27:07 +0000

I only have some light use cases, so I use a cheap laptop (<$250) with a ryzen APU 8gb soldered/shared ram. Then added a 16gb ram stick, booted off a usb bios from github, increased uma buffer to 8gb. I had stable diffusion working, it was slow, but I'm pretty sure its faster than cpu/ram (2 min for 512x512 20-25 step).

New comment by gentile in "Browser extension that globally blocks vertical video?"

gentile — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 18:05:11 +0000

On youtube you can block the section with shorts in them with ublock (rclick > block element), this was good enough for my use. I don't know about other sites.

New comment by gentile in "GPT-4o"

gentile — Mon, 13 May 2024 18:27:06 +0000

There is a spelling mistake in the japanese translation under language tokenization. In こんにちわ, わ should be は.