Hacker News: jonash54

New comment by jonash54 in "Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions"

jonash54 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:52:28 +0000

A problem of open GeoData is very much their coverage and availability in the EU. While the countries and their survey offices are required to release high value datasets in standardized form, some simply don’t. In Germany we have 16 states and every one of them has their own standard and pipelines for generating that data, and everyone releases it differently. Take LiDAR: Bavaria should be distributing it through OpenData portals and is required to by the EU, but they simply ignore that and charge 8000€ for it. Building international or even EU wide geo-projects from OpenData like https://hillsha.de is difficult because of that, you never get full coverage.

But as a tool for mapbuilders for small areas or planned tours i think this could be great

New comment by jonash54 in "Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions"

jonash54 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:14:37 +0000

I miss such a landmark feature in all available routing apps and think it will become standard in selfdriving cars where there is more possibility for the driver to look around the landscape

New comment by jonash54 in "Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions"

jonash54 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:11:36 +0000

I agree and for me that weirdly felt more natural

The Question Concerning Technology – Martin Heidegger (Wikipedia)

jonash54 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:26:31 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Technology

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49198872

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jonash54 in "Show HN: Wikipedia Importance Map. Every article sized by its pagerank on a map"

jonash54 — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:04:28 +0000

don't get why this didn't get more upvotes. it's a really cool idea and very eye opening! Thank you for your work!

New comment by jonash54 in "Plotlines: Every place and journey in every literature classic, on one map"

jonash54 — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:50:21 +0000

nice idea!

New comment by jonash54 in "A detailed Lidar map of England and Wales"

jonash54 — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:42:48 +0000

Nice Work! Are you hosting the WMS yourself? I'm hosting one for my region of germany in 0,25m resolution and it's about 100gb already. Whole of UK must be a pretty massive TIF.

I am working on a site for downloading and using high-res lidar data internationally. Maybe check it out if you're interested: https://hillsha.de/

New comment by jonash54 in "Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)"

jonash54 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:32:50 +0000

I love the etymology of the word "world" it's a combination of:

weraz = “man” and aldiz = “age, lifetime”.

Literally meaning “era/age of man”

Alchemy and AI – Hubert Dreyfus (1965) [pdf]

jonash54 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:27:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2006/P3244.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49170344

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Made a website for downloading EU and US LiDAR scans and terrain models

jonash54 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:22:18 +0000

Article URL: https://hillsha.de

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48888609

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by jonash54 in "Geosql: A Claude/Codex skill for geospatial data"

jonash54 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:00:03 +0000

LOVE the fact that LiDAR is OpenData!

I am currently working on a website https://hillsha.de that makes it easy to download LiDAR las/laz files for almost every place in europe, the US and some other regions. I also made an iOS app for the same use-case, which can render the LiDAR data in 3D and 2D without PDAL and GDAL. It uses a vibe-coded library instead that combines both in native Swift. The iOS app is still in testing but works great.

Implementing France was a lot more comfortable than almost every other country, very well structured metadata and naming conventions. So thanks for that

(i work at the german mapping agency but this is a private project since i just love working with LiDAR hillshades)

New comment by jonash54 in "Mistral's Robostral Navigate: a state of the art robotics navigation model"

jonash54 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:33:20 +0000

Producing specific niche models for 100 year old industries that have mountains of data and warehouses full of folders will be the european take on AI.

It may come late but it‘ll be safe and reliable. It also requires a lot of OCR.

New comment by jonash54 in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

jonash54 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 09:46:37 +0000

Exactly. As a german i can say we don‘t care about your salary, we only really care about your language and culture. If you move to a foreign country, learn their language, it‘s literally the only way to integrate into a culture. Germans frown upon rich, tax-paying immigrants that don‘t try to learn german way more than they frown upon B1 speaking ones that don‘t have a job. It‘s about culture, not money. It‘s not the US lol

European leaders meet with the Trump and Amodei over Fable 5

jonash54 — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 05:27:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-donald-trump-anthropic-amodei-row-at-g7/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48566084

Points: 4

# Comments: 0