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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
In the area where I live, Google Maps has a huge highway fetish and often it is more relaxing to take the smaller roads.
You can turn off all those settings though, one of the few things Google still does right.
We call that waze
Woooops, seems there's a bit of traffic here. Let me redirect you through this small back road that's definitely not crowded now because I've been redirecting everyone there since 5 minutes ago.
Someone in my family was briefly obsessed with the idea that Google had a habit of gathering information by treating its own users as guinea pigs. Sending users on routes that would help Google gather traffic flow information, rather than routes that made the best use of users' time.
As far as I know, that was an internet rumor, not the result of evidence or investigation. But it's the kind of allegation that's pretty much impossible to disprove.
Its either this or their routing alghoritm is being developed in kindergarten.
It is 100% confirmed that Google will route traffic outside of communities if community leaders request it. The famous example was the wealthy neighborhood that had a great view of the famous "Hollywood" sign who got annoyed at tourists being directed there to admire it.
Apologies but this Daily Mail article is the best I can find. It was back in 2014 and by now most of the other coverage is either behind a paywall or sites that no longer exist.
AFAIK Google does "spread" routes a bit if sufficient, close-enough alternatives exist. That helps reduce congestion, which at a large enough scale does help users to reach their destination faster than if they all took the "fastest" route.
Would it be a surprise? How would it gather traffic data if they don't send a few cars down an unpopular path? Not saying it is right.
I stopped trusting it when I drove to north Carolina and it had me get off 40 to take some backwater road that went through several small towns and actually made the trip longer and used more fuel.
It tried to do it on the same route a different day. I ignored it and the trip time decreased by 20 min when I skipped that part of the route and just stayed on 40.
For some reason? We don't live in a star trek like utopia. This is exactly how this technology is supposed to work in a capitalist society.
Just imagine when you are in a self driving car you will have no choice at all.
You could be moved through multiple toll roads. Or which toll owner is the highest bidder. Google knows everything about you through your.data. if you are poor you will be routed out of the way or into parking lot like traffic while other roads are kept clear for the affluent.
People talking about self-driving cars and the need to solve the trolley problem are out of touch with reality. The trolley problem is solved. The richest person in the accident will always survive. And that is easily determined by your data.
This is the world we live in and how the tech will be used. It's the same issue with the"AI is just a tool" folks.
A knife is just a tool too. But would you want to live in a world where all the knives are owned solely by socio paths that have all the power in society?
Always check no tolls. It'll always recommend the toll, unless there is an accident or major traffic disruption, even if it only saves 1 min. Rarely are tolls worth it outside peak hour.
One time I was making my way home, about a 4 hour drive, and set it in google maps. I had forgot to turn off tolls,and started driving. It was a real surprise when I ended up at a ferry to cross Lake Michigan. I dont think they took cars, and it was 11pm anyway so they were closed. Thanks google! Idk how thats supposed to help when the ferry is scheduled for every couple hours. Who would even want that option? It didnt save any time unless you could hop on a ferry as soon as you got there.
"No ferries" is a separate checkbox
No, it counted the ferry as a toll. Turning off tolls corrected the issue.
I wish there was a quicker toggle for tolls. I frequently do a drive that would take an extra 3-4 hours without tolls, so having to switch it on and off is a pain.
I wish there was a way to set how much I value my time and every extra mile driven, so that it would select only those tolls that are a good trade-off.
Google Maps have gotten quite a lot worse over tgr last few years. I have tried various alternatives but none function properly. Live traffic routing is a big problem for alternatives. I have tried Magic Earth and Nunav but had to revert back to Google Maps in both cases.
Live traffic routing is hard to do when you aren't installed on every device by default and using google's invasive services to get ya position
What about Waze? I think it's okay just Google maps with extra steps and less routes to choose from.
Waze is literally just Google Maps with different route settings.
But maybe those route settings are exactly what they are looking for.
Controversial opinion: Apple Maps has far superior navigation currently. As in it will actually give correct lane guidance and haven’t directed me to the wrong place yet (Google Maps suggested the wrong ferry terminal recently, lol)
Also tried a few alternatives but a lot of the free apps have given the same strange directions as Google, or missed important shit like one way road directions.
Apple Maps does not update their map as frequently though.
I drive a lot for work and frequently have to go into neighborhoods that are currently being built or were built 1 to 2 years ago. Even the ones that finished construction over a year ago either do not have the addresses in the correct place, or one just flat out shows up as an empty field with no roads despite being fully finished. This is very fun at midnight on a Saturday when the builder decided to put all the house numbers as engraved numbers on grey bricks built into the garage corner.
Google Maps on the other hand will take me to where I need to go nearly all the time.
Or, it's faster but you need to zigzag through residential streets and eventually make dangerous left turns into traffic without a light or stop sign to stop the heavy traffic in both directions.
Oops, it took too long to turn so it's no longer faster-- why didn't you just stay in the main boulevard? Silly human.
So many here are so happily accepting the very concept of a toll road, it's kind of gross.
would you rather have general taxes be higher? someone has to pay for road upkeep.
in my state we refuse to raise the gas tax, so tolls go up, registration fees, etc.
we had a law that pegged the gas tax to inflation, and a ballot measure removed it, because the citizens are idiots. so now we all pay like double our registration fees.
would you rather have general taxes be higher?
Yes. Our toll roads in Oklahoma are in terrible shape and are expensive to use.
me too, but 80% of my fellow citizens don't agree. they think taxes are too high and want them lower.
but also we need to spend more on schools, infrastucture, etc...
almost like they can't do basic math...
Most of them barely pay taxes as it is.
Higher taxes or having to stop and queue every couple of kilometers?
Higher taxes obviously, my time is worth a lot more.
Yes. Higher taxes for the rich are always the answer. They alone can afford to cover the costs. For anyone making $1 mil/yr USD or less, your taxes from all sources should be $0. The lowest paid citizens are the hardest workers; we deserve a break.
right, so everyone who isn't you should pay higher taxes... but not you, you shouldn't pay any! because you're not rich! you're just a low paid hard working person.
Funny thing about that though, is the people making milllions don't think they are rich either.
1 million is too high. Start at 250K as the lowest taxed (not counting below that which is zero) and it goes up proportionally from there. And no cap in it either, if someone makes a trillion their tax should be over 100%.
why do you think it's gross?
Not OC but I agree with him. Where I live, the toll roads are owned by private corporations, some of them entirely foreign owned corporations, and the rates are obscenely high. It isn't about maintaining the road; instead it is about rent seeking behavior and maximizing shareholder profits. That is abhorrent to me. Public goods should be owned by the public.
Every time I have to open that piece of shit I end up screaming at it, screaming!
Yeah, but it brings you past this commercial zone where a number of chains and franchises pay Google a lot of advertising money.
This one. Google isn't free. It's augmented reality advertising.
The most generous guess is that it is doing some exploratory investigation of how long the other paths are currently taking. For any navigation app to be very accurate for most users, it needs to be very inaccurate for some users. It won't know that taking this 30 minute detour is worth taking without someone taking that detour and another person sitting through the traffic that made the detour worthwhile. And since traffic changes over time, it would need to continually do that exploration.
Though it wouldn't surprise me if that's not the only factor and that there's some enshitification going on on top of this. One guess in that angle: a special secret VIP mode where people who have given Google a lot of money get people directed away from their route.
Fun points. I don't trust google or crapple or microsoft(bill gates in bed).
Google maps has taken to routing me onto unsafe roads for walking and biking instead of available trails which are 1000x safer. They removed the "beta" marker long ago but it was shit like that they were concerned about getting sued for. Instead of focusing on fixing shit like that they were busy monetizing and only removed the beta marker once they realized they were legally invincible.
Every time I visit my family in Wales Google tries to take me away from the perfectly reliable A55 and onto some ungodly assemblage of extremely narrow country roads and tenuous mountain passes. Sometimes it offers them to me but I've caught it secretly changing my precalculated route without my input. Unfortunately I've tried several alternatives (various osm apps, here wego) and the only real alternative is Waze... which is owned by Google. We are nothing but cattle to them. I think Google is trying to kill me.
In any case, alternate routes are only faster for the first three people who use them. After that you are no worse off in the first traffic jam than in the alternate traffic jam.