I wonder how much something like that would answer the why too. As an example, if a person threw something across a room and broke it without an obvious reason, could you look at a complete record of their history, and the history of the people around them, and figure out the reason. Would you be able to see signs of anger building through the day and look back to the root cause?

I read an Arthur C Clarke book a few years ago, and it was based around a device that could see anything, anywhere, some sort of microscopic portal I think. One of the characters used it to look back in time following someone’s DNA, so seeing their mother, then their mother’s mother and so on, and eventually saw the intelligence disappear from the distant ancestors eyes. I’m wording it badly, but the idea stuck with me.

I’d love to know when that first spark of intelligence showed up, that separated us from animals, and what our ancestors either side of that divide did differently and similarly. I doubt that there would have been any significant differences at first, but those subtle differences could be fascinating :)

Did anyone see what I did on a may 16th 2011 at 7:16pm?

Wait, that was you?! 😱

Ah, sorry, I didn’t think of that side of things. I was thinking more along the lines of it could solve things that everyone agrees is a crime, like murder.

My line of thought was more just would you want the easy answers, or would you prefer to have to work for them.

Out of curiosity, what sort of things would you explore? I enjoy researching certain things, so having all the answers would spoil that for me.

the success of Ed Sheerin

That made me snort laugh :D

I’d really just want to know dumb stuff…

I like your thinking. I was thinking mostly about stuff that is hard to research, the more serious things, I hadn’t thought about the ‘dumb’ stuff too. That sounds like a lot more fun :)

Also, I’d use it to figure out when my kids are lying. They all break my shit, but I want to know who to blame for what.

That raises an interesting question - where would the balance be between their privacy and your rights as a parent. You need to know at least some of their private information to teach them as you raise them, but would something like the scenario you raised cross the line into being invasive?

I haven’t seen enough of One Piece to ask bait questions yet, I’m only half way through the Netflix series :)

I was thinking that jobs would be one of the solved problems, as in you only have to work if you want to. I’m more curious about whether people would prefer to do the research because they enjoy it, or if they’d rather just tell the computer to give them their full family tree, for example.

I’m Welsh, and my wife is a Welsh speaker, and we both missed that one 🙈🤣

I’ve heard that if it’s cooked right, it’s really gooooo00000000ooooooood

sorry

Exactly. Then when you clean your bathroom, you clean up all the shit particles along with whatever else is in there.

Well, it’s better than letting the tiny particles of shit float through your home until the smell disperses

I’m going to blow your mind - bathroom doors can be closed 🤯

They don’t shove them to the side, they put the new kidney in the front 👍

If you haven’t been back yet, it might be worth emailing them instead, and getting a response in writing

They’ve already got his chin

I’m not sure about things like changing timetables. I know that a lot of places have published timetables that can be added to OSM, but I don’t know if they can be automatically updated or if they would have to be done manually.

In case you haven’t already seen it, MapComplete has a cycling layer that lets you add details to the map. The data is added to OpenStreetMap, so it benefits everyone too 🙂

Street Complete has a map with an overlay that looks kind of like the Pokemon Go map, but it has lots of different icons where it needs more data. Tapping an icon will give you a question based on the icon type, and will be something like ‘what is the road surface here’, or what is the number of this building '.

It’s pretty easy to use, and if you don’t know the answer, or are not confident about answering it, you don’t have to.

Like you say, with OpenStreetMap itself, you don’t get questions and you add things directly to the map manually. It can sound complicated, but you can do anything from adding a single node (a dot) and marking it as the tree in the town square, to drawing a box and labeling it as a building, all the way up to adding bus routes and power lines, like one person on the Discord is doing around Wales at the moment.

As long as the thing actually exists on the ground, you can add it to OSM, and you can do as much or as little as you like. Any detail is better than no detail 👍

StreetComplete is another good app for adding details to the map, and it lets you select the type of things you want to add 👍