I am working on https://geobase.app/ which is a platform for geospatial full-stack developers.
We have created workflows that a specific to the geospatial, mapping and GIS industry use cases. This is currently in private beta but going live in a few weeks. It is built on top of supabase's self-hosted stack.
Apologies for the shameless plug but do checkout https://geobase.app We built it with such use cases in mind and solves the scaling issues with geo data driven apps. We are in private beta but happy to give you early access if you hit us up.
Acoustic beacons exist for underwater position [0]. They usually connect to a transponder on the surface. Not sure this thing had one. Reading this: "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death."[1] makes me think it was a disaster waiting to happen.
https://getgeodb.com is a hosted CartoDB which is an open source stack built on PostGIS but its notoriously hard to run and configure. So we decided to run it as a service for others... we find it very useful to build apps on top of PostGIS since running them requires configuring middleware like tileservices, data APIs and importing data.
really excited at the beta release of dedicated cloud hosted PostGIS and CartoDB https://getgeodb.com a lot of intense work went into making this happen - it's running bleeding edge PostgreSQL12/PostGIS3 - feedback welcome <3
We have just launched dedicated hosted version of CartoDB which comes with backups and monitoring. CartoDB in case people don't know is an open source geospatial service which runs on top of PostGIS/PostgreSQL. For more info message me via http://cartohost.com
The situation is bad for Shapefiles because people forget to export the prj file and it can get lost in the process of transformation. I feel your frustration - it's just a very old format which encodes data into 4 different files.
This however, has nothing to do with PostGIS. PostGIS will ingest any geo data you give it. and if you don't know the SRID you can use -1. As for the problem of Shapefiles there are better alternative formats now like geojson and spatialite based geodatabases that encode SRID in a single file.
I sort of hope GeoJSON takes off a bit more, it just seems easier to work with at the very minimum with things like Leaflet. Of course you have Bing which uses their own objects for their latest rendition of the Bing Maps v8 JS API. Thankfully using Leaflet we were able to use their imagery instead. Having dealt with Shapefiles I can say it definitely felt like dealing with something quite dated, especially compared to how much simpler JSON can be.
Everybody is hoping something other than shape files eventually takes off, as its's universally agreed to be a pretty terrible format. The problem is that the industry hasn't unified around a single format with GeoJSON, GeoPackage and to a lesser extend KML all trying to become the next shape file.
As it stands however, everybody and everything can read shape files and that cannot be said about any other format.
The real annoying thing is that one of the reasons shapefiles are so bad, and so hard to replace is they fill a bunch of niches in a half assed way and no sane replacement format is going to replace shapefile in all situations.
Need a standardized way to disseminate data that's super easy to ingest? GeoJSON and KML work great there, while GeoPackage is going to be not a great fit for things like APIs plus you can't do a streaming read.
Need a way to edit and work with data locally and maybe send stuff around your office? Geopackage is going to be a much better fit then GeoJSON or KML.
Another 'hidden' feature of shape files that I've seen regularly abused (and abused myself more than once) is that they use the standard dBASE format to store their data. Meaning that all kinds of apps that know nothing about shape files (like Excel or Access) can be used to read and analyse the data stored within them.
Also, most of the data I'm using doesn't have a GeoJSON version publically available- I'm having to trust that someone else converted it correctly, and at a satisfiable resolution.
-1 means unknown projection, though for GeoJSON you can usually assume it's either going to have an EPSG code in there or it's 4326 (the only differences in GeoJSON versions is that in newer versions of GeoJSON it HAS to be in 4326 and in older ones it could say it was something else but most things will break if they get a GeoJSON that's not 4326 even if the GeoJSON has it's CRS info in it).
"governed" probably isn't the right word. HOT is a separate organization from OpenStreetMap. They do a lot of work editing OSM and there are people with overlapping involvement.
In addition to running their own tileserver, they also often produce large format maps in QGIS or what not.
>> In his last State of the Union address, President Obama said America should emulate Germany’s knack for producing skilled workers — “high-school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges.” He was referring specifically to fields like engineering and computer science, but he could just as easily have been talking about high-end cooking
Its called "Fachinformatiker". Its basically a lower tiered version of the University CS degree. Its what is felt to be needed to be taken serious as an "IT-Person" in Germany.
That said nobody ever asked me for that Piece of paper let after 15 years and 4 companys :P
there are 2 main tracks - one is hardware oriented the other more software oriented. In practice that means slightly more electronics or programming classes.
The stuff taught is certainly more practical than the stuff you learn at university but its geared toward 16 years olds. None in my class was that age. It was very surreal being treated as a kid again. And the mandatory ethics and German courses (as well as Sports class) were are real pita.
After years of being successfully self employed in IT, I do my Fachinformatiker-Exam this year for the fun of doing it AND to have the right papers to be part of the gang. In the rare occadions I got asked what I had done before, people looked a bit weired when I told them I was a car salesman a decade ago.
IIRC they could mean two possible classes by using the term "Ethics":
* "Ethik-/Philosophieunterricht": basically you learn philosophy, ie. critical thinking, approaching problems/issues from different points of view, or
* "Ethikunterricht" as in learning ethical behaviour in the context of the profession you're striving to be in, which is most likely common sense crap that HAS to be taught so even "the last idiot" gets it or is at least on the record as having been taught this stuff so the school is not "liable" for potential ethics issues caused by the student.
I could very much be wrong about the latter point as I am enrolled in a similar, but more specialized "learning track" at a German "Fachhochschule" and not in a vocational school.
> Computer Science and Engineering are not the sort of technical degrees one gets from a community college.
You can absolutely get an associates degree in CS from many community colleges, and that can be enough to get an entry-level position at many companies; doubly so if in conjunction with a body of established Open Source work. You'd certainly start at a more junior status, but you could progress upwards from there via work experience and accomplishment.
That would hold even more true for a more focused trade-school-style program.
We have created workflows that a specific to the geospatial, mapping and GIS industry use cases. This is currently in private beta but going live in a few weeks. It is built on top of supabase's self-hosted stack.
We were recently also featured on motherduck's blog https://motherduck.com/blog/pushing-geo-boundaries-with-moth...