I have a personal distaste for the multi-syllable word in the headline. I acknowledge that may be a 'me' thing, though I do have reasons which are off-topic.
But seeing it prominently displayed on the homepage of this site is offputting, regardless of my feelings about the word in general.
That's how I feel about "performant". Unfortunately I'll never stop seeing such jargon every day or two, working in tech. It is what it is, I guess. :\
It means "of or pertaining to performance". Like "the performant qualities of this software are currently being evaluated", or the one example of its original meaning I could find from Cambridge Dictionary, "What follows is a series of re-mappings of both the performant and the referent functions that emphasizes the collective performance." The word itself doesn't indicate efficient/good performance, nor poor/slow/etc. ... It just refers to the quality or property of performance. For some reason, very recently it started being used to mean "performs well" or "performs optimally" and has transformed into jargon.
I would add to this article that a major issue with Google Maps has been businesses trying to SEO-pad their business names on Google Maps, to the detriment of readability.
This is also against their TOS – the "business name" form is supposed to be their legally registered business name, the one that they probably have signage for. Moderators simply don't enforce this, and with Map Maker basically gone, the community of moderators is somewhat of a cloak and dagger group now.
I have tried to clean some of these up via submissions, because in spite of agreeing with the points of the article and using mostly Apple Maps for navigation, Google Maps still is better in terms of having a lot of community sourced data and overall place discoverability (along with Yelp, which Apple Maps seems to no longer source data from).
Examples of these business names:
- {name} - {city name} Axe Throwing
- {name} License Agency - (Vehicle/Vessel not drivers license)
- {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}
Some of this is a UX problem or perhaps data architecture problem – in the case of local chains, I imagine many are dealing with people calling in orders and showing up at the wrong place to pick up their order. Google Maps could do a better job showing the neighborhood/locality/"local name" of the area in the search results.
> {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}
Wait, what's wrong with this? This is just good practice. It's helpful to be able to, when communicating with someone, unambiguously refer to the exact location, e.g. Westville Chelsea v Westville East v Westville Hudson v Westville Wall Street.
You're not always looking at a map at all times though. If I verbally tell a friend "Let's meet up for lunch at Westville Chelsea", they can then unambiguously locate the exact one later on on their own.
Also, lots of people (especially visitors!) don't know where the neighborhoods actually are. So having the names of the locations in the pins is better than them struggling to figure out exactly which of a series of identically named pins is actually the right one in an area they don't know about.
Problem is the same name is also used for lists of search results – having a neighbourhood name being displayed there can definitively be helpful to distinguish multiple branches of the same company, while also having a higher chance of being at least roughly recognisable to people as compared to specific street names (which is what Google currently displays for POI listings).
Yes exactly, if you want to, say, meet at a specific Marriott hotel and put it in directions, this helps disambiguate. Google Maps does a good job of it without, but will still show you completely different ones if you don’t have the unique-ish name.
Business names have all this useless PTY LTD and not necessarily the differentiator that is required. E.g. two fast food chain places operated by the same franchise holder but are located on opposite sides of the highway. For me as map use I am interested in identifying the one on the lane Northbound in the list of search results while driving.
This would be solved by dividing it up on 2 distinct fields, a business name field and a title field. Then a business can put their SEO crap in the title field and google maps can decide how much of the info to display when.
Of course moderation would still be a thing, perhaps a character limit of 25 for the name should be enforced unless they can demonstrate why that is too little.
Coincidently the separate fields is how Apple Maps does it, although their title field appears made up of a category list item, presumably to keep it consistent and free of spam.
> {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}
What I'm starting to see a lot which is frustrating is:
{name of completely not local chain} - {neighborhood or city name}
Such as "Local Town Plumbing" with a national telephone number to some plumber referral service and will be located where there is an empty field or other non-business.
I was disappointed that apple took yelp stuff away from apple maps as well. For restaurants though, clicking on the "menu" link for restaurants takes me to the yelp page for that restaurant.
Obligatory business listing:
https://goo.gl/maps/nRH1hnjAkJKfpLcu8
(yes, this is real and apparently pretty decent)
(and yes, the name went viral which doubled the marketing win)
Daimler Truck, one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, has unveiled its first heavy-duty, battery-electric truck – the Mercedes-Benz eActros LongHaul – with a new e-axle and a range of 500kms.
Electric truck maker Janus has debuted the first battery-powered prime mover in Australia and has plans to set up battery swap stations up and down the eastern seaboard within months. .. a first taste of the company’s plans to electrify long haul truck fleets using only batteries.
> Drivers must not exceed 4.5 hours of driving without taking a 45-minute break and a standard day of driving for a HGV driver is considered to be 9 hours long.
The speed limit for this vehicle will be either 80km/h or 100km/h, I'm not sure how they decide, but with some good logistics for a rapid charge part-way through that's not far off.
Mainland USofA is the same land area as Australia.
500 kms w/out having to stop is a long leg.
Being able to stop and swap out | replace batteries in the same time as a refueling | load | unload is indeed "a long haul technology" as it enables long haul trucking.
I tried this and I'm wondering if anyone involved in this project was around when Space Cadet Pinball dropped, on Windows 95 in 1995. Because this is like a parody of that.
I suspect some of these are meant to get a rise, but I'll bite.
> + Commuting
Prior to 2020 this was the vast majority of all jobs, including tech. Most got by just fine. And today still encompasses the majority of jobs, so I would argue this is classist.
> + Neglecting talking to family
Many people have reasons not to talk to family that end up with positive mental health outcomes. Sure, it can be negative, but this seems exclusionary.
> + A certain age without kids
C'mon. This isn't the 1940s.
Please be careful when putting out lists like this.
This is juxtaposing genuine, universal indicators of depression alongside subjective ones, which when read by the wrong (misinformed, uncertain, etc.) audience, could lead to adverse outcomes.
But seeing it prominently displayed on the homepage of this site is offputting, regardless of my feelings about the word in general.