People in San Francisco Are Mad That a New App Lets You Spy on Bars to See How Busy They Are

I like being able to check how busy a place is, but not like this. Simple head count or an average wait time is good. Using web cams is creepy overkill. Typical tech bro invasive shit.

Google Maps already provides this, and it’s pretty handy.

I believe they do this the same way they do traffic jams, by seeing how many android phones are at the location vs. average.

iPhones will report it too if they have Maps open.

/stares in smart glasses

Silicon Valley once again solving a problem nobody actually has.

I don’t know about nobody. Did you see what “one horny user” wrote?

Where’s my husband? - desperate housewives of silicon valley

Inverted alcoholics have this problem…I guess…

You have to drink a lot to become inverted.

Finding a place that’s not too crowded and nice for you is a problem I’ve often had with people.

So San Francisco just invented the webcam? (Btw, Google Maps already shows how busy establishments are.)

Doesn’t Google Maps show trends instead of live numbers?

Edit: I used “numbers” because I wasn’t sure how to end my question. Stats? Values?

It has both.

It also doesn’t have numbers, it has unlabeled columns.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the way it determines how busy places are would be considered a bigger privacy violation than these webcams (which only show people in their areas while Google somehow can report on how busy many arbitrary locations are vs their usual).

“Busy”, “More busy than usual”,… Not absolute numbers.

Depends on the area (maybe), but I think it can do either.

They could very easily just implement some rudimentary person identification algos and output only a headcount.

Pretty sure you can do that with OpenCV.

I think Google does this with your phone. I can see how busy various places are by looking them up on Google maps. Really useful for my local Costco.

So when is your Costco not busy? Genuine question as I have gone there mid-day during the week and it will still be packed. One day I went 30 min before close and the parking lot was still full.

There’s busy and there’s “checkout lines literally to the back of the store”

I’ve noticed usually in the middle of the afternoon, before 4. Otherwise you’ll get the people who left early to go to Costco.

Weekends near the end of the day, oddly enough, usually are quiet as well.

I think you’re correct, but wouldn’t this only work if you are running either android, or google maps, and have location on?

Its accurate enough but still an estimate, is the point i am getting at.

Conceivably a webcam + opencv headcount would be more precise, if the cameras covered the whole space and could account for viewing the same person from a different angle.

Its like how google can give you an estimate of bus times, but if there is a local city app that specifically interfaces directly with the actually city busses, it’ll be more accurate.

Your example with the buses is wrong. There is a standard called GTFS and public transport companies publish their fleet status and timetable according to this standard, Google just reads and displays this data. Nowadays you should see the same data in the official apps and gmaps. There are even foss solutions displaying the same thing like transportr.app

You can browse this data worldwide on https://www.transit.land

Doesn’t work that well in my experience. A place that’s mostly empty on weekdays often shows it’s really busy during weekend evenings because it is, comparatively but it’s not crowded or anything

Shh don’t ruin a “viral” story

I have this capability with my home assistant/frigate setup. Literally have a camera pointed at my back patio right now that says “Cats: 2” Cause my cats are sleeping on the couch out there.

pretty sure they could just pull the number of open tabs

I have no experience with the software involved in that, but I do know that generally, anything connected to a POS system probably should not be connected to a publicly accessible… anything.

Does this software even have APIs to do something like that?

Or could you just point a webcam at a screen or portion of a screen that the default software indicates open tab count on lol?

“Just go to a fucking bar,” she added, seeming to balk at the purpose of the app. “And if it’s not cool you go to another bar.”

I’d rather not. A way to find a nice bar without having to visit several would be nice, not sure having it all live streamed online is the solution

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People in San Francisco Are Mad That a New App Lets You Spy on Bars to See How Busy They Are(gizmodo.com)

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