@futurebird None of the above, with the caveat I haven't been on the street downtown in years. So maybe?

@kristinHenry @futurebird
In Germany I've seen cellphone chargers (USB outlets) in waiting areas in train stations, and in buses and trains, but not just somewhere out on the street.

@futurebird

Local council renovated the local ferry wharf area.

There are a few of these solar powered charging benches at the waterfront now.

Down the big smoke, in Sydney, there are bus shelters, kiosks, toilets, information panels.

The contact owner pays for the regular cleaning and maintenance and they get to show advertising in return.

But the council also get to display information, event information and the police can have emergency information displayed. Eg NYE or VIVID they might use it to direct people away to other areas that are not over crowded.

The city also has a volunteer ambassador program, that sees people at Circular Quay, and roving around the city, to give advice and knowledge on local landmarks, attractions, transport, shops and restaurants etc.

They also have a town crier.

@futurebird @jamey As Manhattan BP, Mark Levine used LinkNYC to promote Community Board meetings. and in the last week I've been seeing promos from assemblyman Alex Bores for his district town hall. I look forward to seeing Mamdani's videos, which I've somehow missed so far.

I love some of the local artists they feature, too.

@futurebird
Are Streets in Australian cities included?

@Su_G

any city in the world but NYC.

@futurebird I think the first question is a little confusing, because a lot of people carry power banks, myself included, but there's not like, a charging station on the street, so yes, but because you provide your own power, not because the city accommodates you.

@futurebird this is hard to reply to because:

(1) phone booths have become extremely rare, but they still exist and work

(2) I have found a couple of solar powered bench chargers with USB ports around but never managed to get them to work reliably.

So on the one hand, I'd like to check a couple of those, OTOH, «not really»?

@futurebird @linuxandyarn @johntimaeus I would say it blew right over you.

@futurebird I'm not sure about cities, but here in Italy most municipalities, especially the small ones, have something like this

which tends to have municipal information and be pretty useless, since they only fit a small amount of text; they don't have ads, but they also don't provide power for phones nor a way to call emergency services or anything.

(in the cities there are some places where you can charge phones, but I think those are mostly private and paid for by ads, lots of ads)

@vfrmedia @futurebird ooh, fancy! Ipswich is clearly much posher than Stoke-on-Trent, but then, everywhere is.

@futurebird Charge the phone on the street? No.

However, we do have USB charging points on many of the buses. (Run by a company whose major shareholder is the council).

@futurebird@sauropods.win In the UK we have the same sort of hardware being used primarily for advertising, exploiting a loophole in the planning regulations that allows telecoms companies to install phone boxes. By providing WiFi and/or phone calls, they're allowed to clutter our pedestrian areas with obnoxious advertising screens that nobody really wants.

I've never actually tried to use them for telecoms services, but I've cycled past while bored teenagers were making hoax calls from one...

Nice to know that they're being used for something good elsewhere, though.

@futurebird@sauropods.win rummages in the photo archive

Does this count as 'public service'?

@futurebird

Your suggestion that the camera feeds should go to public screens is interesting (because I had the same idea, haha).

If a public space is covered with cameras but the feeds are all visible to the public, then it is still just a public space. Except that crime and police brutality will always have witnesses.

@darkling @futurebird further in towards London from where @darkling is, there are information screens that sometimes have phone ports and allow you to make emergency calls (and sometimes non emergency). They're very patchy though.

@Phosphenes
I wanted to make a suggestion that would make the power imbalance caused by one group having control of the surveillance data and how they are released apparent.

As soon as these people imagine every ordinary person in command of such footage? Arranging it to tell our own stories? Then suddenly they find surveillance odious and invasive.

They decided to just turn the cameras off rather than try my egalitarian surveillance experiment. (that may be for the best)

@futurebird @Phosphenes
Is there a city office you could make your suggestions to?

Mamdani gives the impression he's trying to be receptive to constituent concerns. Though, not living there myself, I'm not clear how well this translates to actually listening to and combing through proposals.

@futurebird I lived in NYC for a few years (about a decade ago) , now live in a mapdot where even for people who found smartphones continually useful (I really don't & thusly rarely have one with me), I don't see any of these things as even plausibly helpful to anyone, a horse-drawn carriage loop up & down mainstreet and 1 or 2 parallel ones with a radio & camera or similar being far more sensible.

But beyond that for the state capital that I tend to visit about once a week ( Jefferson City, MO ) & a further one that's actually larger (Columbia, MO), both having bus systems, I believe in most medical centers & libraries their are charging stations.

Those bigger city's do have "information" screens that pretty frequently made me sick with their ads & PSAs, are near most charging stations, so I can avoid the entire mess together & generally do so.

*Next time I'm in Jefferson & Columbia I will look at a few of the bus shelters, but to my current knowledge & easy lookup, beyond a few businesses with charging kiosks that aren't free unless you're a student, it's limited to libraries & medical centers. I am hoping to find out if the radioactive manure that Link is, has similar in any of the cities I now frequently visit. If I do find it in one of said cities, odds are I'll severely curtail if not end those visits over said mess.

@linuxandyarn @futurebird @johntimaeus if you wind ‘em up regular