Years ago I did a video about "Link NYC" I was mostly concerned about the possibility of surveillance through the cameras.
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@futurebird
Are Streets in Australian cities included?
any city in the world but NYC.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@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.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@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»?
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I just walked right into this one didn't I MY GOD WOMAN
@futurebird @linuxandyarn @johntimaeus I would say it blew right over you.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@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)
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there are some kinds of combined ad screen / local information board / telephone in my town (Ipswich, UK), I think they are operated by British Telecom. I think you can plug in a USB to charge phones with them (its also allowed to charge devices in the library, although that depends on their opening hours)
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@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).
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@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 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'?
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They have wired internet connections IDK if it is ethernet or just cable.
Each also has a wifi hotspot but it's very slow and annoying to use.
Using the web browser on the little screen is faster, but not very private.
"The cameras are turned off by default, and footage captured from any active cameras is stored for no longer than seven days unless the footage is necessary to investigate an incident."
I think public backlash has lead them to say this.
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.
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@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).
@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.
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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.
@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)
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@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.
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Hey, people in other cities than NYC:
1. Do you have a way to charge your phone on the street?
2. Are there municipal information screens? Do they show ads?
3. Is there public wifi? Is it any good?
4. Can you make a phonecall on the street even if you don't have a cellphone?
@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.
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@futurebird @johntimaeus So, can Beauforts scale?
@linuxandyarn @futurebird @johntimaeus if you wind ‘em up regular
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@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.I just finished Adam Roberts' #sciFi book "Gradisil".
It has robots hanging around providing "services" and if you approach one, it tries to sell you something. Don't tell Google.
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@futurebird @linuxandyarn @johntimaeus I would say it blew right over you.
@wmd @futurebird @linuxandyarn
"... but this pun generator doesn't just go to 10, it goes to 12!"
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Some observations about how linkNYC is used:
* Emergency calls. This was the main reason something needed to replace the payphones. Even at time of removal payphones were still important for emergencies.
* Information network: the screens can get information to the whole city in an emergency.
* charging phones: they have USB ports where people charge their phones. Some annoying people complain about "homeless people" (how do you know) using them? IDK I've used them in a pinch.
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@futurebird "These chargers are only for the landed aristocracy. How dare you!"
