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

sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • IamAnonymous@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • infeeeee@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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 www.transit.land

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      • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Well dang, I did not know that.

        Thank you for correcting me!

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  • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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

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• Fedizen@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  pretty sure they could just pull the number of open tabs

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  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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?

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