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Show HN: A map that tells you if a NYC cafe has WiFi, a restroom, and an outlet (octobrain.one)
131 points by asimova on Oct 1, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 110 comments
I am slowly adding more locations now. This is intended to be a crowdsourced map. Everyone is welcome to add more locations and provide comments/votes here.

Free people from going to a cafe for work only to leave because there's no wifi, restroom, or outlet!!

Demo: https://x.com/KSeisai/status/1708273554041504028?s=20




Is public WiFi a thing in NY these days?

In Sweden you'd just sit down and use your phone as a proxy. It is usually much faster, and also much safer.

I live in a smaller town. Maybe the crowdiness of Manhattan is the issue?


As jrmj notes, phone plans with tethering aren't as common and often come with strings attached.

I use my phone in coffee shops that don't have [acceptable] WiFi. The main drawback is needing to be mindful of phone battery in addition to the laptop battery.

That being said, it's a great resource when you need a space to work at 11am-2pm (when all of the WiFi-offering spots are filled). There are a couple of local coffee shops with no WiFi, that don't forbid laptops – they're usually empty during peak hours.


Although they may exist, I’ve never seen a European provider prohibit tethering.

One would hope such silliness should be illegal.

I just googled it and see that Verizon in the US was successfully sued for blocking tethering .. one would hope that more people take action against companies attempting this.


I use my iPhone and cellular iPad for 80 GB tethering per month used outside of home and work, for instance in a NYC cafe or outside during the summer. I don't like relying on public WiFi for security reasons. I also bring a nice large powercell for additional charge. It adds about an extra pound, but gives me a full recharge on the 16" MacBook Pro.

Using fast.com (Netflix server) I get 56 Mbps down and 24 Mbps up on Verizon with my iPhone 15 Pro Max in Manhattan which is another reason to use WiFi.


The issue is the lack of cheap phone plans that allow tethering. And even the more expensive ones that do often have low data caps.


Why would a provider forbid tethering? And besides the why, how would they even know you're doing that? If I turn on my phones hotspot, doesn't that look exactly like my phone is doing something™ requiring a high bandwidth?


Very annoyingly, the iPhone also has a way for the carrier to somehow disable the mobile hotspot feature of the phone for their sim.

On the mobile hotspot settings page it will just show a message with a link to the carriers website instead of the toggle to enable it, I find it really annoying since as you said I don't understand how there would be a difference in what the usage would look like to the carrier and it feels like Apple is imposing a restriction just for the benefit of the carrier that makes the phone less usable.


This is Apple's fault. Android phones do not have this problem.


Android phones have the exact same issue. For years I had to use an ADB work around to get tethering.


Android does


Not sure if android has that but I never heard of anything like that here in Europe.


Because they want to charge you for the expensive "tethering" option. I know, that's fucked up but the US are not very good at forcing consumer-friendliness on their companies.

On the "how they detect it", unless you're using a VPN they can look at the traffic and easy distinguish "computer traffic" from regular "phone traffic".


TTL, traffic use amounts. Domains not available to mobile apps. your phone tells the network and sometimes implements the restrictions itself


I perpetually keep my Hotspot on my phone on. For family members and my spare phone. It doesn't drain the battery in any noticeable way.

To me it's weird and so much friction to try figure out wifi Hotspot and password and login. Makes me feel like a homeless poor person, as if I can't pay for my own mobile data.


I didn't have internet at my house for a week and had to use my phone hotspot: the amount of heat my phone generated greatly increased while the battery life greatly decreased.

If you're not noticing a drain on your battery from keeping your hotspot on its because no one is connected to it / using it.


I basically never use wifi outside of my house these days


Espresso House (in Sweden) tends to have public access wifi, but it is extremely slow compared to 4G.

What I find more surprising is that Sweden dropped “unlimited” data plans, I’m not aware of any data plan that is unlimited now. So if you want to do some video calls then I would be looking for wifi.


30GB/month will get you very far also for video calls IMO.

But yes that is exactly the thing. Except for the security risks it is just not worth the hassle to go through a captive portal sign-on just to find out that the WiFi is so much worse than using your phone.


What do you mean? There's unlimited data plans, e.g. telenor, tele2, tre, chilimobil, etc.


oooo this is new.

2017 there were none, I checked. Seems like they're back!


They've been around for a very long time as far as I know.


Yet I couldn't find one and I was specifically looking for one. :)

And I've been living in Sweden since 2014, and it was commented on that "they're dissapearing" a few times in the games studio I was working in.

Glad they've been around, but the way you say this seems to indicate that I was lying and there's genuinely no reason for me to do that.


> the way you say this seems to indicate that I was lying

No, I was just saying


Yes, NYC has Wi-Fi at many shops and restaurants, and at the very least, it has these LinkNYC stations that provide free Wi-Fi along with Google Maps and other services.

https://www.link.nyc


What i meant was - is it really needed when everyone has internet in their pocket?


Not everyone does, though, especially foreign tourists that don't have a data plan in the US. It's good to have free public Wi-Fi.


european data plans tend to be cheaper iirc


Cool project, I wanted to contribute for my city but clicking on Sign In. "Continue with Google" seems to be the only option. That made me sad and leave. I know implementing auth is a hassle and might well take more time than adding the map, but it would be nice to have some option beside "Login with Advertising Giant account"


totally a valid point, was focusing on building the product so didn't think too much about the email signup, will allow regular email sign ups soon!


Anecdotally, I’ve noticed most cafes in NYC with more than a handful of seats have a bathroom (even if they hide it) and WiFi. Outlets are pretty much everywhere, it’s more a matter of whether you can get a seat next to one.


a friend and I tried to launch a startup around this a number of years back with really nice mobile apps, and he has a web/Git-based incarnation of something similar going here now: https://cafeandcowork.com


Vaguely remember one called 'coffee & power': https://alternativeto.net/software/coffee-and-power/about/


yeah there have been a few of these. ours was https://cafewifi.com … these projects require a lot of effort and we tried a bunch of ideas, but ultimately had to call it quits after a while on that one


I use that one everyday


I find it surprising that there are cafés without restrooms. In many countries if you have at least one table you are required to have a restroom to be given a license to operate your business.


American cities are poorly legislated and suffer from a tragedy of the commons when it comes to basic public needs like restrooms. We have deep seated issues that keep us from being able to have nice things like that.


A lot of European countries I've been to suffer an even worse result - restaurants are legally allowed to _charge_ already paying customers to use a restroom. Coming from Canada, I can never imagine treating your patrons like that.


What country? I've never experienced this in any European country I've been to.

Edit: no, once. The McDonald's in the Netherlands on the A16 highway, right after the Belgian border has paid toilets, even for customers. It's a disgrace.


I mentioned below, but in my case it was Netherlands and Germany. I'm seeing now it's not a very widespread practice, I just got unlucky last time I visited.


When I visited Paris and Berlin, there were pay toilets.

I'd rather pay for toilets and have them be clean, than free and dirty.


It seems to be a central Europe issue from my anecdotal experience.


Little Germany or Netherlands experience here. But in Austria, Italy and Switzerland I never encountered a toilet in a bar/restaurant you had to pay for.


Never had problem in Denmark, Austria, Italy, Greece, Cyprus but did find places without restrooms in Germany France and UK.


Which countries ? I’ve never been to a place where as an already paying customer I had to pay for the restroom. You often do see signs ‘customers only’ on the restroom though.


If I recall, it was fast food type joints in Netherlands and Germany. What blew my mind was that these places would employ someone to actually stand guard at the washrooms and collect payment. Wild behavior, in my opinion.


I can't recall the last time I've been to a cafe in the US without a bathroom. Perhaps we don't legislate this stuff because we don't have the problem?


where I am, they're only required if you have over a certain number of seats. The mostly pickup/delivery pizza place near me has 2 tables in a comically large empty foyer because I think that was their workaround.


Why is it a requirement?


Having a place to wash your hands is one stated idea of why they're usually required in Canada.

I'm sure governments like the idea of not having to build-out public bathroom infrastructure (which gets a lot harder in places that freeze).


> Having a place to wash your hands

Here (Japan) places that need hand-washing but don't have a toilet will just have a small sink.

E.g. a fast food place in a mall where they don't have their own toilets: https://saga-style.jp/images/2573/files/251552529081.JPG

Convenience store: https://blog-imgs-65.fc2.com/d/a/i/daiwariki/20140731_2.jpg https://uttan.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/IMG_0332.jpg https://chie-pctr.c.yimg.jp/dk/iwiz-chie/que-1087926330?w=20...


>Having a place to wash your hands

My favorite regional 'fast food joint' is "Cookout" (NC/Tenn). Not only is the Big Double Tray a fantastic & delicious value... they have a hand-washing sink immediately next to the ordering line (so you can wash your hands while waiting).

More places need such accessible facilities.


oh yeah, there's a local BBQ place that has a sink before the bathroom, because they don't want you touching anything with your saucy hands.


Rudy's?


Because at some point our public servants had a modicum of integrity in their stated mission: the public good.


One could call it an unfunded mandate for public availability of restrooms. Not that I find that to be a bad thing.

I noticed in Denver a number of places that had gone out of their way to remove seating specifically to avoid having to offer restrooms to the booming homeless population in the urban center there.


Pissing is a basic human need.


I started building something like this last year, but eventually stopped working on it https://nomadz.app/

I still like the concept. But it feels tough to compete with Google Maps in the geo-information / review space. If Google Maps just added a more robust reviewing feature (eg. wifi speed) and metadata (outlets), then there wouldn't be a need for our projects.

Also individually there is inherently no incentive to share some gem of a coffee shop you found with limited seating capacity to strangers on the internet. I had some ideas to work around that, but it's something that really needs to be addressed. It's amazing anyone even bothers to write reviews for any sites (except as a favor to a nice person, or out of revenge for terrible service) given that none of the platforms really incentivize it, which is a shame. As much flack as social media sites get, I do believe there is space for it in this domain - which I guess Google Maps is sort of starting to adopt but Google is just horrendously terrible at trying to do anything in the social media space or UI/UX-related (eg. like a bunch of CS nerds trying to create a women's fashion blog).


Such a niche map is something that is very hard to pull of. You need a community of millions to contribute geodata, so if such a map is not based on OpenStreetMap, it is destined to whither after a few years.

But, don't fret. This is precisely why I made https://mapcomplete.org, where you can create niche maps based on OpenStreetMap. This jumpstarts general information but has the possibility to add very niche questions. The added bonus is that, when you add e.g. a cafe, it'll be available in all other maps as well.

For this topic, I've added a filter to filter on 'has internet access'. I also added the question if a cafe offers electricity, but those haven't been marked in NYC yet; so here is a map with all cafes offering internet access: https://mapcomplete.org/cafes_and_pubs.html?z=9.8&lat=40.697...

Browsing can be done without an account, contributing requires an OSM-account.


On that note, what is the fastest way to make an app that just allows multiple signed in users to mark something on the map? I'd like to make an app that marks all public hand-pumps in India. My hope is that this would increase the hygiene in my country.


I build it in about 2 days with ChatGPT, totally doable. tech stack Nextjs + Typescript + Google Map Api (I use react-google-maps/api package which is much more user friendly).


Wouldn't this be better suited as metadata for OpenStreetMap? I'm sure at least some of these things are already metadata fields there.


Certainly, I'm just trying to use this feature to indirectly promote my app lol (also would like to have full control over UI/UX I guess...)


Why don’t you use the OpenStreetMap data as the backend for your app? You could then submit updates back to OSM.


Why would OpenStreetMap be a better solution than using Google Map apis?


1. Everyone can contribute, like wikipedia (except no edits without account like wikipedia has, we can't have nice things)

2. Way more metadata about places, something you'll never find on google.

3. It's free

4. You can get complete data dumps if you want to.

5. It's not from an ad company/No tracking


Also, if you contribute the data back to OpenStreetMap, many more people will benefit from it, even if they don't know your app. There are so many applications/APIs/services which use OpenStreetMap, which would benefit from more people updating/contributing data to OpenStreetMap.


This project is such a natural fit for using OSM as the entire backend. Surprising choice not to!


6. Better worldwide coverage. The USA and perhaps some other English-speaking countries are the main areas where Google is better than OSM in most practical categories (probably still not in things like trails), but in most countries you've got better coverage with OSM


How would you handle corrections? Surely Google's API doesn't let you submit changes, and it's not like their data is infallible. Particularly for things like whether a place has AC, I wouldn't even know if Google collects that data in the first place.

OSM has tags for a lot of things, you get the data at cost price (that is, you can keep a local copy for free and serve your own queries, or contract some third party that hosts an API like overpass-turbo for you), and so does everyone else when you contribute back.


Because your dataset would come out of the gate very well-populated, and any changes that you contribute back would benefit a large, welcoming community. I highly recommend it, please reach out if you'd like any pointers on how to engage with OSM.


Why did you create something custom instead of contributing to open streetmaps and using the data from there? https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:internet_access

Checked on overpass turbo and there is already a large amount of cafes listed with internet access: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1BeP


Additional OpenStreetMap Tags&Keys:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dcafe

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dtoilets

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:power_supply

One can always make creative frontends for OpenStreetMap data, while participating in the shared crowdsourcing.


Some people just want to make one of their own and I think it’s good


UI/UX, the ease of use + aesthetically pleasing to look at. :D


You can still provide all this while contributing to and using the data


Overpass is great, thanks for sharing that.


Ever since getting an M1 Macbook Pro, I don't care if there aren't any outlets, because the battery life is so great! Now I can sit anywhere I want, including outside in a park under a tree. And I just plug in my phone via usb and keep it charged while using its flat rate unlimited data for internet. Works just fine! And anyway, now most of the coffeeshops in Amsterdam lock up their plugs and have pay stations for recharging phones (for those damn instagramming tourists).


Good God, I've wanted this for the Bay Area for years. How can I help make that happen?

EDIT: oh, it's not just NYC-specific, it's possible to add locations elsewhere. Awesome - I've bookmarked it, and will start contributing next time I'm out-and-about!


For example, San Francisco also already has many cafés listed with internet access on OpenStreetMap: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1BeS


Just added to this map! If enough Bay Area cafes (more than 5) get added to this map, I'll change the title to 'NYC + Bay Area Trigood Cafe' ;D

Reply to Edit: Yeahhhhhh


You can’t change titles on HM, @dang or another moderator has to manually intervene.


I just made one for SF! https://www.octobrain.one/maps/IXoBBQDnBYXpTa3iN7G4


I expect very simply! Looks like you could add locations anywhere in the world to the 'NYC' map should you really want. It'd be up to OP to split that up into different cities.

Personally, I feel just having it be global and allowing people to zoom in is best.


for sure, technically you can click the zoom out button on top right of the map to view the entire map. I'll let people to create their own maps in the future if there's enough interest.


A stupid question from a non native English speaker. What’s an outlet with regards to a Café?


Power outlets so you can charge your laptop/phone.


John Wilson would have loved this!


If George Costanza made an app, this would be it.


How about: free cafes from people sitting there, working.


Presumably you mean cafes free from leeches taking up all the seating, after buying one coffee per day.

+1 for that


The homeless are getting pretty tech-savvy huh?


Someone should do this for the boston area.


I made one for Bos! https://www.octobrain.one/maps/JcVyMHbN2Xcy17CSLoyR


ty! this will be really helpful. i didnt no u can make ur own


Call it E-Hobo.


The iToilet?


https://www.theonion.com/new-e-toilet-to-revolutionize-onlin...


This would be really useful for the homeless. Nice job!


If thats sarcasm, Homeless are not human?


My Macbook has 18 hours of battery, my phone has unlimited tethering. Just make a bathroom map lol.


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=toilet.samrust...

I have had it on my phone for years and has been accurate when I used it. The biggest issue is forgetting it is on my phone when I am in a rush to find a bathroom.


The description doesn't say, do you know where that app gets its data from?

The map background and routing instructions from screenshots are from Google, but I'd be surprised if Google collects toilet data, lets you query that via an API, yet doesn't show that in their own app. Does this app have its own database, or is there some third party that collects an overview of these?

Based on the properties it shows for a toilet in a screenshot, it could be OSM, but then some reviews complain that there is no field for "last checked" yet OSM supports that (check_date=YYYY-MM-DD) so either that's not it or they don't parse/show that field


Bad take


Perhaps I'm naive, but I trust my tethering more than public wifi.


here you go ;) http://m3.mappler.net/nyrestroom/


18 hours doing what?


Honestly, whatever the heck I want! If I really tax it, i can maybe bring it down to 12 hours.


Try running Docker Desktop, it’ll be gone in no time!


Too true


Posting on Hacker News of course




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