61–70 of 116 posts
Did they automatically detect that it became very popular as it had many people visiting it regularly?
Yeah probably a lot of wifi clients there. Isn't that how Google maps measure activity? By monitoring the wifi traffic of android phones?
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Most [0] people have phones, so if food banks are well-used, they're going to be a WiFi attractor. This is a highly likely explanation. [0] My spouse is a social services worker who specializes in the homeless. She says having a phone is a priority among social services recipients, but they rarely have a data plan (which is very expensive in Ottawa) and rely on WiFi for everything.
But it's weird to rely on a thing like that in the first place. Unless you were able to differentiate between locals and foreigners. Because there would be many other destinations as well, that locals would be likely to group within, but which make no sense as travel destinations. Schools, churches, workplaces, gyms, markets etc. It seems like non-locals would be unlikely to visit a food bank.
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I don't understand what food banks are for. Does Canada have something like Food Stamps/WIC? Food is absurdly cheap, and not all food needs to be cooked/prepared.
They are places, commonly run by volunteers, where people with financial problems can get a food package at regular intervals, e.g. weekly. They sometimes rely on food donated by supermarkets with a 'best before' which has passed - which isn't a big deal for certain types of food such as rice and pasta.
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Only insofar as travel blogs are shallow SEO spam. Good travel blogs maintained by locals are immensely valuable. They usually have much better technical advice about local culture, airports, payment, SIM cards and that sort of thing.
As a local of a tourist destination: why would you trust us? We want to take your money.
I just stayed at an Airbnb in Crown Heights (Brooklyn) a week ago, and knowing nothing about the neighborhood but wanting to eat a meal there, found that Google Maps was a little overwhelming. It was nice to skim some articles that seemed human-curated; it at least gave me an idea about where the hotspots of the neighborhood are and what kind of cuisine I should be favoring.
Reminds me of the time someone blocked a road on Google maps by bringing a bunch of phones and staying still (or something along these lines).
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I have tested AI against my own content (I'm one such local) and it was pathetically incapable. It was closer to someone guessing what the answer is. AI content feels a lot like the copywritten content it replaces: a shallow repetition of what an actual expert wrote down.
You are referring to the baby AI of today. Give it a year or five.
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I don't understand what food banks are for. Does Canada have something like Food Stamps/WIC? Food is absurdly cheap, and not all food needs to be cooked/prepared.
The exact situation depends on the province but nothing exactly like food stamps that I’m aware of. Most of the support is through direct payments. It takes time to access any of those benefits though, and there are still some that despite access to those struggle for whatever reason. Food banks are not an exclusively Canadian thing - a lot of people in the U.K. have ended up depending on them as well.
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I have tested AI against my own content (I'm one such local) and it was pathetically incapable. It was closer to someone guessing what the answer is. AI content feels a lot like the copywritten content it replaces: a shallow repetition of what an actual expert wrote down.
You are referring to the baby AI of today. Give it a year or five.
https://www.ottawafoodbank.ca/
I recently learned that a friend from high school passed away. I hadn't seen her in twenty years almost. She'd been living rough in Ottawa for a few years and the Ottawa food bank was almost certainly one of the groups that had been helping her out. I'm still trying to find out more about what happened with her, but in the meantime I'm making donations to organizations like this one in her name.
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They are places, commonly run by volunteers, where people with financial problems can get a food package at regular intervals, e.g. weekly. They sometimes rely on food donated by supermarkets with a 'best before' which has passed - which isn't a big deal for certain types of food such as rice and pasta.
I have never heard of a food bank in Ontario offering food with passed expiration dates. I previously volunteered there and most of the food was from grocery stores/corporate donors, but not expired.