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Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

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?

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.

depends on the transience I guess of the people that goto them, when I was homeless at least and went to places like this in a large city many of the people were drug addicts from smaller towns or literal hobos who were there for the sake of I assume cheap drugs and social services likes food banks.

How many were traveling not residing, though, and what fraction of travelers were they?

They have been quite a few news articles about the food bank traffic increasing, I’m guessing it’s pulling from those headlines and not using maps data

You can also use that sort of maps to send data via physical mesh net just hopping from one phone to another, never touching a isp.

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