
Avoid Humans: Your temporary respite from the masses - progval
http://avoidhumans.com/
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nostrademons
Pretty inaccurate for Sunnyvale CA. Among its list of local empty spots is a
restaurant that's packed every time I go to it and a park that's always filled
with parents with young children, senior citizens out walking, and impromptu
pickup games of soccer & volleyball.

I think this is more like "Avoid Foursquare and Instagram users", which may
have some value to it anyway.

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rhubarbquid
Terrible recommendations for my neighborhood in Oakland... the top 3
recommended places are the 3 of the most popular and crowded restaurants and
bars in the area. The top one being the restaurant that's so busy it's
generally hard to walk past on the sidewalk because there are so many people
waiting out front.

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throwaway049
Some value as a recommendation engine if cross-referenced with restaurants:
Food/atmosphere is good enough to distract people from their phones.

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dmd
So apparently, to avoid humans in my low density suburb I should - rather
than, say, go to a park or trail - go to (1) Dunkin Donuts; (2) the local
pizza place (3) the supermarket.

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ubersync
Exactly. I thought it would give me a list of resorts in remote areas, away
from cities, close to wilderness etc. But it just uses Foursquare and
Instagram check ins. Who uses Foursquare anymore?

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oldmanjay
Asking for my location when I don't have any idea what is going on is a pretty
quick way to get me to close the tab.

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jessriedel
Yea, would be nice to give an option to enter a zipcode.

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gsharma
...or even better IP -> ZIP with an editable zip.

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kevinskii
I recently asked a friend in Manhattan how people there cope with the lack of
personal space. She told me that whenever she needs a break from social
interaction she just eats in a restaurant by herself. There may be hundreds of
others around but they'll generally sense that you don't want to be bothered.

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jaysonelliot
I just left New York after 12 years. One day, while I still lived there, I
decided to see if there was anywhere I could be in Manhattan without seeing
another human being in my field of vision. It took me several weeks of
exploring possibilities, none of which were successful. Even Central Park
didn't work, there was always someone wandering by, no matter how remote the
spot.

I finally found the only spot where I could be for 30 minutes at a time, in
total isolation. The New York Marble Cemetery on 2nd Avenue, in the East
Village. It's a small patch of land, hidden down a narrow alleyway, behind a
gate, open to the public just one day a month. It looks like nothing but a
lawn surrounded by stone walls, because there are no headstones. It became my
favorite day of the month, that one Sunday when I could go sit on a lawn in
silence and solitude.

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molloy
That's beautiful, thanks for sharing.

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magic_beans
Greenwood Cemetery is another great spot. Much more calm than Prospect Park on
a nice day.

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neogodless
This is neat - however _every_ location near me is considered GREEN (low
population). Maybe that's true, but any time I've been to Wegman's... it's
been packed. Of course, maybe Foursquare just isn't popular enough around
here.

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neogodless
Wawa also showing "few humans." \- Perhaps what this needs is a way to adjust
the scale. What might be "few humans" in LA or NYC can be very different in
other parts of the country.

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alanh
Ha, this is basically saying to go to the bar during business hours.

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james33
Cool idea, though quite a few of the listed places are currently closed, so I
didn't need the app to know there's nobody there.

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andrewsomething
Just break in! No other humans inside.

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oberstein
To test this manually, go to google maps and paste the lat/long into this
site. e.g.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6205099,-122.3493306,19.75z](https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6205099,-122.3493306,19.75z)
\-->
[http://avoidhumans.com/list.php?lat=47.6205099&lng=-122.3493...](http://avoidhumans.com/list.php?lat=47.6205099&lng=-122.3493306)

Is their data purely comprised of people who use this app? No wonder
everything is green everywhere...

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nordic_nomad
No, it's based on foursquare and other location based app check ins.

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miander
How frustrating that I can't manually enter a location.

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incongruity
Amusing and provocative concept, but pragmatically challenged as the majority
of people don't use apps like Foursquare or other check-in services. Moreover,
those that do are likely not a representative sample of the broader
population... so, as a proxy for crowdedness, the data feeds from apps/online
services fail in most cases/places, IMHO.

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cgriswald
This seems very useful to me as a way to find places I haven't heard about
through social media. Finding new places when you're a non-native can be
difficult. Especially because my primary activity during finding new places is
dating and I don't want to ask my date for some new place. :)

I think they should just rebrand their site to match the content.

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swayvil
I avoid humans by going to restaurants and bars? I don't get it.

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recursive
It's just a list of every business, all rated green.

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collyw
If you can deal wih maybe 20 people, a rafting trip on the Tamur in Nepal is
the closest I have come to absolutely "no one else here". No wifi. No
electricity. A couple of nights with only the group and a large bonfire.

~~~
bradleyjg
Every few years my uncle takes a fishing trip in Alaska. He and two or three
others are dropped off by plane and raft down a river for a week. Once a day
the plane flies overhead to check up on them and at the end of the week picks
them up. Other than that they never see another person.

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whyaduck
I'm curious - wouldn't it be cheaper to check in with a sat phone daily,
rather than having a bush pilot do a flyover?

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barlo
I would assume they don't want to carry a satellite phone as that would give
them a connection to that which they are intentionally trying to get away
from.

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sotojuan
Living in NYC, the only place where I can be alone is the special classroom
students in my program have access through with a key. It's open 24/7.

Among the results I get I see Lincoln Center Plaza, which has tourists,
Juilliard students, musicians and people that see those musicians. I also see
Columbus Circle, which has one of the busiest subway stations and a mall.

I'll give some of the other places a try. This is a great idea for an app.

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jpindar
In addition to all the most popular bars and restaurants, it lists "beer
tent", a thing which only exists one weekend of the year when my town holds
it's annual seafood festival. The rest of the year that location is the middle
of a main street (which gets closed off for the festival).

I think that makes it clear that this is listing places that people have
previously mentioned on social media.

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alistairSH
I don't get it? It lists a nonexistent pub in the middle of my subdivision
(the street name contains the word "Tavern", maybe it got confused), the local
pool, and my HOA's mailing address as places to go to avoid people.

And when I click on any of those not-quite-real places, the map is in a
seemingly random place. Tennessee, across the Potomac from me, or the west
coast.

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lukeforehand
If the app ever became popular the least frequented places would "flap" to
become the most frequented places. :-) They would have to effectively load
balance by displaying different location results to different users.

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greggman
Answer for my location:

渋谷 ハチ公前広場 Plaza 0.32 Miles 道玄坂2-1

That's one of the most crowed places in the world. Fail

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escherplex
Shibuya Hachiko square with the bronze dog (犬 # 8) ね? ... that was the subject
of a Richard Gere movie plus it is perpetually crowded.

If you really want to avoid the masses using this app try accessing it via a
VPN. App responds with 'could not find location' meaning you are now invisible
which obviates the need for privacy.

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JamilD
This probably only works for maybe New York and San Francisco. I'm in Toronto
-- where few people use Foursquare/Swarm -- and it's basically just a list of
every location near me.

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agentcoops
Seems like a more reliable metric would be take all nearby Yelp listings with
no reviews and then remove any of those remaining that have any
Foursquare/Instagram check-ins at all...

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codingdave
Very inaccurate. It is listing the cookie cutter suburban neighborhood north
of me as a farm, and someone's online retail store running from their home as
a restaurant.

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urs2102
Any way to make this open source so one could create the same service in
reverse (maybe with Google popularity data if possible)?

Use case: finding a popular bar in a new town.

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esolyt
It lists closed places. Isn't it possible to pull working hours data from
Google Maps or even Foursquare?

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krallja
At SFO airport, it recommends I go to any of the nearby shops. That's not even
close to useful.

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randallsquared
Around half of the suggestions near me are vandalism. This desperately needs a
way to flag such.

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svec
World class nerd sniping.

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teen
It recommends the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica for me XD

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enraged_camel
Mine points to a McDonald's nearby. Hmm...

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jamespcole2
Needs Kilometres, Miles are meaningless to me

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echlebek
Canadian here. You just multiply by 1.6.

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stevewilhelm
kerning!

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simlevesque
They avoided kerning.

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acbabis
I hate how the word "kerning" has an "n" after an "r"

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pavel_lishin
Keming!

[http://www.ironicsans.com/2008/02/idea_a_new_typography_term...](http://www.ironicsans.com/2008/02/idea_a_new_typography_term.html)

