How is this related to wardriving?<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving</a>
This city doesn't look like much work to drive. One evening of work to scope out every nook and cranny is infinitely better than what's possible for most American cities!<p><a href="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c5d3f8a2-6206-4b12-8f3a-eee4bb00b4fc_1820x1044.png" rel="nofollow">https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c...</a><p>It is surprising the lengths some people will go to trying to code their way out of a problem rather than interact with the nearby and available human beings who already have the answers*.<p>* Yes, I too have been guilty of this in the past >..<
Another data point is property tax records, some of which will list building "condition" on a scale of 1-10, or look at assessed property values over time.
It is nice to see millennials re-discovering how pretty much everything was done before the explosion of the internet in the mid-90s.<p>Historically, what this article describes, was simply called "finding somewhere to live". There was no necessity to invoke warfare when looking for a house. One simply drove around the neighborhood looking for for-sale or for-rent signs.<p>Amazing that now just doing something in the real world is cause for excitement! But I'm sincerely happy to see a re-emergence of the practice.<p>BTW, I hope the author appreciates living in a place where "there are almost no real estate agents" along with the other described traits. Escaping the commodification of everything is more difficult every year, and you have to get pretty far from the epicenters to find it at all.
While a beautiful execution of an idea, he should've just taken a few days to drive around the neighborhoods and talk to people on the street and in the bars and restaurants.<p>There are still a few tasks where there is no substitute for ground-truth real-time cultural immersion.
This was fun to read. 8 years ago I used the google maps api to group apartments in Seattle that had fiber internet by neighborhood (<a href="http://blog.alexchantavy.com/articles/using-the-google-geocoding-api-to-find-a-new-apartment/);" rel="nofollow">http://blog.alexchantavy.com/articles/using-the-google-geoco...</a> your blog is a much much more modern spin on house hunting. And yeah others are saying you could’ve just walked around and talked to people - and I’m sure you will - but this is still a useful way of showing how AI can be used to classify things for hackers in daily life.
Interesting idea. I think it becomes far more interesting if you can come up with analysis that not only provides homes for sale but homes that may be coming up for sale. Which neighborhoods have listings for furniture on Facebook Marketplace? Which homes appear to no longer have anyone living there. I look at a home I own that will be sold soon. No internet is setup there. Maybe you Wardrive, by the literal definition, and find homes that don't seem to have internet as an indicator that someone may be interested in moving/selling. The possibilities are endless.
The headline made me think someone was wardriving around looking for spaces with no wifi signal to find places to occupy/squat in (legally or illegally, depending on where in the world this would be), but it seems more like scanning street view for interesting places.