- Voting on a country level here is too coarse, this poll is invalid.
I live in Vietnam and I can see it's getting colored red already but that's unfair.
If you're in Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi, then for sure you couldn't safely leave your laptop in a cafe. But if youuuUse the edit icon to pin, add or delete clips.'re in a smaller town then you'll be fine. But doesn't that apply to basically every country?
I assume that the majority of people voting here are in one of the big cities and it's coloring the results. But what it really means is that English speakers are clustered in the places where it's not safe, not that the whole country is unsafe.
On the other hand, I see Vietnam is currently green for walkable and that's hilarious, it's one of the least walkable countries in the world. Pavements here are places to do business/park motorbikes, not to mention the heat makes it highly uncomfortable. There's a ratio of ~2 motorbikes per person, nobody walks here.
by likeclockwork
1 subcomments
- There is no coffee shop anywhere in the world where I would leave my laptop unattended.
Even if things are unlikely to go wrong the level of avoidable risk is simply too high.
A $3000 piece of my personal or worse employer's property and I'm just supposed to "trust"? Not worth it.
by 01jonny01
1 subcomments
- There was a time you could leave your valuables in most teashops in the UK and they would be safe.
Not no more. We lost our high trust society in most places.
by similarboy
0 subcomment
- very cool idea! Like others have said, "country" doesn't feel like the right level of aggregation. Municipality, street, or even coffee shop itself would feel more natural, although there's a sure trade-off with the effort to source the data
by kalmuraee
1 subcomments
- I can bet with my Macbook to have it in any random coffee shop in Riyadh, Jeddah, or any other City in Saudi , and I can say that is Applicable to Cities like Dubai Doha, these cities have a high level of prosperity, people are there don’t have to steal, and every worker in the country already by law have working permits otherwise he couldn’t stay
- Which is it? A random coffee shop or a Starbucks.
In the USA, I could leave my laptop at a small town coffee shop without any trouble, but never a Starbucks, which are only in larger towns and cities.
- in korea u can literally leave ur wallet, laptop, expensive bag at your table and go eat lunch or do something else for an hr and come back and it'll still be there (and people are used to it). one of the few places that surprised me more than japan lol.
but dont leave ur bike or umbrella out.
by JCharante
1 subcomments
- > Verification not ready, try again.
Japan is trusted enough to leave laptops in but not trusted enough to vote :/
- Something similar is the lost wallet test:
https://reddit.com/r/europe/comments/ijboze/study_of_civic_h... source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau8712
https://web.archive.org/web/20190327101602/https://www.rd.co...
- I would like to see a ranking for countries where you can ship RAM without it getting stolen on the way. I just got mine stolen by someone at Amazon last week so I’m a bit bitter right now!
by codedokode
1 subcomments
- Interesting, the map author marked Crimea as part of Russia, but for some reason doesn't mark 4 other Ukranian regions as Russian. Cannot choose the right side?
- Good idea, but a hard dealbreaker issue: clicking "Yes, totally" or "Hell no" is never accepted, as it always returns "Couldn't verify you're human — please try again.". Clicking a country in the list will also show a white page. But keep going, you have built something useful here my friend ;)
- Opened it fully wanting to vote Yes on Taiwan. Saw it was already top of the safety list. Beautiful country and people.
- I liked looking at this.
Every cafe is different and cafes in each country vary heavily by city and area and I am not sure if I have recommendations on how to make crowd sourced data more reliable but I like the work done.
- The "trick" that worked for me so far is to ask the person in the next table nicely if I can leave it by their side for a moment.
Statistically they're more likely to be honest rather than a thief of opportunity
by newsdeskx
1 subcomments
- its not just country-level, its city-size level too. lived in a town of 5k where everyone knew each other's cars, left my bike unlocked for weeks. moved to a city of 500k and someone took a jacket from a bar stool in 20 minutes. the variable is population density and how many repeat faces you see
by TejashMKumar
0 subcomment
- This reminds me of Hoodmaps, lightweight crowdsourcing with immediate utility.
Main issue is probably self reporting bias, people may vote based on national pride rather than risk levels.
by ChocolateGod
0 subcomment
- In the UK, it's very regional, even in the same city (e.g. London).
- Australian here, and the differing wording on the site kind of changes my answer. I believe I 'can' but also that I 'wouldn't'.
I'm not worried about theft, but see 'reserving' a seat like that as rude, and 10 minutes as longer than is reasonable.
(Pragmatically – I’m more concerned about having an awkward interaction with a barista that cleared the table and put the laptop somewhere, than about someone stealing the laptop)
- japan is quite safe actually, I sometimes do it when I go to the bathroom
- The mobile navigating is a bit iffy. I can accidentally click on a country when zooming in
by sunrunner
1 subcomments
- Semantics, but are there really random coffee shops in Antarctica? I assumed no, though a quick search suggests a place called Coffeehouse at McMurdo Station, some at South Pole Station, and then assorted local station cafeterias. Even so. I guess I'd still vote yes though, so...
by SequoiaHope
0 subcomment
- The problem of course with leaving your MacBook at a random coffee shop in Palestine is that Israel might bomb it before you can get it back…
- Obviously Japan. My first year there I actually was stupid and left my phone/keys at the table when I went to the toilet and things like that. After a while I realised that while the chances of theft are very small, they are not zero.
by stelmashchuk
0 subcomment
- The map on the website has a few mistakes. The wrong border on Ukraine, for example.
by captainbland
0 subcomment
- The page won't verify me as a human if I try to vote, I don't know why.
- Might be more effective if this was by postal code instead of by entire country
by juliusceasar
0 subcomment
- "Couldn't verify you're human — please try again"
- You should probably find a proper e-waste collector, but I guess if you can't find one, you could leave it at Starbucks and someone will take care of it?
by try-working
0 subcomment
- I do it all the time in Shanghai.
- I've seen people leave purses unattended in japan in a fast food restaurant while going to the bathroom.
amazing (and kind of uplifting)
by eddy-sekorti
0 subcomment
- Denmark
by leephillips
1 subcomments
- My first day in Japan (early 90’s) I was in a train station in Tokyo. A suited businessman waiting in a long line put his briefcase on the floor and left the line for a few minutes. He returned to his spot with a newspaper. The case was still there. He had not looked around nor displayed any doubt nor hesitation. Nobody reacted or noticed.
I was born and raised in New York City. This was science fiction to me.
- Good to see 4 scientists in Antarctica felt safe enough to leave their Mac.
by ramenat2am
0 subcomment
- I voted "yes" for Antarctica, because that is the only place I'm confident about.
But seriously, I don't think this website solves the problem of knowing "which countries you can simply leave your laptop at a Starbucks, and where you can't".
It's just a rough indicator of percepted crime rate among a nation.
- For the US this really needs to broken down by state and even county. I know places were you can leave valuables with little likelihood of them being stolen and places where they would be gone in seconds. Small towns where most people know each other are very different to large cities.
- Canada is currently at 31%, and I call BS. Some of us have this self-image of a country where people trust each other, but that doesn't make it true.
On one hand, I dropped my brand new iPhone 4 (whatever year that was) at a concert, and it was waiting for me at the bar. Multiple people did the right thing in that particular case.
On the other hand, I've had a backpack and camera stolen. I've even had toilet paper stolen while I was loading my car (during COVID). I've worked in offices where laptops have been stolen. Everyone has a story like this.
- It's a tricky one as I've left my laptop in Glasgow, London, Tokyo, Seoul, and Berlin. I would say ancedotally they are all of varying levels of safety on the whole as a city, but it depends on the situation and judging it correctly. The only time I've ever had my phone or any piece of tech stolen was in Japan, which many would think was safer.
- interesting!
by yanhangyhy
0 subcomment
- china 43%.. LOL
- "Verification not ready, try again"
- I mean, I wouldn't leave an unattended laptop anywhere. Maybe the real test is "if you had forgotten your laptop at a coffee shop for ten minutes, what probability would you assign to going back there and successfully recovering it?".
For Greece, it would be pretty high, but I wouldn't just randomly leave a laptop, because the off chance of something happening is still not worth the trouble.
- I had my phone fell from my pocket while in a dancing club at night. Someone found it, took it to the bartender and I got it back (saw the location on my computer using Google's find your phone).
But would I deliberately leave my phone or laptop unattended on the table at a random coffee shop that I know nothing about? Probably fine but not taking that risk. Also as others pointed out, context matters. A small indoor coffee shop while I visit the toilet? No problem. Large crowded outside terrace? I'm not stupid.
by obsidian_spider
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- [dead]
by lifestyleguru
1 subcomments
- Why? Stop reserving public or publicly available spots. I you leave anything from laptop to beach towel unattended for longer than 5 minutes you're an asshole.
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