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.
Yeah, same in the US. I would not leave my laptop in a cafe in SF. I would in the Austin suburbs. I might or might not in Chicago depending on the neighborhood and cafe.
- MacBooks are not very attractive theft targets anyway, when properly locked you can only sell them for parts. Wallet or camera or non-Apple laptop would be much more telling.
- Except for Japan, most places it depends on specifics. Who is around, where exactly is the branch, time of day/year (in a couple of countries petty theft rises before Lunar New Year when struggling people especially need money), did you leave a whole setup on your table or is it just lonely closed-lid laptop so someone can pretend it's theirs.
- "Safe to walk at night" isn't what people usually mean by "walkable". Most of the countries in the top are not "walkable".
- This does not account for race and gender. Some white male techbro is probably fine walking alone at night in most places in Thailand, but a woman or an Asian person is another story. The other year multiple people were kidnapped and it caused a big drop in tourism, and a few years earlier double murder of Westerners had some official say the woman should be either ugly or not wear bikini.
- China in the top is funny, I'm aware of multiple knife attacks on foreigners (one happened in central Beijing and I was in the city at the time).
The page says Starbucks, not a random area, random coffee shop. I think it is a valid test. Starbucks is properly staffs, in reasonably busy area, the shop is enclosed.
You'll also need to just chop New York into two and split the city off. NYC data skews the rest of the state so hard...
(north country anectedote: we leave our doors unlocked and laptops, keys, wallets, and iphones straight up in plain view in parking lots up here in rural nowhere. people are dumb.)
Starbucks locations in the US are not limited to areas that are low crime. They are as ubiquitous as McDonald’s if not more so.
Mostly I think this website is just a stereotype collector and in that sense is very counterproductive. It’s going to be a bunch of people who want to report their biases.
you are taking this too literally. try to see it as proxy for questions like 'will i get my wallet back from uber drive' or 'will my purse be snatched by street scooters'
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
Those countries have pruned-controlled immigration systems. What leads to sudden disruptions in observances of law are newcomers who are not familiar with how things work in the new culture. If someone were to walk into town where all the shops and stores keep their doors open and have a box on the counter for payment when someone feels like they need something, it would be a strange sight. And this person would wrestle with the idea of taking something and not paying in full with a bunch of pros and cons. Maybe after some time he will understand better how to proceed.
I think poster means a local area, not a locally-owned coffee shop. Meaning in NYC it doesn't matter if it's a Starbucks or Locally owned shop, you still wouldn't leave the laptop.
However, if it's a local coffee shop in the middle of Nebraska, you would be ok.
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.
South Korea has CCTVs all over the place (especially in the cities), and even small-scale robbery is treated as a very serious crime that often it's not worth the risk.
It’s not only the CCTVs, haha. In Korea, even petty theft is culturally treated as a pretty serious offense. People generally see stealing itself as crossing a big line.
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!
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?
Seems right. This site uses `React Simple Maps` library with `Natural Earth` map data. Natural earth marks crimea Russian territory[0] in their "default" map data.
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 ;)
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.
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
Yes, it's very difficult to make an accurate statement about an entire country that applies and an individual experiential level. You don't experience the average crime statistics of a country at a corner coffee shop.
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.
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)
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...
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.
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?
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.
I was surprised to see in Taiwan last year several instances of people walking into a cafe and leaving their phone on the table to indicate the table was occupied and then going up to the counter to order.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I live in Vietnam and I can see it's getting colored red already but that's unfair.
Also, it's a tiny sample: eight votes to represent a country of 100 million people.
- MacBooks are not very attractive theft targets anyway, when properly locked you can only sell them for parts. Wallet or camera or non-Apple laptop would be much more telling.
- Except for Japan, most places it depends on specifics. Who is around, where exactly is the branch, time of day/year (in a couple of countries petty theft rises before Lunar New Year when struggling people especially need money), did you leave a whole setup on your table or is it just lonely closed-lid laptop so someone can pretend it's theirs.
- "Safe to walk at night" isn't what people usually mean by "walkable". Most of the countries in the top are not "walkable".
- This does not account for race and gender. Some white male techbro is probably fine walking alone at night in most places in Thailand, but a woman or an Asian person is another story. The other year multiple people were kidnapped and it caused a big drop in tourism, and a few years earlier double murder of Westerners had some official say the woman should be either ugly or not wear bikini.
- China in the top is funny, I'm aware of multiple knife attacks on foreigners (one happened in central Beijing and I was in the city at the time).
I'm ignorant. Why does the Lunar New Year increase the need for funds?
There’s 50 US states. Many are very different.
It’d be even better if it was city based.
(north country anectedote: we leave our doors unlocked and laptops, keys, wallets, and iphones straight up in plain view in parking lots up here in rural nowhere. people are dumb.)
Mostly I think this website is just a stereotype collector and in that sense is very counterproductive. It’s going to be a bunch of people who want to report their biases.
Yes but the HN title says "random coffee shop".
Leaving it in that cliche highland coffee shop location in D1 by that street, yeah, no.
Indonesia too, no issue across Jakarta, Depok, Yogya, Bali, Lombok, etc
I’m surprised at Japan, I would thought it be a zero. No issue at any location at all.
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.
Not no more. We lost our high trust society in most places.
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.
However, if it's a local coffee shop in the middle of Nebraska, you would be ok.
but dont leave ur bike or umbrella out.
Please know that I'm being sarcastic.
I actually find it annoying if people put stuff on tables and then walk away for an hour or more, hogging a spot that could be used by others.
Japan is trusted enough to leave laptops in but not trusted enough to vote :/
I'm on safari without an adblocker, not sure what sketchy stuff my ASN is up to
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...
[0]: https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/issues/391
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.
Statistically they're more likely to be honest rather than a thief of opportunity
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)
amazing (and kind of uplifting)
I was born and raised in New York City. This was science fiction to me.
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.
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.
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.
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.