I honestly wasn't expecting much of anything around here, really. We live on the northern end of the city which is kind of rural. We do have a lot of business on our end of things so I guess that's why we have as many pokestops and whatnot around.
I did just get a Psyduck at the grocery store. But yeah, I have to range close to a mile away from my house to catch anything. And me with hip problems and fibro, that's not gonna happen too often.
I have a spot that I can hit from my backyard that occasionally has uncommon pokemon... I'm really not sure how it works, or why. My neighborhood is pretty heavily forested, so maybe it thinks I live in the woods, and pokemon live in the woods?
Not sure that explains the shellder at my desk.
Seen today:
"If Niantic puts gym and pokestops at all voting locations this year, it could swing the largest voter turnout in a long time."
It's funny because it's true.
Eh.
People go to graveyards for Pokemon, but don't visit their dead; people go to playground for Pokemon, but don't slide down the slide; people go to parking lots for Pokemon, but don't park their cars; people go to schools for Pokemon, but don't study for anything.
Why people think that people going to a voting location for Pokemon will mean they will also vote, instead of getting their Pokemon and then turning and walking away, I don't know.
But this is the cynic in me.
So, you know... the only me there is.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
I'm 100% with you. I mean, the most upsetting thing about that Koffing at the Holocaust museum wasn't that it was there... It's that enough people were in that place, playing the game, that random chance let it happen.
Also, schools aren't generally going to have Pokestops/gyms. Some might. But Niantic has generally avoided schools (esp. elementary & middle) having them (so, y'know, there's no issues with adults lingering about). Since polling places are often schools...
But seriously. The excuses people already give to not vote? ('I don't feel like getting up early.' 'I forgot to ask for the day off.') Pokemon wouldn't magically make non-voters suddenly vote.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@Auspice said in Pokemon Go:
I'm 100% with you. I mean, the most upsetting thing about that Koffing at the Holocaust museum wasn't that it was there... It's that enough people were in that place, playing the game, that random chance let it happen.
Also, schools aren't generally going to have Pokestops/gyms. Some might. But Niantic has generally avoided schools (esp. elementary & middle) having them (so, y'know, there's no issues with adults lingering about). Since polling places are often schools...
But seriously. The excuses people already give to not vote? ('I don't feel like getting up early.' 'I forgot to ask for the day off.') Pokemon wouldn't magically make non-voters suddenly vote.
That Koffing thing is definitely something that Niantec should have foreseen and been able to avoid. There should be some way to make sure that Pokemon don't show up at all in certain locations, I think.
Schools are iffy because kids at recess should probably be able to have fun with it. I don't know.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
@Auspice said in Pokemon Go:
I'm 100% with you. I mean, the most upsetting thing about that Koffing at the Holocaust museum wasn't that it was there... It's that enough people were in that place, playing the game, that random chance let it happen.
Also, schools aren't generally going to have Pokestops/gyms. Some might. But Niantic has generally avoided schools (esp. elementary & middle) having them (so, y'know, there's no issues with adults lingering about). Since polling places are often schools...
But seriously. The excuses people already give to not vote? ('I don't feel like getting up early.' 'I forgot to ask for the day off.') Pokemon wouldn't magically make non-voters suddenly vote.
Niantic has considerable experience with this - I'd say more than anyone else could have - since they're also the company behind Ingress.
It's just impossible to predict all sensitive situations especially when it's something as new as virtual and real worlds colliding, there's very little precedent for any of this. Hell, companies in well established markets with decades of history behind them make mistakes which, in retrospect, are pretty obvious yet at the time no one saw them.
The one from the top of my head is the controversy around X-Men: Apocalypse where they had huge billboards up of what came down to a man choking a woman. Yes, when it's put in these terms we're left scratching our heads going "how they hell did they think that was appropriate?" but that's only in retrospect, as they probably just... didn't think of it at the time. Same as the Holocaust museum thing ("we'll put Poke-stuffs at museums and get good PR by sending kids to educative places like that! woo-hoo!"), it just didn't occur to them.
Everyone fucks up. 
I mean, yes/no. Pokemon are generated based on the same algorithms used for XM in Ingress. It's not based on gyms/Pokestops at all. So you're basically saying 'They need to be aware of every potential faux pas that could happen with a Pokemon spawning, anywhere in the world.'
I am not going to hold any game to that. I mean, they can go in now and likely eliminate Koffing from ever spawning in that general region, but to prevent it ahead of time? If spawning was dependent on gym/Pokestop locations, sure, they might be able to task some poor employees to check every single one and check local customs/possible upsetting things/insults/whathaveyou... but then we'd be looking at a release date probably 3-5 years from now rather than this month.
Also, kids can still totally hunt Pokemon at school. They're just not likely to have a Pokestop or a Gym.
No, I know it's illogical to demand that of them ahead of time or with any level of certainty. But now that there has been a case (or more), they should look into diminishing it as much as possible. Or not. Whatever.
Pokemon ain't out here, so.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
@Coin said in Pokemon Go:
No, I know it's illogical to demand that of them ahead of time or with any level of certainty. But now that there has been a case (or more), they should look into diminishing it as much as possible. Or not. Whatever.
Pokemon ain't out here, so.
Given their spawning chances are based on algorithms (i.e. they are automated to a great degree based on collected data usage, since the job of going over it manually to hand-pick locations around the entire world would have been a freakin' gigantic, expensive project on its own) I'd say their best approach might be to selectively blacklist certain locations. That shouldn't be too hard so it'll probably happen at some point just to silence some of the critics.
But man, so much negativity already over social media. I get it's the popular thing and everyone loves to bitch at popular things but my Facebook stream is full of people declaring in outrage how they are not playing P:Go as if that means they're special, and are taking offense at everything about it - from people 'looking at their phones' (which is completely new and never happened before) to 'parks being overcrowded with people', to how this free game no one is making them install will expose their private information - just before they post pictures of their latest piercing, of course.
Some people just really, really hate fun.
Or really, really love a reason to pretend they're more special / better than everyone else.
I'm just glad to see something other than politics all over social media.
Just a few places that Pokemon have shown up at, so far.
Pokemon Go player stabbed, keeps playing (But all of the reports are interesting, tbh.)
News Reporter Walks in Front of Meteorologist’s Live Weather Report While Playing Pokémon Go
I used to think trying to explain to people about going to highschool without a phone made me old before.
(Also, take that, teacher who said I wouldn't have a calculator in my pocket!)
I tried to play this game and it froze every time I caught a pokemon. Let me know when they've updated/patched it enough to be stable and maybe I'll try again. 
@saosmash Oh yeah, that's a known annoying bug. I've had to restart it a number of times.
@saosmash said in Pokemon Go:
I tried to play this game and it froze every time I caught a pokemon. Let me know when they've updated/patched it enough to be stable and maybe I'll try again.
My first night using it, I caught one pokemon, and then each one after that it locked up. It seems to be something to do with server response time, and if the game doesn't get the data it needs in that moment, it just freezes up. Closing and reopening is the only fix. This also means that during heavy-use time it seems to fail more regularly. When I play late at night, early in the morning, etc, it runs much smoother. I'm also using t-mobile, which isn't the best network.
Yesterday evening's update has really stabilized it for me.
The only issue I'm having at the moment is sometimes when I go back into the app (left it running in the background to check something else), it's decided to stop accepting input. But I haven't had any more of the crashes/freezes upon catching a Pokemon.
@skew That's my network too! Sigh.
