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Some answers via Twitter
for a more professional/secure environment ...
... consider a day pass at Workbar Boston or similar professional coworking space - easily walkable from South Station. Especially if one's twitter bio shows employment at freakin' security startup .. bet they just LOVE staff working from open wifi in public settings. VPNs don't stop shoulder surfing heh.
Hmmm,
When you find your coffeehouse, remember: it is your living room. Feel free to buy just one little cup of coffee for your 6-hour stint, or better yet, purchase nothing and get millennial bonus points for bringing in food from another establishment or from home. Hey, it's your living room! Then, remember to take up valuable seating space with your backpack and see if someone will move for you so that you can have their seat by the outlet. Or just stretch the cord across the floor - people won't trip on it. Then get more millennial bonus points for kicking off your shower flip-flops and putting your bare feet up on the chair opposite you.
Ever hear of a frikkin' library?
Where's the library downtown?
The West End or North End ones?
Menino closed them.
Menino closed them.
Them?
You mean one, right? And that got moved to the main library in Copley Square.
West End is still open
I was there last week.
There are a few private libraries
whose membership prices are far cheaper that shared office space.
https://www.bostonathenaeum.org/membership/join-or-renew
$200 per year if you're 35 or younger; or $290 for old farts!
The West End on is a defacto
The West End on is a defacto daytime homeless shelter (Can't stay in an actual shelter during the day). It's also very small and unlike Copley there is no where to hide to get away from this condition. Don't forget the headphones.
What about that little
What about that little library in the alley? Near the old City Hall?
That's the business library
that was next to the Starbucks. It was closed a few years ago and moved to the main Copley Square location, as Adam alluded to above.
North, South, West
According to the BPL website they're still around. And open today, to boot.
http://www.bpl.org/general/hours/
Coffee shops themselves are to blame
Coffee shops themselves are to blame for cultivating that scene. They created lounge like spaces, gave away free wifi, allowed people to plug in laptops and allowed people to linger.
A couple of busy places I know, have started capping wifi based on how much you spend. They also installed cover plates over electrical outlets and eliminated lounge seats in favor of sturdy, less comfortable wooden stools.
"To blame" not quite the right term.
I wouldn't really say they are "to blame." -- they deliberately entered the business of being an alternative work location..... it is working well for some coffee shops in some locations, less well for others.
If somebody does something that backfires
Then yes, blame is an appropriate word to use.
But have a trophy anyway. Everybody wins, right?
Can you name some examples?
because i think it's a good idea. Only place I know that puts wiFi on a timer is Panera during peak hours
Millennial bonus? The people
Millennial bonus? The people I see bringing cheaper take out and bagged lunch into coffee shops usually are baby boomers.
Maybe you just mean this is something that people have started doing after the millennium? Probably true. But that's not really the common use of the term.
Ross rarely bought coffee and
Ross rarely bought coffee and Gunther never seemed to mind.
Yeah, because Millennials
are the only ones who do this. I've never seen Boston Common Coffee Co. full of theatergoers of all ages and types killing time before their shows or anything, and nobody in society over the age of 30 has any public etiquette issues whatsoever.
And don't worry, I'll be sure to stay off of your lawn too!
Ever go in during the day?
If you are an unemployed baby boomer feel free to have LOUD conversations about your financial woes AND health issues. Get a brewed coffee, dump half out, pour in milk for a "ghetto" latte ... IT IS YOUR RIGHT as a member of the post war generation! Feel Free!
Have I generalized enough yet?
Maybe Emerson
has some guest wifi in or near their buildings.
Or possibly
Suffolk U?
not Suffolk
Our network is only available to students, staff and faculty.
Ogawa Coffee 10 Milk st
Ogawa Coffee 10 Milk st
Practice safe WiFi ... VPN
I mentioned this on Twitter but will reiterate here...if you plan on connecting to a WiFi network in a coffee shop, library, or the street in front of your neighbor's house, remember that it is trivial to listen in on everything coming out of your computer onto the network. Most of what is coming out is readable as plain text. Use a VPN connection to encrypt network traffic between your laptop / tablet and the Internet to be safe.
If you are at all tech savvy, an additional step is to use a tool such as Little Snitch to firewall your network connection until the VPN is connected. Quite a bit of readable traffic (passwords, accounts, etc) happen in the moments between connecting to a WiFi access point and the VPN being established.
Sniff... Sniff...
I smell packets.