Lauren Leek writes data-driven Substack essays on UK cities, pubs, restaurants, segregation and how algorithms shape culture.
HN commenters call it an always wonderful blog and link her posts on Google Maps restaurant visibility and independent stores in Australia versus England.
Huh! I had not noticed that trend at all.
Here's the Google Maps article: https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates - note that the Hacker News title left that word out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203343
It's possible I was subconsciously influenced by that article (I saw it linked from a few places yesterday I think), but in this case I really did want to emphasize that OpenAI have started doing this without making any announcements about it at all, which I think is noteworthy in its own right.
(I'm also quite enjoying that this may be the second time I've leaked the existence of skills from a major provider - I wrote about Anthropic's skills implementation a week before they formally announced it: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/10/claude-skills/)
Your comment makes me think of this recent post, https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/the-basket-and-the-booza, from an always wonderful blog which looks at why Australia has far more independent stores left compared to English cities and comes to a surprising conclusion:
"The unifying claim is this: chains follow legibility. A city becomes legible to a site-selection algorithm when it has been organised into walkable, transit-connected high streets with predictable pedestrian volumes. That legibility is what good urbanism produces and simultaneously what makes a city capturable."
Imagine you're in London. How you pick a restaurant for dinner? Do you simply walk into a restaurant or do you use Google too feed you a list of 'curated' venues? Because in the latter case both you and the restaurants (along with their owners, employees) are subject to FAANG's central planning. And that's exactly how people end up in tourist traps.
https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates
Looks like she might publish it: https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates/comment/186069108