[HN Gopher] Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digi...
___________________________________________________________________
Tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in
India
Author : NDAjam
Score : 195 points
Date : 2023-04-04 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| ck2 wrote:
| Is it a crazy suggestion that you could put a display on the
| smart speaker and teach a small subset of literacy for them to
| see what is being said?
|
| Could someone learn a small amount that way?
|
| I've seen countless stories of people who come to the US and
| learn some english by watching TV with the close captions turned
| on, has to work elsewhere?
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| What's cheaper to program and produce: a speaker or a display
| and chip?
|
| I think that this device is super smart. It's a "cell phone"
| chip that "reads" the texts out loud when received from a
| hardcoded number. It could cost a few dollars.
|
| The only cheaper thing would be upcycling existing smartphones,
| but that would be a support nightmare.
| IronWolve wrote:
| More likely the audible confirmation allows everyone to know
| you paid, and the shopkeeper doesnt have to keep his eyes on a
| device all day. Easier for everyone.
| alsodumb wrote:
| As discussed in other comments, illiteracy is not the primary
| driver of these devices. To some extent it is, but not a
| significant chunk. It'll probably also make the device more
| expensive.
| villgax wrote:
| They do charge a subscription fee for it, but sadly enough this
| could have been done with any speaker they had & using the
| official app as well
| blntechie wrote:
| It's 200 Rs/mo as per a shopkeeper I talked to. It's pretty
| affordable for many shops as it cuts down on fraud a bit and
| they see utility in it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| But could it have been done with the resilience/volume/sound
| quality/redundancy/etc of the speaker?
|
| A situation that comes to mind is a vendor stepping away to go
| to the bathroom, and asking their neighboring vendor to sell
| while they are gone. A cheap enough, but fail proof and
| versatile solution is not necessarily a waste.
| jhatax wrote:
| At less than a USD a month--currency vs. cost of living
| conversion--this subscription is extremely cheap considering
| the many positives: confirmation of payment from a new
| revenue stream, multiple language support, low-ish latency,
| fraud prevention for the seller. While a lot of Indians have
| smartphones, this speaker is the ideal example of a device
| that solves one specific problem and nothing else.
| pimlottc wrote:
| That would require leaving a smartphone and a speaker lying
| around where they might be stolen. Having it be a cheap,
| single-use device reduces the incentive for theft.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| You can buy a smartphone good enough for the job for less
| than 60 GBP even in the UK, I'm sure they can be had for
| considerably less in India. And it doesn't need to be lying
| around, the user can have it on them.
| asdted wrote:
| Digital payment transactions stand at 8.5B per month. It's just
| mind-blowing
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I remember seeing these at vegetable stands and thinking it was a
| goofy shopkeeper quirk, didn't realize how useful of a feature
| this was to shopkeepers. Kudos to PayTM for a very good solution
| to speeding up digital payments across society
| throwaway280382 wrote:
| Not mentioned in the article but I asked a shopkeeper why they
| use it. Answer is fraud. Earlier, customers would download a
| "fake" app, which miciked online gateway's UI. Customer would
| punch in money, and show to shopkeeper that "payment went
| through". Customer takes goods with them and leaves. Shopkeeper
| looses money.
|
| With this sound box, shopkeeper gives goods ONLY after the box
| makes sound. Now imagine if a elderly or illiterate relative of
| shopowner is manning the shop. They may not know how to operate
| their "banking" app to make sure money has reached. The sound box
| removes that problem.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| "Fraud" is too friendly a word for this. It's just theft from a
| person who probably is having a much harder time making ends
| meet than the person stealing. Theft is never a pleasant topic
| but stealing from somebody with much less financial means than
| you is morally bankrupt.
| sfifs wrote:
| I visited India a few times in the last 9 months after digital
| payments had taken off due to COVID and can attest that these
| have been game changers that have led shopkeeps to accept
| e-payments.
|
| More than anything to do with literacy, this basically allows
| Shopkeeper to keep doing what they are doing without fiddling
| with their phones etc to confirm they received money. The device
| just says the amount received out loud and at that point, the
| customer can leave with the goods. Haven't seen this tech
| anywhere else.
|
| In my latest trip, I don't believe I paid cash in any shop and I
| was in a second tier city the whole time, not one of the big
| metropolitan cities.
| oefrha wrote:
| > The device just says the amount received out loud and at that
| point, the customer can leave with the goods. Haven't seen this
| tech anywhere else.
|
| I've seen this in China many years ago on both PoS terminals
| and smartphones. Guess it shouldn't be surprising that Paytm
| brought this to India, given that Alibaba/Ant Financial at one
| point had a significant stake in it.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I sometimes go weeks without realizing that I have literally
| zero cash in my wallet.
|
| I was using UPI so much that my credit card usage had dropped
| to almost nothing. Literally had to force myself to use the
| credit card more to accumulate some rewards.
| ramshanker wrote:
| Ditto. I close few credit cards because of usage drop. Paying
| with UPI is easier and at least 10x accepted.
|
| Moreover, within a year or so, UPI will start accepting
| Credit card linking as well. Things are really moving FAST
| here.
| HHalvi wrote:
| Credit Card linking with UPI is live for sometime now [0],
| currently limited to Rupay cards. I have been using my HDFC
| Rupay CC to pay for Merchant Payments that accept UPI for
| last month or so.
|
| [0]: https://www.rupay.co.in/rupay-credit-card-on-upi
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Any good cards on Rupay? Last time I checked, all the
| good rewards were on Visa/Mastercard
| manojlds wrote:
| Ironically, it's for Uber (and Ola) - the services that made
| us move away from cash for taxi and auto in the first place -
| that I have to carry cash for since the drivers just won't
| come without cash payments. UPI is better, but they will have
| the have to fill petrol excuse.
| as300 wrote:
| I may be misremembering, but I thought you can fill petrol
| with UPI too?
| makingstuffs wrote:
| After reading this article so much makes sense. I'm currently
| at the end of my annual trip here seeing family and I have been
| hearing these things all over the shop.
|
| I didn't pay much thought to it until now if I am honest.
| Genius and great to see tech companies do something to actually
| help people solve real world problems.
| alsodumb wrote:
| Just to add to this, digital payments in India got popular well
| before COVID, significantly increasing after the demonetization
| charade (which imo was a bad decision and total chaos).
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| The increase due to demonetization cancelled out afterwards.
| The grown we see now came organically, later
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| At the end of the day, nothing beats convenience. If the tech
| and the ecosystem was the same as it is today, it would have
| found adoption even without demonetization.
| yashg wrote:
| Demonetization induced usage reduced once cash was back in
| circulation. It was COVID era fear of touching cash and
| compulsion of lockdowns that really made digital payments hit
| the stratosphere.
| asdted wrote:
| Pre COVID transcations per month stood at 1.5b and now at
| 8.5B.
|
| COVID might have convinced few people that's all.
|
| Demonetization's effect is not clear since UPI came out
| just a year before Demonetization took place.
|
| It took off because of young generation and costs nothing
| as simple as that. They forced businesses and other to
| embrace it.
|
| Fun fact, i have been using UPI ever since it came out and
| used to pay for coconut/veggies with it even back in 2017
| lxgr wrote:
| Is it possible to use UPI as a visitor, or is an Indian bank
| account required?
| sumitgt wrote:
| UPI support for non-residents has been announced, but not
| sure of the timeline.
| hedora wrote:
| This makes so much more sense than illiteracy. The phone app
| could just have a thumbs up with a number or a thumbs down,
| after all.
|
| It suggests having a tv-like display would work about as well,
| and be less noisy / distracting.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I think a display might consume much more power than a speak,
| these look like they could, if they aren't already, powered
| with batteries, while a display could also be powered with
| batteries it wouldn't last nearly as long, not to mention
| that you can hear this even if you're not looking at it.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| What do you think is cheaper, a touch display with a a chip
| that can render graphics etc or a speaker playing an audio
| stream from a webservice?
| JohnFen wrote:
| From a hobby point of view (meaning that I purchase these
| things in very small quantities), then cost of both of
| these is comparable.
|
| I'm ignoring the "touchscreen" part, though, because that's
| not necessary. I'm thinking just a basic, small TFT
| display.
| foobazzy wrote:
| Why would you need a touch screen? An 8-segment display
| with 2 clicker buttons for looping through history, and a
| little bit of memory (like in a calculator) would be
| enough.
| user_named wrote:
| This has been standard for years in China.
| signal11 wrote:
| > In my latest trip, I don't believe I paid cash in any shop
| and I was in a second tier city the whole time, not one of the
| big metropolitan cities.
|
| If you're a tourist or business visitor, this isn't possible.
| UPI isn't available to you. Also note that many smaller shops
| which accept cards and do accept India-issued
| MasterCard/Visa/Rupay won't take MC/Visa issued abroad, because
| their payment providers charge them extra.
|
| Digital payments for business visitors and tourists in India
| are pretty terrible outside of upscale places.
|
| If you're an Indian living abroad, for now, you need to keep an
| Indian phone number active to use UPI (this should change
| soon). You can use cards though, especially if you have an
| India-issued card -- those have much wider acceptance.
| justanotheratom wrote:
| Yes, visitors can make UPI payments now. See recent news:
|
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/invest/in-bound-
| tra...
| signal11 wrote:
| This is promising, but it's not as exciting as one would
| assume -- it's a _very_ limited rollout, ensuring the use
| /don't use UPI decision has to be made quite quickly for
| people unfamiliar with it, which is most tourists.
|
| > To start with, it will be available to travelers from
| G-20 countries, at select international airports
| (Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi).
|
| > Eligible travellers would be issued Prepaid Payment
| Instruments (PPI) wallets linked to UPI for making payments
| at merchant outlets.
|
| > The PPIs shall be issued after physical verification of
| the passport and visa of the customers at the point of
| issuance.
|
| Also good luck finding the UPI PPI sale point. And of
| course it's extremely limited, to 20 countries.
|
| And the big one
|
| > PPIs can be issued in the form of wallets linked to UPI
| and can be used for merchant payments (P2M) only.
|
| This is "limited UPI" -- you can't use it for P2P payments
| or paying your friends and acquaintances. And does UPI
| Merchant Payments have payment protection / easy dispute
| resolution yet? If not, tourists would be far better off
| sticking to cards.
|
| So yeah, good on the RBI for making a start, but this
| doesn't help tourists realise even a fraction of UPI's
| convenience.
|
| I'm sure one day visitors and regular tourists will be
| prompted to set up a UPI wallet when they get their visa /
| eVisa, top up UPI online across the length and breadth of
| India, and in fact be able to top up their UPI wallets
| before landing in the country. But there are many
| bureaucratic barriers before that happens.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| PhonePe translates to "on the phone" in Hindi. And, of course, it
| reads like "phone pay" in English. A nice touch.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Sounds very much like the Vipps system we have in Scandinavia,
| particularly Norway, with the addition of something like the
| Android Voice Notify app which reads Android notification. My
| mobile phone has been doing this for years. Whenever I receive a
| payment it reads it out to me. No need for any new devices.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| It's amazing how fintech can create actual value when they aren't
| all just fighting over who gets to salami slice a nation's
| commerce!
|
| > Digital payments have taken off in a big way in India in recent
| years due to the government's unified payments interface (UPI)...
| But this boom hasn't helped fintech companies in India as they do
| not make money from facilitating UPI transactions.
| alsodumb wrote:
| There was definitely massive digital payments drive before the
| speakers, and the article is exaggerating it's effects.
| However, there was a good chunk of vendors who were not happy
| with the 'check your phone every time you get a payment'
| routine and this solution works out for them perfectly.
| evan_ wrote:
| They talk about how sometimes people would show them doctored
| receipts to scam them- how much longer before people start
| recording the "Paid Rs 50" voice and playing it back off their
| phones?
|
| Not sure what the fix for that would be- reading off the
| time/date, a small integrated display, or maybe it's just not an
| issue.
| jatins wrote:
| This speaker is with the merchant. I am sure the merchant can
| distinguish between a sound coming from their speaker vs sound
| coming from someone's mobile.
| rkrishnaan wrote:
| Another thing that helps this boom is, in India no one has any
| problem in sharing their phone number with strangers. Delivery
| workers, Cab drivers, Restaurant waitlist, you name it. So
| payment send and receive with just mobile number as the primary
| key becomes easier.
| hipratham wrote:
| There is also Virtual Payment Address (VPA) attached to account
| wiht legit number and bank acct which is good enough to use
| (share /scan QR code ) with merchant/user name.
| villgax wrote:
| Wow not true at all, everybody hesitates to bring forced to
| give mobile number at the supermarket it cloth stores for no
| good reason than to feed into FB/Google in bulk.
|
| For paying a bill you're just scanning the QR most of the time,
| it's only P2P like cabs/autos when you may have to scan the
| drivers personal QR. Gpay & others apart from BHIM tend to
| already generate or allow alphanumeric UPI ID.
| eru wrote:
| That seems to be working in Singapore as well.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| This is one of the most unique things about India that I
| haven't seen in any other country - the openness and community
| between its citizens. Especially proud to be Indian!
| jack_riminton wrote:
| The vendor being able to instantly take out a loan is the real
| kicker here. If even a relatively small percentage of shopkeepers
| do this it will enable economic growth only seen in places like
| China in the 1990s, the effect will be multiplicative throughout
| the economy
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I was so happy to read that part. A triumph of capitalism, if
| it takes off.
|
| Everyone deserves the right to a fair and quick evaluation of
| their default risk to get access to capital on margin. It's the
| best way to get people to invest in themselves and their
| communities.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Only if they can pay back the loan otherwise you just end up
| with a banking crisis.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| True but this isn't inflation of assets it's money for goods
| purchases by the sounds of it which is a lot less susceptible
| to bubbles
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| video of it in action (english subtitles)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUR84Qz0KbM
| djhworld wrote:
| Interesting thank you for the video.
|
| I was going to comment on this post wondering how it's more
| efficient than just the merchant looking at a fixed screen
| which shows the incoming transactions.
|
| But the video demonstrates why the audio interface is better,
| it allows them to multi-task. Sort of like how listening to
| radio/podcasts doesn't tie you down to somewhere like watching
| the TV does.
| ape4 wrote:
| So the merchant has to buy/rent a device. I expected it to be
| phone-to-phone for such wide acceptance.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| from my research, here is what I've found:
|
| 1- The govt insists the payments be done on their national
| backbone, which works on 0 markup, so companies have to find
| different avenues for revenue
|
| 2- The device is essentially a mobile phone with no
| display(newest version has a small pocket-calculator sized
| lcd, but most do not) and just four buttons: power, volume
| up, volume down, and repeat last message. It takes a SIM and
| has a rechargeable battery and a loud speaker.
|
| 3- This means essentially operators a renting a very
| specialised "dumb-phone"; one which has a simple audio output
| but no input (and thus access) to the actual app. They can
| leave this "phone" out in the public, while keeping their
| smartphone separate and secluded.
|
| 4- The device rent is lowered or even waived if you have a
| high-enough transaction volume. So for people who have a low
| usage, they can stick with checking their phone; for people
| with more frequent usage, it pays for it self.
|
| ----
|
| I see a lot of benefits for this. AFAIK, each device is keyed
| to the user, so stealing it not beneficial, but even if some
| one did, no can use it to access the app or your funds, since
| all it does is receive confirmation SMS.
|
| There no training involved, and more importantly, no handover
| of a device anytime you to step away from a counter; anyone
| can take over and just listen to the confirmation message.
|
| one benefit the article mentioned is that people would dupe
| the seller by showing fake screenshots of a transaction, how
| that was eliminated by the device; no sound message, no
| payment.
|
| But the best benefit is the multi-tasking; you can use your
| hands and eyes to keep focused on the task at hand while
| using your ears to keep track of payments. Imagine a food-
| stall seller having to wipe their grease/sauce covered hands
| and fiddle with a slippery phone, anytime a customer paid, it
| would never work.
| fandorin wrote:
| do you think such payment flow would work in the US / in
| the EU as well? I know that for example in Sweden Swish is
| super popular and you can pay with it in stores by scanning
| QR code (and then showing your phone to the merchant) -
| seems like such device could fit there perfectly.
| lxgr wrote:
| It definitely could, but I really hope it doesn't.
| Contactless payments are both more convenient and more
| secure than (even dynamic) QR code payments. (Whether the
| device manufacturer should have a monopoly on NFC-based
| payments is a different question, and one under active
| regulatory scrutiny at that.)
| bobsmooth wrote:
| In America there's contactless payments with your phone.
| The merchant's POS will confirm the transaction like it
| would with card or cash.
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| > it would never work
|
| Ask Thailand and their QR-code based payments, TrueMoney
| and "Thai QR", because that's exactly how they work. Maybe
| scammers are less prevalent in Thailand than in India so
| they go by trust, even in 7-Elevens.
| lxgr wrote:
| I'd be really surprised if 7-Eleven employees used
| personal or company-provided smartphones to confirm
| payments.
|
| For most QR payment systems, the flow for smaller
| merchants is customers scanning a printed QR code
| (optionally with common amounts pre-populated) and the
| merchant receiving a notification (so no need to actually
| open any app to confirm payments, and the merchant app
| could easily assign different ringtones to different
| payment amounts). This is the use case in which these
| speakers make a lot of sense.
|
| But for larger merchants with a POS, the clerk usually
| scans the customer's (dynamic) QR code and initiates the
| payment that way. Alternatively, an existing POS payments
| terminal can display a one-time and transaction-linked
| code that the customer scans.
|
| For tax and reporting reasons alone, payments practically
| need to be bound to a given transaction/receipt number.
| blntechie wrote:
| It's just not screenshots. Initially the payment apps
| added moving icons/pictures to differentiate screenshots
| with actual payment confirmation screens. As a response,
| some people made specialized apps which dynamically
| recreated the same exact payment confirmation screen of
| the popular apps with moving parts, fake transaction id
| etc.
| lazyninja987 wrote:
| [dead]
| flerchin wrote:
| Literacy rates in India look to be ~80% and climbing about 1% per
| year. Obviously it'll reach an asymptote, but it's looking like
| India already surpasses the US in this regard. Of course, given
| the large population, more Indians are illiterate than there are
| people in almost every nation. Nonetheless, wouldn't this
| solution be quite niche?
|
| Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-
| rat...
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| > Obviously it'll reach an asymptote
|
| I think you mean the increase will level off.
|
| An "asymptote" would mean it is always getting closer to some
| target number, and there is no reason that would be 'obviously'
| true.
| aatharuv wrote:
| Africa is possibly another target. Its literacy rates are a
| little bit under India's, and it's another place where digital
| payments have gone big, even earlier than India.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SSF/sub-saharan-africa...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's looking like India already surpasses the US in this
| regard_
|
| Different standards. India is measuring base literacy, being
| able to "read and write with understanding a short simple
| statement about their everyday life" [1]. The comparable
| counter-statistic in the U.S. is Level 1 illiteracy, or being
| able to "unable to successfully determine the meaning of
| sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece
| of information, or complete simple forms" in English [2]. That
| figure is 4.1%. (A Spanish-speaking physics PhD would count.)
|
| [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/literacy-
| rat...
|
| [2] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179.pdf
| Y_Y wrote:
| You think you can get a PhD in physics without learning to
| read basic English? Not this century.
| swamp40 wrote:
| There is more going on here than literacy. Even if you are
| illiterate, if you tell someone to pay 10 rupees you could see
| if 10 rupees made it to your account.
|
| Do those vendors not have smartphones? That's what I am
| suspecting. If they did, an app could announce it and you
| wouldn't need the external speaker.
|
| The speakers seem to be directly connected to the cellular
| network. And rented for ridiculously small fees.
| alsodumb wrote:
| Now that I think about it, I am not sure why they didn't just
| announce using the smartphone speaker - I've seen several
| vendors with smartphones still using these boxes.
|
| Granted, many vendors don't have smart phones, and perhaps
| sound boxes started with them. I think the fintech companies
| saw the opportunity and decided to not implement it their app
| for users with smartphone. Given that they are so cheap, I
| guess the vendors even with smart phones decided to get them
| anyway.
| z3t4 wrote:
| It's difficult to wake up a phone to play custom audio. I
| believe iOS and Android has made that impossible without
| rooting the device.
| wildzzz wrote:
| You don't need to play custom audio. Notification
| narration already exists.
| vaidhy wrote:
| Yes, the vendors have smartphones. The smartphones' speakers
| are not loud enough to announce over the road noise and
| general buzz in Indian shops. It would also be too
| distracting to keep looking down on the phone.
| dirtyid wrote:
| 20% (~300M) illiterate skews old, higher % of whom are active
| in workforce and will be for decades. Not that ~300M is "niche"
| as you said, but think of it technology that helps 50% of the
| workforce vs 20% of population.
| alsodumb wrote:
| I've interacted with several vendors who use these sound boxes.
| The article is a bit misleading in the sense that illiteracy is
| not the primary driver of the usage of these devices. It is a
| better check-out experience. Vendors were busy and annoyed by
| the fact that they have to use their phone to confirm payments
| which often hindered them from doing their routine to sell more
| stuff. Think about vendors making street foods, actively
| selling vegetables, etc.
|
| Now all they have to do is listen to the confirmation, directly
| streamed from the payment gateway vendor's server as soon as
| receive the money. Minor convenience, agreed, but the service
| isn't expensive to run (thanks to the minimal hardware it needs
| and the low data prices in India) and surprisingly even small
| vendors are okay with paying a subscription fee for it.
| achow wrote:
| Yes right.
|
| > _The 48-year-old, who can neither read nor write, would
| need to call his son to confirm that the payment had been
| received._
|
| Looks like the author made up a narrative. These vendors
| definitely can read numbers, they manage loads of cash
| through the day. They do lightening fast calculation in their
| head - which would put a Math grad student to shame.
|
| They may not be able to read, write English (or other
| languages) but they are very comfortable with numbers and
| operations on them (addition, subtractions...).
|
| And they would not need "their son" to confirm the amount
| (they can read), and also they would recognize a very large
| green checkmark (an icon to confirm successful transaction),
| so don't need "their son" for that too.
| alsodumb wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure about the author making up the
| narrative, it very well could be real but it is definitely
| not the majority.
|
| I get what you are saying, but none of this would put "a
| Math grad student to shame". If you really think it does,
| you definitely have no clue what grad students do -
| sincerely, a grad student whose best friend is a math grad
| student.
| asdted wrote:
| I saw college students (not indian) fail to answer basic
| arithmetic questions like 50-13 stuff like that.
|
| He meant they do basic calculations very fast with out a
| calculator.
| rkagerer wrote:
| How exactly does the experience work? e.g: -
| How does the customer know how much to send and where?
| - How quickly does the confirmation come through? Does it
| say who the money is from? - What happens if the vendor
| is distracted and misses the confirmation for a particular
| order?
| kevinsundar wrote:
| 1. The merchant tells them the amount and there's a QR code
| on the box to scan.
|
| 2. Within seconds. When I paid while over there it was 2 -
| 5 seconds. It doesn't say who the money is from though.
|
| 3. The merchant has to check their phone or trust the
| screen on the customers phone.
|
| It works surprisingly well for 95% of use cases. Usually
| more than one person isn't checking out in parallel. It
| lets the merchant continue cooking / packing your items /
| pouring a tea for someone else / etc.
|
| Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUR84Qz0KbM
| wildzzz wrote:
| I would just assume that the vendor's payment app would
| just play a chime and maybe a readout of the amount
| received. Every payment app I've used has a notification
| with name and total when I get money. I'm pretty sure
| Android can already handle this anyway. Connect the phone
| to a speaker if you need it louder. Seems like a much
| cheaper solution than buying a speaker with a built-in
| modem that you have to pay a monthly fee for unless you
| just don't own a smartphone.
| ajonit wrote:
| Fraud was another reason for the emergence of these sound
| boxes. Android store was filled with fake payment screenshot
| generator apps. People would show the (fake) payment
| screenshot and leave the shop premises (saying "must be a
| network problem at your end.")
|
| After multiple complaints from merchants, Paytm and the likes
| innovated this affordable idea.
| spyder wrote:
| Hmm... but the phones too have speakers, they could have just
| made their to app read it just like the speaker does it.
| db1234 wrote:
| +1. First time I came across these speakers was when I had
| tea in a road side tea stall off an highway. The shop was
| crowded and I held my phone at the owner to show him the
| evidence of payment which he ignored and within a couple of
| seconds my payment was announced on the speaker. Great
| experience!
| t8sr wrote:
| I thought you were joking about India surpassing the US in
| literacy rates, and then I looked it up. It's 75 - 85%
| depending on how you count. What?!
|
| How is this number not 99.9%? Developed countries are at 100%
| or minus rounding error. Even Canada is at 99%, and that's next
| door. What is going on in the US?
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I suspect a lot of this is variance on surveying methods. I
| could see "Literacy" be defined anywhere from "able to read
| the survey enough to pick out where to mark "yes/no" and
| "sign here"" to "Able to read YA novels", and in the US it
| could well be "English literacy" versus "Any literacy". I
| knew plenty of kids growing up who had grandparents living
| with them that could read Mandarin or Spanish just fine, but
| who had pretty limited English skills.
| eru wrote:
| I would suggest you double check what definition of literacy
| the different countries are using. Perhaps the US has a more
| stringent definition?
|
| As an example, for a long time Germany used a way to measure
| unemployment that yielded consistently higher numbers than
| most of the rest of the world. So any honest international
| comparison had to make adjustments.
|
| See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
|
| > In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence
| suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the
| U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term
| is presently defined as the ability to use printed and
| written information to function in society, to achieve one's
| goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3]
| bombcar wrote:
| You also need to see if it's from official reports based on
| testing or statistical reports based on surveys. Many
| people who are counted literate are functionally
| illiterate- they car recognize street signs, their name,
| etc but not much more.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| It is not a fair comparison. In India, the definition of
| "literacy" does not mean functional literacy in India ...
| merely knowledge of the alphabet is enough to qualify
| ("akshar gyan").
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > depending on how you count
|
| I think you got it right there. Be wary of cross-nation
| statistics without context.
| SaltyGoodness wrote:
| I was stunned to learn that the average American reads at a
| 5th grade level. It's true though. I've been wondering why
| for a while, since it explains so much... Here's my best
| guess:
|
| 13 million children face daily hunger, and politicians fight
| to take away school lunches. Hungry kids don't learn too
| good.
|
| Fear porn is blasted over every corporate media outlet
| constantly, to the point where it saturates culture. People
| who feel unsafe don't learn too good.
|
| Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither political
| 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers often have
| to buy school supplies out of their own meagre pocket. Kids
| in schools that don't have money don't learn too good.
|
| School boards refuse to integrate modern understanding of
| best practices - homework is useless, school starts too
| early, multi-modal learning works way better, spaced
| repetition works great, bullying isn't a fact of life to be
| accepted and ignored. Bullied, tired kids don't learn too
| good.
|
| Publishing monopolies charge hundreds of dollars for
| textbooks, altering 1984 and children's stories to be
| "safer", and holding back anything that might upset their
| comfortable position.
|
| Hundreds of years of the world's most sophisticated anti-
| intellectual propaganda has allowed America to be world
| leaders in producing people that think education is scary.
|
| Blaming poor people for their own problems is a national
| sport.
|
| These attitudes have been with America for hundreds of years,
| and no amount of fight from Mark Twain, or Thoreau, or
| Einstein, or Bernie has changed those fundamentals of
| American culture.
|
| There's no political motive to change any of this. As George
| Carlin put it so well: "Governments don't want a population
| capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers,
| people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb
| enough to passively accept their situation." America are
| undisputed world leaders in this (except in America, where
| this is seen as socialist talk and therefore safe to ignore).
|
| Media, corporations and government conspire to prevent any
| third party or group from changing the social situation -
| look at what happened to OWS, or MLK, or Fred Hampton.
|
| Any progression toward helping people get safe and educated
| is labeled communism, and the DNC conspires with media to
| mess up anyone too "radical" that runs as a Democrat.
|
| Nobody on TV talks about how many teachers we could have
| trained with the 20 trillion dollars spent bombing Middle
| Eastern families - it's a lot.
|
| So, a lot is going on in America. I didn't even mention the
| drugs, the housing situation, the bank crises, the
| environmental poisoning, the disconnection from nature, the
| lack of exercise, the poor quality food or God knows how much
| else.
|
| Some will say I must hate America to write this stuff -
| people who say things like this get accused of being Putin's
| puppets, or worse, socialists. But I love America, which is
| why I hate to see what is happening to it and refuse to
| pretend these problems will be solved without even
| acknowledging them.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Schools are funded based on local taxes. Neither
| political 'team' seems determined to change this. Teachers
| often have to buy school supplies out of their own meagre
| pocket. Kids in schools that don't have money don't learn
| too good.
|
| This one is mostly a myth. States and federal grants will
| equalize money per pupil across different school districts.
| Some of the worst performing school districts in the
| country also have the highest per-capital spending.
| SaltyGoodness wrote:
| [dead]
| misterprime wrote:
| Your post includes some good commentary identifying issues
| with the educational system, specifically about fostering a
| healthy, effective learning environment as well as
| commentary about mis-allocating resources. However, it also
| includes lots of specific blaming and accusations which, to
| me, distracted from the helpful elements.
|
| I'm curious if you think the best path forward would be to
| keep pushing for the federal government to do better with
| education, or if it would be better to empower more local
| entities to improve. This could be state, county, or city
| governments, or even private school systems.
| SaltyGoodness wrote:
| How does Finland do it? Copy them as much as possible,
| since it's clearly working. Gaps in Finlands system? Pay
| experts to figure it out. I don't claim to be an expert -
| you don't need to be, to see how bad the current system
| is.
|
| If we can afford $20 trillion on interest payments for
| illegal wars on the other side of the planet, we can
| figure out how to fund schools.
|
| Not sure what you mean by "specific blaming and
| accusations" - there _are_ real forces fighting back
| against educating children in a safe and happy
| environment.
|
| They're not even that sneaky about it. Pretending that
| extremely well funded and organised and power groups are
| not, for example, banning books, abortion, cutting school
| funds, cancelling school lunch programs, giving millions
| in TANF funds to dried out quarterbacks, etc, etc, is
| like ignoring the termites eating away at the foundations
| of your house while spending all your money on grenades
| to protect from home invaders.
| jonfw wrote:
| There are two causes to consider. The failure of society to
| provide equal opportunities to all, and the failure of
| individuals to capitalize on what opportunities they have
| available.
|
| The trouble with your criticism is that you are focusing
| entirely on society's failures, when a more complete
| analysis would consider what can be done on either side.
| robocat wrote:
| > and the failure of individuals to capitalize on what
| opportunities they have available
|
| Yeah, we could blame the 5 year olds for their lack of
| grit and determination to create their foundation for
| their reading skills. Alternatively, we can look at what
| other societies achieve, and try to improve our own.
|
| Also you are completely ignoring that plenty of people
| have functional difficulties learning to read and write.
| Anecdotally I would say over 10% based on my dyslexic or
| illiterate friends and family, some of which had
| professional focused help beyond what schooling provides.
| I agree with you that the education system has its
| faults, and some people "fail to capitalise
| opportunities". However there is a large segment of
| people that are motivated, work hard, get good
| educational opportunities, and yet still struggle to read
| and write. There are people with denial or bullshit
| reasons too, but too many of my friends and family have
| symptoms that I have good reasons to believe they are not
| making anything up.
|
| My 10% figure ignores functional meta-level difficulties
| for lacking motivation. Perhaps born without grit and
| determination; perhaps never taught it; perhaps other
| home problems trump it.
| SaltyGoodness wrote:
| Sure, everyone ought to do what they can to better
| themselves. That's for another comment, because the
| question was, what is it about America that has literacy
| skills at such a shameful level.
|
| It's not Brad's fault that he can't read good. It's not
| Chad's fault that he hasn't picked up a book. These
| hypothetical kids are 6, 7, 8 years old.
|
| That's on us, and our willingness to allow their home
| lives to be miserable rather than pay for mental health
| supports and education as a society.
| nativespecies wrote:
| Public education has been gutted for decades in this country.
| misterprime wrote:
| I'm not sure our Department of Education is effective, and I
| think some children actually are being left behind, despite
| the "no child left behind" effort.
| nngjmppkjhfd wrote:
| Why even consider that another standard could be in use,
| like others have pointed out in the thread, when you have
| political priors to confirm? Stay classy HN!
| mplewis wrote:
| What? It's widely known that over half of American adults
| read at or below a sixth grade level. This is a result
| from 2020 so it shouldn't be news to you.
| sowbug wrote:
| But it's good that there are options. Many of us aged 40+ can't
| read HN-sized text anymore, and the prevalence of presbyopia
| among UI designers is evidently 0%. Throw in glare from
| sunlight, a busy storefront where you constantly need your
| hands and eyes elsewhere, etc.
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