[HN Gopher] Doing laundry on campus without a phone
___________________________________________________________________
Doing laundry on campus without a phone
Author : barbarr
Score : 294 points
Date : 2023-09-01 16:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (naveenarun.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (naveenarun.wordpress.com)
| simonjgreen wrote:
| This feels like it could have been much better achieved through
| contactless payment than a proprietary app. Moving from coins
| makes sense, moving off standards less so.
| mrighele wrote:
| Proprietary app makes more sense for them
|
| - you get the money in advance - you don't pay commission to CC
| network for every transaction - casual users will give you much
| more money than what they need to
| simonjgreen wrote:
| I'm extremely confident their top up mechanism will incur
| fees just as much as contactless payment would. And clearance
| is soon enough. Unclaimed balances would not show on their
| P&L if they are following GAPP, in fact they'd be a
| liability. And it's at a school?! Priorities:D
| fortran77 wrote:
| If in the United States, the thing to do is call an attorney and
| file an ADA lawsuit against the school. Find a disability that
| makes it difficult to use a smartphone and claim you have it. For
| example "Internet Addication" or "ADHD"
| syats wrote:
| Somewhere in HN there's a post about disrupting or
| revolutionizing the laundromat industry, where some person is
| showered in praise (and later money) for setting up this lousy
| system.
|
| If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
| WeAddValue wrote:
| Long time ago I lived in a shady building where it was broke,
| broken into that is to get the coins in the machine.
| usr1106 wrote:
| And now the LavaWash server could be hacked to steal user
| data that a washing machine would never need, but the
| implementer chose to store without reasonable protection.
| Cupprum wrote:
| Really nice article i really enjoy the way you write.
| sanjitb wrote:
| Speaking of the evils of internet-reliant devices and bad
| engineering: those MIT washing machines actually went down for
| two weeks. MIT changed the authentication configuration of their
| wireless network, the software couldn't re-connect, and all hell
| broke loose. They had to turn on some emergency operating mode
| that allowed students to use them for free, without any app.
| bick_nyers wrote:
| Good, I mean why charge in the first place? So much other
| infrastructure gets rolled into tuition anyways.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I understand the argument that you shouldn't need a smartphone
| for everyday tasks but you can get a perfectly serviceable one
| for $100-$200 and I feel like this shouldn't be a burden for a
| college student.
| rsolva wrote:
| Price is not the only reason to not get a smartphone, not
| participating in surveilance captalism also plays a part for
| some. I have found a compromise with a de-googled phone, but I
| have considered switching to a dumb phone more than once.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes because paying with a credit card gives you lots of
| anonymity...
| flangola7 wrote:
| Hello, cash?
|
| At least credit card isn't a _continuous_ and multi-sensor
| surveillance device.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And then they have to hire someone to go by and get cash
| from each of the machines.
| [deleted]
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > And then they have to hire someone to go by and get
| cash from each of the machines.
|
| Are hiring costs really such a deciding factor? By
| relying on an app, they have to hire teams to develop and
| maintain at least two mobile apps, probably another team
| to develop and maintain the 'Laundry Pod' device, at
| least two teams to develop and maintain the laundry
| machine endpoints (hardware and software), teams to
| develop and maintain the backend services, technical
| support staff to offer first-level customer support for
| any IT issue, and (hopefully) a competent infosec team to
| keep their platform secure. And that's without taking
| into account the IT infrastructure expenditures.
|
| If they can afford all that, they can afford some low-
| wage cash-picker-uppers... but why would they even need
| them? They could simply provide the organisation that is
| renting out the laundry equipment with the keys to get
| the cash themselves. Washlava can invoice the renters for
| whatever flat or per-usage fee, with no need to even
| touch the cash.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| That's a fixed cost versus variable cost. That's just
| like asking why you can't call Google when you want to
| perform a search and have someone do it for you.
|
| I don't believe people on HN don't understand why you
| shouldn't do things that don't scale.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I think you missed the part where I pointed out that
| hiring somebody to "pick up the cash" is not even
| necessary.
|
| If scaling is the issue, invoicing the institutions
| hosting the laundry equipment a flat or a per-usage fee
| (whatever best suits the business model), and having them
| deal with the cash still scales much better than the
| whole infrastructure and headcount required to
| unnecessarily shoehorn an app into paying for using a
| washing machine.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Price hasn't been the main problem in years. Everyone likely
| has a cousin or friend with an old smartphone collecting dust
| in a drawer that could be had practically free.
|
| The biggest problems are loss of autonomy, privacy, and
| redundancy. Whole life dependent on G and A corps? Accounts
| that can be banned on a whim with no recourse? No thank you.
| ((extends middle finger))
| jlokier wrote:
| _> an old smartphone collecting dust in a drawer that could
| be had practically free._
|
| Needed to use an old smartphone in a drawer recently, due to
| current one failing.
|
| Unfortunately they tend to be too old to install current
| apps. Good for calls, text and web, but not for random
| laundry app of the week. Same with friends' old drawer
| phones.
|
| If you're poor the phones you buy are often second hand too,
| which exacerbates the problem of the old one in the drawer
| being out of date for current apps by the time you need to
| get it out again as a backup.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| My 6s was supported for seven years or more. While what you
| say is true, it seems a bit overstated. When an individual
| is motivated, they will find one cheap if not free.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| But you're okay with using a credit card - controlled by
| Amex, Visa and Mastercard
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Reading comprehension is important and must be developed
| and tended like a garden.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > The biggest problems are loss of autonomy, privacy, and
| redundancy. Whole life dependent on G and A corps?
| Accounts that can be banned on a whim with no recourse?
| No thank you. ((extends middle finger))
|
| This all applies to credit card companies. Try running a
| porn site and accepting payments with credit cards
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I'm not okay with that either. (Although PCI DSS and
| banking regulations do present a limit to their potential
| shenanigans.)
|
| A secondary in any case, as issues have well-developed
| remediation strategies. Few regular folks are banned from
| the financial system without recourse.
|
| I get it. You wanted to be edgy and shoot from the hip,
| but this time pulled the trigger too fast.
| truculent wrote:
| Did this article trip anyone else's "is this GPT?" senses? I
| thought the prose style was very strange - quite verbose with a
| lot of redundant descriptors.
| shijie wrote:
| It tripped my "trying to hard to write eloquent, witty prose"
| senses. I proofread a lot of papers in college and wrote a lot
| of columns in the school newspaper. This is a common style.
| Thesaurus-driven word choice.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| yeah, it tripped my "this is college writing" sense.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Basically the "if I use fancy words, I sound smart to those
| who don't actually comprehend the words' meanings"
| maksimur wrote:
| I don't know if it's the guy's case, however, there are
| people who actually delight themselves in writing complex
| sentences comparable to a mathematician's delight in doing
| mathematics or a painter's artistry on canvas.
|
| I'm noticing it's mainly an US-centric trend to have
| negative feelings towards good and complex writing.
| gcr wrote:
| i used to do exactly this as an undergrad! i thought it
| made my writing sound whimsical or whatever, as if
| emulating the style of Lemony Snickett or _why the lucky
| stiff
|
| i've since replaced this (bad imho) habit with other bad
| habits, fortunately
| maksimur wrote:
| It goes without saying you shouldn't imitate the style of
| other people but have your own. Also, there's actually a
| feeling of joy in writing good prose and seeing the
| result, which is something I never mastered in English,
| as evidenced for example by my repeated use of "but", but
| (yeah..) kind of did in my native language.
| hoherd wrote:
| > "Omit needless words." (Rule 17.)
|
| The Elements of Style
| tiny_ta wrote:
| Reading this was nostalgic for me as this was how we'd write
| essays in my Indian high school. It's not so strange when we
| grow up developing our style to look like this :)
| dcminter wrote:
| To me it sounds very self conscious, just like a high
| schooler or youthful university student who has not yet found
| an authentic voice but wants to sound literate. So probably
| more about the "high school" than the "Indian" part of your
| observation. I didn't finish the article.
| theonething wrote:
| some good writing there.
| khiqxj wrote:
| 1. stop putting software in things 2. especially dont put webshit
| in things 3. especially dont put smartphone shit in things
|
| really, i'm not trying to sound rude, theres no other way to put
| it, you deserve it. its unfortunate that people value
| "politeness" over reason. this is the hard truth that people in
| this bubble have not been able to face for 20 years now. the web
| is an abomination which was never created for anything other than
| corporate interests and serving magazines. _of course_ it 's
| practically inoperable. same exact story for smartphones, it was
| created by some scum _web company_ to carry out the old trope of
| making a software ecosystem where shitty devs that cant make
| their own software come to and said scummy company gets to rule
| over. none of this implies any good or even reasonably working
| software
|
| also laundry is a trivial task, it was only hard before washing
| machines. also this is one example of where technology actually
| made our lives better but all kinds of idiots like
| environmentalists and corpos are trying to ruin it.
| helmette wrote:
| Is it unrealistic to hope for legal protection against being
| refused services on account of lacking a phone? Has that been
| suggested anywhere?
| MandieD wrote:
| This is something that AARP should be on. Yes, I know that most
| seniors, even very old ones (over 80) have smartphones, but an
| awful lot do not, and many who do have a rather uneasy
| relationship with it. Every update comes with user interface
| changes that have to be learned, and I see my older relatives
| who do have smartphones having various levels of trouble
| learning them each time. Eventually, they give up on functions
| that change too much (Apple, I'm talking about Camera and
| Photos on the iPhone)
|
| Despite personally liking my iPhone, I'm looking to help
| protect the rights of my relatives to live their lives and
| access public services without smartphones or personal internet
| access.
| paxys wrote:
| Unless you are entitled to that service by law, probably.
| shrtctroulette wrote:
| sidenote: so happy with the dead simple template of this blog
| [deleted]
| nlunbeck wrote:
| > You can actually check out an iPod Touch, generously provided
| by Washlava and SidPac, to open the Washlava app and perform your
| laundry. Score!
|
| I love how this would totally feel hyperbolic as a comedy skit
| greenie_beans wrote:
| add me to the list of people without a smartphone who has to deal
| with bullshit like this.
| ltr_ wrote:
| this has nothing to do with bad engineering, it's about stupid
| greedy investors/managers with to much power on decision making,
| decisions that they should not make. this is sad and an
| embarrassment to tech people. this industry is a joke.
| rapnie wrote:
| Smart people call this "Digital Transformation", and they think
| it is good. After all, they earn their money with it.
| rolph wrote:
| https://blacksprucehound.com/2011/09/26/how-to-wash-laundry-...
| [2011]
| einpoklum wrote:
| tl;dr: He got a smartphone substitute from some desk, which works
| with the washing machines. After a bit of trouble working that,
| he managed to access his account and wash.
| Lammy wrote:
| Sounds like it really is trying to be "Uber for Laundry" (i.e.
| expensive and spies on you) https://www.washlava.com/facility-
| owners https://www.washlava.com/route-operators
|
| > Real Time Data
|
| > Demand Based Pricing
|
| > Real-time performance analytics
|
| > Optimize price per load
|
| > Shareable data & reporting
| vinay_ys wrote:
| I want a safari private browsing mode equivalent for apps on
| iPhone. I would turn this on by default for all apps. And I would
| use Apple ID generated per-app user-id and iCloud private relay
| and private email for every app by default. I'm hopeful that
| Apple will do it as they are a privacy focused company. Basically
| iPhone should behave like TorBrowser for every single app. I also
| want the location service to feed an address based location or a
| previously saved location to the app. And I want to deny any
| attempts to fingerprint via device ids and names like wifi access
| point names or bluetooth devices etc. Someone at apple, if you
| are reading this, please get it done. Thanks!
| throwitaway156 wrote:
| Damn, i knew that Apple did marketing well but not this well.
| Great success, apple marketing team.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Hmm, maybe like Firefox containers.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Almost all of this already exists:
|
| * Apps that offer any form of social login must also offer
| Apple ID login * Apple ID login can anonymise your email
| address per-provider * Every app already gets a distinct device
| ID, and indeed every app _install_ gets one. Reinstalls
| regenerate it. * Wifi APs and Bluetooth scans require location
| privileges, which you can decline. * Apps are required to
| continue functioning (minus functions that clearly require the
| permission) if you decline them.
| cglong wrote:
| Not quite the same, but Android has a Guest User mode (similar
| to macOS). If you switch to the Guest account, it'll create a
| new user separate from the main one. Then when you log out, it
| deletes all the data.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I think the writer hit the nail on the head when they said they
| were the first one to ask for the iPod.
| cseleborg wrote:
| I recently landed on beeline's website (GPS navigation devices
| for motorbikes and bicycles). For bicycles, the tagline was
| "Simplify your ride".
|
| I strongly disagree. I feel like involving my smartphone into any
| activity that existed in 1990 (like jogging, or riding a bike)
| tends to make things _more_ complicated, not less. When I go for
| a jog wanting to listen to podcasts, battery status, headphones,
| Bluetooth and playlist ordering are additional complexities that,
| at the very minimum, add additional steps to the process and, at
| worst, require several minutes of problem-solving before I can
| get started.
|
| In my experience, involving a smartphone can, but rarely does,
| make things simpler.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| You think this because the cases where smartphones are worse
| stand out more.
|
| Finding businesses that match some profile in the area, finding
| out that business' hours and offerings, then getting directions
| there from wherever you currently are -- all MASSIVELY easier
| on a smartphone compared to doing the same in 1990/pre-web.
| Doing that stuff with yellow pages and a map was a huge pain in
| the ass that took forever.
|
| Grabbing a playlist to listen to music on a jog is also way
| easier in the age of music subscriptions and smartphones,
| compared to going around with a walkman+tape, especially if you
| factor in getting variety in song choice.
|
| Also, remember communicating with people at arbitrary times? If
| they're at home, that's fairly safe, though if _you 're_ not
| home you may need to find a payphone. But if _they 're_ away
| from home on errands, lol, good fucking luck getting a message
| to them.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Finding businesses ...
|
| Finding information about just about anything pre-Web was
| massively harder. Sources were limited, physical, probably
| out-of-date, etc. This isn't a smartphone thing as such
| unless you're talking about real-time discovery while you're
| not at home. But the smartphone and the real maturation of
| information sources online were coming together at about the
| same time.
|
| People forget--or they never knew--what it took to do most
| kinds of research.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| _In my experience, involving a smartphone can, but rarely does,
| make things simpler._
|
| Beeline is an alternative to a paper map, and having seen many
| people try to navigate with a map I'm pretty sure everyone
| would agree than a smart phone is _massively_ less complicated.
|
| If you're going on a journey where you wouldn't need a map,
| just adding in some tech is obviously going to be more
| complicated than not adding tech.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| How is any of this preferable to just shoving some quarters into
| a slot? Not everything needs to be a fucking app.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| When I moved in 8 years ago, our laundry service accepted coins
| or cards. There was a nice box on the wall where you swiped your
| card, and then you could activate up to four machines at a time,
| which was great, because I usually ran three loads at once. They
| also had a fantastic web-based machine monitor page, which was
| accessible by anyone from anywhere, with no auth required.
|
| Then they "upgraded" and every machine got a little bluetoothy
| card reader dongle on it and a QR code, and they "upgraded" the
| box on the wall so that it stopped accepting cards. So that's
| fine, I guess, but it was a pain in the ass to start 3 machines
| at once, because now I needed to run my card 3 separate times,
| and hope that the readers were all working OK. There was also a
| mobile app, but the Android Lollipop tablet I had never worked
| with the app. You needed to activate both WiFi and BT (and it
| would force those on) but it still didn't work, despite my
| valiant efforts to contact their Support idiots. They also shut
| down the good monitoring page, and the only way to monitor
| machines was to pay for a load and use the app only. That sucked.
| A major use case for monitoring was to see who was using machines
| already, before I lugged everything downstairs!
|
| So I got a new Android 10 phone and the app worked okay. I didn't
| really use the app. Then I noticed that the laundry room was
| really going downhill. Machines went out of order and weren't
| fixed. The same with pipes and such. Seeing the hand writing on
| the wall, I began to outsource to a wash'n'fold service, which
| has worked great.
|
| Then a few months ago, landlady announced that we were switching
| laundry services, so that was all swept away and new machines
| were installed. There is a new app. The little box on the wall
| now sells reloadable cards, too. And you can pick those up at the
| leasing office. I sort of used the app just to test it.
| Obviously, there's no world-readable monitoring page on the web.
| Thankfully, I think the machines are still accepting quarters.
| But I'm still going with my outsourced hassle-free laundry.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The wave of the future: "washer women" for hire.
| itronitron wrote:
| I'm sensing a YC startup opportunity, assuming it isn't
| already taken.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Washr?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| totetsu wrote:
| Solving societies problems through technology
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| On a trip to California last year, my wife and I rented a house
| in which the washing machine required a mobile app to start. I
| don't have a cell phone. Fortunately my wife has an iPhone, so we
| were able to install the app on her phone, connect it to my
| credit card, and charge it with the minimum mount (about $15, as
| I recall). I'll never use that specific app again, so we deleted
| it, meaning the app company got to keep most of the money.
|
| Later we tried renting some e-scooters, which required the use of
| the Lyft App. My wife has the Lyft app, which let her pay for one
| scooter but then wouldn't let her unlock a second one for her
| non-cellphone-owning husband (I guess if you're a parent who
| wants to use e-scooters with your child, you're out of luck).
|
| I sense that in the not-too-distant future, those of us who don't
| own a device running either Apple's or Google's proprietary OS
| will be pretty much excluded from many of the basic conveniences
| of everyday life.
| astura wrote:
| >(I guess if you're a parent who wants to use e-scooters with
| your child, you're out of luck)
|
| Check the TOS, children are, generally, not allowed to use the
| e-scooter rentals. Preventing this situation seems very
| deliberate.
|
| For example, Lime-
|
| https://help.li.me/hc/en-us/articles/115004915588-How-old-do...
|
| You must be the legal age to enter into binding contracts. For
| most countries, this means you need to be 18 years or older to
| ride Lime scooters or e-bikes. In most countries, you can be 16
| years or older for our non-electrical bikes. Before signing up
| for Lime, make sure to review the User Agreement for your
| country, which states age requirements
| userbinator wrote:
| Don't some states have laws that require businesses to accept
| cash?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| you're required to accept cash as a payment for a debt (at
| least that's what is says on the bill, "this note is legal
| tender for all debts, public and private")
|
| but you can't be compelled to provide a service for someone
| who is carrying cash only, unless something changed recently
| happymellon wrote:
| > you're required to accept cash as a payment for a debt
| (at least that's what is says on the bill, "this note is
| legal tender for all debts, public and private")
|
| Does it mean that? Just because it is legal tender doesn't
| mean you have to accept it.
| brazzy wrote:
| Yes, it does. That is the _definition_ of "legal
| tender". Usually there are some restrictions on the
| amount and the denominations, so you don't have to accept
| a truck full of 1 cent coins.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| As I understand it as a layman, if:
|
| * The seller does _not_ state they do _not_ take cash
| _before_ the transaction happens,
|
| * And the buyer attempts to pay for the transaction after
| the fact with cash in good faith,
|
| * And the sold goods cannot be returned to their original
| condition prior to sale,
|
| Then the buyer is okay (FSVO okay) to leave and go about
| his day because the seller refused to take money that was
| presented in good faith by the buyer. Because cash, at
| least in the US, is "legal tender for all debts public
| and private" and a transaction to which you owe money is
| a form of debt.
|
| Obligatory not a lawyer and not an accountant disclaimer.
| I'm way too lazy to go and properly research and cite
| this.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| This was definitely a meme going around during covid as
| more places were going cashless
|
| In real life there's not a lot of cases where someone
| gives you goods before you pay, and anywhere i've been to
| that don't accept cash clearly posts "this is a cashless
| business" (sweetgreen and the like, SF/NYC, YMMV) so good
| luck making the argument that you're entitled to your
| free salad
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Yeah, as I said if the buyer makes a good faith payment
| in cash and if the seller didn't inform him beforehand
| they don't take cash then the onus is presumably on the
| seller to take it or leave it because the buyer is
| willing to do his part and make the pie whole.
|
| Usually this isn't a problem because "We don't take
| cash." signs are prominently posted, but we are speaking
| in the hypothetical after all.
| brazzy wrote:
| Yes, it seems like a lot of misunderstandings here hinge
| on not paying attention to or making incorrect
| assumptions about the word "debt". You cannot refuse cash
| payments for an existing debt, but you _can_ make non
| cash payment a condition for engaging in a transaction at
| all.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| You do for debts, but paying for a good or service isn't
| a debt.
| flangola7 wrote:
| In some states, yes, you have to accept it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| At that point I'd wash my clothes in the sink/tub and hang to
| dry, techniques learned from my backpacking days.
|
| Sometimes the traditional ways are best.
| glogla wrote:
| Worse, due to regulations on security, this is the case for
| banking in EU.
|
| A lot of banks don't even have web interface and those they
| still do require you to install and link smartphone app to be
| able to log in or to pay with card online.
|
| While there might in theory be many second factors with
| different pros and cons, most bank only allow their own app and
| nothing else. The few stragglers that still allow text messages
| make it increasingly user hostile, e.g. rewrite 12 number code
| and enter special PIN, different from your normal PIN or just
| click a button in app!
|
| And of course, none of the banking apps will work without
| Google or Apple account, because if you try to run them on
| deGoogled Android they just refuse to work.
|
| It will soon be impossible to be part of society without having
| Google or Apple account. Maybe it is already the case.
| kefyras wrote:
| > A lot of banks don't even have web interface and those they
| still do require you to install and link smartphone app to be
| able to log in or to pay with card online.
|
| Which "classic" banks don't have online banking?
|
| > While there might in theory be many second factors with
| different pros and cons, most bank only allow their own app
| and nothing else. The few stragglers that still allow text
| messages make it increasingly user hostile, e.g. rewrite 12
| number code and enter special PIN, different from your normal
| PIN or just click a button in app!
|
| I'm reasonably sure at least with most major Scandinavian
| banks you can use plain old OTP tokens.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| None of the big Dutch consumer banks are smartphone-first. I
| have the app for mine but I could easily do everything on a
| computer instead.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| ING customer: I can't access my online shit on my desktop
| without going to my phone for verification
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Yes, but if you don't want to use your phone, you can ask
| them to send you a physical 2FA device instead:
| https://www.ing.nl/particulier/digitaal-bankieren/mijn-
| ing/s...
| rojcyk wrote:
| [dead]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's cool and all, but what if something happens to your wife
| and you're unable to do anything about because of your purity
| spiral? Do you want to be telling people 'yeah I couldn't call
| 911 because I refuse to own a mobile device due to my
| philosophical principles.'
| renewiltord wrote:
| Two clarifications to your comment.
|
| 1. That money will go through a thing called "escheatment" and
| end up with the California government on your behalf where it
| will be held for you.
|
| 2. I use the Lyft e-bikes and from recently onwards you can
| rent one for a friend. It doesn't apply your subscription
| benefits but I suppose that's life.
| Grimburger wrote:
| > charge it with the minimum mount (about $15, as I recall)
|
| Living in one of the highest density areas on Earth, stuff like
| this blows my mind. Public washing machines are everywhere for
| those that don't have their own.
|
| I guess the extreme lease costs driven by entirely artificial
| commercial RE prices put a full stop to it existing in the
| west.
| IshKebab wrote:
| There are still some launderettes around, but it isn't the
| cost of running them that matters, it's the inconvenience.
| Having your own washing machine is dramatically more
| convenient (and cheaper). The only reason not to have one is
| if you are extremely short on space.
| [deleted]
| hippich wrote:
| I am not an accountant, but I believe that such unused balance
| can not be treated by the company as an asset, and instead as
| liability. And I believe there are laws in every state where
| such money eventually should be returned to you or to the
| state's "unclaimed property", if they can't contact you. Search
| for "unclaimed property <state>" and see if you can locate
| anything there.
|
| On the other hand, I have no idea how that is enforced. So it
| is quite possible that liability stays on books indefinitely.
| Or worse - not recorded as liability in the first place..
| IshKebab wrote:
| Nah these pretend money things have an expiry date exactly
| for that reason. Check any kind of gift card, voucher, reward
| scheme etc.
|
| Companies don't want never-expiring liabilities and they also
| want to make money from people not spending account balances.
| teddyh wrote:
| "Like regular money but more fun!":
| <https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/08/like-regular-money-but-
| more...>
| robk wrote:
| The minimum sounds like a scam by the home owner to collect the
| breakage on their end.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Those preload things are a scourge. Just charge me what I owe.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| You're the embodiment of "laggard" in the theory of Diffusion
| of innovation which IMHO is quite rare on HN, mainly used by
| innovators and early adopters.
|
| Laggard only start using an innovation because they're forced
| by external factors.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
| austinjp wrote:
| I'm not sure this is laggard behaviour. Laggards are defined
| as having no thought leadership qualities, they are literally
| late to the party.
|
| There's an argument that this is quite the reverse: it's
| innovative behaviour since it demonstrates comparative
| rarity, leadership (pointing the way), novelty (we should do
| things differently), etc.
|
| Frankly, I think this thread points to some of the weaknesses
| in the Diffusion of Innovations theory (which on the whole I
| quite like). It doesn't neatly model 'luddites', those who
| are exposed to 'innovations' and understand them, yet reject
| them for whatever reason.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. If you look at a list of technical innovations I
| expect that there is a whole list of often perfectly
| rational reasons why some inventions took longer to hit
| high penetrations levels than others. It's not just "I hate
| change."
|
| I certainly don't think I'm a luddite in general but there
| are a lot of things that I'm just "Meh. Don't need it."
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| I'm the "meh don't need it type" but whatever the
| feelings I have, I can't rent a car or buy a plane ticket
| without a credit card.
|
| Some shops don't even accept cash anymore. Don't get me
| started about the worst recent innovation : a Friggin 21"
| monitor for the "infotainment" in a car.
|
| But I know that if I have to change my current car, it
| would be almost impossible to have a car without a
| television on the console. Unless I buy an old car which
| pollutes too much.
|
| I think that "meh don't need it" is the first step to
| "I'm gettin too old for this shit"
| vachina wrote:
| You can buy a Honda Civic and rip out the head unit. But
| yeah, infotainment screen is nice for the first week but
| is good as useless.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's definitely way _more_ common to be anti-technology here
| than in the real world, because of the number of weirdos here
| that are hyper paranoid about security, and because of the
| number of "If I could set screen modes manually in X86config
| then it's good enough for you!" stuck-in-the-muds.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Having to use an app to use a washing machine does not count
| as "innovation" to me.
|
| It's using technology to go a step backward in usability.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Using the app is not the only problem. But the lack of
| freedom and privacy in obtaining the app.
| dsiddharth wrote:
| I'd certainly prefer to use an app rather than having to
| hunt for quarters. If the app didn't exist, I'd probably
| have to go to a bank to get quarters or an ATM to withdraw
| cash and beg the closest convenience store to give me
| change.
|
| Granted, there are probably better solutions that require
| neither quarters nor a mobile app, but between those two,
| the mobile app wins for me.
| acomjean wrote:
| There is an in between. Our buildings laundry has a
| payment machine that takes credit cards and either gives
| you a credit card sized laundry card or recharges it. You
| tap the card to start that machine. You can also use the
| smart phone app, but I don't think it's used by many.
|
| It works pretty well.
|
| Parking meters are another thing that seems to be going
| the app route. I use one locally but when I travel it's
| usually not the same network so its figure out how to do
| it.. (website, payment kiosk, another app...)
| dazc wrote:
| 'Parking meters are another thing that seems to be going
| the app route.'
|
| Gone that way already in the UK, ironically in lots of
| places where there is very patchy or no mobile signal at
| all.
| ghaff wrote:
| >when I travel it's usually not the same network
|
| Apps tend to be a pretty good solution for regular local
| users. They're less good when you're dealing with
| different apps/kiosks/etc., with different interfaces,
| and different ways of storing value in different cities.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The problem is that it's not an either-or.
|
| Adding app operation alongside coin operation would have
| been an improvement in useability. Replacing coins with
| apps is just making it suck in a different way.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| But then you have two problems: keeping the app going AND
| dealing with cash
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It is an either or for some businesses. Coins in the USA
| are in a massive shortage the last few years. Change
| machines aren't cheap and repairs can be costly. It makes
| financial sense to switch to these apps or people
| wouldn't do it.
| ghaff wrote:
| From the consumer perspective, probably. But from a
| laundromat's perspective, even if only a fraction of
| users use coins, they still need to deal with coins.
|
| Once you're below some use threshold, a lot of places
| would prefer to ditch cash entirely.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| It reminds me of the cycle of enshittification: once you
| have a captive audience, you start bumping the profits at
| the cost of the user experience.
|
| It looks like something similar is in effect here:
| instead of meeting the different customers where the
| customers alrady are, it's the company's preferred way or
| the highway.
| atrettel wrote:
| Yeah, getting quarters is a real problem, especially when
| all of the banks in your area are only open during
| business hours and not on weekends. That said, I'd
| personally prefer quarters over an app, since quarters
| are much more fail-safe. The system that I'd prefer
| overall though would be some kind of prepaid account and
| an NFC card. UCLA had this system when I was a grad
| student there and it was really easy to use. You just tap
| your card on the reader by the door and select what
| machine to use. Everything ran smoothly.
| BytesAndGears wrote:
| Agreed. I lived somewhere that switched from a credit card
| reader on the machines, to an app.
|
| The credit card reader was instant. You could just put in
| your laundry, swipe your card, and that was it. Instantly
| started.
|
| They switched to an app by the same service company, and
| now there were a bunch more steps involved. Put in your
| laundry, find the app, open it, scroll through their
| "what's new in laundry!" news that nobody cares about,
| click a bunch of buttons until you find the machine number
| that matches yours, go through the menus to pick washer
| settings, then pay there, and still need to push the start
| button on the machine itself.
|
| So much worse, and also more error prone -- I would
| regularly get errors when a machine disconnected from the
| internet.
|
| Why people think it's better, I have no idea. The only
| thing I can think is that credit card fees are cheaper on a
| $20 transaction compared to 20 $1 transactions
| midasuni wrote:
| I guess the value to the user is a notification when the
| wash completes?
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Credit card fees are exactly the reason why the switch
| happened. Do you really think the washing machine
| companies would bother building an app when they could
| continue charging without any investment whatsoever?
| convolvatron wrote:
| intermediation. they get a chance to have their own
| laundry bucks currency. they get better tracking. they
| get to show you ads, and have marketing touch points with
| you every time you need to do laundry.
| alistairSH wrote:
| If I use a CC to pay in app, there's still a fee. Is an
| IAP considered lower risk, so lower fee than a physical
| card at a terminal?
| chucksmash wrote:
| The cost for a vendor processing CCs is something like
| (iirc) 3% of purchase price + $0.10. The benefit to
| vendor of selling you credits (aside from the fact that
| you might not use them all), is that they only have to
| pay the $0.10 portion of the fee once for every, say, $20
| worth of washes instead of paying the flat part of the
| fee every single wash.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| d-s wrote:
| Sidestep I'd say as we've never seen that before. Sidestep
| into hell, but still a side.
| flir wrote:
| Gotta disagree that it's rare on HN. There's a strong privacy
| contingent, but there's also the natural conservatism about
| technology you develop as an experienced engineer ("how is
| this gonna break and bite me in the ass?")
| [deleted]
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| It's interesting you mention scooters, because Lyft allows a
| single user to unlock two _bicycles_ , at least in Chicago, but
| not two scooters. I wonder if the risk profile is somehow
| different?
| smabie wrote:
| Bird let's you unlike 2 scooters so I imagine there really
| isn't a good reason for Lyfts one scooter limitation
| vikramkr wrote:
| I mean, or they were different teams and the product person
| on the bike team was like sure, two bikes, while the scooter
| team was like let's unlock one scooter, and there was no
| reasoning of any sort of communicating and sometimes stuff is
| just inconsistent because people don't talk and don't care
| about things they think don't matter
| almostnormal wrote:
| > I wonder if the risk profile is somehow different?
|
| A bike does not require a minimum age but an e-scooter does.
| The app probably knows the age of the user, but has no way to
| determine the age of the user of additional scooters.
|
| It could cross-reference data from social media accounts, and
| if all friends of the user fullfil the required minimum age
| then offer additional scooters.
| sznio wrote:
| Can't they just... ask the user?
|
| If a simple yes/no prompt is good enough for porn, I guess
| it's good enough for a scooter too.
| ido wrote:
| An underage user can die from using a scooter but not
| from watching porn.
| midasuni wrote:
| A parent can unlock a scooter for their underage kid if
| they don't unlock one for themselves.
| ido wrote:
| I'm sure you can find a lot of edge cases and work around
| but at some point you get to "we don't need passwords
| because someone can crack them anyway".
|
| The fact is that there's nothing potentially dangerous
| about minor watching porn where there is about minimum
| age requirements for electric scooters.
| Thiez wrote:
| Depends on who you ask - some people are _really_ anti
| porn. Some might say silly things like underage driving
| may threaten the body, but porn threatens the immortal
| soul.
| vikramkr wrote:
| I think that thanks to your valiant efforts to remain cell
| phone free you seem to have missed the memo that the "not too
| distant future" you described arrived like a decade ago lol.
| We're well into the "smartphones are a human right" era
| gambiting wrote:
| That's why it's so frustrating when people point at homeless
| people having smartphones and snarkily say oh they aren't
| really poor, why would they have a smartphone if "allegedly"
| they can't afford food.
|
| Well the answer is that in modern life it's literally
| impossible to access basic infrastructure of many places
| without a smartphone. It's an absolute necessity unless you
| want to be a nomad and live in the wilderness.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Yep, that is common argument against refugees. "They come
| on foot with smartphones, they are not poor". They keep
| translator app, map, documents, priceless memories as
| photos, contacts with relatives - it is all they own apart
| of backpack of cloths. I wouldn't step onto another
| country's soil without that.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I don't have a phone, I don't live as a nomad in the
| wilderness. Well, in London, which is a bit of _a_
| wilderness.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, cool? Fortunately in the UK a lot of services are
| still available offline, but it's rapidly changing.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Wasn't it 5-10 years ago that people said that? I think
| it's understood these days that smartphones are important
| to have (for better or for worse) and dirt cheap if you
| just need _a_ smartphone, any smartphone.
| morelisp wrote:
| It was 10 years ago they were upset poor people had
| refrigerators.
|
| https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-nation/fox-cites-
| ownership-...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A/K/A "Maslow's Smartphone": <https://web.archive.org/web/2
| 0230603005201/https://old.reddi...>.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Is this a European thing? Or maybe a recent big city thing?
| I am in the US and I have no apps on my phone. I use it for
| texting and phone calls, nothing more. Everything I could
| do in the 1970's, 1990's, 2010's I can do today just fine
| without a phone. For context a couple of years ago I had to
| take BART into SF to visit some overpriced lawyers. Paid
| cash for my BART ticket at the ticket machine. I stopped at
| a coffee shop and bought a coffee, paid with cash.
|
| The reason I ask is that I am concerned. Anything Europeans
| do eventually parts of the US will mimic.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > Everything I could do in the 1970's, 1990's, 2010's I
| can do today just fine without a phone.
|
| In the 1990s, I remember payphones being conveniently
| available, but now I need to keep an eye on my battery if
| I'm going to phone home.
|
| In 2010, I could log into any of my accounts with just
| WiFi and a password, now I need 2FA and often SMS is the
| only supported option. Sometimes a phone call. So in
| order to, say, check my bank account, I now need data and
| cell signal. That combination can be hard to get in a
| concrete building or while traveling abroad.
| [deleted]
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >Anything Europeans do eventually parts of the US will
| mimic.
|
| Examples?
|
| Nb I have closed a bank account because I refuse[d] to
| install WhatsApp.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _Examples?_
|
| Some cities have been installing concrete filled pipes to
| close of what used to be access streets into parts of
| cities forcing them to be "foot traffic only". This
| started in the EU and became trendy. Now its spreading in
| the US in big cities. I am not complaining. In some
| places this actually works out. In some places it hurts
| business. I guess that is a matter of city planning. Even
| the really old town I grew up in is doing this now in the
| part of town that has a bunch of small businesses to
| encourage more foot traffic.
|
| Another example is roundabouts. Some of the small cities
| are putting these in new developments. I think it's still
| somewhat experimental in the US as not every small city
| is doing this.
| numtel wrote:
| > concrete filled pipes
|
| I believe the word you're looking for is 'bollard'.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Everything I could do in the 1970's, 1990's, 2010's I
| can do today just fine without a phone.
|
| I think it's a few things.
|
| - Integration of stuff like GPS that can be done on a
| dedicated device but are easily done better on a phone
| through an app.
|
| - Ready access to information on the go. (Much of which
| wan't really available on the go until the 2000s.)
| There's a lot you could do once the smartphone came out
| that you didn't have access to before. But there's a lot
| in general I can do today that I couldn't in the
| 1970s/80s.
|
| - And yes, there are apps for things like parking, public
| transit, rideshare, airline notifications etc. that are
| more generally relevant if you're traveling and in
| cities.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That's not so bad. I still use dedicated GPS. I suppose
| the downside is that a couple times a year I have to pull
| down map updates for it. All of the other things you
| mention don't sound like requirements but rather additive
| data or interaction but not strictly required. Nice to
| have's I suppose.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone else mentioned, it's probably also true in
| Europe that a lot of people would see having WhatsApp as
| close to essential. But, in the US, SMS is pretty
| universal and certainly for any service you _need_.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I honestly can not think of any service I _need_ that I
| must use my phone with. Plenty of things use SMS 2FA but
| I can also talk to people, face-to-face in most cases.
| Probably the closest would be the IRS if I have questions
| because calling them means being on hold for a few hours,
| otherwise I have to use snail mail which I have done.
| kefyras wrote:
| > As someone else mentioned, it's probably also true in
| Europe that a lot of people would see having WhatsApp as
| close to essential.
|
| What are you referring to? While it may be the most
| popular messaging app, it's not in any way, shape, or
| form essential. SMS is also universal, mostly unlimited,
| and much less weirder than it is in the US.
| ghaff wrote:
| I only know what Europeans tell me. I assume different
| people have different takes on what is essential. And my
| understanding is SMS can still be pricey. (Not sure
| what's weird about SMS in the US? It's on my phone. I use
| it. It can piggyback on iMessage but that's not necessary
| and is transparent, bubble color notwithstanding.)
| [deleted]
| kefyras wrote:
| >And my understanding is SMS can still be pricey.
|
| It hasn't been for like 15+ years since pretty much every
| subscription has either unlimited*/or more than you can
| reasonably use minutes/SMS.
|
| >Not sure what's weird about SMS in the US?
|
| Don't you get (or used to) charged for incoming SMS?
| ghaff wrote:
| Both outgoing and incoming SMS used to have charges but
| (AFAIK) all the major plans now include unlimited SMS. I
| think the US went to mostly "free" SMS before much of
| Europe did which probably explains WhatsApp becoming the
| most common thing. (The only people I use WhatsApp with
| from the US are international.)
| II2II wrote:
| In a sense, they are right. Survival is about meeting your
| immediate essential needs.
|
| Of course, they are also very wrong. Opportunities to
| escape poverty are lost when you are only trying to fulfill
| your immediate needs, then there are the psychological
| ramifications of being vulnerable and in constant need for
| aid from others.
|
| There is a reason why we have built our technological
| societies. It goes well beyond the personal gratification
| we get from gadgets or fine foods. We do it because it
| offers security of being and the ability to make our world
| a better place.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "There is a reason why we have built our technological
| societies. It goes well beyond the personal gratification
| we get from gadgets or fine foods. We do it because it
| offers security of being and the ability to make our
| world a better place."
|
| "We" haven't built anything. A group of very powerful
| people planned this locked-down, dystopian world we
| currently live in and worked on achieving that plan.
|
| You and I are simply living in the world they envisioned.
| rex_gallorum2 wrote:
| I've read that they have to be reachable in order to get
| any kind of state benefits, and being unreachable leads to
| automatic disqualification - which is a big problem as
| homeless people often lose their phones or have them
| stolen.
|
| As far as smartphones being a necessity goes, I have never
| owned a smartphone myself, and do not carry any phone at
| all most of the time. I have just gone on living like I did
| before smartphones, though I am aware that I am locked out
| of more and more things. I am beginning to resent things
| like parking that requires a smartphone. I don't understand
| the lack of back up options.
|
| Rather than insisting on 'smartphones as a human right',
| I'd rather see 'opting out' as a human right.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| So no network, no power, lost your phone, not battery, broke
| your phone, lock out of your phone, and you are not a human
| anymore?
| vikramkr wrote:
| I don't think you understand what a human right is. If you
| don't have freedom of speech, you're not suddenly not human
| lol. The point is that if you're human you should have
| access to your rights, not the other way around which
| wouldn't make any sense
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| on the contrary, they are a decade ahead in insisting on
| their "freedom from technology"
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Ah, yeah, the evil technology. Irrigation and its
| consequences...
| Ekaros wrote:
| And they still want to use things like washing machines and
| electric scooters?
| [deleted]
| beebeepka wrote:
| To hell with mobile app only washing machines, dude. If
| that's the price of admission into the glorious future, I
| don't want no part of it.
|
| I went back to candy bar phone more than a decade ago and
| I barely use it.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Do you have any friends?
|
| I imagine they would hate next time you need to organise
| a trip and you can't join their group chat for
| coordination.
|
| Or are you one of these people who calls everyone for
| basically no reason when a message could suffice?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| bro this may shock you but there's a whole contingent of
| people out there who still pick up the phone when their
| friends call
|
| and IME cats don't self organize into a herd, it's
| usually one person figuring out a time and place that
| works for everyone, unless you're one of those
| insufferable people who sends out a "when are you free"
| survey of checkboxes ;P
| ghaff wrote:
| >there's a whole contingent of people out there who still
| pick up the phone when their friends call
|
| That's increasingly rare. My elderly dad still uses voice
| calling pretty much exclusively and there's a friend who
| I'll exchange voice calls with. But I don't think there's
| a single other person who would call me out of the blue
| socially absent an emergency--and at least some of these
| are people I would have regularly called 25 years or so
| ago.
|
| For that matter, no one at work would just call me on the
| phone either.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| >> be me
|
| >> 30, elderly
| dazc wrote:
| Seems the correct etiquette these days is to arrange a
| call days in advance at a time that will be mutually
| convenient. My younger self would never have believed
| this would be the case yet here we are?
| ghaff wrote:
| The prevalence of messaging probably has a lot to do with
| it. "We still on for tomorrow night?" works fine as just
| a text. "Have time to chat on phone later?" seems to work
| pretty well too.
|
| In any case, the goalposts for calling someone out of the
| blue have moved for a lot of people.
| sneak wrote:
| What about people who buy the phone but don't want to
| participate in the contracts of adhesion that are the ToS of
| Apple or Google?
|
| Apple is making it harder and harder to use an Apple ID
| (required for the App Store) without using iCloud. iCloud is
| a privacy nightmare.
|
| We shouldn't have to give up our rights to privacy to
| participate in society.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on iCloud's privacy situation?
| sneak wrote:
| Most of iCloud is, by default, not end to end encrypted.
| The e2ee is opt in and approximately nobody uses it.
|
| Apple can and does read most of the data in iCloud (due
| to it lacking e2ee by default) including all your
| iMessages, all your iMessage attachments/photos, all your
| iCloud photos, all your call logs, all your iCloud files,
| all your contacts, calendars, etc. iMessage's e2ee is
| effectively backdoored by all the iMessage sync keys
| being backed up in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup.
|
| Apple turns over user data (including all of the
| aforementioned) for 17,000+ user accounts to the US
| government _without a search warrant_ under the FISA (aka
| PRISM) system. They turn over even more user data on top
| of that each year when provided with actual search
| warrants - the 17k users figure is just the ones without
| search warrants!
|
| They don't protect most of the data in iCloud from
| themselves, and Apple is forced to spy for their national
| government thanks to Section 702 of the FISA Amendments
| Act (FAA702), which allows the US to read anything in
| iCloud without probable cause or a search warrant - point
| and click access.
| jpttsn wrote:
| > We shouldn't have to give up our rights to privacy to
| participate in society.
|
| Betrays fundamental misunderstanding of both.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It is not society that wants you to give up privacy, it
| is a few rech giants, and all the small wannabes, that
| want you to. And they are basically able to, since those
| tech giants control all online aspects of modern society.
|
| Society so could step in via elected governments and stop
| this behaviour through laws. Not that I am holding my
| breath on this.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| When are you going to understand that many people go into
| government to get power over others, not out of
| generosity? I don't mean civil servants (although some of
| them do chase power at the upper levels) but politicians,
| many of whom are as psychopathic as any corporate raider.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Nobody ever accused me of liking politians. The
| alternative to the various forms of democracy so is
| oligarchies, totalotarian rwgimes and even more rampant,
| exploitative capitalism than we see now. I know what I
| prefer.
| harry8 wrote:
| > "smartphones are a human right"
|
| This works out as "You are required to carry your
| surveillance device at all times"
|
| Thanks to everyone who didn't care forcing the rest of us
| into being part of your turnkey facist dystopia. Who do you
| think will be turning that key? How long? 3 years? 5? 10?
| didntcheck wrote:
| And increasingly attempts to resist the surveillance are
| being treated as suspicious and leading to access being
| blocked. Using a VPN is becoming increasingly difficult,
| with a lot of websites outright blocking you rather than
| giving a CAPTCHA, and more Android apps are requiring
| SafetyNet verification
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Even if you have a smartphone and you carry it around with
| you, you're going to be blocked out from some services if you
| don't have access to either Apple's App Store or Google Play.
|
| I've had to shut down my accounts in two banks because of
| surprise app requirements (that weren't in the contract) for
| basic account functionality. Their apps are only available
| trough App Store and Google Play, no .apk alternative. And
| even if you install the apps using Aurora store, the app
| instantly crashes, I suppose because they implement Google's
| SafetyNet, or whatever it's called now.
|
| So, unless I want to buy and carry around an extra phone for
| completely bullshit reasons, I'm limited to only using one
| bank, the only one in my country that still doesn't require
| an app for the type of account I want. I've thought of buying
| a phone just for the apps, but after that, who knows with
| what other bullshit they may come up with (your device is too
| old, it doesn't have a phone number associated, etc), so I
| just give up.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| If you're in the EU, Bunq's app works perfectly installed
| from Aurora Store on GrapheneOS without Google Play
| Services.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Exactly!!!
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >unless I want to buy and carry around an extra phone for
| completely bullshit reasons
|
| Owning a separate, dedicated piece of hardware for
| sensitive and critical activities (eg: banking) is a _very
| good_ idea because it isolates them from all your other
| mundane, potentially risky activities.
|
| Most people don't do this because of the various
| inconveniences and expenses involved, but if you can
| tolerate them it's about as safe as digital activities can
| get.
| mihaaly wrote:
| It is even better idea if it is not a smartphone at all
| but a dedicated simple security device! Smartphones are a
| constant security risk alone!!
|
| I had multitudes of non-smartphone based security devices
| in my life, cheap and dedicated small secure things, but
| those are endangered species now regrettably.
| exec1 wrote:
| It doesn't take much effort to remain relatively safe on
| the internet so you don't have to resort to dedicated
| hardware just for banking. Don't install sketchy apps
| that you don't need and stop clicking on every link that
| you see - that's pretty much it. I found that this basic
| internet hygiene has a nice side benefit as well - it
| forms a habit of avoiding superfluous and/or crappy
| content altogether.
| smeej wrote:
| "Relatively" is itself a relative term.
|
| You might be fine having apps as closely tied to your
| real identity as your banking app on a device that's
| constantly collecting location and other data about you,
| but privacy is important to some other people.
| smeej wrote:
| I did get a dedicated device specifically for banking
| apps. I installed GrapheneOS with sandboxes Google Play
| Services.
|
| The banking apps _still_ won 't work. They insist on some
| signal from a SIM card "for my security," and I'm not
| willing to put a SIM card in a device that won't ever
| leave my house.
| volent wrote:
| I don't understand, what's the point of having a
| dedicated _mobile_ device to access banking services _at
| home_?
|
| Why not a computer?
| fn-mote wrote:
| My bank (or Zelle) removed the ability to send money to
| an individual from the web interface. You have to use the
| smartphone app.
| kingaillas wrote:
| Some banking feature are _only_ accessible via mobile
| phone - e.g. check deposit.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's the only one I know of at my bank that's mobile
| only. (And for how frequently I deposit checks, going to
| an ATM wouldn't be a big deal.) I realize other banks may
| have more de-featured web sites.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Because sometimes you want to check banking services on
| the go. Or you get a notification on your email and want
| to open the app to check. Or it's much quicker to log in
| with fingerprint. Or so you can quickly zelle someone on
| the go. Or because why do you want to go and pull out our
| computer and turn it on and log in and waste all that
| time when you have mobile computer in your pocket that's
| always on and always connected and not in your backpack
| in the corner somewhere. I know a lot of people who only
| have a work laptop and use their phone for everything
| else.
| newsclues wrote:
| Yeah, you could get an iPhone or android and use either
| as a dedicated banking phone.
|
| The banks are creating their own requirements for how to
| access their app.
|
| Just like some users are creating their own requirements.
|
| Both parties seem to be content to be apart of the
| problem and blame the other.
| tomohawk wrote:
| A device with required connectivity to network, built in
| eavesdropping and tracking - that hardly qualifies as
| dedicated to sensitive and critical actities.
| ghaff wrote:
| How common is it for financial institutions to require the
| use of a mobile app? In the US, none of mine do and, in
| fact, I use the mobile apps quite rarely. (The main thing I
| do once in a blue moon is to deposit checks using my bank's
| app on my phone.)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| my local app MANDATES LOCATION access for "security", WTF
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's relatively logical. Banks have to issue payments
| on your behalf, and the most common signal of scams is
| attempts to make purchases from random new locations.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| no other app does this with far greater number of users
| so i don't see how this is relevant. so i cannot use my
| banking app because i am on a vpn? nice
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Oh, it hasn't taken any effort on my part. I've just always
| been fortunate enough to have: -Always lived in a house with
| a phone -Always worked at a business with a phone -Never been
| important enough that anyone needed to reach me when I wasn't
| at home or at work
| vikramkr wrote:
| In the same vein I think that people were making jokes
| about how it is even possible to use smart phones to make
| phone calls like 5 years ago lol. Wouldnt be shocked if
| some folks had not made a single phone call in the past 3
| or 4 years. Smartphones are small mobile internet connected
| computer plus camera hybrids first, and also if you really
| want you could use them to make phone calls too I guess but
| you could drop that feature and the other 99% of the use
| vases people actually use smartphones for (work, reddit,
| YouTube, slack and other chat, internet browsing, apps,
| ordering food through delovery apps, etc) would be
| unaffected
| alex_duf wrote:
| Honest question: how do you stay in touch with friends?
| simoncion wrote:
| I'm not the OP, but for me it's email, phone calls,
| instant messaging, paper mail sometimes.
|
| Surely your pocket computer isn't your only computer?
| Like, you do own a computer with a physical keyboard,
| right?
|
| Pre-COVID, when I made plans to go out with folks, we
| arranged a time and place to meet, and, like, arrived at
| that place roughly around that time. It's pretty easy,
| really.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Surely your pocket computer isn't your only computer?
| Like, you do own a computer with a physical keyboard,
| right?
|
| More and more people, particularly the younger
| generations, don't have anything besides their smartphone
| because what's the point? It's additional expense,
| additional maintenance, additional clutter, additional
| mess.
|
| They can do everything they need on their phone.
| andreasmetsala wrote:
| > More and more people, particularly the younger
| generations, don't have anything besides their smartphone
| because what's the point? It's additional expense,
| additional maintenance, additional clutter, additional
| mess.
|
| I'm 40 and if I wasn't a software engineer I wouldn't own
| a desktop / laptop computer. As you say, what's the
| point? Everything except for software development can be
| done on a smartphone. Why even bother installing an
| instant messaging application on the computer when you
| can just take the phone out of the pocket instead of
| walking to the room where the computer happens to be?
| Even when I'm working at the computer I use the phone for
| music, messaging and news.
| albert_e wrote:
| > Everything except for software development can be done
| on a smartphone.
|
| That sounds like a little too broad a generalization.
|
| A typical office worker who creates or consumes
| documents, presentations, accesses corporate apps (half
| of them still 90s tech with lipstick), submit proposals
| to clients, review others' work, attending multiple hours
| long zoom calls with screenshare, etc ... are still using
| at least 13" laptop screens to do a lot of their day to
| day work.
|
| Sure a sales executive or a senior manager might get away
| by just typing one liner commands to minions on their
| smartphone, hitting approve buttons on expense apps, and
| just listening into team calls, etc. -- but lower in the
| hierarchy where the real numbers and usage are ... we
| still have physical keyboards and mice, and decent sized
| screens (often multiple monitors) to help us stay
| productive.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Wait until you're fifty and you can barely see the stupid
| thing.
| flir wrote:
| I know they're out there, hell my wife doesn't turn her
| laptop on from one week to the next, but I still find it
| hard to fathom.
|
| This is the gulf UX design is supposed to cross, I guess.
| Designing for people who engage with tech in utterly
| different ways to me.
| ghaff wrote:
| There certainly is a gulf.
|
| On the one hand, I rarely use my smartphone at home
| because I have computers.
|
| On the other hand, I hear stories from parents at work
| whose kids don't want a computer because "Why would I
| need one? My phone works fine."
| vel0city wrote:
| I know several _households_ which don 't have a
| traditional laptop or desktop computer. Smartphones and
| maybe a tablet. Maybe a work-issued laptop, but usually
| that stays at the office and isn't for personal use.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'd be far more inclined to assume someone didn't have a
| computer--or at least ready access to one--than didn't
| have a smartphone.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| e-mail and my work phone. I'm a married man, so my wife
| does most of the social arrangements anyway. Recently I
| got a JMP.chat number so I could send and receive text
| messages, and have been very happy with it. When I leave
| my job and have to give up the work number, I'll probably
| break down and buy either a Pinephone or Librem (maybe
| there'll be other options by then).
| sorenjan wrote:
| As you got to experience, smart phones aren't mainly
| phones, they're mobile computers with a phone app. They
| have Bluetooth that let's them connect to bikes close by,
| biometrics that let's them be used for relatively secure
| payment, modems that allows them to communicate with
| servers, GPS that makes it easy to see that you're not
| riding or parking the bike where you're not allowed, etc.
| If one person was able to unlock multiple bikes who is
| responsible for how the bike is used? A while back someone
| on a rented scooter hit an elderly man and then left the
| scene. He was found and convicted, because the scooter was
| personally rented by him.
|
| Don't expect to be able to use modern services if you don't
| want to meet the providers where they operate. It's like
| refusing to use a card and demanding everyone to use cash,
| you're going to limit yourself and it's your choice if you
| think it's worth it.
|
| I think limiting your goods and services to people with
| devices that have been available for more than two decades
| and are basically ubiquitous is a reasonable thing to do,
| considering the benefits that comes with it.
|
| Personally i very rarely talk on the phone, that's never
| been why I've used mobile phones. I listen to music and use
| offline maps with GPS far more, but I also use it for
| payment, camera, text messages, etc.
| mo_42 wrote:
| > We're well into the "smartphones are a human right" era
|
| My government has to respect free speech but it doesn't mean
| I have to speak up. Just because something is a human right
| doesn't mean I have to execute it.
|
| I very much appreciate those people who live without
| smartphones. As a society, we need these people. It's not
| only about people with disabilities and other marginalized
| groups. It's about everyone.
|
| Last year, the smartphone of a friend of mine was stolen.
| Luckily, it was well protected. But still it was gone with
| all the 2F apps. This friend had to learn by example that
| those apps actually second factors. Also luckily, this person
| didn't enable 2F for Gmail. Otherwise it would have been much
| more trouble.
| ghaff wrote:
| Lots of us probably come to rely too much on our
| smartphones. I still carry a little cash (and a few other
| things in a small wallet) and usually do things like print
| out trip itineraries but, even so, But, even so, I know if
| I lost/had stolen my smartphone on a trip there's still a
| lot more information I probably would wish I had with me.
| dazc wrote:
| I was robbed once in Spain, lost my laptop, tablet and
| passport. Thankfully, I retained my smartphone which made
| everything a lot easier to deal with. For instance, the
| local consulate was super helpful in getting me issued a
| temporary passport but I would have had a hell of a time
| even finding her without my phone.
| morelisp wrote:
| "Husband depends on wife to organize his life because of
| bullheadedness" isn't a particularly smartphone-era
| phenomenon either.
| vikramkr wrote:
| That's also very true lol but if it works for them it works
| I guess
| akira2501 wrote:
| Not having a smartphone is a human right.
| EspressoGPT wrote:
| Then go get a phone
| didntcheck wrote:
| > running either Apple's or Google's proprietary OS
|
| And specifically a non-rooted, locked bootloader, remotely
| attested version. Running your own code on your own device is
| suspicious behavior you know! This is already somewhat the case
| with banking apps, but luckily it's usually possible to hide
| root _for now_
|
| And, yes, I get there are legitimate worries about malware and
| that does kind of solve them, but we've managed with desktop
| web banking (though not if Google's proposal succeeds). AFAIK
| most financial scams are executed by social engineering. 2FA
| (which is now mandated in the EU) is a more effective
| protection than locking down one endpoint
|
| Barclay's was doing 2FA via an offline code generator (looks
| like a calculator) where you put in your card and entered a PIN
| since what feels like at least 10 years ago. I know most users
| would prefer mobile 2FA, but I wish they'd kept that as an
| option, whereas AFAIK they're phasing it out
|
| In any case, _de facto_ saying "you must pay dues to either
| Apple or Google to bank on the go" is quite bad for free
| competition
| csours wrote:
| > Running your own code on your own device is suspicious
| behavior you know!
|
| Loss of TAM by excluding rooted device: less than 1%
|
| Ratio of problems per rooted device vs problems per non-
| rooted device: More than 100%
|
| It's not YOUR fault that it's one of the most meaningful
| heuristics, but that also doesn't stop it from being a
| meaningful heuristic.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Ratio of problems per rooted device vs problems per non-
| rooted device: More than 100%
|
| What problems would those be?
| austinjp wrote:
| Scooter workaround: Have multiple apps for multiple providers
| on one phone. I've done this plenty of times e.g. when one of
| us has a dead phone.
|
| Obviously only works if your city has multiple scooter
| providers :)
| squokko wrote:
| Sounds like your "I don't have a cell phone" routine just means
| "I make my wife do everything"
| fifilura wrote:
| Ha! I used that at work!
|
| "Sorry I don't have <admin privilieges> so someone else will
| have to help you with <mundane adminstrative task>"
| scarface_74 wrote:
| [flagged]
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| > So what did you expect Lyft to do to accommodate your lack
| of willingness to use a smart phone?
|
| Allow unlocking a second scooter while in your own session
| already, I feel like this is kind of obvious.
|
| I ran into the same situation just because my phone was dead.
| My girlfriend couldn't unlock a second scooter for me.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Why are you being an asshole for no reason?
|
| These companies don't care about you. There is no reason to
| defend brazenly bad practices. You're grating and attacking
| everyone in this thread who doesn't agree with you.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ogurechny wrote:
| > readily accessible technology
|
| I think I should remind everyone that scooters are
| actually amusement rides, just like coffee-to-go
| ("Imagine yourself as part of those laughing young people
| wearing bright clothes!"). The city won't grind to a halt
| if they disappear. They are much more expensive than
| general transport, and that's the reason they spread like
| wildfire across the world: there is enough money in there
| to win officials' hearts (unlike slow and expensive city
| projects that never satisfy everyone). And, yes, enough
| money to pay IT teams and loud-mouthed evangelists, too.
| gambiting wrote:
| Wow what a weird take. I think it's the same attitude
| that leads to modern technology being inaccessible to
| people with disabilities - after all why plan our systems
| for anything other than "readily accessible technology".
| If you refuse to use it you're just an asshole, that's
| your problem, right? If you physically can't use a
| smartphone because you're blind that's your problem, and
| not the problem of the idiotic system built so that it
| can't be accessed in any other way, obviously.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| A modern iPhone has all sorts of affordances for people
| with disabilities - including blind people.
|
| Do you also complain that you can't use Uber without a
| cellphone?
|
| Most people in society are more than willing to help
| those who for whatever reason can't do for themselves.
| But are less forgiving for those who won't
| cornholio wrote:
| That's beyond ridiculous. A smartphone is by definition a
| usability nightmare, it's a purely visual design that
| presents as a featureless slab to a visually impaired
| user.
|
| It's great it has some accessibility features to enable
| such users access to some smartphone specific functions,
| that they can't have in other ways, such as audio
| directions. But that doesn't mean we should be actively
| push this audience to smartphones and destroy actual
| accesibile designs for things that haven't required a
| smartphone in the past. let alone berate people for
| failing to get on with the times and embrace the clearly
| inferior "evolution".
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Have you ever used a cell phone the same way blind people
| do?
|
| Do you think the washers and dryers have brail on them?
| Do you think cash is easier for blind people?
| gambiting wrote:
| Ah yes, an iPhone works so the problem is solved, despite
| the fact that iPhones are a minority of devices out there
| and in most places they are luxury devices. Android is
| nowhere near as good when it comes to accessibility and
| that's what majority of devices are.
|
| >>Do you also complain that you can't use Uber without a
| cellphone?
|
| I do actually, it's one of the major problems with Uber
| in my opinion, and that's why a lot of people still stick
| to local taxi companies that you can just call. But Uber
| is generally completely shit for accessibility, where law
| forces local taxis to be accessible Uber usually does
| their usual bullshit of skirting these regulations and
| saying absolutely crazy things like "if there is demand
| for wheelchair accessible taxis then the market will
| respond".
|
| >>But are less forgiving for those who won't
|
| Who won't what? I don't understand what you're alluding
| to.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm in NYC right this second at the US Tennis Open. You
| can order Uber WAV - Wheelchair Accessibility Vehicle.
|
| If you choose to use much less convenient taxis instead
| of an Uber because of a refusal to use cellphones that's
| on you.
|
| > despite the fact that iPhones are a minority of devices
| out there and in most places they are luxury devices
|
| iPhones are big a minority in the US - where the college
| is located.
|
| And Google not having accessibility options as good as
| the iPhone sounds like someone needs to be suing Google
| under the ADA.
|
| But do you really think blind people are not buying
| devices that actually work for them?
| mplanchard wrote:
| I think taxis in NYC are much more convenient than ubers.
| No wait, no need to fiddle with my phone or worry about
| whether it's going to die, can pay in cash or card.
|
| I always laugh when I see people standing on the side of
| the road staring first at their phone and then out into
| traffic as they wait for an uber to show up, and
| meanwhile at least five taxis have gone by that they
| could have hailed on the spot.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm just leaving NYC right now. We went between the
| boroughs and everywhere else using public transit. I've
| never used public transit in my life. But even I could
| navigate public transit using the Apple Maps app. I had
| no need for Uber.
|
| We were here for the US Tennis open.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>You can order Uber WAV - Wheelchair Accessibility
| Vehicle.
|
| That's cool - wish Uber would have that option worldwide.
|
| >>If you choose to use much less convenient taxis instead
| of an Uber because of a refusal to use cellphones that's
| on you
|
| If you think my message is about refusal rather than
| physical impossibility of using a smartphone, that one is
| on you I'm afraid.
|
| >>And Google not having accessibility options as good as
| the iPhone sounds like someone needs to be suing Google
| under the ADA.
|
| I don't live in the US, I don't know what ADA is.
|
| >>But do you really think blind people are not buying
| devices that actually work for them?
|
| I know some blind people and they are all on government
| benefits and way too poor to afford an iPhone. They all
| have those "old people" mobiles with huge buttons and
| braille on them. A modern smartphone is both out of reach
| financially and as far as I understand it just doesn't
| work for someone who is completely blind.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| cxr wrote:
| > Do you also complain that you can't use Uber without a
| cellphone?
|
| I don't hear it (the harshness of responses like yours it
| would engender might have something to do with it), but I
| don't see anything wrong with the complaint. I can make
| HTTP requests from my laptop.
|
| Uber's smartphone requirement is an unnecessary one.
| cge wrote:
| As an illustration of the requirement not being
| necessary, you _can_ use Lyft (for cars only, I think)
| via a browser at ride.lyft.com.
|
| Outside of questions of accessibility, having web-based
| access is also very useful for unexpected problems: I
| think people often have many ways of accessing the web,
| but usually only one smartphone. My partner recently
| needed to get to a train station when an OS bug suddenly
| stopped most apps from working on her phone; being able
| to use her laptop to call a car was extremely helpful.
| austinjp wrote:
| Comparing a smartphone to a hat is like comparing a Tesla
| to a sock. It doesn't illuminate the conversation at all,
| it's a straw-man in the extreme.
|
| Some people don't want smartphones. Some people can't get
| hold of them. They are both getting locked out of basic
| societal functions.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So these are college students on a college campus who
| can't get a hold to smart phones and you're worried about
| them getting locked out of societal functions?
|
| If those people who don't "wan to use a cell phone, then
| they are free to suffer the consequences of their
| decisions. No need for society to bend to their whims.
| austinjp wrote:
| Dude, come on. You can surely see where this line of
| argument leads. Are you seriously defending a society
| that continually and arbitrarily raises the barriers to
| accessing services?
|
| On what criteria are those barriers raised? Those
| decisions are being outsourced by states -- which
| (democratic) societies elect to act in their best
| interests -- to monopolies that have none of those
| responsibilities. In fact, as your comments illustrate,
| market pressure and competition provide neat
| justifications to avoid those responsibilities. They lead
| to a race to the bottom, not the top.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It's called progress. You can always become Amish. You
| make the choice - you suffer the consequences of your
| choice.
|
| If you can't for some reason use a smart phone, then yes
| the college should offer assistance just like most
| colleges offer assistance for people with disabilities.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Progress implies society is becoming better, more
| equitable, and a heathier environment to live in. O don't
| see how mandating smartphone ownership works towards any
| of those.
| austinjp wrote:
| Limiting access to services that were previously
| available is certainly not progress.
| [deleted]
| red_admiral wrote:
| And if google's automated algorithms score a false positive and
| ban you, you're also out of luck.
| grishka wrote:
| Some scooter rental apps allow getting more than one scooter at
| a time.
|
| A surprising number of things also breaks down when you don't
| have mobile data -- and that happens every time you travel
| internationally and don't have or want a sim card for that
| country.
|
| And as a Russian, I also have to mention how terrible it is to
| travel when you don't have an internationally working debit
| card. There's so much stuff you simply can't use without one
| because there's no cash option. Those same scooter rentals are
| one example.
| jack_pp wrote:
| Have you tried using apps like Revolut? Even if you can't
| link a credit card of your own you could find someone with an
| international credit card that will top up your account if
| you give them cash.
|
| Though not sure you can even sign up with a Russian id
| grishka wrote:
| > Though not sure you can even sign up with a Russian id
|
| You definitely can't. You used to be able to sign up for
| Vivid, a similar app, with a Russian passport and by
| telling them that you live in Germany with no proof
| required, but I heard they cracked down on this since.
| hollander wrote:
| This is where digital money comes in. You can buy an
| anonymous card with digital money on it and you can buy it
| with cash money. Then you have your debit card.
| csomar wrote:
| Got a legitimate link for that? Because gift cards mostly
| do not work.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And risk running afouls of most KYC requirements. The
| provider, not the user that is.
| sgt wrote:
| How do you pay abroad at the moment, using ATM's? Or can
| other credit cards work?
| grishka wrote:
| You bring cash. Russian cards are useless* abroad.
|
| People who travel or shop online often, or have to receive
| payments from abroad, have all got themselves accounts and
| cards in foreign banks. I did, too. In some countries
| (Kazakhstan, Georgia, Indonesia, Turkey) some banks would
| open an account and issue a card for you even if you're not
| a resident.
|
| * except several "friendly" countries that still accept Mir
| cards, like Armenia. Russian Visa and MC are truly useless
| abroad though.
| sgt wrote:
| That's crazy. It basically cuts off Russian tourism.
| grishka wrote:
| [flagged]
| kyboren wrote:
| The Western electorate is indifferent about you. But it's
| only fair, because you are indifferent--at best--about
| them. If there were a strong domestic Russian opposition
| movement there would be much more sympathy. But the
| Russian population has been successfully depoliticized.
| Those who care are dead, imprisoned, emigrated,
| internally-exiled, or live as serfs bound to a genocidal
| Tsar. Oh well. Bummer, bro.
|
| The financial sanctions are not about you. They're about
| constraining the resources of a genocidal mafia regime
| waging direct war against its neighbors and hybrid war
| against "The Collective West(tm)".
|
| With that in mind, a far better argument in favor of
| loosening sanctions to allow Russians to spend abroad is
| that those foreign currency outflows will put further
| pressure on the ruble and Russia's limited forex
| liquidity.
|
| Bitching about sanctions is ultimately pointless, though,
| as CBR would almost certainly restrict foreign payments
| on their own even if sanctions weren't in place, exactly
| because of those financial constraints.
|
| Ultimately your payments problem boils down to Russia
| wasting all its resources and potential on a genocidal
| war of imperial aggression and _that_ is what you should
| spend all your energy to address.
| sgt wrote:
| I'm definitely pro Ukraine, but Grishka also has a point
| here. I think it's well worth it to take a few steps back
| and consider that the war was indeed _somewhat_ provoked
| by NATO (although I am truly a NATO supporter, let 's not
| convince ourselves that they are completely innocent all
| the time).
|
| Putin won't be in charge forever, and they can stop the
| war literally right now by ceding some territory to
| Russia. After which NATO membership can be given to
| Ukraine. No more sanctions for our Russian HN members.
| grishka wrote:
| I just want to clarify -- I do oppose this war and this
| government. The only point I'm making here is that _some_
| of the sanctions disproportionately affect regular people
| who have no say in the matter (the government doesn 't
| take any feedback and trying to protest anyway gets you
| jailed) and are bypassed easily given enough will and
| resources. Some _other_ sanctions, especially the
| personal ones against the government elites, do have the
| intended effect of forcing those people to fully immerse
| themselves into the country they themselves have built
| over the decades.
|
| The problem I see is that there's no process going on to
| evaluate whether each particular sanction has its
| intended effect, and repeal those that clearly don't.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| The point was to punish Russia and harm its economy. It's
| working.
| grishka wrote:
| > punish Russia
|
| The government or the people?
| nicbou wrote:
| This is a constant issue for me when I travel.
|
| I always need another app or another account, and those are
| often impossible to use without a local phone number and an
| internet connection.
|
| There were also periods of time where I had no active phone
| number, or no smartphone. Sometimes it was just for a few hours
| because I ran out of battery. Sometimes it was for a few days
| because I dropped my phone in a lake.
|
| In the later case I could no longer make bank transfers, and if
| I wasn't well-prepared I could not log into many websites.
| mihaaly wrote:
| My big trouble is that my bank account is reacahable remotely
| either by mobile app or receiving a security code to my mobile.
| Essentially my fragile to physical impacts, constantly
| outdating (about every 6 weeks I have to update the app, just
| to have changes in the UI making me lost or adding features
| never missed), non-waterproof, expensive enogh (still on the
| cheaper side compared to average) to be attractive to thives,
| can go out of signal range (the cell companies provide the bare
| minimum of towers making inside reception unreliable), may have
| account troubles (carrier locks out by mistake, it happens to
| others), depletes without proper charging cable or
| possibilities, have no access to foreign carriers abroad,
| ...who knows if I miss some other limiting or risk factors, so
| this single point of multiple potential failures is the sole
| key to my bank account (remotely). I am genuinly paranoid about
| my mobile. I am living for it, not it for me this way. I want
| to live like you, without degrading quality infalting priced
| smartphones, but it was quite difficult and in many cases
| impossible. I am not happy about technology, not at all, it is
| holding me hostage! Instead of helping me.
| nullifidian wrote:
| >those of us who don't own a device running either Apple's or
| Google's proprietary OS will be pretty much excluded from many
| of the basic conveniences of everyday life.
|
| Considering that Google is already incorporating Web
| Environment Integrity API into Chrome, soon we won't be on the
| internet either, and that's a much more pressing concern imho.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Why WhatsApp for calls and texts? Why not use a simple dumb
| phone?
|
| In fact, the OP mentions that he has a Razr flip phone, but uses
| it without a SIM card?!
|
| And whoever thinks that using an app for controlling the washing
| machine is smart...isn't very smart.
| beecafe wrote:
| [dead]
| downvotetruth wrote:
| Shared washers and dryers spread fungal infections like
| candidiasis.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Wouldn't the heat and chemicals kill off most of these?
|
| Isn't the point of washing clothes to get rid of this kind of
| stuff?
|
| I'm not sure I want the answer to these questions, maybe
| ignorance is bliss.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| > I'm not sure I want the answer to these questions, maybe
| ignorance is bliss.
|
| Same, already second-guessing my regular runs to the
| laundromat
| op00to wrote:
| If shared laundry were a significant vector of transmissible
| diseases, it would be pretty damn obvious.
|
| Can fungus grow in your washer? Sure. My washing machine
| growing up as a kid was gross and my clothes constantly stunk
| because of my family's inability to take wet laundry out of
| the washer. Then I went away to college, the machines were
| maintained, I'm not a moron and can handle getting clothes
| out of the washer when they're done, and my clothes no longer
| stunk.
|
| Wash your clothes with detergent (no, you don't even need hot
| water), dry them promptly, and you will be fine. Use a hot
| air dryer instead of line drying if you're really worried.
| downvotetruth wrote:
| The dryer heat should, but realize that the surface of the
| machines like the handles are separate.
| op00to wrote:
| wear gloves.
| toast0 wrote:
| What's the alternative? Dorm rooms aren't going to get
| individual laundry machines if they don't even have individual
| toilets.
|
| Most apartments aren't getting individual laundry equipment
| either.
|
| And you can't wash your clothes down at the river anymore.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > Dorm rooms aren't going to get individual laundry machines
|
| When I lived on campus (in the Netherlands) every apartment
| (6-18 people) had at least one washing machine. These weren't
| provided by student housing, but there was at least one small
| room in every group that had all the plumbing needed for a
| washing machine. You'd go out and buy a cheap used one as a
| group and run it until it died. Same thing applied for
| everything in the group's shared space: refrigerators,
| freezer, gas stove, oven, microwave, TV. You'd have a gas
| hookup in the kitchen but the group itself was expected to
| provide the stove, just like in any normal apartment.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In other countries these appliances are provided with
| rented apartments. In Denmark and Britain I'm provided a
| washing machine, dryer, fridge, stove, oven.
|
| Especially for students it sounds a hassle to make them
| install and remove these.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Appliances are only provided in as far as they are fixed.
| So a kitchen may have a built-in stove top and oven, but
| often there is just a space for a separate oven/stove
| combination. Basically anything that isn't fixed doesn't
| come with the apartment. This includes flooring.
|
| You can rent furnished apartments but this usually for
| short term use (think a few months).
|
| For students it's a little different. The appliances
| belong to the group and are in the shared spaces. When
| someone moves out they only need to clear out their room.
| You only need to install/remove anything when it breaks
| and needs replacing. Not a huge problem.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Most apartments around here have their own washing machine,
| often the tenants buy their own. I understand that some
| people are fine with shared machines, but I think at least
| for families, a washing machine (+ dryer maybe) is a good
| investment.
| downvotetruth wrote:
| A warning would seem helpful. There is no alternative to
| suffering if people accept the conditions. Some choose not to
| go to university; some are trapped in slums.
| taway1237 wrote:
| This is very culture dependent. Is this true in the US? When
| I was a student in central Europe, every apartment had a
| laundry machine, same goes for most dorms. I think it's not
| even legal to have a permanent place to live (like a dorm)
| without a toilet here.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not so likely with 60-80 degrees Celsius though. Also
| professional washers have disinfectant cycles.
|
| I use the laundrette around the corner as I don't have a
| washing machine or dryer (it's really just as easy, and the
| washers and dryers are crazy fast compared to home ones) and my
| clothes are just fine at 60C. Bedding and towels I do at 80.
| karaterobot wrote:
| One significant problem with making your hardware dependent on an
| app is that if you are a washing machine company, you probably
| don't make mobile apps. So, you hire a contractor. They design an
| app without any expertise in the product or the domain, and
| program it on the cheap. It is trash. Later, the contractor goes
| out of business and you give the code to another contractor. They
| notice that the code is garbage, and not even garbage that
| somebody there made. Feature work is impossible, the app
| languishes. 1.5 stars in the app store. Every time there's an iOS
| update, people can't do their laundry for a couple weeks, until
| the one programmer working half time on the app can push an
| update. Later, you (the washing machine company) decide to sunset
| that product line, which means there's no updates to the app. iOS
| changes, the app stops working altogether, everybody has to buy a
| new washing machine.
|
| I've been that contractor, which is why I will never be the owner
| of an appliance that requires an app to function.
| ryandrake wrote:
| In general, companies that are hardware manufacturers provide
| the worst software, with one or two obvious exceptions everyone
| here can point out.
|
| Embedded software is the absolute worst. Think about the UI of
| your TV or car radio (unless it's from one of the few
| manufacturers who have wisely given up on software and licensed
| theirs from Google or something): My old Toshiba plasma TV's UI
| looks like literal clip art, with obvious "polish" problems
| like some of the icons being 32x32 and others being 31x31--that
| kind of shit. Fixed width text font. UI responds 3 seconds
| after you press the remote button. The full color palette is:
| 0xff0000, 0x00ff00, 0x0000ff, 0xffff00, 0xff00ff, 0x00ffff
| (very creative). The audio feedback that happens when you
| navigate a menu is 500-1000ms off from the animation. It's a
| total mess.
|
| These companies look at "Software" as just another line item on
| the BOM, like a nut or a screw. Source it from the cheapest
| supplier you can find, and scoop it into the product somewhere
| down the assembly line. The idea that software is actually a
| vital part of the creative industrial design of their products
| is foreign to them.
| 2devnull wrote:
| Better yet, don't install apps. Cell phone apps are the enemy
| of good software and ethical computing and a threat to human
| freedom. They are well established as national security risk
| and the source of emerging health problems for our youth. If
| you are a programmer, consider whether working on cellphone
| apps is ethically sound. The entire industry from sweatshop
| production of the devices to the addictive mind numbing video
| game apps, it's all very anti-human.
| gwill wrote:
| are you pitching for web apps instead or no applications at
| all? even useful tools or are you mostly thinking of social
| media?
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Not op, but I think the gist is clear:
|
| - useful applications don't need "gamification"
|
| - native applications push users into addiction and ease
| privacy violations
|
| Useful native mobile applications exist too. But they are
| mostly not superior to PWAs.
|
| I read OPs comment as an observation about the market and
| society and the conclusion is categorization by correlation
| (there are technical arguments too, of course).
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| You really took OP's point and ran with it to make a deeply
| radical and ideological argument. I can only imagine that the
| only way that you maintain this view whilst finding HN a
| palatable community is by drawing fairly artistry
| distinctions between technologies that you enjoy and those
| that you have declared "for the kids" or whatever. We were
| talking about an application for a washing machine, not
| TikTok. What if TikTok was implemented as a web app?...which
| it is I must add. Or is this all some deeply impractical RMS-
| style Lynx fetishism?
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| The argument is not ideological.
|
| Compare the permission flow of native applications to the
| one of web applications explicitly opened in any browser:
|
| You should notice some differences.
|
| That being said, I strongly consider supporting arguments
| as invalid when "ideological" is part of the brief summary
| of your refutiation and the supporting argument is first in
| the enumeration of your supporting arguments.
|
| It's just a subset of the infinite set of useless but
| convincing "ad hominem" arguments, unless you can
| specifically point out why exactly some argument is
| "ideological", rather than rational logic or an attempt at
| achieving this ideal.
| titzer wrote:
| Ah. See, the secret is to stop giving one single shit about
| consumers once they buy your washing machine.
| layer8 wrote:
| Part of this modern sickness is having an OS that requires
| regular updates of the apps that run on it.
| snicker7 wrote:
| It's more than that. The app likely has some backend
| dependencies that require some ongoing maintenance or cost.
| It's not just that your washing machine depends on an iOS
| app, but on some DynamoDB table somewhere.
| bluescrn wrote:
| If your business is not advertising and/or data-harvesting,
| then build websites, not apps.
|
| Phones have very capable browsers.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Leaving data uncollected is just leaving money on the
| table. It's far better to steal peoples data and flog it
| off. Making a product and selling it for a fair price is
| very 20th century.
| layer8 wrote:
| It depends on the use-case, of course, but when applicable
| I vastly prefer native offline-first (or local-network-
| first) apps.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| I turned off automatic updates a few years back and it's
| amazing how many apps have a required update each day that I
| use them. Almost none of them include meaningful release
| notes.
| palijer wrote:
| That is just what Continuous Delivery is though. Quicker
| release cycles keeps breakage short. It's a lot easier to
| manage "this edge case broke because of something we
| changed in the past day/week" compared to "something we
| changed in the past 3 months broke this edge case"
|
| The lack of release notes is probably just not the effort,
| or even confusing for users and can deter them, or make
| them never read the release notes when they happen. I don't
| think most users know what semantic versioning is.
|
| Like, if the only thing you did last week was refactor some
| module, add more unreachable code for a flagged feature,
| and update third party libraries, do the users need that
| info every week?
|
| But not releasing all those small changes daily/weekly
| makes the releases more and more dangerous as they stack
| up.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| There's a reason why we don't do Continuous Delivery in a
| high reliability embedded context: the costs of bugs can
| be very high if it turns out to brick the device or
| physically damage it. As the other poster put it, it's
| continuous beta, and I personally am not a fan.
|
| I like my releases thoroughly tested.
|
| You updated some third party libraries, and maybe there's
| some subtle thing that changed in them to cause a break.
| Maybe that refactor wasn't zero impact the way it was
| intended to be. As a user, sure I want to know about
| third party libs being updated. All of that is useful
| information for us to decide to take the update or not.
| Back in the good old days it was all information
| everybody gave as a matter of course. These days,
| especially on phones, it's opaque and you're forced to
| take it whether you want to or not.
|
| edit: and the interface changing out from under us
| unexpectedly is incredibly off-putting. I hate that these
| days I never know when an application I use every day is
| going to decide to remove its menus or something
| similarly asinine inflicted on me because that's the
| latest trend in UX design.
| layer8 wrote:
| A less charitable moniker for this approach is "eternal
| beta".
| lol768 wrote:
| > Almost none of them include meaningful release notes.
|
| "Bug fixes and performance improvements"
| answiftydev wrote:
| A couple of places I have worked had a ton of extra work
| when Apple would want detailed information about each
| release note item, and it just became easier to make the
| notes generic. Which I would guess is one of the reasons,
| with the other being tracking/ads.
| bluescrn wrote:
| The real release notes would probably be 'gather more
| analytics data, and show more ads, using 3rd-party
| advertising SDKs'
| slig wrote:
| Even more amazing are the apps that require updates to run,
| yet they fail to display any meaningful 'you should update'
| message; instead, they abruptly crash with a catch ()
| {throw new Exception("An error occurred");}.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| If we only had a Windows phone...
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| My Nokia lumia was easily the best phone I ever owned
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| I also adored, and miss, my Lumia.
| lamnk wrote:
| Reading the original article, I must mention the recent LG OLED
| TV, which required me to create an account to install an app
| from their app store.
| oblak wrote:
| Just today I went into a Xiaomi only store, branded as Mi store
| something.
|
| After spending a few minutes looking around, I finally asked the
| guy if there's ANY product that works without an app.
| Surprisingly, there was - an electric shaving device (razors?). I
| couldn't stop laughing. Even things as simple of cheap
| pole/standing fan require apps.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Decided to limit smartphone usage... by running whatsapp on a
| computer.
|
| Kids these days.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| "Decided to limit realtime notification distractions and the
| constant temptation to glance at my ultraportable computer
| by...
|
| Installing a communication program widely used by friends on my
| bulkier computer that I only check periodically."
|
| Yes, it does make sense.
| saurik wrote:
| Just a few months ago, I was still able to get Lyft rides using a
| desktop browser; but, despite the web page still being very
| functional -- letting me select the endpoints, see nearby cars,
| and get pricing-timing information for the various options --
| when I tried to do that this morning they made the button to do
| the actual booking process say something like "book using the
| app" and presented a dialog when I clicked it telling me they no
| longer supported booking from the website and I would have to use
| the app on a phone. I am pretty sure the web site even correctly
| tracked my ride after I booked... this one just feels
| particularly egregious to me as it clearly is almost fully still
| functional but they decided to explicitly not allow this use case
| anymore?
| ljlolel wrote:
| I pushed for the creation of that at Lyft and got it done. Sad
| to see us abandoning it.
| prox wrote:
| It's sad and worrying. An app is nothing but a glorified
| webpage in most cases anyway, or at least it should be.
| gcr wrote:
| can't get those sweet sweet behavioral analytics and
| always-on location data from a webpage though!
| imchillyb wrote:
| Lyft generates additional revenue through tracking and selling
| data points not available through standard browsers and non
| portable devices. Using a browser for booking literally takes
| money out of Lyft's pockets. How long should Lyft allow such
| profit adverse behavior to continue? Indefinitely?
| hollerith wrote:
| Lyft also requires the ability to receive an SMS text at
| account creation (or more precisely if there is a way around
| that requirement, I couldn't find it) which is why I use Uber.
| didntcheck wrote:
| It's frustrating how "mobile-first" has become "mobile-only".
| I've encountered several utility companies, banks, and other
| important services, who have fairly important features only
| present in the mobile apps (whereas I prefer to do "important
| business" like that sitting at my desk with a large screen and
| physical keyboard). The worst is when they don't even tell you
| this, offering a desktop web UI that is essentially in
| maintenance-only mode, and you only discover things are missing
| if you happen to install the app
| ghaff wrote:
| Mobile apps can be useful but please let me do tasks from
| desktop web browser if I want to. Sadly, with the general
| shift to esp. younger people mostly using smartphones for
| many things, I expect the trend will continue.
| saurik wrote:
| The irony of this, for me, is that when the iPhone came out,
| I was annoyed that people kept building "mobile-optimized"
| web UIs that had some trivial sliver of the functionality
| that their desktop website had... even though the iPhone
| pointedly comes with a full browser capable of rendering the
| full website: someone had just decided "people on their phone
| will only want to do these four things so let's make a
| simpler website with painfully-large text that only has four
| buttons on it to make that easier for them".
| behringer wrote:
| Get yourself bluestacks, the android emulator.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Recently, I did not have a phone for a couple of days so I was
| using my laptop for everything. I came across so many bugs on
| the desktop equivalent of apps if they existed at all.
|
| Some of them were frustrating like when I tried to order food
| on swiggy, it would go through with a credit card then get auto
| refunded and cancelled. The catch? The order will be delivered
| anyway and appear back in your order history. The refund will
| not be processed. Due to this strange behaviour, I ended up
| ordering the same thing 4x until I received my first order and
| it magically appeared back in the list as fulfilled.
|
| The security guard asked me next day - why did you not receive
| all your orders that appeared late night? Was there a party?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| All of these bullshit "growth & engagement" operations often
| have to meet the real-world and dial down the user-hostility in
| certain markets where it just won't fly. This explains why the
| web UI is there and why it ultimately worked - it's made to
| serve markets where high-end smartphone penetration is low or
| where bandwidth constraints wouldn't allow people to download
| the app.
|
| Uber has the same at https://m.uber.com - it actually appears
| to work well for my Western European location despite everyone
| here being used to the app, however it still shows artifacts of
| its primary target markets such as the option to pay in cash
| (not something we do in my location, and the _app_ does not
| offer that as an option).
| kristopolous wrote:
| That's so bull. I was a cto of a small ride sharing company
| where you could book through sms, a web page designed for flip
| phones, one for desktops, or a smart phone app - and this was
| in 2020.
|
| We had like 1/100th the budget of Lyft. It's inexcusable.
|
| An sms interface is super easy. You give it an address, then it
| reads it back to confirm it's right, gives you a list of price
| options and sends you updates... You can do the entire rideflow
| completely over sms assuming the person has already signed up.
| Even the tips, no problem.
|
| It feels more casual. We definitely got higher utilization
| after the SMS interface than before. The flip phone interface
| was actually great for people with old phones or on limited
| data plans, it too got a lot of use.
|
| This forcing of all the users through the same funnel is total
| bullshit. Wasn't personal computing supposed to be individuated
| instead of consolidated? Let's stop 1960s IBMing everything
| smabie wrote:
| How many customers does Lyft lose because you can't book
| through a computer? I would guess close to zero
| fortran77 wrote:
| My 90 year old mother can't use a smartphone. She'd book
| rideshare rides if she could do it over a voice phone.
| hollerith wrote:
| She can call you, and you could use your Uber account to
| book a ride for her. At least, I succeeded in helping an
| elderly friend the one time I tried that.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Too unweildy. Drivers cancel. I have to wait on the phone
| until she gets in the car. I'd also have to figure out
| exactly where she is so I can set the location.
|
| Have you every had to deal with a 90 year old? It's not
| simple.
| ghaff wrote:
| My dad can use a smartphone when he wants to, e.g.
| ordering from Amazon. But he deeply resents and resists
| having to use web or native apps to do things like
| interact with his bank that he would historically have
| handled by calling them or going into a branch.
| kristopolous wrote:
| That's not correct.
|
| It's how many profit dollars does it lose.
|
| Most customers are hybrid customers - they will use say,
| Amazon.com on a desktop and on their phone.
|
| The question is do you want to cater to customers where
| they're at as that flow changes throughout the day or do
| you want to force them to come to you?
|
| Obviously it's the first. You want to push your way into
| their behavior through ubiquity.
|
| You keep it up for the same reason you keep the Denny's
| open at 3am Christmas morning or you have those 7 Starbucks
| within a mile radius - there's an important ideological
| commitment that defines your relationship with the customer
| as a reliable and accessible partner in their lives. It
| pays dividends at the macro level even if on the micro
| level it doesn't seem reasonable.
|
| You're either de facto infrastructure or luxury. Make sure
| that decision is yours and not the consumers.
|
| As far as what happened to the company, we had some high
| risk bets in 2020Q1 and bet everything on it and yeah well,
| pandemic. Shit happens.
| maccard wrote:
| > Most customers are hybrid customers - they will use
| say, Amazon.com on a desktop and on their phone.
|
| Metrics that I've seen on projects I work on tell me
| otherwise. There are a small number of people who use
| desktop or laptop computers, and a smaller number that
| use multiple devices. The vast vast _vast_ majority of
| users use a smartphone.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Depends on the product I guess.
|
| I just want to caution about programmers looking around
| at their well heeled technical friends and then either
| assuming the world is like that OR imagining some crude
| caricature of Joe six pack idiot and assuming the world
| is like that.
|
| It's often weird, organic and complicated. People are
| going to find unexpected killer uses for your stuff only
| if you give them the space for that magic to happen.
| kcplate wrote:
| > It's how many profit dollars does it lose.
|
| I think it would still would be likely close to zero. The
| ride share concept generally relies on easy booking from
| a mobile location. So a huge % of your revenue would come
| from mobile just by the very nature of the service.
|
| You may have some (probably a very small) percentage of
| users who prefer desktops, but of that _desktop
| preference_ group most would simply opt to use mobile in
| lieu of a desktop app if it was not available. That would
| leave a tiny fraction who would simply not use the
| service at all. Their potential revenue minus the cost to
| maintain a desktop platform is what is lost. Quite
| honestly, I'd wager that you would barely break even in
| the cost to dev /maintain a desktop version vs the
| revenue specific to service that "only will book by
| desktop ever" use case.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That, Lyft's behaviour, is what get by using endless VC
| money in the pursuit of building a customer data based
| monopoly of sorts. Well, VC money isn't endless anymore,
| is it?
| kristopolous wrote:
| It's hard to attribute replicable causitive agency to any
| success.
|
| If say Dolly Parton started a successful restaurant chain
| with line dancing waiters and barrels of hay everywhere,
| that doesn't mean country time jamborees are the things
| to be copied. There's a greater context that all these
| things exist in and they work holistically and
| specifically in a way that's codependent on everything
| else including uncontrollable external factors.
|
| You can't extract and replicate and expect success. If
| only it was that easy...
| bsuvc wrote:
| And the ones they do lose are "difficult customers".
|
| Not all customers are equal.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Or they're good customers and you're servicing them
| wrong.
|
| There's definitely ~10% that aren't worth welcoming back,
| but I'm playing interlocutor here.
|
| There's plenty of companies who tossed all their cash
| cows into volcanoes for the difficult customer belief
| which really stemmed from an inability to listen. Here,
| read up on the fall of WordStar for a premiere:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroPro_International
|
| Old software companies were famous for this: Lotus,
| VisiCorp, Digital Research - running away from their
| existing customers who they thought were atrophying to
| some presumed greener pastures that didn't exist only to
| end up with nobody because the problem was they had their
| heads up their asses the whole way.
|
| In this problem space there's 3 levels which are both of
| increasing accuracy but also increasing work.
|
| 1. Imagine your customers 2. Measure your customers 3.
| Know your customers and almost-customers, like
| personally.
|
| 3 doesn't scale but ignoring it is what can snag even the
| biggest companies
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Wait ten years to see if Lyft survives the competition
| and you'll have the answer.
| robk wrote:
| I've found a decent number of exec assistants that have
| this issue booking on behalf of their bosses. Uber Black is
| preferred by the boss but they wind up using Addison Lee or
| similar for this desktop booking. So there's money left on
| the table from fairly price insensitive customers.
| [deleted]
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| [flagged]
| kristopolous wrote:
| Lyft's platform choices in 2023 wasn't the driving cause of
| their initial funding round success in 2007.
|
| Lyft (actually Zimride at the time) grew up when both the
| iPhone was new and a bunch of people lost their jobs from a
| stock market crash.
|
| A tech stack decision from 16 years in the future isn't in
| play here.
|
| Also we sold the company and walked away with enough zeros
| for me.
| resonious wrote:
| It's seems quite common for software to seriously rot
| after success. At the start, technical excellence goes a
| long way. At some later point, the selling point is no
| longer the software itself, and instead just the network
| of existing users.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Propriety software has a shelf life. Free software that
| people actually use does not rot.
| fyloraspit wrote:
| Enshittification
| kristopolous wrote:
| You need groups with the courage of their convictions and
| a curated list of courageous convictions.
|
| That's the motivation of a startup. Reid Hoffman talked
| about it in blitzscaling although that literary style is
| my own
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >Also we sold the company
|
| What companies are in the market to buy a ride sharing
| company?
|
| I'm guessing Lyfy and Uber would (might?) buy you for
| your customer acquisition- but I'm not getting the
| feeling that is what happened.
|
| Is there another genre of business that is interested in
| buying a ride-sharong business?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Many local cab companies have their own apps, even if
| they often also drive for Uber.
| mihaaly wrote:
| > I tried doing my laundry without a smartphone. This proved to
| be difficult, since our laundry machines can only be operated
| with a smartphone app. After lots of struggle, I finally managed
| to do it, leading me to reflect on whether technology is actually
| making our lives better.
|
| On the current maniacally forced through and intentionally
| neglectful way (arbitrarily picking the superiority of a narrow
| concept over all else) it is not. Not at all.
|
| In the past 10-15 years the usability of technology is degrading.
| Got only overcomplicated, unnecessarily overwhelming (using it in
| places unnecessary or harmful), not better in making life easier.
| Just relocating the difficulty and complexity somewhere else, to
| some previously unkown domain. Be it gadgets, operating systems,
| home appliences, vechicles. Things went wrong somewhere by some
| reason. (rampage of clueless investment money? huge technical
| organizations serving only themselves? ...)
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Be careful, pointless smartphone-ifying of everything is what
| keeps half this site employed.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Right! : )
|
| : (
| [deleted]
| hnburnsy wrote:
| One could use an Android emulator without needing a smartphone.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| This reminds me of my experience of getting the battery replaced
| for my iPhone.
|
| The authorized repair technician at Best Buy made me turn off
| "find my iPhone" before servicing the device. Turns out, somehow,
| I had two Apple accounts, one with a user name that is tied to my
| email address, and the other one where my user name is my email
| address. To my surprise Apple considers these to be distinct
| accounts. While I remember the password for my user name, and I
| assumed it was the same for the account that used my email
| address as the user name, turns out it was not and I could not
| turn off find my iPhone.
|
| Attempts to use my phone to reset my password lead to the
| settings app freezing up and giving me a gave a generic "could
| not connect to network" error message. Switching from cellular to
| WiFi did not help the situation. The technician was about to say
| that they would not be able to replace the battery for the day.
| Fortunately I had brought my laptop with me that day for
| unrelated reasons and after returning to the store with it I was
| able to reset my password with the web interface.
|
| Modern technology has introduced a large number of seldom used
| use cases that are not well handled, but are essential when
| needed. Had I not had all the devices with me in my digital
| arsenal, I would not have been able to get my battery replaced. I
| have to wonder how many people face this issue and end up buying
| a new device to avoid the hassle.
| NoNoisle wrote:
| This doesn't sound right. You should be able to reset the
| password or at least start the process using the Apple support
| app or the website on the iPhone itself...setting is not the
| only way.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| I omitted the step where the technician had me install the
| Apple support app as an alternative pathway to a password
| reset, but that had the same issue where a network connection
| could not be found regardless of being on WiFi or cellular.
| ta8645 wrote:
| I wanted to ask OpenAI for an idea how to solve this social
| problem, but I can't sign up without a cell phone.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So instead of using a phone, he used an iPod Touch which is
| basically an iPhone without a cellular chip?
| linker3000 wrote:
| My son had a near-identical experience at Uni in the UK, except
| for 'pod' substitute smartcard.
|
| For some reason, the laundry app would not run without crashing
| on his phone.
|
| The Uni could provide a loadable smartcard for the machines - but
| they had run out. The machines did not work with regular
| credit/debit cards or NFC phones.
|
| Result: For several weeks, son has to haul laundry on the bus to
| an off-campus launderette.
| codeulike wrote:
| Thirty years ago I would have given anything for a pocket device
| that could tell me whether any washing machines on campus were
| empty and ready to use.
|
| Because it sucked to lug my basket of socks and sweaty t-shirts
| over to laundry block only to find out there was a big queue and
| my options were either to lug the basket back to my room and try
| again a random interval later, or leave my backet lying around in
| the laundry block, at the mercy of who knows what and come back a
| random interval later.
| brightstep wrote:
| Would you still have, if you knew the strings that would come
| attached? Tracking your every move? Enabling governments to
| surreptitiously snoop on your audio and camera? Constant
| exposure to experiences designed to addict and immiserate you?
| Spivak wrote:
| The number of people who carry smartphones around means the
| answer to this is almost certainly yes.
|
| Also no one snoops on your audio or camera despite the
| paranoia around it, there's no need to. You can get all the
| info you need much more efficiently and accurately other
| ways.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why not just bring a book in case you need to wait in line?
| mihaaly wrote:
| Probably they should have reached out to smart people from
| somewhere available who could come up with some sort of booking
| systems like all shared loundry services of residential houses
| do in Sweden since perhaps the 70's and before.
|
| https://www.thenewbieguide.se/laundry-in-sweden/
|
| You do not need pocket device for such. Do you really say that
| in the university - supposedly filled with loads of smart
| people - no-one was able to come up with a solution for this
| trivial problem before Steve Jobs introduced the smartphone?
| Wow!
| Findecanor wrote:
| It is becoming more common that this function is part of an
| apartment building-wide electronic lock system. Still using
| the same model but using a RFID key fob which also opens many
| other locks: front entrance, mail box, basement, etc.
|
| There is often a web interface to the booking system in
| addition to a wall-mounted terminal in a hallway. But using
| that terminal is often more convenient, as you'd often pass
| it twice every day anyway and you'd only need the key fob to
| "log in".
|
| (I have worked on developing such a system, but before that I
| had been a regular user of a competitor's system in my
| apartment block for years)
| codeulike wrote:
| Thats interesting about the Swedish system, I've never seen
| that before.
|
| _Do you really say that in the university - supposedly
| filled with loads of smart people - no-one was able to come
| up with a solution for this trivial problem before Steve Jobs
| introduced the smartphone? Wow!_
|
| Not sure if you're familiar with UK Universities in the 90s,
| but no-one was spending much thought making laundry easier
| for the students. Or making anything easier for the students,
| for that matter. Least of all the students.
| SenAnder wrote:
| Plus reporting which laundry machines are in use, and paying
| for their use, are two different things, so an app could show
| you which machines are available, but the machines still let
| you pay with coins.
|
| The GPs argument is similar to how full anti-user lockdown of
| devices is justified for some minor security benefit that
| could have been achieved without said lockdown.
| jefurii wrote:
| Our apartment uses one of these "services" for laundry. It
| requires you to be online to start the washer and my phone can't
| connect to my wifi from the laundry room. FAIL.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| There's a lot of underground restaurants and bars in Sydney,
| and many of them have started using QR code only ordering. Only
| problem is phone reception is really spotty in a lot of the
| basement venues, and not all of them have wifi.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I have a love-hate relationship with those kinds of
| restaurants. I hate having to look at the menu and order
| using my phone, but on the other hand, I love that I don't
| need to tip them (because there's no service being provided
| to me -- no, carrying my food over from the counter doesn't
| count).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah the QR crap was understandable during the pandemic
| (though a bit stupid because surface spread was discredited
| very soon).
|
| But I don't understand why so many restaurants still hang on
| to it.
|
| It used to be impolite to mess with your phone in a
| restaurant. Now it's mandatory. Luckily it's not so common
| anymore now in Spain, only the Asian restaurants still do it.
| And McDonald's are trying to force their app by removing ever
| more ordering screens.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > But I don't understand why so many restaurants still hang
| on to it.
|
| It's cheaper than having to deal with paper that gets
| dirty, torn apart by kids or outright stolen. And "daily
| special" doesn't need to be manually inserted into menus
| any more.
|
| I've mentioned it in another thread about ice cream
| machines already: restaurants and hospitality in general
| are absurd cheapskates. Whenever a tiny avenue opens that
| saves them money, they'll do it, legal or not - the only
| thing that matters is that it looks acceptable to
| customers.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| > restaurants and hospitality in general are absurd
| cheapskates.
|
| You've never run a bar or restaurant have you. What do
| you think the profit margins are?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I have never _run_ a bar, but worked in stage lighting,
| as a bartender and as a cleaner.
|
| And no matter where I worked at, if you'd send in the
| health department, fire safety inspectors, plumbers,
| electrical inspectors or cybersecurity experts, you'd
| find a truckload of code violations, not to mention
| constant issues with getting paid.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > But I don't understand why so many restaurants still hang
| on to it.
|
| In some Chinese cities you can walk all day without finding
| a restaurant/shop that can give you change if you try to
| pay with cash or that accepts your western credit card.
|
| Without Alipay/WeChat you will be stuck in your hotel
| unable to do anything.
|
| However unlike the crappy western solution, where each
| business wants to have their own app, the experience is
| extremely smooth: Scan a QR code with WeChat, the menu
| opens in the app, order, pay.
|
| Want a bottle of water in a small shop? Grab it from the
| cooler, scan the QR code on the cooler, type in 2 CNY and
| hit send money. Cashier gets a ding that you paid 2 CNY.
| Confirm with a nod and just leave.
|
| Ride hailing (Didi - which ate Uber's lunch here),
| airplane&train tickets, and much more is also done right
| through WeChat/Alipay.
| paganel wrote:
| The problem comes when you become an enemy of the state
| (real of metaphorical, it doesn't matter) and you
| instantly get denied access to those apps.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Do they let non-Chinese people use WeChat or Alipay's
| payment services these days?
|
| Last time I was there (2019) you had to tie your account
| to a Chinese bank account. You can only get a Chinese
| bank account if you have a resident ID. You, for obvious
| reasons, cannot get a resident ID if you're not a
| resident or there on a work visa.
|
| Effectively, I couldn't even go down to the corner store
| and grab a snack without an escort because I had no
| ability to pay for anything.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Do they let non-Chinese people use WeChat or Alipay's
| payment services these days?
|
| Both Alipay and WeChat allow that now. I had no issues
| using my Visa with Alipay, and while WeChat was a bit
| confusing, it worked in the end.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Escorts are usually hired for other things than a trip to
| the corner store. Saying for a friend :D But pretty
| creative solution!
| devbent wrote:
| It saves time, potentially a lot of time during busy hours.
| I've waited an easy 10+ minutes for a server to come and
| ask for drinks and another 5-10 to come back and take
| orders.
|
| Phone based ordering, which can include pictures of all
| menu items, is a huge win in comparison.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Most of them here don't do this though, they just link to
| a PDF with the menu.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why do you talk about the pandemic in past tense? The
| pandemic is still going on. If QR code menus don't make
| sense now, then they never made sense.
| sojournerc wrote:
| I'd say it is now endemic, and the emergency is over.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why? What's the difference between now and 2021, other
| than the fact that most people decided to stop caring?
| sojournerc wrote:
| Is the Spanish flu still an emergency because a related
| strain still exists?
|
| Covid still exists, but most everybody has natural or
| induced immunity, and it just isn't as severe (new
| strains) or as much of an unknown.
|
| It's not going away. If you want to live in a state of
| emergency in perpetuity, go for it, just don't expect the
| world to not move on.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Covid still exists, but most everybody has natural or
| induced immunity
|
| That's why I compared to 2021, not 2020. In 2021 anyone
| who wanted a vaccine could get one.
|
| > it just isn't as severe (new strains)
|
| AFAIK this is still unproven, do you have a source?
|
| > If you want to live in a state of emergency in
| perpetuity, go for it
|
| I don't, and never did. You've understood my point
| exactly backwards. I don't think QR code menus make
| sense, and, along with a lot of other pandemic theatre, I
| don't think they _ever_ made sense, as evidenced by the
| fact that once people decided to stop using them, nothing
| catastrophic happened, despite the fact that the state of
| the pandemic is not meaningfully different from 2021.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah if anything we could have stopped caring when the
| South African variant came out. That was really the
| turning point and many countries kept ignoring the
| evidence of how mild it was.
| telotortium wrote:
| They also never made sense after May 2020 at the latest,
| when it was clear to the well-informed that surface
| spread was not a significant vector (nor were droplets,
| only aerosols).
| umanwizard wrote:
| You are correct.
| mattl wrote:
| But your phone can use non-wifi in the same spot, or is it a
| total deadzone?
| gnopgnip wrote:
| We had the same problem but the HOA installed a cell phone
| repeater/extender on the roof. It was like $200, one time
| purchase, works great.
|
| Also the washers and dryers take quarters too but that can be a
| pain too
| kxrm wrote:
| If they are willing to go so far as to install repeaters, why
| not a credit card reader?
| gnopgnip wrote:
| They don't want to deal with credit card fraud and pci
| compliance when everyone can use the service on their phone
| or get quarters
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder if whole thing is bought SaaS. So it is up to
| provider to get it to work.
| matthews2 wrote:
| WaaS (Washing as a Service)
| alcover wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31294316
|
| ...about being locked out of your appartment when your phone is
| discharged.
| thegreatwhale8 wrote:
| Sorry, but this story reads like an AI generated text and the
| subject matter is ridiculous. The person in the text is narrow
| minded, selfish etc. There are a multitude of reasons
| public/commercial laundry would want to have an app. If one wants
| to have it tailored to their old-fashioned ways they have to own
| their own laundry machine.
| brightstep wrote:
| It's not always possible to have a personal laundry machine
| available. Is it too much to ask that the machines also accept
| a credit card scanned in-person?
| personjerry wrote:
| Fine, an app for laundry is overkill but man is the particular
| conclusion dumb. Imagine I said "I tried opening a door without a
| key!! Is technology making our lives better after all? Metallurgy
| is unnecessary!!"
| msdrigg wrote:
| This is the right takeaway honestly. I was hoping a comment
| like this would be the top comment, but unfortunately
| hackernews loves this kind of bait
| thsksbd wrote:
| A key is $0.50, is dumb, cannot spy on you and is
| indestructible..
|
| A phone is >1000x that and comes with distraction,
| surveillance, and is easy ti brake.
| paganel wrote:
| Try parking in the majority of European cities without a (smart)
| phone, it has become close to impossible.
| dano wrote:
| Here are some driving factors for this change:
|
| - tenants have asked for it because they never seem to have the
| right amount of change
|
| - banks are declining to accept unrolled coins
|
| - better accounting between owners and property managers
| twodave wrote:
| Why an app, though? Could easily implement this via NFC
| ghaff wrote:
| >- tenants have asked for it because they never seem to have
| the right amount of change
|
| I have a couple old change buckets that probably still have a
| fair number of quarters buried in them, but I don't get given
| coins in the US more than a few times a year. If I didn't have
| old change at home, I'd have to go to a bank.
| cogogo wrote:
| It was a huge hassle to have enough quarters 20 yrs ago when I
| last used coin laundry. These days when many people don't use
| cash at all it's far harder to find them. During the peak of
| the pandemic restrictions in the US there was a massive
| shortage of quarters because of limited commerce. There are a
| lot of people where I live in the Boston area who depend on
| coin laundry who had a hard time getting any done.
|
| Personally I would have welcomed anything that freed me from
| rounding up quarters. Though would prefer tap to pay on the
| machine over an app.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Did banks not exist in 2021? Did laundry rooms not have
| change machines?
|
| Requiring a smartphone and network connectivity to wash
| laundry is crazy. It should at best be an option.
|
| But I suppose people have less loose change in their pockets
| these days.
| _delirium wrote:
| My apartment building's laundry uses quarters and just has a
| change machine in the laundry room. It is _almost_ a closed
| loop token system since people tend not to use the quarters
| for anything besides laundry. You stick a bill in the change
| machine to get quarters, put the quarters in a laundry
| machine, then every few days the staff empties the quarters
| from the laundry machines and uses them to refill the change
| machine.
| Symbiote wrote:
| What is a typical cost?
|
| A laundry near me costs PS4, which is $5. Feeding 20 coins
| into a machine is unappealing, so I can see why apps and so
| on might be more popular in the USA.
| _delirium wrote:
| $1.75 in my building! Most standalone commercial
| laundromats do cost more, in the $3-4 range, and those
| almost always take credit cards. I don't think I've ever
| had to use an app though, just a card.
| Tee3993 wrote:
| During lockdowns my country required phone, to get permit to
| leave house. If I followed rules, I would not be able to buy
| food, and would starve to death!
| d-s wrote:
| A phone or a smartphone with is from big 2?
| Tee3993 wrote:
| Local number was required to receive SMS. Foreign numbers
| were not supported. I only had foreign data SIM.
| neom wrote:
| A similar thing happened in Korea, to enter establishment there
| was a requirement to scan the business QR code then collect
| name and phone number on a government portal before entering,
| however the vast majority of people travel in Korea are
| assigned a sim with no number attached, so a lot of forigners
| just couldn't go out. To be fair, you couldn't enter the
| country for tourism at the time, but you could for business- so
| meetings at restaurants became a real challenge.
| cglong wrote:
| Can I ask which country?
| Tee3993 wrote:
| Greece
| beebeepka wrote:
| Not shocking you have plenty of anarchists down south,
| neighbour. An app to request permission to leave your home.
| What were they thinking
| mongol wrote:
| I don't understand why everything needs to be an app. Why not a
| webpage? And always these user agreements that require approval..
| mrweasel wrote:
| My non evil take: Because design interfaces for humans to
| interact with is expensive.
|
| You can save yourself a bunch of R&D, manufacturing and
| maintenance if you can have the users provide the interface
| design. That basically what the majority of smartphone apps are
| for. Sure some of it is convenience for the end user, but for
| everything that needs to interact with something in the real
| world it's a cost saving measure.
|
| As to why not webpages.... don't know, seems less serious I
| suppose. Personally I can't deal with more apps on by phone.
| userbinator wrote:
| Companies seem more keen on worming their way into your life
| and collecting information about you than making it easier to
| purchase their products.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I keep seeing this posted on HN. What information do you
| think they can collect in an app without your permission that
| they can't collect over the web?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Access to data on the phone for example. Just from top of
| my head: camera, stored data, contacts, location,
| microphone...
|
| I am firmly in the browser-over-app camp. One of the
| reasons I have close to zero third party apps on my phones.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And none of that information is available unless you
| explicitly give the app permission.
|
| On the other hand using standardized APIs, a web page can
| access everything you mentioned except for contacts
| rwmj wrote:
| Welcome to the app for my Fujifilm camera (only required
| because I wanted to update the firmware) that _refuses to
| run_ unless you grant fine-grained location access. After
| upgrading the firmware I deleted the app because it has
| literally no other benefit.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Support apps for digital cameras generally require
| location access since a feature that many customers want,
| is geotagging the photos. Only some camera models have a
| built-in GPS, while other models rely on the presence of
| a nearby smartphone to provide the coordinates for the
| photo. Apps are typically developed to support a whole
| range of models, so they need the location access to
| support the non-GPS-equipped models.
| midasuni wrote:
| If (have location) then geotag Else dontgeotag
|
| Rather than
|
| Else quit
|
| It's not rocket science.
| grotorea wrote:
| Isn't that what Apple requires apps to do by the way?
| Does Fujifilm have an iOS version that does that and an
| Android version that quits?
| rwmj wrote:
| This was the Android version. The Apple policy sounds
| more sensible. Even better would be a way to fake the
| permission (which I understand some non-Google Android
| variants allow).
| tchebb wrote:
| Did it update the firmware over Bluetooth? Up until
| Android 11, Android required fine location permission to
| perform Bluetooth scans[1] because knowledge of nearby
| devices can be used to derive location.
|
| [1] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivi
| ty/blue...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Good. And now how many people out there do look at app
| permissions exactly?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| What do you mean look at them? If they mindlessly click
| yes to allow an app to have permission when it asks them,
| why wouldn't they mindlessly click yes on the same
| confirmation on a website?
| hef19898 wrote:
| You just showed so little worda why consumer protection
| laws are so god damn important.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes because we really need to give the government more
| power...
| hef19898 wrote:
| When it comes to prtect from unhinged capitalism and
| greedy corporations, well, yes, we absolutely do.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Only the government has a legalized monopoly on power. I
| can avoid any one tech company much easier than I can
| avoid government.
| sneak wrote:
| Nah; apps can share data. If you log in to a dedicated
| video browsing account in the YouTube app, Google Maps
| and Google Docs can now associate your YouTubing account
| with your work and personal accounts. The ad company can
| now connect your personal email correspondence, your
| browsing, your work documents, your work travel, your
| personal travel, and the videos you watch. Share link
| trackers give them parts of your social graph even if you
| don't share contacts permission, but they build that up
| ad hoc from your email contents anyway.
|
| The sandboxing inside of apps is mostly an illusion.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You realize a website can do the same thing don't you?
| rvba wrote:
| You cant use the app if you dont give permission.
| ansgri wrote:
| I presume it's mostly on Android, on iOS apps seem to not
| be approved if they don't run without clearly optional
| permissions. One of my bank apps absolutely refused to
| run without having scanned the full filesystem of an
| Android phone, yet on iOS it requires nothing for all
| operations.
|
| Walled gardens with their HOA-like behaviors are bad in
| theory, but sometimes the gangsters in the streets are
| much worse.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Apps exist on your homepage, websites don't. (And yes you can
| turn bookmarks into app icons but most people never use those)
| Thiez wrote:
| There is only so much place on the home screen. Most apps
| will never live there no matter how much effort the company
| puts in it.
| prox wrote:
| But it's fairly trivial to run the same logic on two routes
| (on the app and on the web) Especially simple stuff like
| bookings and so on. It all goes into the same data storage.
| sorenjan wrote:
| I think the easiest answer is that a majority of consumers
| prefer it that way, if you don't have an app you don't exists
| as far as they're concerned. Remember that a lot of students
| doesn't understand file paths[0], they're so used to smart
| phones that they've never learned basic computer skills. Add to
| that that even before smart phones a lot of people didn't
| understand URLs or even used bookmarks, they just googled
| whatever site they wanted, like facebook login. Having the app
| icon on your home screen is much easier for them, and they're
| more likely to use it again and not forget it.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-
| direc...
| mvolfik wrote:
| I don't understand why this is being downvoted, from my
| casual observations I think pretty much the same. Every day
| when I step out of my social bubble of people daily working
| in/with IT, I get reminded that so many things that I
| consider obvious are a puzzle to the common folk
| onion2k wrote:
| The irony is that it probably _is_ a webpage, displayed in a
| webview, in an app wrapper. Very few companies with these tiny
| apps built them as native apps.
| kredd wrote:
| A decent chance that it's a React Native shop that's pumping
| these apps. Worked with some subcontractors that did those.
| danielheath wrote:
| Apps give cleaner/more trusted usage stats, which are important
| when the product you are optimising is your share price.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How so?
| d-s wrote:
| You can block a lot more in an browser - like links to
| surveillance stat systems (mixpanel). It still possible to
| do that with an app, but it's much more involving
| scarface_74 wrote:
| That's also a permission on iOS to allow tracking.
|
| But there is still nothing stopping a company from doing
| server side analytics and tracking.
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