Really glad to see this getting traction outside of our lil bubble here.
I've tried twice to go without a smartphone in the last year or so (once due to stolen-phone-necessity, the other just a social experiment) and it was a GIANT PITA each time.
Even just a Saturday night downtown... parking, restaurant, show ticket... each part more or less NOT doable without a smartphone
I finally got one this year (I'm 36, but realized this stuff was nonsense on an iPaq) just to do away with potatophone service and a landline that only worked some of the time. I still mostly use it as a phone. Maybe the pervasive need for vendor smartphone applications just hasn't reached anywhere I go, but I do travel for work a fair bit.
Is this just, again, something that's prevalent outside the USA?
EDIT: comment further down did remind me that I think someone in our group had to use some parking app last time we were in Cambridge, MA.
> I've tried twice to go without a smartphone in the last year or so...
Go where? Airport? Somewhere else?
I still prefer printing out tickets. I've just seen tech fail so often, or had to deal with bad tech so often, that I'd rather have a fallback for when (not if) it breaks.
If you paid with a credit card then there is absolutely no need for a paper ticket; inspectors, etc., can just use a card reader to connect you to the record of you paying.
It really needs to stop being socially acceptable for people to stop learning through life.
I’m fine with subsidizing devices for low income people, but this need to retain paper and pay tons extra for staff for the elderly who haven’t learned anything since they were 20 is ridiculous.
It's worthwhile to retain paper as a business continuity strategy in an outage or disaster scenario - e.g. just in case servers or networks are down.
But websites and email are not a new technology. They've been around more than 20 years.
> the presumption is that the elderly remain vigilant to every missive from the online world, when in fact many find it a jungle of scams, junk mail, endless passwords and security risks into which they venture as little as possible.
I very much so love being tech literate, but it's extremely annoying even if you know technology to just deal with what formerly was an on-site transaction. While it's good many business have ensured that they can work with their usual customers, sometimes it's extremely frustrating to figure out the actual way to use some services, or there are extremely inconsistent handlings of payment for services that you simply can't know until you're trying to make the transaction.
It's not an unusual thought for me to imagine a summer market where some of the vendors take cash only, others only take direct transfers, and even more will only take cards. Online, it's pretty annoying as there is _so_ much spam/scam out there that the major search engines happily return that I would wager even most IT professionals would have an uneasy feeling trying to sort which one is the real site and which are just SEO spammed scams.
I don't think it's about the learning curve, it's about the businesses pushing a lot of their costs onto consumers and expecting them to figure it out, and more and more it's blocking people from doing business with these businesses.
I'm pretty sure there's a more healthy medium than just forcing your customers to deal with the lack of investment into the UX for their businesses. I always get a paper boarding pass along with my electronic one; it only took me one time almost missing a flight to reach this position, because the gate agent decided my electronic boarding pass was fake as they scanned it too fast across the scanner and it couldn't read it, despite me asking them to please try it again. While I was able to figure this one out, it's only because I got lucky enough that the employee working the desk finally got a break from their other duties during boarding to be able to check my situation. I'm pretty sure if there had been anything else that required this person's attention coming up, I would not have made my flight, despite having valid tickets.
Don't blame the individuals here; there are instances when caveat emptor applies, but a lot of ticketing/business is definitely pushing their poor UX problems onto the consumers and just blaming them for not knowing the workflows these businesses use for their operations.
This stance could be somewhat tenable if there were secure smartphones that didn't betray their owners, and if the systems designed around these things weren't so janky and user-hostile (see the comment above about trying to fix some digital problem while on a bus, and having to deal with multiple accounts hassling with "login verification" and associated garbage). In other words, if these information systems could be taken for granted rather than often being a bottomless source of problems and frustration. As it stands it's completely understandable that people don't want to invest themselves into the current environment.
The tech is here to serve me. I am not here to serve the tech. If it makes my life harder, I'm not using it. That's not because I have "stopped learning".
And, frankly, I don't care if it requires the company to have more staff. (They're not "extra" staff, either - they're staff the company had before they tried to shift everything to the phone, and the company hasn't found a way to lay off yet.)
What about those of us who are tech savvy enough to not want to install every random shitty untrustworthy company's software on our pocket computer just to pay for something, rent a bike, use an event ticket etc etc.
On a secure OS like e/OS or Graphene? Not many I'd wager. And you can use something like Insular[0] for extra piece of mind.
Besides, these shifty apps are not trying to root your phone, just to, in the worst case, send back data they should, or shouldn't even have access to.
I have done all these things, but the hypothetical person I am using might not be able to, yet they might be a Windows power user, an Excel master, a gadget lover... but they are not tech savvy because they don't use lineageOS?
This is the solution I've chosen as well. But you need to realize this is a high bar to clear, even in the tech community. Researching, buying the correct phone model, installing a user-representing distribution, and then staying on that distributions' device upgrade treadmill all take time and effort. It would be best described as a hobby, and unfortunately nobody has the time and effort to do all the hobbies they'd like. (I've also got a bunch of "smart" devices sitting around effectively unutilized because Home Assistant crapped the bed 5 years ago and I haven't had time to set up something new)
Furthermore all of the secure Android distributions are community projects spearheaded by one or two developers. They could easily fall by the wayside tomorrow (eg CopperheadOS). It's nowhere near a self-sustaining off the shelf solution, despite how easy it seems once you actually do it.
Also the looming threat of remote attestation could destroy using secure Android distributions for consumer apps in the blink of an eye. And it's not like the venues that went digital only will then go back to having a paper option if the secure option has disappears.
In short, it's great to proselytize and grow the number of people interested in secure phone operating systems. But it's so far from being a prescriptive model to imply that people who haven't done so deserve what they get.
You don't have to go as far as using a specific rom. There are plenty of much easier sandboxxing solutions available. All that's required is that a tech savvy user use one. Any one.
"Use GrapheneOS" is an easy answer, capable of being implemented in two weekends by any intermediate computer user, once they decide to take it on.
Figuring out what "easier sandboxing solutions" are actually secure and aren't just snake oil is a much taller order. Especially with the way folk security (mis)advice gets repeated in forums, and the tendency for security amateurs to think more customization choices implies more security.
> It shouldn't be for a tech savvy user. I'm sure there are plenty of articles
covering this from reputable sources.
I'm sorry, but this reads as straight up Dunning-Kruger. Care to suggest any articles about these "easier sandboxing solutions" ? Popular articles on Android security are just as likely to rot your brain as they are to inform you. Remember that trend of "task killers" ?
If you were referring to your earlier link to Island - using Android Work Profiles on its own adds some security properties, but it's nowhere near comprehensive enough to assume your device now represents you.
The problem is that security is essentially a prove-a-negative endeavor. You can add "solutions" and configure things all day long for a simulation of making things more secure (see also: "antivirus"). But it's only by moving up to a higher context can you see/fix the holes.
Witness that even with Graphene on Pixel, you still have the baseband processor doing who-knows-what behind the scenes, and the application processor likely has vulnerabilities to it (this is seemingly a step up from the legacy Qualcomm standard where the AP completely trusts the BB, but it's still a black box). It's just one of the best answers we've got right now for a secureish solution that fits in your pocket with a long battery life, and so it's appropriate to recommend it in a consumer security context.
(You also haven't responded to the larger initial point I made, where adoption of these things are really not to the point where we can take them for granted in a societal context)
> I'm sorry, but this reads as straight up Dunning-Kruger.
No offense, but I'm not sure you understand what Dunning-Kruger is if you think that.
> Care to suggest any articles about these "easier sandboxing solutions"
Did you even try searching?
> Popular articles on Android security are just as likely to rot your brain as they are to inform you.
Key words in my original statement: reputable. sources.
I'm sorry, but you seem like you want to argue just for the sake of arguing. You also give off the vibe of being an armchair security expert, and as someone that does security professional as has for my entire career, I'm not really finding you to be credible. Same as someone screaming that security by obscurity doesn't work because they read it somewhere an heard other people say it.
The point was simply that there are decent sandboxing solutions that are easy to find, and will protect you sufficiently from untrusted third party apps that are not trying to root your phone, but trying to exfil as much data as possible. That's it. And that remains true.
Not really interested in discussing this further though, since I don't think this is a productive discussion. Cheers.
I said Dunning-Kruger because you seem to be advocating doing Internet Research and following "reputable" pop suggestions of security solutions. This is the equivalent to rolling your own crypto - anyone can create a system that they themselves are satisfied is secure, and that's effectively what you're doing by mashing up random security apps with a proprietary Android distribution.
These "decent sandboxing solutions" are all just front ends to Android Work Profiles. Trusting Work Profiles on a proprietary distribution is similar to just trusting the proprietary distribution as is - especially when most distributions have blobbed "Play Services" with backdoors into the OS. So in my opinion this isn't a particularly good path to go down to achieve trustable security, just as adding a bunch of band-aids to Microsoft Windows won't get you something trustable.
And really, my overarching point is that the current state of secure user-representing Android is nowhere advanced enough in capabilities, auditing, or adoption to say that anyone can "just" do some things to be protected from the surveillance industry.
Reputable simply means of good repute. Having good reputation. I.E. being credible and having credibility. In the context of tech savvy users, it wouldn't refer to the 'pop' articles you refer to.
As I said, the word is doing most of the work of your argument. I can totally see someone saying the exact same thing you are, and then pointing to some throwaway article on some popular Android news site and calling it reputable - in an earlier comment you indicated that these reputable articles can be found by "searching", which with how search engines tend to work these days is like the exact opposite of reputable.
And as I've said for the nth time now, you could end this abstract discussion with a link to like anything concrete. I addressed your specific reference to Island and Work Profiles in general, which you have just ignored. I myself use Shelter on Graphene, it has its place. But using Work Profiles on a black box proprietary Android distribution just seems like adding a false sense of security.
> As I said, the word is doing most of the work of your argument.
It's really not. Saying it twice doesn't make it so. You just decided to make an issue of it for some reason.
> then pointing to some throwaway article on some popular Android news site and calling it reputable - in an earlier comment you indicated that these reputable articles can be found by "searching", which with how search engines tend to work these days is like the exact opposite of reputable.
I expect a tech savvy user to understand the difference between a garbage site and a reliable, reputable site.
> And as I've said for the nth time now, you could end this abstract discussion with a link to like anything concrete.
How about you just stop replying? Why keep it going this long when we clearly disagree? I find such behavior baffling. If I wasn't interesting in putting in time to provide links before, given the tone of this discussion, why do you think I would be now?
Throwing out dubious security advice, especially as a lemma for downplaying legitimate concerns, requires backing it up with details. If you don't want to have tedious discussions, the sooner you supply those details the better. FWIW you were the one who said you were going to stop replying, but apparently you care just enough to dig your heels in on the content-free part of your argument, but not enough to actually fill any details of what you're trying to advocate.
I haven't thrown out any dubious security advice. I made a point which seems to have gone over your head, and that you've turned into both a strawman and discussion of semantics. Absurd. And you don't get to dictate the terms of any discussion.
All your comment is showing here is that you need to have the last word and want to argue for the sake of arguing. So have at it. You're no longer worth my time.
And this point that went over my head was? Don't confuse understanding with disagreement.
I started off curious what you might be referring to, if it wasn't just work profiles. I still am. But now I'm mostly just amazed how set you are in arguing some abstract unsubstantiated point, when a simple link could have supported it long ago.
(Also for reference, if someone said "I've read about Covid from a reputable source", what would you think?)
I have better things to do with my life than manage a zoo of shitty apps, so to hell with that. Just because I'm technically capable of spending time on doing something doesn't mean I want to.
From a marketing perspective, there's zero difference between someone who cannot afford a smartphone and someone who does not use one out of principle.
Seeing more of this at museums and institutions as well which is really disheartening.
Gone are the days where you could pay at the door. Now you must go to their website and fill out a long string of forms and manually type in your credit card number, all so you can get a QR code and wait even longer to enter.
Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.
Once a refuge from always-connected society, restaurants and museums now require it and I'm finding myself not returning to these places.
Yes, but the time it takes the visitor to get a QR code is a lot more than ringing up a transaction. The museum has offloaded work on the visitor and this is not acceptable. The visitor, after all, is the one paying the bill.
Before that the phone system offloaded work to their subscribers, who now needed to listen to and understand the various tones (dial, ringing, busy) and remember phone numbers.
In all seriousness, there is a point to be made about equity at a minimal viable level, and if you don’t want to enable access for everyone, you’re not permitted to operate. Very similar to how some jurisdictions have outlawed not accepting cash (because this policy impacts the unbanked, underbanked, and low income disproportionately). Streamlining, efficiencies, and improved experiences via digital delivery are welcome, but once you start tiptoeing into disenfranchising cohorts by doing so (even unintentionally), that’s where regulation comes in.
“You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.
> “You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.
Is you must have an ID to get on plane also unreasonable? A modern smart phone (at least an iPhone) has all sorts of affordances that make life easier for the disabled.
I actually think it's unreasonable, and it never used to be required for a domestic flight. If you had a ticket, you could get on the plane. Same as trains and buses still work at least in most places.
You don’t. You can show up at a TSA checkpoint without ID and they’ll identity proof you on the spot. As an identity nerd, I’ve done it just to try it to experience and confirm the TSA’s process. Next time you pass through a checkpoint, ask!
With that said, a physical credential and a smartphone are wildly different from an accessibility perspective. You can get a REAL ID compliant state credential for under $100. Poor comparison.
That's the problem, they haven't changed staffing. Customer service is still there. Staff for managing queues is still there. The wait has increased, and hasn't decreased the need for staff.
Presumably this is all done so they can get a verified email address for marketing purposes, as proof of entry only arrives via email.
Neither one of those roles has become obsolete with the introduction of said apps, I wouldn't even say there's any difference in staffing requirements. You've simply replaced one problem with another, instead of simply taking your money, the worker now has to figure out why the app doesn't accept your card/phone/address/etc which is arguably much more time consuming.
I hate to say it but there needs to be some regulation about customer service, ie not allowing companies to not provide it by pawning people off on digital solutions. So many businesses are only viable because they don't provide customer support, and I don't think that's un society's interest.
I don't think this is really an issue, but even if you do it's trivially solvable. Vending machines have [somewhat surprisingly] been around for hundreds of years. Single slot generic items, like generic tickets, could easily be 'automated' by a vending machine. Few to no places do this because it's not a meaningful bottle-neck or labor issue.
Isn't the entire point of a museum customer service? What else are they doing other than preserving the stuff? Isn't a museum with bad customer service more properly called a "warehouse"?
>Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.
Don't worry, they will have paper copies if you don't have a phone or are insistent you want to handle a grubby, contaminated piece of paper before you eat your meal.
Not everyone has paper copies and if I’m going out to dinner with my wife the last thing we want to do is pull our phones out and figure out a pdf menu
What's wrong with QR codes for restaurant menus? Here are the pros I can come up with off the top of my head:
- Restaurants can experiment with more food options and more frequent updates to their menu
- Real time info on what's in stock
- Cuts out the cost of having to constantly reprint the menu
- Easier for customers to find the menu online when searching for restaurants (huge issue pre-COVID)
What are the actual downsides? Sure, there may be a tiny fraction of people without a smartphone, but they're likely accompanied by someone who does have one. Despite that, restaurants would likely keep a few physical menus on-hand.
A major con for me is that I don’t want to get my phone out. If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications, they may distract me even if only by making me think about them. I’d rather just not check my phone for the duration of the meal.
Also I have friends and relatives who have never owned a smartphone, some who would be essentially unable to do so.
That said, another benefit is more scope for accessibility. I would bet that most restaurant sites are terrible for accessibility, but implementing screen reader or large font support would apply everywhere, whereas I’d also bet that most restaurant never have braille or large print menus.
> If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications
You can turn on do not disturb until you leave the current location on iOS. I do that a lot. You have all of the tools you need. It's like someone complaining that the sun is too bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.
> It's like someone complaining that the sun is to bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.
It's more like you're saying that it shouldn't be a problem to require someone to stare directly into the sun because they should have brought eclipse glasses and be fine with using them
Well, if you stay in the HN bubble you would think that in normal life, people are complaining that they can't run Linux on AirPods....
But in the real world, smart phone penetration is 95%, including 94$ of the homeless (I posted a citation earlier)
> why do you think that so many people here are proposing that the choices you suggest are toxic?
People also think that alcohol sales shouldn't happen on Sunday, and all other crazy stuff. I'm simply suggesting that if your choices are out of the society's norms, it's not society's responsibility to make affordances for you.
If we made a law forbidding companies from using software badly, every single SaaS business would disappear.
> it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.
Would you believe that my wife and I refuse to use American Airlines partially because the app and the website is so bad? I stay away from a lot of services, software and hardware because of a bad user experiences.
We have the tools, but QR code menus override the most basic tool – keeping my phone in my pocket. When I have to take my phone out and haven't pre-planned by switching to DND, I'm likely to see notifications.
It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.
Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.
> It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.
You really didn't know that in 2023 you might have to use a QR code to see a menu? That's like going to Seattle and being surprised that it started raining.
I'm not from Seattle or the US so don't know that stereotype. In the same way, I don't expect restaurants to use QR codes for menus because it's fairly rare in my experience, so no I would not plan for it.
I prefer it when venues like restaurants design for all and don't expect knowledge of local customs.
> Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.
This is not the conclusion most would draw from this. If anything it seems fairly well understood that QR menus are mostly beneficial for restaurants not diners.
If I open Scarface's Pork, Beef and Spirits should I be forced to design my restaurant for people who have a religious conviction against eating beef and pork?
>If I use my phone to read the menu I’m also seeing notifications, they may distract me even if only by making me think about them.
This is my concern as well. When someone is at a table with people, put the damn phone away and actually be present for those around you.
QR code menus make "phones out" the default state of a table. So of course people will get distracted and split their attention between notifications and those around them.
- Lots of restaurants have no WiFi and may also have poor cell reception for certain networks. This either makes the menu slow to access or impossible to access.
- I shouldn’t have to pass my phone around the table to people who can’t access the online menu. That slows everything down and most people don’t want others on their phones anyway.
- When they throw in payment with their online menu there are inevitably issues. I’ve had this fail numerous times (money taken, order didn’t go through).
- Lots of restaurants have PDF menus designed for a computer screen. They’re awful to browse on a phone.
The problem is that most of the time a "QR Code Menu" means a QR code pointing to a PDF hosted on Google Drive or alike, a digitized version of a paper menu which was never meant to be read on tiny phone screens and is a pain to read with no reflow. You have to squint at your screen to figure out what you want, and then the rest of the process is the same, someone comes down and takes your order.
What you presumably mean by "QR Code Menu" is a QR code pointing to a website where the content is optimized for screens and perhaps interactive, allowing you to order from your table without involving wait staff and thus streamlining the entire ordering process for you and the restaurant.
If 95% of all practical implementations of a concept are bad implementations then I don't have a good idea implemented badly. What I have instead is an idea that fails to work when faced with the real world. I'd say it's warranted to call that "a bad idea".
Don't be intentionally obtuse. Reframing the parent comment as "the _only_ concern (all) people have is poor QR code menu implementations" is disingenuous and myopic.
In addition to all the other downsides listed, here's another more basic one: I don't want to order food from a smartphone!
If I wanted to push a button and get food, I'd eat out of a vending machine or order with DoorDash. One of the reasons I go into a restaurant or some other meatspace "event" is to escape technology for a tiny bit of time and enjoy life. I want to sit down in a comfortable place, enjoy a conversation with my family, or bask in the ambience of the restaurant. I want to have a pleasant, human interaction with a human server. With these digital-only menus, now I'm yet again pulling out my smartphone and scrolling-scrolling-scrolling. Sorry, due to work I've got screens blasting at me for hours every day. I'm not going to go out in the evening to look at another screen.
Museums could have a booth that takes cash/card and prints the tkts instead of a random/poorly maintained website that'll do who knows what to you CC number (which probably costs more than having the person selling tkts)
This has not been my experience. Paying for admission to museums/sporting events I apple pay from safari on my phone then am presented with a QR or a pass to add to my apple wallet. It's really nice and I much prefer it to standing in line.
This. Apart from not wanting to be tethered to my phone 24/7, I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some. The most terrifying prospect to me is governments that want to switch to digital IDs. No thanks. I don't need to lose access to existence just because my battery died or I forgot my phone at home.
And once these devices become required for participation in society, is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them, or are they going to become yet another burden suffered disproportionately by the poor, just like car ownership?
Maybe, yes. Lose that piece of paper and you forfeit your right to enter that concert...
...but lose that piece of paper and you haven't also forfeited your right to access your hotel room, to catch the plane back home, to pay for your parking space where you left your car, to take public transport, to enter your gym...
I've never been to such an event where using your smartphone to pay was mandatory, it's usually just much faster and more convenient.
At many smaller venues, a credit card (or tap-to-pay) is required, and I'm 100% in favor of that. We should be doing more to help provide unbanked people with credit cards. Requiring small businesses to deal with cash is increasingly a burden; cashless enables them to save a lot of time and money.
This is the wrong approach, because the laws around payment cards require they be strongly linked to ID, allowing point and click shutdown/freezing of anyone's ability to transact.
When you can't pay a lawyer, and you can't pay a taxi to get to your lawyer, and you can't buy food, and it's all because the government pointed a finger without evidence, prior to trial, the system is a bad one.
The ability to use cash must be preserved. You really don't want to live in the world where the only payments are the ones the government explicitly allows.
I see it as similar to what happens when your credit card gets messed up or won't read anymore. It's a similar level of inconvenience.
That said, I have found it easier to replace a phone on short notice than a card. Banks seem to want to do everything through the mail, where I can walk into any carriers store and walk out with a replacement device the same day.
In the future, how does one pay to replace a lost device at the store after losing the device that is the exclusive holder of all your payment details, as well as the exclusive holder of all the credentials to all your accounts?
One day or an other, your proprietary pocket tracker and his mandatory connectivity will fail. What if the device is broken (yah, go buy another) ? What if the upstream service don't work ? What if the GSM network is locally in maintenance ? Overall, why should we require obsolete-when-bought, extremely costly and polluting locked-down devices you don't even control to access public places ?
So why, any concrete response capable of holding up in practice ?
Not to discount the other issues, but apple wallet being offline is one of my favorite features and side-steps many of the issues related to connectivity of bandwidth issues when you're at a large event/venue.
It would be much better to have varied and robust options though.
What works for me, if I need to pay something: I use my credit card (contactless under 50, over I need to type a code) or some bills which both are in my physical wallet (protected against rfid, it just looks as a normal wallet).
I don't see any benefits adding third parties to the mix apart the fashion of "Oh yeah I can pay with my tracker watch".
I usually hate the cliche "vote with your wallet" solution, but in this case, it's the right way. Now is the time, while this garbage is still trying to get a foothold and there are still many alternatives that do not treat their customers like shit. Loudly refuse to do business with those companies that require unnecessary technology, and complain to the right people. Not the faces behind the counter making minimum wage.
I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.
The issue is we want restaurants and museums. If we vote with our wallet and boycott than they will look at it as a disinterest in the venue and not a failure of their IT team.
You need to tell them why. "I'm not visiting your museum because you demand the use of an app. I want to pay cash for admission at the door"
If you happen to be disabled, and cannot use a mobile app (most do a woeful job with accessibility and even if they don't, some people just cannot use the devices), threaten an ADA lawsuit.
This is the right way, only I would reword it to “I want to visit your museum but I’m unable to use the app due to disability, would you mind taking cash or debit?”.
Try not to start conversations in the negative. You’ll get a lot farther.
Yes, and demand alternatives. I went to an urgent care clinic last year, they wanted me to provide all my info on an app using my phone. I refused, said give me a clipboard. They were reluctant but eventually agreed.
Restaurants, just screw them if they demand apps. No restaurant is that good, and across the board the apps make the ordering experience much worse.
I can call Dominos and say "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza for carryout," give them my name, and be done before the app finishes loading and showing all its promo/coupon deals.
So yes, do business with companies that still have some vague notion of what customer service is. I have stopped expecting businesses to exceed my expectations (used to be the norm for most) but it's nice when it happens and they will definitely get my business again.
Ryanair is sufficiently bad that, as it's the only airline flying from where I live to where most of my friends live in the UK, I am likely to use the train next time.
Last time I used them, mass-cancellations from 1cm of snow combined with the next alternative flights being a week later, meant that I had to get home via a combination of ferry and train.
> I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.
In defence of RyanAir, they are upfront end honest about this and you know what you're getting with them. Whether you think it's a good deal is a subjective matter you can decide for yourself, but I do think it's a fair deal.
That said, I would have used my discretion as a RyanAir employee here: the heavy fee is to encourage people to not "lazy out", which is clearly not what happened here.
That's kinda the problem with the current consumer capitalism destruction of life support systems. Everyone has principles, until they look at the price tags and just chose the cheapest option. And it's perverse because for most people budgeting is a matter of survival.
So we're stuck in this death spiral where only companies that find ways to exploit us and the ecosystems survive, and even tho we know this, we can only patronize companies that exploit us and the ecosystems because the ones that don't are a luxury/lifestyle signaling tool for the affluent.
I don't see any way out. The current civilization paradigm will crash and burn and only then something different will emerge.
I've been to a lot of venues where that's the preferred option.
I recently took my kids to the county fair. There was a big line of people waiting to buy tickets, and a short line for ticket holders.
We went to the line of ticket holders, I popped up the website, and thanks to browser autofill, I completed the transaction in less than a minute, and we had our tickets by the time we reached the front of the line.
I 100% agree that this shouldn't be the only option. But I think it's a great alternative, and for many events it makes sense for it to be the default option.
I agree with you in principle, but one of the problems is that some exhibitions are so popular that you really have to book weeks in advance if you want to get in.
Case in point: A friend suggested the biggest ever Yayoi Kusama exhibition in Manchester[0], which I relayed to my girlfriend because we would be in the city 3 weeks later.
She sent me a frantic sms Get Tickets Now! since the exhibition was sold out weeks in advance.
And that's an issue you see with a lot of popular exhibitions. You can't just walk into a David Hockney exhibition at Centre Pompidou on a whim, because the time slots are sold out for weeks in advance.
That may not be fair and super inconvenient if you don't book far in advance. But popular exhibitions in big cities are so overwhelmed by visitors that there's really no other way than selling time slots well in advance.
The Kusama exhibition was totally worth it. But we wouldn't have stood a chance if we hadn't organized the tickets weeks before the visit.
I think the insistence on smart phones for basic services is much worse than asking the public to organize a museum visit well in advance if the exhibition is super popular.
> There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
It's absolutely abhorrent that you would begin to think this. There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology. Not to mention, there are plenty of people who are religiously or ideologically against new technology. Making it a REQUIREMENT to do anything is absolutely not something we should be promoting. To add on to this, in both of your examples, none of those two things were required. You could get a friend to call with you, or go to the place to set up an appointment. Literacy is something we already recognize as extremely important and we absolutely do have accomodations provided for people who are illiterate.
Asking people to "be responsible for their actions or lack of them" when you talk about disability is just blatantly incorrect. Remember, we're all just temporarily abled. Some day you will grow old and have the inability to interact with modern technology. I bet then you will be very upset if everything started requiring it.
> Why should I go out of my way because someone made a choice to inconvenience themselves?
Why should I go out of my way because someone decided that I now must own a smartphone (often iPhone or Google Play required) to do things that we all used to be able to do before without one?
This is just as bad as adding unjustified bureaucratic and procedural requirements to actions that used to be able to be done freely and without hindrance.
> Why should I go out of my way because someone decided that I now must own a smartphone (often iPhone or Google Play required) to do things that we all used to be able to do before without one?
You don't. You are free to make any life choices you want and suffer the consequences of your life choices as long as they don't affect me.
It's hard to believe you are really this "consequences for thee but not for me" about life in general, considering your comment just up-thread, but I suppose it makes sense that such people would exist and be so self-uncritical as to proudly and openly pronounce such beliefs.
If I choose not to sell a product or service in a method that some subset of customers don't find acceptable, I'm losing some amount of revenue. I must think that tradeoff is worth it. If you choose not to use a phone -- but you are obviously capable of using technology if you are posting here -- you are choosing not to do business with me.
At the same time, in this hypothetical scenario, you're choosing not to do business with me. It's always going to be a two-way street. Supply and demand are both equal partners in transactional economies.
Isn't that what I just said? If I open Scarface's Pork and Spirits, I'm choosing not to do business with observant Muslims. We are both making choices using our free will.
Attempting to retcon your arguments when your previous comments are in plain view is brazen, and essentially bullshitting to avoid admitting any kind of incoherence or mistake on your part. But keep going off, I guess.
What have I said any different in this entire thread? Both the business and the consumer are free agents. The business gets to decide how they want to conduct their business and the consumer gets to decide if that’s acceptable.
Have you ever thought that you might just not have been able to comprehend that argument?
You said “consequences for me but not for thee”. We both “suffer” from the consequences of our actions. I lose business from people who don’t want to use a phone and you lose the chance to get a good or service you want
Why do you get to impose "consequences" for my life choices? Why can you make the choice to require an app to pay for your parking lot depriving me from the ability to pay in cash —affecting my positive freedom of movement—, while I however must calibrate my life choices so they "don't affect" you?
Is it because you are a business and I'm a mere citizen?
> Why do you get to impose "consequences" for my life choices?
I'm not "imposing" anything. We are both making choices that fit our own priorities.
> Why can you make the choice to require an app to pay for your parking lot depriving me from the ability to pay in cash —affecting my positive freedom of movement—, while I however must calibrate my life choices so they "don't affect" you?
We are both making choices. I am choosing not to do business with you on the terms that you find acceptable and you are choosing not to do business with me. Should I also accept pesos in the US because you don't want to exchange your pesos for dollars?
I see. If it's all choices, would you accept the consequences of me interfering with your business operations as much as legal when you unjustifiably expect me to use a smartphone (holding up the line, making a fuss, refusing to tip, etc)? This may slow down income, put off other potential customers, and result in a more stressful workplace resulting in lower staff morale. It appears to be the only choice I have left...
...or I will simply use the power of the state to defend my ability to live a normal life without needing a smartphone, as I live in a country where the people have chosen that consumer protection can be imposed on businesses by Law.
And I'n saying the business should have the right to decide whether the marginal cost of providing alternate methods is worth the marginal revenue to gain customers that choose not to partake in something expected in modern society in 2023.
> There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology
What I meant is that the majority of people don’t have a disability that would prevent them from using technology. The ones who do, should and do get assistance
> Not to mention, there are plenty of people who are religiously or ideologically against new technology
If your religion or ideology is to live in an ancient world, by all means do. Just don’t come to the 21st century and complain that you cannot enjoy the modern society
In practice "use the app" means "use an Apple or Android phone". If "modern society" means "please make these ethically dubious companies in a duopoly that produce devices I don't even like even richer", then I will gladly be "ancient". I have serious problems more or less forcing people to give money to one of these two 100% for-profit companies, especially when it's for public services. It's fundamentally and profoundly anti-free market.
For all the hate the web and browsers get here, at least that's an open platform that you can run on more or less $any system of your choice, or even re-implement from scratch (which, while still a large project, is quite as hard as sometimes made out to be).
> There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
> It's absolutely abhorrent that you would begin to think this. There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology
Actually, yeah, this is a good point. Ever watched somebody with a nerve issue try to use a touchscreen? Their hand shaking all over the place? You're lucky if they can do it without somehow texting gibberish to random contacts.
Requiring a smartphone for tickets to anything (instead of a physical ticket) is a high cost to entry for people even if they are perfectly capable of using modern technology. Your “no phone no appointment” reference ignores the fact that you’ve always been able to make appointments to places in person or even by writing as alternatives. Now, no expensive smartphone and cell plan, no entry. Very, very different. I’ve seen concert venues transition to apps with no alternative.
the thing is tech that is being forced is simply not there. I don't want to install app that asks for 1000 permissions just to pay for entrance, scaning qr code and being redirected to web payment form should be the maximum such venues should ask.
They used to be allow all the permissions they want or don't by not installing the app. Now, there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
> They used to be allow all the permissions they want or don't by not installing the ap
That was never an issue with iOS. For some reason I am not surprised that an operating system created by an adTech company doesn't care about your privacy,
> there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
>> there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
> Such ss?
Well, sandbox escapes have already been talked about. But, I also believe accelerometer data isn't gated. Any app can talk to the Internet. But, I don't have a modern iPhone to corroborate that info.
> I've run every version of iOS. It always gave you a pop up to request permissions as needed.
Since the first release of the iPhone? I find that hard to believe since the release notes for iOS 6 specifically called out their fine-grained permissions improvements. There was clearly some wholesale bundling before that.
> Citation? And I'm not referring to targeted state actions.
> Since the first release of the iPhone? I find that hard to believe since the release notes for iOS 6 specifically called out their fine-grained permissions improvements. There was clearly some wholesale bundling before that.
There has never been a version of iOS that forced you to accept all permissions before you could download it. I'm not even sure that would be possible. The OS wouldn't know what permissions an app needed until the first time you called a function that needed the permission.
Tightening down permissions is more along the lines of only allowing an app to have access to certain pictures instead of your entire library.
> There has never been a version of iOS that forced you to accept all permissions before you could download it.
I didn't say that. I said they had access without any sort of permission mechanism. The bundling I was referring to was both the fine-grained access, and permissions that weren't gated.
> The OS wouldn't know what permissions an app needed until the first time you called a function that needed the permission.
The app can advertise to the OS which capabilities it will use and then the OS can deny the app access to anything it hasn't requested or it has but the user has not allowed.
> Tightening down permissions is more along the lines of only allowing an app to have access to certain pictures instead of your entire library.
> The app can advertise to the OS which capabilities it will use and then the OS can deny the app access to anything it hasn't requested or it has but the user has not allo
Besides certain specialized entitlements, that's not how iOS apps have ever worked.
> That is not what that permissions tightening was like
We are talking about three different things.
1. With Android, you use to have to give an app all of the permissions it requested on first launch or not install it. That has never been the case on iOS.
2. Apple has put more things behind permissions as time goes on - what you are referring to.
3. Tightening permissions are like what I was referring to such as only allowing an app to have access to certain photos or contacts and adding GPS permissions to only allow an app to use GPS when the app is in the foreground.
A smartphone with monthly internet is a substantially more expensive proposition. It is a device that can fail or break at any point without immediate recourse. You are at the mercy of a Google/Apple duopoly and are forced to carry around this device for even minor trivialities.
Smartphones are tracking devices as well. There are really good arguments to be made that I should reasonably opt out from an un-auditable, expensive hyper-tracker with a monthly subscription cost.
You can always get a cell phone and not enable cellular and download anything you need before you leave home. I travel a lot and I do that so I'n not dependent on flaky wi-fi and poor reception in airports and other venues.
There are a lot of services that require their own apps as well as restaurants/museums/shops with no public wifi either. There's a lot of really badly-coded websites that demand safari or chrome.
> Why can’t people be responsible for their actions or lack of them
They are responsible for their actions, same as the people implementing these ill-informed changes are responsible for theirs.
What you miss, other than people who simply don't know, is that there is a whole universe of people for whom these solutions do not work and who are not accounted for. Accessibility is a gigantic problem in app-only spaces. Plus people who temporarily do not have a device due to loss or lack of money or simply a dead battery.
There was another article posted recently that humans are, by and large, "temporarily abled." We are born not being able to care for ourselves, we go through various stages of being or not being able to do so, and most of us die being unable to care for ourselves. Our relationship with technology is the same way.
For everywhere, but especially for sole-source things like government, transport, large public venues, and so on, accessibility must be paramount and that absolutely includes both people who cannot hear or see through people who do not have the latest technology either by choice or necessity.
Some people don’t want to accept the baggage of a smart phone (tracking, algorithmic advertisement, and other intrusions of privacy). I think they should be able to make that call.
This isn’t a zero-sum game. I would like such people to live comfortably, and I can’t help but wonder where your animosity towards them is coming from. It feels very juvenile.
Has it ever occurred to you that their reasons may be sound?
The anxiety and distraction produced by smart phones is well-documented, as is the invasion of privacy and manipulation.
What makes you so sure you’ve got it right? Why not allow people who choose not to have phones to pay in cash? Why do you feel their lives should be difficult?
> And there's nothing you can do to prevent your ISP, nor your OS from tracking you.
Then use your phone as a wifi only device and don't buy a phone with an operating system created by an adTech company.
> Oh, so you think people can't take responsibility for that choice?
They are taking responsibility for their own safety by choosing not to accept cash. But the consequences of being killed because you are carrying cash is a lot greater than worrying about the man tracking you....
> But the consequences of being killed because you are carrying cash is a lot greater than worrying about the man tracking you....
You're not Batman's parents, you're just a regular person, no one cares what you have in your pockets. It's honestly baffling to me that someone could believe this is a valid assessment of real-life risk.
We are talking about business owners taking the cash they make from their business to the bank. We aren’t talking about a few dollars in your wallet. I’m arguing why businesses would want to avoid accepting cash.
>Then use your phone as a wifi only device and don't buy a phone with an operating system created by an adTech company.
I am concluding that you are, indeed, severely uninformed on the subject matter. I would recommend reading up on the baseband system of mobile phones as a starting point.
No one's talking about banning anything. They're just talking about providing options that satisfy everyone's preferences.
It's very much a "yes, and" situation here. Offering physical resources is not mutually exclusive with providing digital means to access those things, too.
Please try to engage in the conversation in good faith.
Smartphones make certain things more comfortable, and certain things way more uncomfortable.
Checking the weather? Comfortable. Using modern phones and apps in a way that doesn't compromise one's privacy is very, very uncomfortable. I know because I do it on a regular basis.
It's costly and time consuming. Paying cash and not providing tons of PII would be much faster, easier, and more comfortable, and indeed that's what I choose to do in all cases where it is a possibility.
I volunteer as a digital mentor at my local library. I go down there for a couple of hours every week and help people who have trouble understanding computers or their phones.
As an example, there is is 75 year old Doreen ho had never touched a compupter before (start by explaining that there is no standard place to find an on-off-switch and what one may look like. She had never heard of Google. She is an entirely charming, intellifent lady with very poor eyesight, slightly dodgy literacy and no keyboard skills.
I really recommend volunteeriung for something similar.
> There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
Likewise, there is no mental or physical disability preventing me from understanding the fundamental maths behind quantum mechanics or exactly how Qbits work. ... but I don't.
>There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
???
Blindness? Loss of limbs? Combined with poor/non-existent accessibility implementations on the digital replacements of the meatspace technologies.
Disabilities aside, what about just a plain old dead battery or a misplaced phone? I can’t look at your restaurant’s menu if my phone is dead? I can’t park my car if I left my phone at home?
> There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
Judging by the amount of insufferable "Got it! Got it! Got it!" modals, pop ups and other bullshit in "modern" technology, the apps themselves are the disability - wasting time and getting in the way of doing the thing the user is actually trying to accomplish.
Your analogies are invalid. Those are actions which were enabled by new technologies and could not be performed before such technologies existed. This article, however, is talking about actions which have not been made possible by new technology. Rather, they are actions that were possible before such technology existed but are being made arbitrarily harder or even impossible to perform without some very specific consumer products.
This is not technology enabling new features — it is technology being used to excuse a regression of features.
I've never had a smartphone and I think the extent to which you need a smartphone is nowadays is overstated. The only things I have ever encountered that I simply could not use was the bikeshare in town and the mothers' nursing stations at certain airports. Restaurants and museums may roll their eyes at me but I have yet to run into one where they couldn't make it work somehow.
The necessity of a computer however is very real, and a credit card is close. I don't think this is great, but I'm glad smartphones aren't there yet.
>> The only things I have ever encountered that I simply could not use was the bikeshare in town and the mothers' nursing stations at certain airports.
The nursing station part of this is appalling. Why is a smartphone necessary for that?!
I've noticed malls that used to have helpful directories and maps have replaced them with a QR code. In one instance I tried scanning it and found I had no cell signal...
I really like the venues that have two check-in lines, the fast lane that just scans your QR code and the old fashioned one. It works at airports, grocery stores, museums, the DMV, etc.
Got the digital stuff all done beforehand? Good boy, you can go through the quicker line.
Want to do it old school and talk to someone? Fine, here you go, but it's going to take 3x longer.
That system incentivizes the more efficient approach, enticing people to learn the digital ropes so they don't have to wait in line as long. But it also doesn't exclude the people who don't or can't do so.
I just do it in the car or whatever so it's more like a quick scan and enter once you're there.
Taken to the extreme, you have membership based check ins like Clear at airports or the Amazon grocery store stuff or any gym that scans your barcode when you go in.
I don't think it's fair to say it's only for the company's benefit. On my own device, autofilling saved info, I'm often faster than the person behind the desk.
I found that the "old fashioned" is often faster actually, because most people are in the "QR queue" and the "old fashioned queue" tends to have much fewer people. Plus, I don't need to create an account, unsubscribe from their marketing emails, get twice-yearly ToS update emails, and stuff like that, so I'll save annoyance on that too.
While they're incentivizing me to learn the ropes and be more
efficient, I'm secretly incentivizing them either to respect my
privacy by accepting cash payments or to compensate me with a discount
for giving up some of my personal information. I wonder which of us
will learn the ropes sooner.
On a more general note, I prefer to tell people that I'm too old for
newfangled stuff like smartphones, because I prefer the reaction of
condescending reassurance to the alternative of hostility evoked by
saying I've made an informed decision not to own one.
I'm more interested in raising the technical savviness of our entire population rather than continuously making things ' backward compatible' for those who aren't yet caught up. We no longer offer infrastructure to ride your horse-drawn carriage through NYC. It doesn't seem far-fetched that eventually, people without a smartphone will be in the extremely small minority.
As of very recently (9/2021), less than a third of MTA stations were wheelchair accessible. I realize I'm nitpicking your point, but I'm illustrating how awful we are at implementing any of these ideals because we are a selfish society.
> It is an accessibility issue caused by arguably unnecessary dependencies on tech being asserted
I disagree. While the additions may be unnecessary from the point of view that things worked beforehand, technology has increased accessibility for nearly all aspects of life. I think that the benefit greatly outweighs concerns about people who don't yet have access to a smartphone (which is the primary limitation here, right?). Considering how disposable they have become, how ubiquitous wi-fi is, and how vastly $10 smartphones are traded around the globe, I don't see a financial limitation here.
If wheelchair accessibility is not enough, that supports my point. Your argument would be in the ballpark of "Remove the 1/3 support we do have because accessibility should be traded for maximum convenience of the masses and most people are not wheelchair bound"
Financial limitations are only 1 way of creating an accessibility issue
It is not just a dependency on owning a smartphone, but also on having it on you, having it charged, having it up to date, having their app installed, having their app up to date, not having any bugs, and using its processing to handle the transaction.
These are not trivial concerns, and contesting them is not the same as being against new technology.
Where is my government supplied smartphone with free internet and free charging to go along with these requirements? A cheeky question, but not that outlandish
I 1000% support using a smartphone as an OPTION but I disagree with it as a requirement.
How about just the fact that I do not want to show a line of people the brand new phone I have in my pocket because it might make me a target? Or maybe I don't want people around me to know if I'm apple or android, or maybe I have a private background image I don't want to risk being shown, or even just that my phone is in the middle of an update and I can't use it at the moment?
The examples are contrived but my point is that the requirement loses on both ends. I shouldn't need to have it on me, and also it's one of my most personal items that I own and I may not want to take it out in public on demand in order to do activities that have nothing to do with it.
There's no need to create all this management effort when previously I could basically just hand the gate person a $20, show my ID, and walk in.
If they have a smartphone I can borrow when I reach the end of the line to do smartphone stuff for the sake of utilizing new tech then that would be accessible. Requiring me to supply my own and make sure it's compatible with their system and operational at the moment is not.
But the new technology is worse for the user. It doesn't serve the user. This "get with it" attitude is just groveling at the feet of authority. The cage of technology they're telling you to desire is neither inevitable nor cool.
I don't know... I had to use an app to get into a concert not too long ago, and the company screwed up and there was no way of fixing it (basically my id information is correct due to a big in their system).
What upsets me is there's all sorts of legitimate reasons for not wanting to use a particular app for something that could be done differently. Everything should have multiple methods of entry for many reasons.
One problem going back to the 80s are companies leveraging tech to exert unreasonable control over access. This seems like another version of that, extended into other domains.
Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I see this more of an issue of User Experience / Service Design than anything else.
Physical check-in means you provide your ID / Passport, and a boarding pass is printed by the check-in staff. Most of the work is hidden from you (the employee enters all numbers, clicks all boxes, etc.) so from a service design perspective it's a simple process. However, it's costly, and requires you to stand in line.
Digital check-in is not on the same level, there's no standard across airlines, not one app to do it all. And the process hasn't been simplified at all, all the work has just been delegated to the user. This is not an issue for tech-savvy people who're used of entering forms and using digital tools, but I still believe it's a poor user experience.
Ideally, you'd want a unified digital solution where all you have to do is click one button, scan the RFD chip in your passport and click check-in.
The solution is NOT to bring back cash and manual check-in counters, but to look at it purely from a service design perspective to make it simple and inclusive. Which I'm sure will benefit everyone in the end.
The last 2 or 3 times I've been at a local restaurant with friends, the sequence has been:
- Waitress points us to the QR code to get to the menu
- Everybody pulls out a smart phone
- After a minute or three of trying to deal with their el-crapo on-line menu via a tiny screen, everybody asks for real menus. (Which are at least 8.5"x11" - bigger than even an iPad Pro screen - and decently laid out and readable.)
- We notice that there's considerably more conversation than when we were squinting at their web menu
I've stopped eating at places that require QR codes. The only advantage is when you can select the items in the app and pay for it all in that one place. It's quite useful for things like Dim Sum where you're getting lots of small things over a longer period of time.
More frequently, there's that one old man yells at crowd person who insists on a paper menu and makes things uncomfortable for everyone. But I also get it.
I work in tech as a software engineer, and even I resent the assumption that I have a smart phone and want to use it as a single point of failure for absolutely everything.
Even my local gas company, after switching to paperless billing, now requires me to login to their ridiculous web app, which uses Okta and often gives me problems trying to sign in, just to be able to access my stupid bill. And this ridiculous web app has so many pointless "features" and annoyances. If I want to switch back to being mailed my bill like a normal sane person (yes I'm showing my age) I can't do this online but have to phone them, jump through hoops and pay an outlandish fee. I know paper and mail costs money, but how much did the contractors who built that pointless web app charge?
But my bank also seems to be encouraging its customers to do mobile online banking more and more. Which I don't want to do. I do online banking, but I don't like nor trust smart phones enough to want to use it for something as critical as banking.
TicketMaster has also switched to mobile tickets by default. Given how uptight most events are about cell phones my wife and I often opt to leave ours at home when attending shows. At least they still allow you to pay for a print ticket (for now).
The conspiracy theorist in me believes that adding all these pointless features is a government ploy to keep Product Owners employed… /s
Really, “You give me electricity,I give you money.”
Via Direct Debit. How many menus you need in your web? I log in once every 2 years… why force me to download a crappy app?
I recently saw an advertisement for a comedy show that would let you bring your smart phone but required that it be stored in a pouch that prevented use. If you really need it, there would be "stations" available where the pouch could be removed. I assume that once the show ended there would also be a massive line to unlock and remove these pouches.
As opposed to, say, a paper ticket and requiring people to leave their phones at home. Is that really such an outlandish request?
Yes? Do you not see any of the endless ways that could be an instant deal-breaker. Anyone who is relying on ride-share apps to get there or get back; anyone driving who wants to use their phone for navigation (or even someone walking there!) or has to use an app to pay for parking; even people using public transit benefit from being able to look up schedules or get updates.
So yes, I do consider it absolutely an outlandish request to require that people leave their phones at home.
What frustrates me is how fragile this can quickly become.
I recently was traveling with my 7 year old daughter on public transit, and her card was denied... something was wrong with the 'kids free travel' product loaded on her card. Since her card is actually issued by a train company, I had to login to their website. Since I hadn't logged into their site (as her) in a while, I had to verify my account with a password reset link. The site then sends a create password link to HER email (they would not let me use my email since I was already a user), which I had also not used in a while, so I needed to answer some security questions. The email was severely delayed so cue lots of refreshing. I then had to 'pick up' the product at a terminal in the back of the bus, thankfully this bus had a working one, and then 'check in' at the front.
Thankfully it was a long bus ride but the driver was clear I would need to pay if I couldn't arrange it. This is all totally insane as kids ride free and you don't need an RFID card to see that at 7 year old is under 14. And the worst part is that since it's a bus pass loaded on a train card linked to an email address you need to access on your mobile phone... there is just no accountability.
A similar event happened when my bank just decided I couldn't login since I accidentally used a VPN once, with no error message. Congrats, you won the lottery, you get to play the 3 hour call support game.
If you're technically illiterate, disabled, poor, or have little time, you just can't play these games with companies and are totally screwed.
The biggest problem is mediocre business people at all these companies for whom digitalization means copy-pasting the order process from an e-commerce site. I want to see a museum, why ask me for 8 different fields of data you won’t use ever?
Taking the example of the transit card, a simple login with the card number (in your hand) and a PIN number (in your head) should suffice to view card status and order a new balance top up (without storing CC numbers). Same as when you do a top up in a 7-11 with cash. Just don’t show any confidential information or hide those under an additional authentication request.
Many mediocre companies and organizations bought the “data is money” mantra and soak up useless information they will never use but make their clients life difficult for it.
I just keep 3 fake personas in Bitwarden and roll with them for these services.
It is also plausible that since these businesses are unlikely to have their own software development capability, they outsource the job to providers that are experienced at bringing up e-commerce sites and simply apply a project template without much thought.
Or, worse, build a marginally competent completely bespoke website on an ancient toolset they are comfortable with and that’s impossible to maintain or integrate with anything that wasn’t part of the original specs.
Also possible the providers have a side business selling the data their hapless customers are collecting.
My take is we're seeing the same sort of abuses and risk that we had with credit reporting agencies. And we need the same sorts of regulation. And those rules need to be onerous enough that most companies will try hard to stay out from under them.
your bank story reminds me of an issue friends of mine ran into. their bank website has a section about security where they helpfully show the finger print of the tls key of the online banking website. except, it's wrong or outdated. so my friend called the bank, because the instructions even said so: if this key doesn't match, then do call the bank. he did, and promptly got his bank account locked, because obviously the problem must be on his end (his computer could be compromised), and not on the banks side. he had to walk into the local bank branch to resolve the issue in person.
> This is all totally insane as kids ride free and you don't need an RFID card to see that at 7 year old is under 14. And the worst part is that since it's a bus pass loaded on a train card linked to an email address you need to access on your mobile phone... there is just no accountability.
Sounds like the person who should be held accountable is the driver. They should have just let her on, or if they're going to dodge accountability, they should do it by raising the problem to their management, or at least promised they will and given you a phone number/email address or something.
If something like 95% of your customers could manage a step or two at the entrance , society has still decided you should build a ramp or install a lift - and law has codified that.
Not needing an app for everything is, I think, one of the next big accessibility issues that will at some point come to a courthouse near you.
This might depend on your country whether it's allowed and/or possible, but it's really not that hard technically to hook up a tablet, a contactless card reader, and a roll printer that can produce QR codes.
On a somewhat related note, one thing that annoys me is that the self-checkout lanes at my local large supermarket are getting ridiculously long. These were touted to be the end of waiting in line!
My nephews are growing up with computers, but in a different way from how I did. They are distinctly at the machine's mercy instead of the other way around. The younger of the two desires programming lessons, which I'm ferociously excited to give.
It's not just the 'non tech-savvy' that are failed by this, it is all of us. I don't want to be required to take my smartphone everywhere I go and to make sure the battery doesn't die. There is no excuse for it in most cases. And as for Ryanair requiring a printout, that's just a way of forcing users to pay more. When I last flew with SAS from Trondheim, many years ago there were no check-in staff. I put the credit card I had used to book the ticket with in a reader, it spat out a label that I attached to my bag which I then placed on the belt. I used the same card to gain entry to air side. I used the same card to enter the corral by the actual gate. Finally when boarding there was a person there to attend to any problems and that was it. No need for apps, no paper.
These systems also regularly fail for travellers who don't fit the assumptions developers make about users. For instance the app might not be available on the app store for foreign users, or might require a local phone number, or might enforce a format that does not match the user's data.
They frequently fail for groups who complete a task together, or people who act on behalf of someone else.
It's called free will. We all are free to make our own life choices and accept the consequences of those choices. We are not free to impose our choices on others.
I don’t have to worry about my credit card’s battery. And I don’t have to buy a new one for several $100 every few years.
Credit cards aren’t ideal, but there are also debit cards and they work just as well. Of course, there are different tradeoffs: what if you paid with a different card than the one in your pocket?
Yah super, running apps made by trainees or websites that takes ages to even render, if not, filled with third party assets and trackers, as well as depending running whole cloud infrastructures just to enter a museum or to see a restaurant menu L O L.
I think you don't even realize how stupid it is.
PS: I did not ever gave 1 cent to Amazon, feel "free" to do so as well.
I think online ticketing systems are fine, and yeah they mostly require to run on a robust infrastructure. Knowing the trends, that certainly would depend on big-tech cloud infrastructure.
I don't care unless this become a mandatory de-facto standard to access public places.
Hopefully yet it is not, and people would reject that if that would become an obligation. But there's a chance that our children would not even know this is bare dumb cause it would be the norm.
Why are you asking this? The OP just stated their view.
They stated battery drain being an issue and that they dislike the requirement to have a phone on you at all times. I can relate to that especially with the size and weight of today's phones. There is also the issue of being locatable.
> "I don't want to inconvenience myself by having to have my phone. But I don't mind if others are inconvenienced by being required to have a credit card"
They never said they want others to be required to have a credit card. You are making this up. Why don't companies accept both?
Does he not make sure he has enough gas in his car before he drives somewhere? Enough money in his account before he orders at a restaurant? There are certain things that modern society can expect from people. If he decides to go against that, that's on him. If he is posting to HN, obviously he isn't opposed to technology,
I see the need for gas for driving somewhere or money to pay something. But I don't see the need for a phone when I want to pay for entering a museum (or a plane for that matter)
Its a service. The service should be designed to fit the customer, not the other way around.
Clearly, the people who designed the system have the same design philosophy as you. That is the problem.
4.5% of the US is "unbanked". So now we are talking about 4.5% vs 9% and the overlap is probably small.
And before you say poor people probably don't have smart phones. 94% of homeless people have cell phones. The percentage of poor people with cell phones is probably higher.
They can choose not to use their phone apps and if the business in question doesn't allow any other method to use their services, they have both made their choices.
That's just like Uber has chosen not to have a call dispatch center where you can call them if you want a ride.
Why should we accept a smartphone-dependent society ? Because it pleases you or because this is imposed by the top and you just accept it, then find all the other just being morons ? :)
Yes 90%+ including 94% of the homeless population have a cell phone. You are making the choice to be in the minority of people who choose to inconvenience yourself. The Amish have the courage of their convictions and never felt the need to ask the government to force their beliefs on other people.
However, having smartphones does not mean to go toward and accepting more and more situations where they do become mandatory to enter to public places.
As we expressed before in this topic, applications, websites and their back-ends depends themselves on lots of other things to be reliable. Not even considering security issues or privacy abuses that are reportedly common. This is not an individual problem, it's a society choice that does not seems to be advised.
I'm not against adding methods for accessing such places with some computer connected to a network just like smartphone, smart watches and stuff... If this can be useful, handy and neutral as tools should stay.
Still, I personally don't wish to find myself or anyone reduced, worse, denied by not wearing a specific smartphone (that would even maybe require to accept and sign many private third party conditions) for enjoying a direct interaction with "normal" people having a restaurant or a museum for example.
I would consider extreme to think that, because "everyone have a smartphone" then it should be normal to require that for everything. Implying (not blindly) accepting whole bunches of consequences (that most people seems to want to ignore because otherwise they would feel reduced or rejected) coming with.
Perhaps we don't see the same reality under the same prism and education. This is is not some point. It's just to say... What I sadly observe in general is a total lack of competence or understanding of the information technologies, actors and implications. And outside the fact it is another great source of pollution, they also represent a good opportunity for locking down people and tracking them from bad actors intentions.
So, I wish that it won't be misused or forced, particularly in situations were this wipes-out the freedom to do simple things that works fine, in any ways. Just what's in my mind if we would ask me my opinion.
The parking app is the worst, IMHO. I can see the parking space but I have to figure out which parking app works with this particular lot and then hope I don't get a ticket.
This article is mostly about just the need for a smartphone, not specifically about apps. But I specifically hate all the apps! I don’t want to download a Taco Bell app to order food or whatever. Just let me use a website that works reasonably well on a phone and doesn’t request a bunch of permissions I don’t want to grant.
If you can’t even find an example then it’s probably not that much of an app deluge.
Almost everyone has some kind of decent mobile site outside of the category of social media (and to be honest many of the social media sites like Facebook and YouTube have pretty excellent mobile sites).
I’m struggling to think of a major store or service that forces you to use an app, especially if you exclude Apple’s walled garden (then again, there is iCloud.com).
Fast food in particular is such a weird concept to need an app. But Chick-fil-a's app is so much better than all the others they give the concept hope. Combined with their great service, the app is legitimately faster than a Drive Thru. Can't say the same of McDonalds.
Here, in Brazil, this is becoming more and more common, but in the US it's already an endemic problem for those who don't use tech.
My biggest issue with all this comes to the forced dependency of 3rd party services and ToS agreements to use something totally unrelated to it, along with all the technical issues that, we all know, happens every time. For example, here the federal bank will ask you to install their app trough App/Play store. Since there are still MANY tech illiterate people here, they still have in-person service. But for the majority of people, they will try to force you to use the app. It's a "don't you guys have phones?" issue i see spreading everywhere, but almost nobody complains about it because... it's easier. They don't care about privacy, data collection, none of this, and companies (with government bodies) are taking advantage of this for reasons i rather not speculate about here.
During Covid, i took my first dose of vaccine and the nurse said "check out our Instagram to see the next date of vaccination". "But i don't have a Instagram account or any social media. Is there any official channel, like a .gov website?" i asked, and she shrugged like 'its your problem then'. I walk out of any restaurant that forces you to scan a QR code for the menu, and if possible, i avoid the usage of my phone all together. As long as people are compliant in that behavior, things will only get worse.
> During Covid, i took my first dose of vaccine and the nurse said "check out our Instagram to see the next date of vaccination". "But i don't have a Instagram account or any social media. Is there any official channel, like a .gov website?" i asked, and she shrugged like 'its your problem then'.
When I retire with my tech millions and have lots of spare time, I swear I'm gonna start filing lawsuits for shit like this.
Can't even park some places around here. Scan something on a post and voila! If you have a smart phone, if it scans, if you have internet connectivity, if you have the app.
Some of us don't install apps willy-nilly. Some of us have phones with no app other than what it came with.
Something I bring up every time this comes up, because it remains true: requiring the use of an app that's only in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store means you're implicitly requiring everyone to agree to either Google's or Apple's terms of service. Don't want to, or got your account terminated for some inscrutable reason? Well I guess you're not buying tickets/parking your car/renting a bike then!
Many public school districts now use Google services to provide public education, meaning that Google TOS agreement is required to get the things your tax money has already paid for.
A while ago my mother had issues buying a ticket from the much ridiculed state train company ticketing system[0]. The payment went through, but no ticket was issued. Eventually she had to go an office of theirs and apply for a refund filling out a paper form because the online one required having a ticket id assigned.
I helped her through this, but it was utterly confusing for the both of us.
[0] the frontend files are not minified so it's possible to see what a shitshow it is in all its glory - method names which are partly in English and partly not being but one example.
The problem is that when it works it is so convenient. But a small failure crashes everything. How likely is failure? It probably depends (age, income, mobile coverage, language), but it seems to mostly succeed for most people, which drives the change.
I recently travelled to Glasgow to watch cycling. Flight boarding passes, directions, venue tickets, meeting up with people, doing some work - everything - was on my phone and worked well. I could not imagine how that trip would have been if I had to gather lots of bits of important paper to travel with. The first time our sushi place had a QR code, I balked and asked for a menu, but now I have learned that the sushi experience (ordering small portions as you want and need them) works so much better on mobile than getting a menu and waiting for waiters to return to take an order.
We trade convenience with risk of being in a pickle if things are broken. So far, the convenience is winning. A lot if this is driven by (as implied in OP) young people who are more tech savvy.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadI've tried twice to go without a smartphone in the last year or so (once due to stolen-phone-necessity, the other just a social experiment) and it was a GIANT PITA each time.
Even just a Saturday night downtown... parking, restaurant, show ticket... each part more or less NOT doable without a smartphone
Is this just, again, something that's prevalent outside the USA?
EDIT: comment further down did remind me that I think someone in our group had to use some parking app last time we were in Cambridge, MA.
Go where? Airport? Somewhere else?
I still prefer printing out tickets. I've just seen tech fail so often, or had to deal with bad tech so often, that I'd rather have a fallback for when (not if) it breaks.
I go to a lot of concerts and printing tickets is not even an option anymore for most of them.
I’m fine with subsidizing devices for low income people, but this need to retain paper and pay tons extra for staff for the elderly who haven’t learned anything since they were 20 is ridiculous.
Maybe the ignorant people are the ones who will install an app without thinking twice just to park their car or navigate an airport.
But websites and email are not a new technology. They've been around more than 20 years.
> the presumption is that the elderly remain vigilant to every missive from the online world, when in fact many find it a jungle of scams, junk mail, endless passwords and security risks into which they venture as little as possible.
It's a jungle out there for everyone.
I very much so love being tech literate, but it's extremely annoying even if you know technology to just deal with what formerly was an on-site transaction. While it's good many business have ensured that they can work with their usual customers, sometimes it's extremely frustrating to figure out the actual way to use some services, or there are extremely inconsistent handlings of payment for services that you simply can't know until you're trying to make the transaction.
It's not an unusual thought for me to imagine a summer market where some of the vendors take cash only, others only take direct transfers, and even more will only take cards. Online, it's pretty annoying as there is _so_ much spam/scam out there that the major search engines happily return that I would wager even most IT professionals would have an uneasy feeling trying to sort which one is the real site and which are just SEO spammed scams.
I don't think it's about the learning curve, it's about the businesses pushing a lot of their costs onto consumers and expecting them to figure it out, and more and more it's blocking people from doing business with these businesses.
I'm pretty sure there's a more healthy medium than just forcing your customers to deal with the lack of investment into the UX for their businesses. I always get a paper boarding pass along with my electronic one; it only took me one time almost missing a flight to reach this position, because the gate agent decided my electronic boarding pass was fake as they scanned it too fast across the scanner and it couldn't read it, despite me asking them to please try it again. While I was able to figure this one out, it's only because I got lucky enough that the employee working the desk finally got a break from their other duties during boarding to be able to check my situation. I'm pretty sure if there had been anything else that required this person's attention coming up, I would not have made my flight, despite having valid tickets.
Don't blame the individuals here; there are instances when caveat emptor applies, but a lot of ticketing/business is definitely pushing their poor UX problems onto the consumers and just blaming them for not knowing the workflows these businesses use for their operations.
And, frankly, I don't care if it requires the company to have more staff. (They're not "extra" staff, either - they're staff the company had before they tried to shift everything to the phone, and the company hasn't found a way to lay off yet.)
What about those of us who are tech savvy enough to not want to install every random shitty untrustworthy company's software on our pocket computer just to pay for something, rent a bike, use an event ticket etc etc.
Besides, these shifty apps are not trying to root your phone, just to, in the worst case, send back data they should, or shouldn't even have access to.
[0]https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.oasisfeng.island.fdroid/
Is the bar for tech savvy so high now that I have to know what fdroid is, and how to install it (since I don't think it is on google play).
Am I only tech savvy if I know what a custom android ROM is and how to install one?
This is getting absurd!
I have done all these things, but the hypothetical person I am using might not be able to, yet they might be a Windows power user, an Excel master, a gadget lover... but they are not tech savvy because they don't use lineageOS?
Furthermore all of the secure Android distributions are community projects spearheaded by one or two developers. They could easily fall by the wayside tomorrow (eg CopperheadOS). It's nowhere near a self-sustaining off the shelf solution, despite how easy it seems once you actually do it.
Also the looming threat of remote attestation could destroy using secure Android distributions for consumer apps in the blink of an eye. And it's not like the venues that went digital only will then go back to having a paper option if the secure option has disappears.
In short, it's great to proselytize and grow the number of people interested in secure phone operating systems. But it's so far from being a prescriptive model to imply that people who haven't done so deserve what they get.
"Use GrapheneOS" is an easy answer, capable of being implemented in two weekends by any intermediate computer user, once they decide to take it on.
Figuring out what "easier sandboxing solutions" are actually secure and aren't just snake oil is a much taller order. Especially with the way folk security (mis)advice gets repeated in forums, and the tendency for security amateurs to think more customization choices implies more security.
It shouldn't be for a tech savvy user. I'm sure there are plenty of articles covering this from reputable sources.
I'm sorry, but this reads as straight up Dunning-Kruger. Care to suggest any articles about these "easier sandboxing solutions" ? Popular articles on Android security are just as likely to rot your brain as they are to inform you. Remember that trend of "task killers" ?
If you were referring to your earlier link to Island - using Android Work Profiles on its own adds some security properties, but it's nowhere near comprehensive enough to assume your device now represents you.
The problem is that security is essentially a prove-a-negative endeavor. You can add "solutions" and configure things all day long for a simulation of making things more secure (see also: "antivirus"). But it's only by moving up to a higher context can you see/fix the holes.
Witness that even with Graphene on Pixel, you still have the baseband processor doing who-knows-what behind the scenes, and the application processor likely has vulnerabilities to it (this is seemingly a step up from the legacy Qualcomm standard where the AP completely trusts the BB, but it's still a black box). It's just one of the best answers we've got right now for a secureish solution that fits in your pocket with a long battery life, and so it's appropriate to recommend it in a consumer security context.
(You also haven't responded to the larger initial point I made, where adoption of these things are really not to the point where we can take them for granted in a societal context)
No offense, but I'm not sure you understand what Dunning-Kruger is if you think that.
> Care to suggest any articles about these "easier sandboxing solutions"
Did you even try searching?
> Popular articles on Android security are just as likely to rot your brain as they are to inform you.
Key words in my original statement: reputable. sources.
I'm sorry, but you seem like you want to argue just for the sake of arguing. You also give off the vibe of being an armchair security expert, and as someone that does security professional as has for my entire career, I'm not really finding you to be credible. Same as someone screaming that security by obscurity doesn't work because they read it somewhere an heard other people say it.
The point was simply that there are decent sandboxing solutions that are easy to find, and will protect you sufficiently from untrusted third party apps that are not trying to root your phone, but trying to exfil as much data as possible. That's it. And that remains true.
Not really interested in discussing this further though, since I don't think this is a productive discussion. Cheers.
These "decent sandboxing solutions" are all just front ends to Android Work Profiles. Trusting Work Profiles on a proprietary distribution is similar to just trusting the proprietary distribution as is - especially when most distributions have blobbed "Play Services" with backdoors into the OS. So in my opinion this isn't a particularly good path to go down to achieve trustable security, just as adding a bunch of band-aids to Microsoft Windows won't get you something trustable.
And really, my overarching point is that the current state of secure user-representing Android is nowhere advanced enough in capabilities, auditing, or adoption to say that anyone can "just" do some things to be protected from the surveillance industry.
Do you know what reputable means? Then why are you so obviously twisting the meaning of what I am saying to fit your argument?
And as I've said for the nth time now, you could end this abstract discussion with a link to like anything concrete. I addressed your specific reference to Island and Work Profiles in general, which you have just ignored. I myself use Shelter on Graphene, it has its place. But using Work Profiles on a black box proprietary Android distribution just seems like adding a false sense of security.
It's really not. Saying it twice doesn't make it so. You just decided to make an issue of it for some reason.
> then pointing to some throwaway article on some popular Android news site and calling it reputable - in an earlier comment you indicated that these reputable articles can be found by "searching", which with how search engines tend to work these days is like the exact opposite of reputable.
I expect a tech savvy user to understand the difference between a garbage site and a reliable, reputable site.
> And as I've said for the nth time now, you could end this abstract discussion with a link to like anything concrete.
How about you just stop replying? Why keep it going this long when we clearly disagree? I find such behavior baffling. If I wasn't interesting in putting in time to provide links before, given the tone of this discussion, why do you think I would be now?
All your comment is showing here is that you need to have the last word and want to argue for the sake of arguing. So have at it. You're no longer worth my time.
I started off curious what you might be referring to, if it wasn't just work profiles. I still am. But now I'm mostly just amazed how set you are in arguing some abstract unsubstantiated point, when a simple link could have supported it long ago.
(Also for reference, if someone said "I've read about Covid from a reputable source", what would you think?)
On phones we call anyone who balks at scanning random QR codes and and installing shitty parking apps they'll use once conspiracy nut weirdos.
The other part of the problem is that SafetyNet means a lot of apps won't work if your system is too weird.
It's not as easy as you make it sound.
I can't see any tech savvy user for who ad blocking is a priority using an iPhone.
Gone are the days where you could pay at the door. Now you must go to their website and fill out a long string of forms and manually type in your credit card number, all so you can get a QR code and wait even longer to enter.
Or go to a restaurant and use your phone to scan a QR code to read their PDF menu on your phone.
Once a refuge from always-connected society, restaurants and museums now require it and I'm finding myself not returning to these places.
And security staff and queue management is always going to be needed if the place is large and crowded.
In all seriousness, there is a point to be made about equity at a minimal viable level, and if you don’t want to enable access for everyone, you’re not permitted to operate. Very similar to how some jurisdictions have outlawed not accepting cash (because this policy impacts the unbanked, underbanked, and low income disproportionately). Streamlining, efficiencies, and improved experiences via digital delivery are welcome, but once you start tiptoeing into disenfranchising cohorts by doing so (even unintentionally), that’s where regulation comes in.
“You should just get a smartphone” is an unreasonable position to take and policy should actively discourage outcomes based on that position. It’s an accessibility and “fail safe|gracefully” issue.
Is you must have an ID to get on plane also unreasonable? A modern smart phone (at least an iPhone) has all sorts of affordances that make life easier for the disabled.
You don’t. You can show up at a TSA checkpoint without ID and they’ll identity proof you on the spot. As an identity nerd, I’ve done it just to try it to experience and confirm the TSA’s process. Next time you pass through a checkpoint, ask!
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/frequently-asked-questions/i-forg...
With that said, a physical credential and a smartphone are wildly different from an accessibility perspective. You can get a REAL ID compliant state credential for under $100. Poor comparison.
Imagine the absurdity of forcing banks to universally provide what ended up being an essential service by their own design?
Presumably this is all done so they can get a verified email address for marketing purposes, as proof of entry only arrives via email.
I hate to say it but there needs to be some regulation about customer service, ie not allowing companies to not provide it by pawning people off on digital solutions. So many businesses are only viable because they don't provide customer support, and I don't think that's un society's interest.
Don't worry, they will have paper copies if you don't have a phone or are insistent you want to handle a grubby, contaminated piece of paper before you eat your meal.
- Restaurants can experiment with more food options and more frequent updates to their menu
- Real time info on what's in stock
- Cuts out the cost of having to constantly reprint the menu
- Easier for customers to find the menu online when searching for restaurants (huge issue pre-COVID)
What are the actual downsides? Sure, there may be a tiny fraction of people without a smartphone, but they're likely accompanied by someone who does have one. Despite that, restaurants would likely keep a few physical menus on-hand.
I have no issue with it being default, but since covid ended, the places that still use qr menus seem not to have paper menus on hand.
It’s not the end of the world but it makes your restaurant feel cheap.
Still 100 times better than places that make you order on your phone.
Also I have friends and relatives who have never owned a smartphone, some who would be essentially unable to do so.
That said, another benefit is more scope for accessibility. I would bet that most restaurant sites are terrible for accessibility, but implementing screen reader or large font support would apply everywhere, whereas I’d also bet that most restaurant never have braille or large print menus.
You can turn on do not disturb until you leave the current location on iOS. I do that a lot. You have all of the tools you need. It's like someone complaining that the sun is too bright when they have their cap turned backwards and their shades on top of their head.
It's more like you're saying that it shouldn't be a problem to require someone to stare directly into the sun because they should have brought eclipse glasses and be fine with using them
It amazes me how many people are railing against technology while posting on HN...
I’m sure people complained about those horseless carriages years after cars became mainstream
But in the real world, smart phone penetration is 95%, including 94$ of the homeless (I posted a citation earlier)
> why do you think that so many people here are proposing that the choices you suggest are toxic?
People also think that alcohol sales shouldn't happen on Sunday, and all other crazy stuff. I'm simply suggesting that if your choices are out of the society's norms, it's not society's responsibility to make affordances for you.
- this is not entirely about the homeless
- this is not entirely about the elderly
it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.
> it is about companies using technology badly - something you either support or can't recognise.
Would you believe that my wife and I refuse to use American Airlines partially because the app and the website is so bad? I stay away from a lot of services, software and hardware because of a bad user experiences.
It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.
> It's like complaining that the sun is too bright after deciding to stay indoors and consequently not bringing a hat, but then being forced to go outside.
You really didn't know that in 2023 you might have to use a QR code to see a menu? That's like going to Seattle and being surprised that it started raining.
I prefer it when venues like restaurants design for all and don't expect knowledge of local customs.
> Once again it seems like you want me to inconvenience myself because you don't want to make the effort.
This is not the conclusion most would draw from this. If anything it seems fairly well understood that QR menus are mostly beneficial for restaurants not diners.
This is my concern as well. When someone is at a table with people, put the damn phone away and actually be present for those around you.
QR code menus make "phones out" the default state of a table. So of course people will get distracted and split their attention between notifications and those around them.
- Lots of restaurants have no WiFi and may also have poor cell reception for certain networks. This either makes the menu slow to access or impossible to access.
- I shouldn’t have to pass my phone around the table to people who can’t access the online menu. That slows everything down and most people don’t want others on their phones anyway.
- When they throw in payment with their online menu there are inevitably issues. I’ve had this fail numerous times (money taken, order didn’t go through).
- Lots of restaurants have PDF menus designed for a computer screen. They’re awful to browse on a phone.
So I see part of the drink menu horizontally and vertically. Another example: Non-alcoholic is on the "back" of the menu but wine is on the "front".
And now the restaurant needs to hire a UX designer.
What you presumably mean by "QR Code Menu" is a QR code pointing to a website where the content is optimized for screens and perhaps interactive, allowing you to order from your table without involving wait staff and thus streamlining the entire ordering process for you and the restaurant.
If I wanted to push a button and get food, I'd eat out of a vending machine or order with DoorDash. One of the reasons I go into a restaurant or some other meatspace "event" is to escape technology for a tiny bit of time and enjoy life. I want to sit down in a comfortable place, enjoy a conversation with my family, or bask in the ambience of the restaurant. I want to have a pleasant, human interaction with a human server. With these digital-only menus, now I'm yet again pulling out my smartphone and scrolling-scrolling-scrolling. Sorry, due to work I've got screens blasting at me for hours every day. I'm not going to go out in the evening to look at another screen.
The future is going to be hysterical as the US ages out.
Surveillance. For those of us who still care, that is.
Museums could have a booth that takes cash/card and prints the tkts instead of a random/poorly maintained website that'll do who knows what to you CC number (which probably costs more than having the person selling tkts)
your phone just broke/stolen/lost, do you forfeit your right to enter these places and use their services some of which might be "essential"?
I also have a cellular Apple Watch that also has a copy of my digital wallet....
Yes
https://www.dmas.virginia.gov/media/1252/lifeline-telephone-...
And 94% of the homeless have cell phones. I would assume that the penetration of cell phones among the poor and not homeless would be higher.
https://priceschool.usc.edu/news/homeless-los-angeles-cell-p....
...but lose that piece of paper and you haven't also forfeited your right to access your hotel room, to catch the plane back home, to pay for your parking space where you left your car, to take public transport, to enter your gym...
At many smaller venues, a credit card (or tap-to-pay) is required, and I'm 100% in favor of that. We should be doing more to help provide unbanked people with credit cards. Requiring small businesses to deal with cash is increasingly a burden; cashless enables them to save a lot of time and money.
When you can't pay a lawyer, and you can't pay a taxi to get to your lawyer, and you can't buy food, and it's all because the government pointed a finger without evidence, prior to trial, the system is a bad one.
The ability to use cash must be preserved. You really don't want to live in the world where the only payments are the ones the government explicitly allows.
That said, I have found it easier to replace a phone on short notice than a card. Banks seem to want to do everything through the mail, where I can walk into any carriers store and walk out with a replacement device the same day.
So why, any concrete response capable of holding up in practice ?
It would be much better to have varied and robust options though.
What works for me, if I need to pay something: I use my credit card (contactless under 50, over I need to type a code) or some bills which both are in my physical wallet (protected against rfid, it just looks as a normal wallet).
I don't see any benefits adding third parties to the mix apart the fashion of "Oh yeah I can pay with my tracker watch".
I just see that as really pathetic.
I don't want to victim blame, but the elderly couple in the article should know better. Isn't Ryanair notorious for their shittiness to customers? We should stop dealing with shitty companies just to save $10.
If you happen to be disabled, and cannot use a mobile app (most do a woeful job with accessibility and even if they don't, some people just cannot use the devices), threaten an ADA lawsuit.
Try not to start conversations in the negative. You’ll get a lot farther.
Restaurants, just screw them if they demand apps. No restaurant is that good, and across the board the apps make the ordering experience much worse.
I can call Dominos and say "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza for carryout," give them my name, and be done before the app finishes loading and showing all its promo/coupon deals.
So yes, do business with companies that still have some vague notion of what customer service is. I have stopped expecting businesses to exceed my expectations (used to be the norm for most) but it's nice when it happens and they will definitely get my business again.
Last time I used them, mass-cancellations from 1cm of snow combined with the next alternative flights being a week later, meant that I had to get home via a combination of ferry and train.
From Stansted to Berlin.
(I'm glad work was understanding).
In defence of RyanAir, they are upfront end honest about this and you know what you're getting with them. Whether you think it's a good deal is a subjective matter you can decide for yourself, but I do think it's a fair deal.
That said, I would have used my discretion as a RyanAir employee here: the heavy fee is to encourage people to not "lazy out", which is clearly not what happened here.
So we're stuck in this death spiral where only companies that find ways to exploit us and the ecosystems survive, and even tho we know this, we can only patronize companies that exploit us and the ecosystems because the ones that don't are a luxury/lifestyle signaling tool for the affluent.
I don't see any way out. The current civilization paradigm will crash and burn and only then something different will emerge.
I recently took my kids to the county fair. There was a big line of people waiting to buy tickets, and a short line for ticket holders.
We went to the line of ticket holders, I popped up the website, and thanks to browser autofill, I completed the transaction in less than a minute, and we had our tickets by the time we reached the front of the line.
I 100% agree that this shouldn't be the only option. But I think it's a great alternative, and for many events it makes sense for it to be the default option.
Case in point: A friend suggested the biggest ever Yayoi Kusama exhibition in Manchester[0], which I relayed to my girlfriend because we would be in the city 3 weeks later.
She sent me a frantic sms Get Tickets Now! since the exhibition was sold out weeks in advance.
And that's an issue you see with a lot of popular exhibitions. You can't just walk into a David Hockney exhibition at Centre Pompidou on a whim, because the time slots are sold out for weeks in advance.
That may not be fair and super inconvenient if you don't book far in advance. But popular exhibitions in big cities are so overwhelmed by visitors that there's really no other way than selling time slots well in advance.
The Kusama exhibition was totally worth it. But we wouldn't have stood a chance if we hadn't organized the tickets weeks before the visit.
I think the insistence on smart phones for basic services is much worse than asking the public to organize a museum visit well in advance if the exhibition is super popular.
[0] https://factoryinternational.org/whats-on/yayoi-kusama-you-m...
It's absolutely abhorrent that you would begin to think this. There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology. Not to mention, there are plenty of people who are religiously or ideologically against new technology. Making it a REQUIREMENT to do anything is absolutely not something we should be promoting. To add on to this, in both of your examples, none of those two things were required. You could get a friend to call with you, or go to the place to set up an appointment. Literacy is something we already recognize as extremely important and we absolutely do have accomodations provided for people who are illiterate.
Asking people to "be responsible for their actions or lack of them" when you talk about disability is just blatantly incorrect. Remember, we're all just temporarily abled. Some day you will grow old and have the inability to interact with modern technology. I bet then you will be very upset if everything started requiring it.
Why should I go out of my way because someone made a choice to inconvenience themselves?
This is just as bad as all of the bans on alcohol sales on Sunday because of religion.
Why should I go out of my way because someone decided that I now must own a smartphone (often iPhone or Google Play required) to do things that we all used to be able to do before without one?
This is just as bad as adding unjustified bureaucratic and procedural requirements to actions that used to be able to be done freely and without hindrance.
You don't. You are free to make any life choices you want and suffer the consequences of your life choices as long as they don't affect me.
Do you also complain that there isn’t a number that you can call to get an Uber ride and you have to have a cell phone?
Or that you can’t call Amazon to place an order like you could when they first came online in the 90s when people were afraid to pay over the web?
If either company misses out on few Luddites on HN wearing tin foil hats, their business will go on fine.
Have you ever thought that you might just not have been able to comprehend that argument?
You said “consequences for me but not for thee”. We both “suffer” from the consequences of our actions. I lose business from people who don’t want to use a phone and you lose the chance to get a good or service you want
Is it because you are a business and I'm a mere citizen?
I'm not "imposing" anything. We are both making choices that fit our own priorities.
> Why can you make the choice to require an app to pay for your parking lot depriving me from the ability to pay in cash —affecting my positive freedom of movement—, while I however must calibrate my life choices so they "don't affect" you?
We are both making choices. I am choosing not to do business with you on the terms that you find acceptable and you are choosing not to do business with me. Should I also accept pesos in the US because you don't want to exchange your pesos for dollars?
...or I will simply use the power of the state to defend my ability to live a normal life without needing a smartphone, as I live in a country where the people have chosen that consumer protection can be imposed on businesses by Law.
What I meant is that the majority of people don’t have a disability that would prevent them from using technology. The ones who do, should and do get assistance
> Not to mention, there are plenty of people who are religiously or ideologically against new technology
If your religion or ideology is to live in an ancient world, by all means do. Just don’t come to the 21st century and complain that you cannot enjoy the modern society
we should be empowering people to be independent, and that is even more important for people with disabilities.
For all the hate the web and browsers get here, at least that's an open platform that you can run on more or less $any system of your choice, or even re-implement from scratch (which, while still a large project, is quite as hard as sometimes made out to be).
> It's absolutely abhorrent that you would begin to think this. There are plenty of disabilities that don't allow people to use technology
Actually, yeah, this is a good point. Ever watched somebody with a nerve issue try to use a touchscreen? Their hand shaking all over the place? You're lucky if they can do it without somehow texting gibberish to random contacts.
That was never an issue with iOS. For some reason I am not surprised that an operating system created by an adTech company doesn't care about your privacy,
> there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
Such ss?
Network access. Accelerometer access (which, remember, can be used as a rudimentary microphone among other things).
You can disable cellular access on a per app basis. Yes not being able to turn off access for wifi on a per app basis is a gap.
> Accelerometer access
An app can't access accelerometer data in the background on iOS.
I'm pretty sure it was an issue before iOS 6.
>> there are still plenty of things you wouldn't want to provide apps access to that they get outside of your control.
> Such ss?
Well, sandbox escapes have already been talked about. But, I also believe accelerometer data isn't gated. Any app can talk to the Internet. But, I don't have a modern iPhone to corroborate that info.
> Well, sandbox escapes have already been talked about.
Citation? And I'm not referring to targeted state actions.
> I also believe accelerometer data isn't gated.
Turn on rotation lock.
> Any app can talk to the Internet
You can disable cellular data access on a per app basis. I wish you could turn off wifi access on a per app basis.
Since the first release of the iPhone? I find that hard to believe since the release notes for iOS 6 specifically called out their fine-grained permissions improvements. There was clearly some wholesale bundling before that.
> Citation? And I'm not referring to targeted state actions.
It was very easy to find this article: https://medium.com/ssd-secure-disclosure/ios-vulnerabilities...
There has never been a version of iOS that forced you to accept all permissions before you could download it. I'm not even sure that would be possible. The OS wouldn't know what permissions an app needed until the first time you called a function that needed the permission.
Tightening down permissions is more along the lines of only allowing an app to have access to certain pictures instead of your entire library.
I didn't say that. I said they had access without any sort of permission mechanism. The bundling I was referring to was both the fine-grained access, and permissions that weren't gated.
> The OS wouldn't know what permissions an app needed until the first time you called a function that needed the permission.
The app can advertise to the OS which capabilities it will use and then the OS can deny the app access to anything it hasn't requested or it has but the user has not allowed.
> Tightening down permissions is more along the lines of only allowing an app to have access to certain pictures instead of your entire library.
That is not what that permissions tightening was like: https://www.cultofmac.com/173128/new-ios-6-privacy-settings-...
> The iOS6 beta brings much finer-grained controls to the privacy settings, letting you specify just what services any app will have access to.
There weren't limitations on calendar, contact, reminder and photo gallery access.
Besides certain specialized entitlements, that's not how iOS apps have ever worked.
> That is not what that permissions tightening was like
We are talking about three different things.
1. With Android, you use to have to give an app all of the permissions it requested on first launch or not install it. That has never been the case on iOS.
2. Apple has put more things behind permissions as time goes on - what you are referring to.
3. Tightening permissions are like what I was referring to such as only allowing an app to have access to certain photos or contacts and adding GPS permissions to only allow an app to use GPS when the app is in the foreground.
Smartphones are tracking devices as well. There are really good arguments to be made that I should reasonably opt out from an un-auditable, expensive hyper-tracker with a monthly subscription cost.
They are responsible for their actions, same as the people implementing these ill-informed changes are responsible for theirs.
What you miss, other than people who simply don't know, is that there is a whole universe of people for whom these solutions do not work and who are not accounted for. Accessibility is a gigantic problem in app-only spaces. Plus people who temporarily do not have a device due to loss or lack of money or simply a dead battery.
There was another article posted recently that humans are, by and large, "temporarily abled." We are born not being able to care for ourselves, we go through various stages of being or not being able to do so, and most of us die being unable to care for ourselves. Our relationship with technology is the same way.
For everywhere, but especially for sole-source things like government, transport, large public venues, and so on, accessibility must be paramount and that absolutely includes both people who cannot hear or see through people who do not have the latest technology either by choice or necessity.
The anxiety and distraction produced by smart phones is well-documented, as is the invasion of privacy and manipulation.
What makes you so sure you’ve got it right? Why not allow people who choose not to have phones to pay in cash? Why do you feel their lives should be difficult?
Why do you want to punish them?
> What makes you so sure you’ve got it right? Why not allow people who choose not to have phones to pay in cash
Because accepting cash has its own risks -- employee theft, getting robbed, etc.
> invasion of privacy
Both Android and more so iOS have plenty of permissions to keep apps from getting information from you.
And there's nothing you can do to prevent your ISP, nor your OS from tracking you.
Sorry to ask, but are you even informed on this subject?
>Because accepting cash has its own risks -- employee theft, getting robbed, etc.
Oh, so you think people can't take responsibility for that choice?
Then use your phone as a wifi only device and don't buy a phone with an operating system created by an adTech company.
> Oh, so you think people can't take responsibility for that choice?
They are taking responsibility for their own safety by choosing not to accept cash. But the consequences of being killed because you are carrying cash is a lot greater than worrying about the man tracking you....
You're not Batman's parents, you're just a regular person, no one cares what you have in your pockets. It's honestly baffling to me that someone could believe this is a valid assessment of real-life risk.
https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/robbery-convenience-stores...
https://www.statesboroherald.com/local/robbers-target-conven...
https://rangerguard.net/blogpost/why-are-convenience-stores-...
I am concluding that you are, indeed, severely uninformed on the subject matter. I would recommend reading up on the baseband system of mobile phones as a starting point.
It's very much a "yes, and" situation here. Offering physical resources is not mutually exclusive with providing digital means to access those things, too.
Please try to engage in the conversation in good faith.
Noise pollution and light pollution are both issues that localities have legislated against, yes.
Checking the weather? Comfortable. Using modern phones and apps in a way that doesn't compromise one's privacy is very, very uncomfortable. I know because I do it on a regular basis.
It's costly and time consuming. Paying cash and not providing tons of PII would be much faster, easier, and more comfortable, and indeed that's what I choose to do in all cases where it is a possibility.
As an example, there is is 75 year old Doreen ho had never touched a compupter before (start by explaining that there is no standard place to find an on-off-switch and what one may look like. She had never heard of Google. She is an entirely charming, intellifent lady with very poor eyesight, slightly dodgy literacy and no keyboard skills.
I really recommend volunteeriung for something similar.
> There is no physical or mental disability preventing people using modern technology.
Likewise, there is no mental or physical disability preventing me from understanding the fundamental maths behind quantum mechanics or exactly how Qbits work. ... but I don't.
???
Blindness? Loss of limbs? Combined with poor/non-existent accessibility implementations on the digital replacements of the meatspace technologies.
Disabilities aside, what about just a plain old dead battery or a misplaced phone? I can’t look at your restaurant’s menu if my phone is dead? I can’t park my car if I left my phone at home?
Judging by the amount of insufferable "Got it! Got it! Got it!" modals, pop ups and other bullshit in "modern" technology, the apps themselves are the disability - wasting time and getting in the way of doing the thing the user is actually trying to accomplish.
This is not technology enabling new features — it is technology being used to excuse a regression of features.
The necessity of a computer however is very real, and a credit card is close. I don't think this is great, but I'm glad smartphones aren't there yet.
The nursing station part of this is appalling. Why is a smartphone necessary for that?!
Got the digital stuff all done beforehand? Good boy, you can go through the quicker line.
Want to do it old school and talk to someone? Fine, here you go, but it's going to take 3x longer.
That system incentivizes the more efficient approach, enticing people to learn the digital ropes so they don't have to wait in line as long. But it also doesn't exclude the people who don't or can't do so.
Taken to the extreme, you have membership based check ins like Clear at airports or the Amazon grocery store stuff or any gym that scans your barcode when you go in.
I don't think it's fair to say it's only for the company's benefit. On my own device, autofilling saved info, I'm often faster than the person behind the desk.
On a more general note, I prefer to tell people that I'm too old for newfangled stuff like smartphones, because I prefer the reaction of condescending reassurance to the alternative of hostility evoked by saying I've made an informed decision not to own one.
For example, we absolutely still offer infrastructure to walk or bike through NYC.
Walking and biking are more (financially) accessible to people than cars. We also support wheelchair access to places.
This is not a tech issue. It is an accessibility issue caused by arguably unnecessary dependencies on tech being asserted
I do agree with you that outside of accessibility issues, we should not limit ourselves to low-tech for the sole sake of backwards compatibility
As of very recently (9/2021), less than a third of MTA stations were wheelchair accessible. I realize I'm nitpicking your point, but I'm illustrating how awful we are at implementing any of these ideals because we are a selfish society.
> It is an accessibility issue caused by arguably unnecessary dependencies on tech being asserted
I disagree. While the additions may be unnecessary from the point of view that things worked beforehand, technology has increased accessibility for nearly all aspects of life. I think that the benefit greatly outweighs concerns about people who don't yet have access to a smartphone (which is the primary limitation here, right?). Considering how disposable they have become, how ubiquitous wi-fi is, and how vastly $10 smartphones are traded around the globe, I don't see a financial limitation here.
Financial limitations are only 1 way of creating an accessibility issue
It is not just a dependency on owning a smartphone, but also on having it on you, having it charged, having it up to date, having their app installed, having their app up to date, not having any bugs, and using its processing to handle the transaction.
These are not trivial concerns, and contesting them is not the same as being against new technology.
Where is my government supplied smartphone with free internet and free charging to go along with these requirements? A cheeky question, but not that outlandish
I 1000% support using a smartphone as an OPTION but I disagree with it as a requirement.
How about just the fact that I do not want to show a line of people the brand new phone I have in my pocket because it might make me a target? Or maybe I don't want people around me to know if I'm apple or android, or maybe I have a private background image I don't want to risk being shown, or even just that my phone is in the middle of an update and I can't use it at the moment?
The examples are contrived but my point is that the requirement loses on both ends. I shouldn't need to have it on me, and also it's one of my most personal items that I own and I may not want to take it out in public on demand in order to do activities that have nothing to do with it.
There's no need to create all this management effort when previously I could basically just hand the gate person a $20, show my ID, and walk in.
If they have a smartphone I can borrow when I reach the end of the line to do smartphone stuff for the sake of utilizing new tech then that would be accessible. Requiring me to supply my own and make sure it's compatible with their system and operational at the moment is not.
What upsets me is there's all sorts of legitimate reasons for not wanting to use a particular app for something that could be done differently. Everything should have multiple methods of entry for many reasons.
One problem going back to the 80s are companies leveraging tech to exert unreasonable control over access. This seems like another version of that, extended into other domains.
Physical check-in means you provide your ID / Passport, and a boarding pass is printed by the check-in staff. Most of the work is hidden from you (the employee enters all numbers, clicks all boxes, etc.) so from a service design perspective it's a simple process. However, it's costly, and requires you to stand in line.
Digital check-in is not on the same level, there's no standard across airlines, not one app to do it all. And the process hasn't been simplified at all, all the work has just been delegated to the user. This is not an issue for tech-savvy people who're used of entering forms and using digital tools, but I still believe it's a poor user experience.
Ideally, you'd want a unified digital solution where all you have to do is click one button, scan the RFD chip in your passport and click check-in.
The solution is NOT to bring back cash and manual check-in counters, but to look at it purely from a service design perspective to make it simple and inclusive. Which I'm sure will benefit everyone in the end.
- Waitress points us to the QR code to get to the menu
- Everybody pulls out a smart phone
- After a minute or three of trying to deal with their el-crapo on-line menu via a tiny screen, everybody asks for real menus. (Which are at least 8.5"x11" - bigger than even an iPad Pro screen - and decently laid out and readable.)
- We notice that there's considerably more conversation than when we were squinting at their web menu
Even my local gas company, after switching to paperless billing, now requires me to login to their ridiculous web app, which uses Okta and often gives me problems trying to sign in, just to be able to access my stupid bill. And this ridiculous web app has so many pointless "features" and annoyances. If I want to switch back to being mailed my bill like a normal sane person (yes I'm showing my age) I can't do this online but have to phone them, jump through hoops and pay an outlandish fee. I know paper and mail costs money, but how much did the contractors who built that pointless web app charge?
But my bank also seems to be encouraging its customers to do mobile online banking more and more. Which I don't want to do. I do online banking, but I don't like nor trust smart phones enough to want to use it for something as critical as banking.
TicketMaster has also switched to mobile tickets by default. Given how uptight most events are about cell phones my wife and I often opt to leave ours at home when attending shows. At least they still allow you to pay for a print ticket (for now).
Now get off my lawn.
Really, “You give me electricity,I give you money.” Via Direct Debit. How many menus you need in your web? I log in once every 2 years… why force me to download a crappy app?
As opposed to, say, a paper ticket and requiring people to leave their phones at home. Is that really such an outlandish request?
https://www.overyondr.com/howitworks
Yes? Do you not see any of the endless ways that could be an instant deal-breaker. Anyone who is relying on ride-share apps to get there or get back; anyone driving who wants to use their phone for navigation (or even someone walking there!) or has to use an app to pay for parking; even people using public transit benefit from being able to look up schedules or get updates.
So yes, I do consider it absolutely an outlandish request to require that people leave their phones at home.
I recently was traveling with my 7 year old daughter on public transit, and her card was denied... something was wrong with the 'kids free travel' product loaded on her card. Since her card is actually issued by a train company, I had to login to their website. Since I hadn't logged into their site (as her) in a while, I had to verify my account with a password reset link. The site then sends a create password link to HER email (they would not let me use my email since I was already a user), which I had also not used in a while, so I needed to answer some security questions. The email was severely delayed so cue lots of refreshing. I then had to 'pick up' the product at a terminal in the back of the bus, thankfully this bus had a working one, and then 'check in' at the front.
Thankfully it was a long bus ride but the driver was clear I would need to pay if I couldn't arrange it. This is all totally insane as kids ride free and you don't need an RFID card to see that at 7 year old is under 14. And the worst part is that since it's a bus pass loaded on a train card linked to an email address you need to access on your mobile phone... there is just no accountability.
A similar event happened when my bank just decided I couldn't login since I accidentally used a VPN once, with no error message. Congrats, you won the lottery, you get to play the 3 hour call support game.
If you're technically illiterate, disabled, poor, or have little time, you just can't play these games with companies and are totally screwed.
Taking the example of the transit card, a simple login with the card number (in your hand) and a PIN number (in your head) should suffice to view card status and order a new balance top up (without storing CC numbers). Same as when you do a top up in a 7-11 with cash. Just don’t show any confidential information or hide those under an additional authentication request.
Many mediocre companies and organizations bought the “data is money” mantra and soak up useless information they will never use but make their clients life difficult for it.
I just keep 3 fake personas in Bitwarden and roll with them for these services.
My take is we're seeing the same sort of abuses and risk that we had with credit reporting agencies. And we need the same sorts of regulation. And those rules need to be onerous enough that most companies will try hard to stay out from under them.
Sounds like the person who should be held accountable is the driver. They should have just let her on, or if they're going to dodge accountability, they should do it by raising the problem to their management, or at least promised they will and given you a phone number/email address or something.
Unfortunately, many people on immigrant visas can’t afford to raise problems to their management and risk getting fired for being “troublemakers”
"What happened to the days when a THING was a THING?!"
Not needing an app for everything is, I think, one of the next big accessibility issues that will at some point come to a courthouse near you.
This might depend on your country whether it's allowed and/or possible, but it's really not that hard technically to hook up a tablet, a contactless card reader, and a roll printer that can produce QR codes.
They frequently fail for groups who complete a task together, or people who act on behalf of someone else.
Is this your response when anyone shares their opinion on a topic? Like why should anyone say anything if this is considered a meaningful response?
Anyway I am doubtful they are pushing for a credit card-governed world.
Credit cards aren’t ideal, but there are also debit cards and they work just as well. Of course, there are different tradeoffs: what if you paid with a different card than the one in your pocket?
Still, Ryanair requiring printouts is a joke.
You are free to go on Amazon and buy an unlocked cheap Android phone for $30.
I think you don't even realize how stupid it is.
PS: I did not ever gave 1 cent to Amazon, feel "free" to do so as well.
Do you not think it takes an entire "cloud infrastructure" for the museum to take credit cards?
I don't care unless this become a mandatory de-facto standard to access public places.
Hopefully yet it is not, and people would reject that if that would become an obligation. But there's a chance that our children would not even know this is bare dumb cause it would be the norm.
Why are you asking this? The OP just stated their view. They stated battery drain being an issue and that they dislike the requirement to have a phone on you at all times. I can relate to that especially with the size and weight of today's phones. There is also the issue of being locatable.
> "I don't want to inconvenience myself by having to have my phone. But I don't mind if others are inconvenienced by being required to have a credit card"
They never said they want others to be required to have a credit card. You are making this up. Why don't companies accept both?
Every business chooses which customer it is trying to fit and which customer not to fit.
2. Presumably a debit card on the same network would work just as well. What’s the credit + debit card penetration rate?
https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-americans-have-sm....
4.5% of the US is "unbanked". So now we are talking about 4.5% vs 9% and the overlap is probably small.
And before you say poor people probably don't have smart phones. 94% of homeless people have cell phones. The percentage of poor people with cell phones is probably higher.
https://priceschool.usc.edu/news/homeless-los-angeles-cell-p....
(No I'm not judging homeless people for having a life line for survival)
Because I'm the one spending the money. If you make it harder for me to spend money with you, I'm going to spend less money with you.
> Cell phone penetration in the US - 97$
> Credit card pentration in the US - 70%
Sure. But most credit cards don't have batteries that die.
And I as a business owner must be okay with it. See how freedom of choice works? We can both choose which parameters we operate within.
That's just like Uber has chosen not to have a call dispatch center where you can call them if you want a ride.
Why should the world bend to your desires?
Why should we accept a smartphone-dependent society ? Because it pleases you or because this is imposed by the top and you just accept it, then find all the other just being morons ? :)
You don't have to. The Amish haven't. I have no problem with them making that choice either.
Yeah those are both extreme points. But this is really violent to wish no middle in between.
As we expressed before in this topic, applications, websites and their back-ends depends themselves on lots of other things to be reliable. Not even considering security issues or privacy abuses that are reportedly common. This is not an individual problem, it's a society choice that does not seems to be advised.
I'm not against adding methods for accessing such places with some computer connected to a network just like smartphone, smart watches and stuff... If this can be useful, handy and neutral as tools should stay.
Still, I personally don't wish to find myself or anyone reduced, worse, denied by not wearing a specific smartphone (that would even maybe require to accept and sign many private third party conditions) for enjoying a direct interaction with "normal" people having a restaurant or a museum for example.
I would consider extreme to think that, because "everyone have a smartphone" then it should be normal to require that for everything. Implying (not blindly) accepting whole bunches of consequences (that most people seems to want to ignore because otherwise they would feel reduced or rejected) coming with.
Perhaps we don't see the same reality under the same prism and education. This is is not some point. It's just to say... What I sadly observe in general is a total lack of competence or understanding of the information technologies, actors and implications. And outside the fact it is another great source of pollution, they also represent a good opportunity for locking down people and tracking them from bad actors intentions.
So, I wish that it won't be misused or forced, particularly in situations were this wipes-out the freedom to do simple things that works fine, in any ways. Just what's in my mind if we would ask me my opinion.
Thanks for your exchanges there.
Almost everyone has some kind of decent mobile site outside of the category of social media (and to be honest many of the social media sites like Facebook and YouTube have pretty excellent mobile sites).
I’m struggling to think of a major store or service that forces you to use an app, especially if you exclude Apple’s walled garden (then again, there is iCloud.com).
My biggest issue with all this comes to the forced dependency of 3rd party services and ToS agreements to use something totally unrelated to it, along with all the technical issues that, we all know, happens every time. For example, here the federal bank will ask you to install their app trough App/Play store. Since there are still MANY tech illiterate people here, they still have in-person service. But for the majority of people, they will try to force you to use the app. It's a "don't you guys have phones?" issue i see spreading everywhere, but almost nobody complains about it because... it's easier. They don't care about privacy, data collection, none of this, and companies (with government bodies) are taking advantage of this for reasons i rather not speculate about here.
During Covid, i took my first dose of vaccine and the nurse said "check out our Instagram to see the next date of vaccination". "But i don't have a Instagram account or any social media. Is there any official channel, like a .gov website?" i asked, and she shrugged like 'its your problem then'. I walk out of any restaurant that forces you to scan a QR code for the menu, and if possible, i avoid the usage of my phone all together. As long as people are compliant in that behavior, things will only get worse.
When I retire with my tech millions and have lots of spare time, I swear I'm gonna start filing lawsuits for shit like this.
Some of us don't install apps willy-nilly. Some of us have phones with no app other than what it came with.
I helped her through this, but it was utterly confusing for the both of us.
[0] the frontend files are not minified so it's possible to see what a shitshow it is in all its glory - method names which are partly in English and partly not being but one example.
I recently travelled to Glasgow to watch cycling. Flight boarding passes, directions, venue tickets, meeting up with people, doing some work - everything - was on my phone and worked well. I could not imagine how that trip would have been if I had to gather lots of bits of important paper to travel with. The first time our sushi place had a QR code, I balked and asked for a menu, but now I have learned that the sushi experience (ordering small portions as you want and need them) works so much better on mobile than getting a menu and waiting for waiters to return to take an order.
We trade convenience with risk of being in a pickle if things are broken. So far, the convenience is winning. A lot if this is driven by (as implied in OP) young people who are more tech savvy.