I have no problem with the substance of this article, but the title does not seem clear enough to meet HN guidelines.
I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
411–420 of 562 posts
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#412I found a wallet once. It has a bankcard in it, so I called the bank, telling them I had found the wallet of one of their customers and asking them if they could help me return in to the owner.
They weren't allowed to give contact details of the owner to me, but they were allowed to forward my contact details to the owner of the wallet.
Through this route we eventually got the wallet back to its owner. Took half a day to get everything in order, but man were they happy to get the wallet back.
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I get told a lot I'm just lucky. It's a left-handed way of assuming a woman has no idea what she's talking about and can't possibly be competent. No. It's a straightforward way of assuming that you are not actually in complete control of the universe and it doesn't matter how competent you are, things could have worked out differently. If you'd like to assert that you actually have perfect methods of identifying an…
I'll give you another extraordinary claim: I appear to be the only openly female member of HN to have ever spent time on the leader board. The leader board is 100 names long. I've been here over a decade and was not an early adopter, so the site is more than ten years old. There have been, no doubt, quite a lot more than a 100 people who have spent time on the leader board. So one openly female member out of more tha…
I'm a woman, but I also have absolutely no idea why this would be relevant. If it helps to explain, I would disbelieve any person on that leaderboard who said they would definitely be able to identify any Ted Bundy types. I don't think that skill exists.
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#414In terms of the kindness of strangers, I’m reminded of a friend who decided she wanted to hitch hike around Mexico when she was 18. She was poor but she wanted adventures. She wanted to get away from the beaten path, away from tourist traps, and go out into the rural areas so she could discover what Mexico was really like. Everyone who picked her up warned her that what she was doing was very dangerous. She was lucky…
This reminds me of a story about how a tribe in the amazon jungle picks their camp site. They check the surrounding trees to make sure they are in good health. I imagine you would have to spend 1000 nights next to a tree they would regard as unsafe, before there was even a chance for something to happen to you. When it happens though, your family will remember it.
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll give you another extraordinary claim: I appear to be the only openly female member of HN to have ever spent time on the leader board. The leader board is 100 names long. I've been here over a decade and was not an early adopter, so the site is more than ten years old. There have been, no doubt, quite a lot more than a 100 people who have spent time on the leader board. So one openly female member out of more tha…
I'm a woman, but I also have absolutely no idea why this would be relevant. If it helps to explain, I would disbelieve any person on that leaderboard who said they would definitely be able to identify any Ted Bundy types. I don't think that skill exists.
The vast majority of rapes are not committed by Ted Bundy types. This is a detail I already addressed elsewhere. Most victims know their assailant socially.
Nowhere have I claimed any ability to "identify Ted Bundy types." Suggesting this is my claim amounts to putting words in my mouth.
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#416Every so often my pessimistic tendencies get a healthy slap across the face by the actions of someone who took the high road when they easily could have chosen otherwise. It's a couple summers ago, at the height of the summer tourist season and I'm cycling up 4th ave SW in DC. Somewhere between the NASA HQ and the National Mall my camera bag - packed full with a fairly new DSLR, a few lenses, and a secondary cell pho…
I live in Sweden. Lost my wallet during my bike to work time in the morning. Not sure why it fell from my pocket, but it might because of the bumpy road due to some construction. As most of the things inside the wallet can be replaced in a couple of days (bank card, and some ID's), I did not worry that much. But, a nice guy from the neighboring office took the high road by calling the contact point of my office, whic…
my daughter lost her SL card (Stockholm public transport) that had a phone number written on, and on another occasion forget her debit card at the business.
Someone called her with her SL card (worth around 100$), and the business kept her card and verified her identity when she called.
Clothing items are constantly being lost and left in-place mostly during winter, some might be relatively expensive
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#417Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some do (that happened to mine when I forgot it once, bank called me). Others do not. The best ones require that you take your card before they do the thing you wanted it to do (as a measure to ensure you don't forget your card).
I can't remember which places do it which way, but I have walked off with my card and without the cash I withdrew when I used an ATM that gave the card back first (I was used to the other way round).
The ATM can (don't all?) take the money back if not picked up in 30s, and cancel the transaction.
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
This drove me mad when moving to Canada. In Germany all the ATMs require you to take the card to get the cash, in Canada it was the opposite. I lost my card twice that way. Design is so important.
It’s like this in the US as well, and I didn’t know the possible difference in order of operations before you brought it up. I would think stuff like this would be written down in a best practice / licensing document somewhere in order to even sell ATMs. Edited: Added “up” after “brought it”.
Sadly no, there's very often tricks to correctly designing routine things in life that not everybody responsible has thought about and this can have dire consequences. Every "push" door with prominent "pull" handles is a miniature example.
Modern railway trains use electronically controlled doors. Rather than needing a team of people to run along checking every door on the train is closed and locked, or just hoping nobody falls out of a moving train, the doors are powered and when instructed will close and lock. The doors can't close instantly of course and so the procedure will be that the guard or driver presses a button, there's a brief warning period and then doors try to close and lock, once all doors are successfully closed and locked you're clear to drive the train away.
In the UK it turns out that there were two ways to implement this functionality, some train manufacturers used one, some the other. One way goes like this, when the button is pressed:
1. "Door Open" buttons for passengers are disabled 2. All open doors sound an alarm (typically fast bleeping) 3. Wait a few seconds 4. All doors that are still open try to close
The other way goes like this:
1. All open doors sound an alarm 2. Wait a few seconds 3. "Door Open" disabled 4. Try to close any open doors
This second order feels pretty similar, it's likely only a few geeks even noticed it was different and nobody made a big fuss about it. Until there was an accident and then the accident investigators discovered it.
A passenger realised very late that they were at their destination, unknown to them when they pressed "Door Open" in fact the train's crew had just told the system to close all doors for departure and it was in that waiting period. On their train, the "Open" buttons were not disabled during that period. Now the passenger's door was open, but it had missed that "alarm" phase, so there was no warning anything was amiss. The passenger tried to step through the door, but at that moment the timer expired and the door closed on them, trapping IIRC an article of clothing and resulting in a dragging accident when the train departed.
All affected trains needed revised firmware to enforce the correct order of events now that it was apparent to everybody that there even _was_ a correct order of events.
Re: I just lost my wallet on the way home from work
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Been robbed 3 times in parramatta, NSW, Australia. I left Australia 🇦🇺
Been robbed at gunpoint in San Francisco. Guess where this will never happen? Hong Kong where I live now but where people are now afraid to visit because they think it's Syria.
Or maybe they don't want to support Chinese oppression.
I've been to HK, it's ok to visit, living there though is a different matter entirely, sure I may not get robbed at gunpoint but between China and air pollution I will find somewhere else thanks.