Digital feudalism at it's finest. "You wish to park on Lord Absentee's land? You must enroll yourself in his service, then, peasant!"
Free parking is theft
How do we pay for parking?
11–20 of 347 posts
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#12[flagged]
Author is a tech-savvy Android user, so no.
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#13If you want to get to the point of the story, +/- summary : An old lady in Seattle couldn't understand how to pay for parking using confusing parking apps. The author helped her, but the process was complicated and not user-friendly. He guided her through scanning a QR code and using parking apps, eventually helping her pay with the Park Mobile app using her credit card.
Sort of, if you skip the Google Ads, Google Instant Apps, Google Pay, and Google Location Services problems, which are all one company trying to collect data to use to serve ads.
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#14If you want to get to the point of the story, +/- summary : An old lady in Seattle couldn't understand how to pay for parking using confusing parking apps. The author helped her, but the process was complicated and not user-friendly. He guided her through scanning a QR code and using parking apps, eventually helping her pay with the Park Mobile app using her credit card.
The tone of your oversimplification sounds like you have something against the author's opinion, which, if true, would be much better stated than sarcastically implied.
Edit: The parent has been edited since I commented.
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#15A software engineer friend has a common refrain for situations like this: “all software is terrible.” It is only a very slight exaggeration.
Such a good opportunity to link to https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#16Modern parking lots always seem ripe for physical phishing, whats stopping someone from sticking up a couple of QR codes that link to a fraudulent payment page or some other malware? This is one of those things that tech really didn't "fix" and now I have to select from one of 20 apps instead of just paying with cash or even a credit card.
Seems like a good avenue for parking protests. All you need is a small buzz for people to never trust the app-based systems.
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#17Modern parking lots always seem ripe for physical phishing, whats stopping someone from sticking up a couple of QR codes that link to a fraudulent payment page or some other malware? This is one of those things that tech really didn't "fix" and now I have to select from one of 20 apps instead of just paying with cash or even a credit card.
One would think this would happen pretty often, but at least my cursory search didn't turn up many specific examples of it happening in the US. I wonder why that is?
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#18The horrors of bad urban design; solved by many competting apps.
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#19Modern parking lots always seem ripe for physical phishing, whats stopping someone from sticking up a couple of QR codes that link to a fraudulent payment page or some other malware? This is one of those things that tech really didn't "fix" and now I have to select from one of 20 apps instead of just paying with cash or even a credit card.
I paid this booth last night, wasn't even sure if they were legit
Re: How do we pay for parking?
#20Much of the value in "tech" is basically treating people like shit at scale. In this example, when a lot attendant was needed, they could only be so unhelpful. Now we don't need to pay them, can push their work onto customers, and simply magically drop any "problem" customers. Same with all this shit. Huge companies exist solely to prevent a human from getting human support, and many more extend the concept to "scale" without properly supporting customers.