91–99 of 99 posts
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dumb question but what happens if you forget to tap out ?
You likely get charged from where you got on to the end of the route.
Swiss/Danish/Finnish Mobile Payment alternatives like TWINT and MobilePay. Also: physical lockers with PIN/Code instead of keys (in basically every country aside from Germany). It's just completely bonkers to me, that German train station lockers still use physical Keys EVERYWHERE.
I like the keys. The key has the locker number on it, so you don't have to remember anything. And there's no way to screw up setting the pin because of a language barrier, since there are basically no instructions needed for key lockers. FWIW the key lockers are more common in Japan as well.
definitely loved renting e-scooters when I was in Germany, really convenient with how many bike paths there are
With bike rental systems the frustration is slightly less common as you often need to put them up against a bicycle rack in order to return them.
Ultimately this is just a societal issue, but unfortunately there's neither the public co-operation nor enforcement of sensible rules about where to park them in many large cities such as Berlin.
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Sending GPS updates from the subway?
At least on iOS, it doesn't access the GPS directly. It asks the OS for updates to the device's location with a certain degree of precision. It's up to the OS to blend various sensor data (GPS, cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth beacons - the latter is used underground to get a good position fix without a line of sight to the sky) and send that to the app. If it was using GPS continuously it would drain your battery very qui…
Old school but all the machines for paying in cash in Japan are so optimized for speed. Train stations, onboard buses, convenience stores. Just throw in a handful of coins and it quickly picks what it needs and returns what it doesn’t. In other countries (eg australia), the ticket machines could only take a single coin at a time and would reject if you did it too fast. I believe this is one (of several) reasons why c…
I was in Paris some years ago, and it surprised me that a jug of water for drinking was free on every table. Of course if you wanted any other beverage you’d pay for it, but just quenching your thirst was free. In Germany water is not free, but instead another income for restaurants. Also it needs a law (only since 2001) that the cheapest beverage must be non-alcoholic. (Yet water could be more expensive than beer, a…
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You likely get charged from where you got on to the end of the route.
Couldn't you leave with a friend have your friend get off at the next stop they scan both cards while you travel the entire route?
In China, nearly everything works via the same app (WeChat) and via QR code. Every grocery store, coffee shop, train station, or point of sale has the same scanner, where you can flash your QR code. I don't think I saw a single physical currency exchanged in the entire 6 weeks I was there. I keep hearing that X wants to be the "everything" app. WeChat is _already_ the everything app. It's DoorDash, Venmo, Facebook, I…