Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 870 posts

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#111

Post by iforgotpassword »

everdrive wrote: post #33
sumuyuda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is that banks should support any TOTP client for authentication and not just their proprietary app. So you can use open source software or a hardware key.

But they won't. HN is quite good at suggesting a lot of genuinely intelligent and valid potential technical solutions, but most banks won't even think about supporting TOTP broadly. They'll lean into smartphones and apps because this is where the bast majority of their customers are. In this case the 'tyranny' is the overwhelming preference of other people. The masses have spoken, and they want everything to be on th…

Also because ticking boxes. You just provide an app that fulfills all the silly security requirements for banking apps and then if something goes wrong, the customer has the burden of proving it's the banks fault.

I've had my banking app installed on an old Samsung phone running lineageos. I only powered it on when I had to do online banking. At some point I needed to update the app and they started checking for rooted devices, so it wouldn't work anymore. Now I've installed it on a much newer android device that I also use for a lot of other crap and sketchy stuff I don't want on my main phone. Also it's powered on all the time. Whether that's really more secure than what I did before is questionable.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#112

Post by agumonkey »

derac wrote: post #106
agumonkey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on where you live, a smartphone can be bought for 100 bucks and a basic line (voice, messages, 2GB of data) for less than 5 bucks. It's not ideal but it's not a sacrifice anymore.

You can also use wifi. Even free wifi. You can get a very nice used phone with many years of updates for 100 dollars. You can find a worse phone for much less if you really want to. edit: You can even get a free phone from your community. Possibly a better one than the a53. Most people have a phone or several in a drawer. https://swappa.com/listings/samsung-galaxy-a53-5g?carrier=un...

Quite true, to the point that my data plan is not used much (I'm way below the 2G threshold) because I'm mostly indoor when I fetch a lot.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#114

Post by philipov »

tdeck wrote: post #92

One thing not mentioned yet is what happens when you've got a cheaper phone filled with photos and videos. At various times I've had to spend a few minutes deleting things just to download some stupid 100 meg app that I need to use for a total of 5 minutes to complete some basic task.

Is your cheaper phone unable to interface with a computer? I'm no advocate of an app-based economy, but your phone shouldn't be the archive for your photos.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#115

Post by alabastervlog »

arrowsmith wrote: post #98
alabastervlog wrote: post #90

The entire history of technology is our becoming dependent on one invention after another, such that anyone with any interest in the area(s) that invention touches no longer has a realistic choice not to use it. They may technically be able to, but only through outsize sacrifice that leaves them worse off than they would have been before the thing was invented.

Hi Ted.

I was channeling Burke’s show Connections, actually, but sure, that too.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#117

Post by joshdavham »

Glyptodon wrote: post #113

My city has parking meters that I can't use because the website has a broken credit card form and the app "isn't available on your version of Android." And of course they don't accept cash. It's a farce.

You’re in Vancouver, too?

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#118

Post by morkalork »

JeanMarcS wrote: post #10

My brother doesn't have à smartphone (by choice). For example, he cannot access his bank account via his desktop anymore. He have to go to his agency in person. Well we all did that for years so it's just annoying, because he still have the possibility to do it and it's his choice. But what will happen if all the brick and mortar close ? When will it be mandatory to get a smartphone for his bank app, just to have acc…

I had some hilariously degenerate experiences with this recently. There are basic services that branches won't provide at all anymore like cashing cheques, which can be annoying in some circumstance. But the real dumb one was being blocked from taking a certain action in the online banking with a message like "present yourself with 2 forms of government ID at a local branch". OK. Fine. Drive there, wait in line, blah blah blah. The teller looks at me like I'm crazy when I say that online banking sent me there. They figure it out, do the KYC process, unblock me and I say great now can you do the thing I was trying to do before all this? "No, you must use online banking for that."

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#119

Post by HocusLocus »

wtcactus wrote: post #62

[flagged]

I remember the European young folk who had RFID chips implanted in their arms so they could fast track the lines in dance clubs. I wonder how many of those chips are still in arms, today.

I'm not denying smartphone adoption. I'm just giving it 20 years to mature. During which time I can observe it from the outside, and better track dystopian policies that may result from it and slow their progress... by using a desktop computer and advocating for arms-length 'security' solutions, instead of installing apps and losing all control. The opaque app sandbox is just as menacing to the user as to the hypothetical hacker. Currently I'm thinking, why should I EVER decide to use a device for which I cannot easily attain God-Mode? That includes defeating end to end encryption so I can see the plaintext the device uses to communicate. If that itself carries another layer of encryption, I will suspect it to be devious by default, and isn't that rational?

It just seems like Darwin In Action, and my quick adoption would make me the brunt of some cosmic joke. I will never buy a cellphone without an easily removable battery, either. On general principle. Some things are not features, they are curses disguised as features.

Re: 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised

#120

Post by fifticon »

My doctor/'s office was just forced to switch to app-instead-of-website for patient interation. Ironically, the old and this new software came from same megacorp I work for (different department, same story). The old web interface was rather good and rather sensible-practical-sane. It was almost as if someone had asked a doctor what he actually needed for his patients, and then understood his answer and also managed to actually implement and deliver it.

  The new smartphone app.. Not so much. It looks more like some MBA types managed to solve "what is the cheapest thing we can get away with, lawfully?"
Internally, I know it is because the original dev team has been gutted, development outsourced to india, and just a skeleton crew from the original team manages the chinese-whispers process with the huge indian team.

As a result, the use case flow (IE the only way you can operate it..) of the app, goes as follows:

1 close the app 2 launch the app and sign in 3 do ONE action 4 enjoy the result of the action 5 repeat from 1..

You might wonder why that is.. Well, that is because your software is not allowed to display any errors - because that might indicate there were bugs.. So instead, whenever an error happens, you just display the '... still loading..' animation... forever. So, technically, there are no errors, no bugs.. "IT IS JUST TAKING TOO LONG TO RESPOND". (spoiler: it will NEVER respond, because hidden behind the screen, is a series of unhandled web api errors..)

But again, as an "internal" employee, I have seen our management claim all this is a huge success (client paid/pays).

Back to using it: When I have to interact with my doctor, I write the texts on my PC, and mail them to myself. Then I cut/paste them from gmail into this wonderful app.

Post reply on HN