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How do we pay for parking?

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Re: How do we pay for parking?

#291

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

LandR wrote: post #41
thechao wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, on multiple occasions (in Austin, >10 years ago), paid for parking to an "attendant" at a lot I know is free. Those guys will just have your car towed — the whole scam just hangs together: the towing company charges you for the storage & processing, but not the nominal fee; the attendant gets cash. Win-win-lose.

In my city, in the rougher parts it used to be somewhat normal to pay someone to "look after your car", of course you were paying them not to vandalise it while you were away! Especially popular on football days when parking near the stadium. It was only a couple of pounds or so. I haven't been to these parts of town for years so I have no idea if this practice still goes on.

That happened to me at least a few times; I never went for it, and nothing bad happened in those instances. In retrospect, I suppose I'm surprised. But perhaps it was sort of randomized, so that people wouldn't draw obvious conclusions?

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#292

Post by invig »

I've attempted to solve this problem. The whole sector is extremely low trust and adversarial, and to be fair they have good reason to be given rampant fraud and their difficult relationships with landlords. It's definitely solvable, but you've got to be willing to play in atoms and have your own test bed (car parks) to do it right.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#293

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #128
crote wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole concept of "allotted time" is a scam anyways. Sure, it made sense with analog pre-paid parking meters, but it's complete nonsense when you are modernizing it like this. Billing the actual parking time down to the minute is pretty trivial, so having to reserve a specific time means they are intentionally trying to defraud you by either a) making you pay for time you won't use, or b) fining you for not reserv…

Love how when someone overpaid in coins the next one parking there could take advantage of it while now the payment is instead tied to your license plate. Actually, I don't love it at all.

Remember the altruistic folks who would feed expired meters and such? Good times.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#295

Post by lionkor »

djbusby wrote: post #155
lionkor wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didnt you? Now I have to go watch the video on expensive data, darn it

I didn't watch the video then but I will for you. It's about the Chicago Parking deal in 2008 with some machines for parking. Daley gave control of parking meters to a private company until 2083. Sold out his citizens. For a super discount. And now, in a shocking twist, the private company is squeezing the citizens and government. It's a pretty good watch.

Oh, wow, thank you! Appreciate that a lot

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#296

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

brw wrote: post #289
ncpa-cpl wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add another one, that is an issue when traveling: - Having an app store account of the country you are visiting. Some of this apps are geo restricted and can't be downloaded with foreign app store accounts. Sometimes they can't process foreign cards or foreign phone numbers.

While on holiday in the States for the first time recently I actually changed my Play Store country to be able to download some US specific parking app, not knowing that I apparently have to wait a full year before I can change my country again (I don't remember reading this during the process). Explaining this to Google Play and Google One customer support led to nothing, they just told me to wait out the full year…

Full Year?! Good to know, and perhaps at this point, a burner phone is the best choice for overseas travel.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#297

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

bmitc wrote: post #274
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to push the cost onto the customer. If they don't have physical infrastructure it's a cost they don't have to maintain anymore. They know we will put up with the app bullshit because we have to park.

This is a great observation. Corporations just keeping pushing costs, infrastructure, features, quality assurance, and even testing onto regular people and customers. We're everybody's little compute engine.

Self-checkout groceries: wow, what an insult that I should have to train myself as a cashier at every store I shop, and further insult that you can't employ deserving humans for it.

Interestingly, the move to place the POS in front of the customer rather than handing our cards to the cashier, is a valiant effort to make things more secure and efficient, I suppose, so I kind of approve of this change, although it sometimes gets crazy to figure out a new POS terminal for myself, and that's the most stress-filled point of shopping when the whole line and the cashier are all waiting for you to pay and checkout and GTFO ASAP.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#298

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

klyrs wrote: post #171
GaggiX wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a cell phone I would be more concerned about other things than the parking lot, such as how people contact you when you are out?

1. Why do I want people to contact me while I'm out? It's almost always spam, and assuming it's not, it's almost always a them problem. 2. If I did want people to contact me, a flip phone would work fine for that. Without a smart phone with a data plan, it is becoming harder and harder to navigate the world made for advertizers and cellular providers. And these parking companies don't want to make it easy for you to…

I was appalled when my transit system recently introduced mobile fares, and I let them know exactly how I feel, as a designated early tester.

First you gotta install their atrocious little app, which I've always avoided because it was buggy and Google Maps gave the same real-time info in a better interface. So then you purchase some passes. They're QR-based, they're not NFC. Ugh, why?

Then during your entire voyage you'll need to maintain both connectivity and battery life. I hear tell that NFC can even survive a dead phone battery, but not a QR app. I was pissed about the connectivity, because I tend to disable networking while traveling, and I have a 1GiB data plan. Also, it makes for one-handed boarding because they mean it when they say "Have Fare Ready" so I feel like fiddling with my phone onboard is like fishing in my pockets for a pass, but worse, and I've already had passengers complain at me.

Now they're revamping the fare system again, and they're introducing NFC-card-based payments as well as account-based rather than pass-based fares. The punch line is that the mobile app won't be compatible with the card, so you need to choose one or the other, permanently. Guess I know which way I'll go.

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#299

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

klyrs wrote: post #232
clipsy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean I would think you have a family and just to organize something you would need to communicate, even when you're outside. This seems to come as a shock to much of the HN crowd, but people did in fact manage to organize things before cell phones existed.

People even made plans to meet at a specific time and place before phones were invented. When they left their houses, nobody was able to deliver a letter to them. I'd say it went fine, but honestly, they're all dead now.

If only they'd been carrying an emergency phone at all times

Re: How do we pay for parking?

#300

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

liendolucas wrote: post #111

Oh yes, the world is enshittificating at an unbelievable pace. Here's one I have recently had to deal with. Sometime ago I failed my theory driving exam. The computers presented a series of 30 questions, to which you answer true or false. Fast forwarding to a few weeks ago, I found myself for round 2. The computers have all been changed. Shiny IBMs ThinkCentre with a small camera on top. The exam is supposed to start…

Proctoring exams is a crazy, messed-up world. It has always been extraordinarily difficult for human teachers and TAs to prevent cheating on tests. And the tech companies have convinced administrators that technology can proctor exams better than an eagle-eyed human, and so they've designed elaborate biometrics and heuristics and ML to determine who the cheatingest students are, and it's a dumpster fire of false positives and bugs and general injustice. And now we've got LLMs!
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