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

451–460 of 870 posts

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

#451

Post by JustExAWS »

dwedge wrote: post #445
joshdavham wrote: post #127

I’m fascinated by this phenomenon of apps proposing solutions that are far worse than the previous existing solutions. For example: 1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters. 2. Tinder is worse than IRL speed dating. 3. Duolingo is worse than language classes. 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass. 5. Etc It really makes me frustrated as someone who builds software and generally thinks…

Printing a boarding pass for the return trip when you can only check in 36 hours before departure is a lot trickier than printing at home. I'd prefer to print but this is one of the things that is simpler. The only annoying part is when the app gets battery killed with terrible reception in the airport and then takes 2 minutes to show you the boarding pass it already downloaded.

That’s why you put your boarding pass in your phone’s wallet

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

#452

Post by JustExAWS »

tdeck wrote: post #260
Kwpolska wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you remotely update a PDF file after someone downloaded it?

Why would you need to do that? The boarding pass has a QR code on it; the QR code links to your ticket. If you need to change your booking, they can email you a new one.

They are referring to gate and time changes

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

#453

Post by Henchman21 »

gxs wrote: post #427
Henchman21 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vote. I am 50. I have voted in every election I was able to. In my life my preferred candidate has won exactly twice: Obama’s second term and Biden’s first. This includes local, state elections, and national. To quote George Carlin: “ If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it ”. Trump lost in 2024 but took the win because his cronies disqualified enough voters in enough states to win. So, please, spare me. We’…

Don’t mean to be antagonistic here, but do you have a source for the claim that trump took the win? Would be really curious to see how this could be proven or at the very least convincingly induced.

Go look for how many ballots were disqualified in the swing states?

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

#454

Post by joseda-hg »

kxrm wrote: post #249
ryandrake wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm weird, but when I go on a trip, I generally pack my smartphone, if I bring it at all. It would be a royal pain to go find it again when I get into line to board.

Same, I do recognize that walking around without a smartphone starting to become "weird" to others though. I don't mind being weird. I live in a major US city and get hit up for cash by the homeless sometimes. When I explain I do not have a cellphone to them when they ask for money through some cash app. They look bewildered. Just 20 years ago I was the only one carrying around such a device for IT reasons. Now I am…

OTOH Currently, the only thing I don't pay regularly by using a smart device, are bus fares, which are a solved problem, my city just hasn't implemented that yet

Everything else, I can either use a digital wallet for, or an instant bank transfer (Which I've been given to understand are a bit more of a hassle in the US)

I'd basically never expect to be without a device for an extended period of time, specially not in an airport

I am aware of the single point of failure though, so I do take particular care of not running out of battery, keeping an accesible spare, and some cash around for emergencies I just never use it

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

#455

Post by fsckboy »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #402
Henchman21 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? What do you propose?

Holding C-level executives criminally liable for the actions of the company would be a start.

eye-for-an-eye, any time a company's app is showing a customer a spinner, the c-suite's phones should also be showing spinners

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

#456

Post by CyberDildonics »

roughly wrote: post #425
bee_rider wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s bizarre. The whole point of having an app instead of a website is to have more processing occur locally, right?

The whole point of having an app is to collect data, show ads, and “engage the customer with the brand.” Any additional capabilities beyond that are incidental.

Don't forget bait and switching with updates so you can do all that later, possibly after you sell your quality app to someone else and cash out.

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

#457

Post by scottmcdoge »

null0ranje wrote: post #243
reaperman wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often can no longer ask for a menu at restaurants that expect me to scan a QR code. Well…I can ask, but they don’t have any to provide.

I just leave restaurants that have gone to the online-only menu. It's usually an indicator that there are other terrible cuts in service and quality going on as well.

[dead]

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

#458

Post by dalke »

gs17 wrote: post #390
harrisoned wrote: post #84

I have a big issue with this, and the truth is that the majority of people simply do not care and/or do not understand the implications. By tying your service to a smartphone your are basically refusing to provide service if the costumer doesn't agree to Apple's or Google's TOS. If the app doesn't complain about emulation or something different than Android or IOS you are in luck, but that's not the case with most ba…

> if the costumer doesn't agree to Apple's or Google's TOS. Or if Apple or Google arbitrarily decide that they don't like that customer. You don't have to have done something wrong, they can decide that you're likely associated with someone who did.

When people ask for examples, I point to a NYT report of a man in San Francisco whose young son had redness on his penis and complained about it feeling sore. The pediatrician asked for some photos to make a diagnosis online. Google flagged it as child porn and notified the police. The police said it wasn't, but Google declined to restore service.

"A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal.", https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...

In India, Google locked an engineer from Gujarat out of his Google account because it contained explicit content potentially involving child abuse or exploitation. The engineer believes it's because the account contain images of him as a child being bathed by his grandmother.

"HC notice to Google India after engineer loses access Gmail, Google Drive, and more over childhood photo labelled 'porn'" https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/hc-...

I use these examples specifically because many in my government want "Chat Control", where snitchware scans messages for child porn and the like, and notifies the police. It will be full of false positives like these, especially if the scanning software continues to be built by puritanical American companies.

Another class is people who the US deems to be a security threat. How long will it be until the US extends its sanctions against the ICC by ordering Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and Google to shut down the accounts for the ICC and anyone involved in their genocide investigation, work and personal?

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

#459

Post by anigbrowl »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #300
ndriscoll wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perpetual spinner thing happened at my last job too, and I developed the opinion that putting a spinner into your site at all is a sign of incompetence. For any normal CRUD app, it should take milliseconds to do whatever task. Even with network delays, 150 milliseconds is a reasonable upper bound for end-to-end processing. If you have an animation at all, then your thing is either ridiculously slow or broken. Eit…

> For any normal CRUD app, it should take milliseconds to do whatever task. Even with network delays, 150 milliseconds is a reasonable upper bound for end-to-end processing This is only really true with stable, high speed internet connections. We still cannot take for granted that everyone has that, especially not in rural areas and double especially not on mobile devices

Then it should give explicit status information like

  uploading to server (xx%)...OK
  waiting for response...delayed. Check again in 3 minutes.
Not as cool, but at least somewhat informative. Engineers have a responsibility to push back on this kind of thing, because marketing people frequently do not think about failure modes or actually put themselves in the customer's shoes.

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

#460

Post by joseda-hg »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #168
pqtyw wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Parking apps are worse than parking meters. I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late (or wasting money if I get back early). > 4. Airline apps that are worse than just printing a boarding pass. Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is muc…

> Unless the app is exceptionally horrible you can just export it to Apple/Android wallet which is much more convenient than having to find a printer. Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it? There's an electronic solution strictly better than the app, for when you have no printer handy: just give the user the goddamned PDF ! Works everywhere, works off…

> Why do iOS and Android phones have a "wallet", and why a boarding pass would have anything to do with it?

It's not that deep, just a skeuomorphic name for somewhere where you'd keep importants/valuables for quick access, credit/debit cards, boarding passes, concert tickets

Not unlike keeping a folded up copy of a pass in a physical wallet (Which may not be universal, but I would have guessed not that uncommon either)

Post reply on HN