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

theguardian.com

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

#771

Post by creer »

1propionyl wrote: post #351
Henchman21 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m gonna punt on the question of where the line is for hostile actions and use some past legal justification of “I know it when I see it” and I see it clearly here. The second part is the more interesting question to me: Appropriate reactions would seem to include: - finding a new doctor/practice/provider. Super hard in practice as they seem to be geographical monopolies a la the cable networks - providing appropria…

This is all downstream of consolidation of ownership in private equity of clinics, community health centers, emergency rooms, veterinarians offices, end-of-life care facilities, etc. This is what happens when you let the bean counters and MBAs a quarter turn around the world with no on-the-ground experience or institutional knowledge make decisions from their spreadsheets to "optimize out inefficiencies". Let's call…

> downstream of consolidation of ownership

No, if anything, people buying and running multiple offices are exactly in the business of optimizing the last few percentage points of efficiency and that include amortizing better software across all these offices to make them run with fewer humans in the loop. Causing more people to talk to more humans is NOT what they do.

The issue is lack of care, incompetence, stupidity - exactly the things that will get you fired from these operations. Eventually.

The problem is "eventually". Unfortunately it will take too long for that to happen, compared to the rest of our lives.

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

#772

Post by crazygringo »

lucb1e wrote: post #597
realityking wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that - hopefully exceptionally rare case - the gate could just print you a boarding pass. It’s not a big deal.

I didn't know that. Based on what do they print a boarding pass, or perhaps rather: why don't they check {whatever the answer to the previous question is} at boarding instead of you having to hold onto a pass that apparently is a proxy for something else?

Speed.

It takes time to look up a passenger on a computer.

The plane will be delayed if they have to do that for everyone while boarding.

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

#773

Post by Neonlicht »

michaelmrose wrote: post #638
azemetre wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should condemn large swaths of the rural population to not only abject poverty, but remove health care access too? Is this what you're seriously arguing? That people should be forced to have a worse quality life, die earlier; all because they committed the crime of not living in a metropolis? Do you not see how people read this as completely heartless and devoid of empathy towards their fellow man?

>Be forced to have a worse quality life, die earlier; all because they committed the crime of not living in a metropolis? Literally already the case and more so care isn't cheaper unlike land so your lesser dollars buys lesser care and no realistic access to specialists

Reminds me of how the CCP pays doctors extra money to work in rural areas. And I read an article on how gynecologists are fleeing the American South. And even in my own country there is lack of GPs in some provinces.

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

#774

Post by Neonlicht »

kelnos wrote: post #736
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there to be more efficient? You’re sitting there waiting for a flight. This isn’t a shopping mall, even if it appears to look like one. Re push vs pull… which one do you prefer more? Kafka or MQTT? On a more serious note… pull because I don’t sit snd stare at the phone all the time. Phone stays in the pocket. So the act of taking it out of the pocket is a pull action. There are no screens and announcements at…

I really don't get why you're being so hostile here. If you don't want to rely on modern conveniences, don't. There's no reason to get up in arms that some of us think that other ways can be easier.

I want to offer a counter point to all these Luddites:

I'm mentally handicapped (my mind is apparently somewhere on a spectrum) and technology allows me to limit human interaction- which causes me physical discomfort. I realise normal people love to talk to the lady at McDonald's, they probably live for that shit.

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

#775

Post by jrochkind1 »

rangestransform wrote: post #191
jrochkind1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

going back to pre-smartphone but still true, in the US at least, it is generally illegal to park at a broken meter and you can get a ticket -- because otherwise there would be incentive to break the meter so you could park there for free.

This is only an issue because the US somehow became allergic to enforcing vandalism and property crime laws aggressively

Uh... I don't think so. These laws have been in place for decades, and are a way of preventing vandalism to property meters.

We don't yet have a surveillance state capable of observing every time someone puts gum in a parking meter while pretending to pay it, so they can park for free, it's not that we are "allergic" to enforcing this so choose to prevent parking at vandalized meters instead, it's that it's not realistic to catch that. Although I guess we're getting closer to that surveillance state now, but certainly weren't when these laws were first implemented, their motivation was that it was not feasible to catch most people vandalizing parking meters, instead the reward for doing so had to be removed (which honestly seems a lot more effective anyway??)

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

#776

Post by strken »

olowe wrote: post #718
strken wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Australian whose parents have 300kbps internet, please continue to add spinners to your apps. The round trip time to US west is 270ms for a good connection here. That 270ms doesn't include any processing (maybe 60ms or so) and the wifi tax (another 20ms). Then your round trip time gets doubled by HTTPS, which goes up to tripled if you're sending more than 14 KB of data. This means it takes a full second to load…

Imagine the entire UI of an email client becoming inoperable, diplaying "loading..." and a spinner every time you send mail. We don't do it now nor did we do that when 300kbps connections were more common. Spinners are a crutch for undercooked, bad software.

From what I remember of Thunderbird and Outlook, they both showed a visual loading indicator somewhere in the UI.

Am I missing a detail of terminology here? By "loading spinner" I meant it in opposition to "do absolutely nothing for three full seconds and make me refresh the page with the network tab open." I didn't mean to suggest any particular indicator of a pending network request, only that there should be an indicator.

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

#777

Post by jrochkind1 »

crusty wrote: post #504
jrochkind1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

going back to pre-smartphone but still true, in the US at least, it is generally illegal to park at a broken meter and you can get a ticket -- because otherwise there would be incentive to break the meter so you could park there for free.

Are you extrapolating experiences from a small area or at of municipalities, because I've never been ticketed for parking at a broken meter in the US.

I haven't been ticketed for parking at an expired meter for years either! Laws may have varying levels of enforcement, is one thing.

Google AI agrees that it's generally illegal. I can't look up every single municipality of course, but here's a few. It certainly may not be universal, but it is not unusual, I don't have figures on how popular it is, maybe not as popular as I thought, but it's not at all unusual!

Rockville MD: "If a parking meter is not registering time with the insertion of coins, debit/credit card or ParkMobile, you must either park elsewhere or pay with another payment method available" https://www.rockvillemd.gov/274/Public-Parking

Chicago: "Overstuffed meters wouldn't accept quarters, leading to broken meters and tickets for the parkers who tried to use them." https://www.governing.com/archive/chicago-parking-meters.htm...

Bellingham Washington: "City code prohibits parking in a space if the meter is broken." https://cob.org/wp-content/uploads/parking-meter-info.pdf

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

#778

Post by jagged-chisel »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #598
jagged-chisel wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what should one do if the network is down? Stand there indefinitely hoping it comes back up? Recall the driver can’t continue without an address.

If the network is down it really doesn't matter if your app does synchronous or asynchronous operations because both will fail? I'm not entirely sure what your point is at all

Asynchronous operations can be retried until the network returns without blocking the UI.

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

#779

Post by crmi »

qingcharles wrote: post #609
2shortplanks wrote: post #167

One thing this article doesn’t mention is how this all falls apart when you spend time in more than one country. My UK bank (Barclays) won’t let me install their app on my US iPhone (i.e. my phone that uses a US based iCloud account). Tesco won’t let me use their loyalty app. I can’t install an app that’ll let me order Starbucks or McDonalds in the UK (I only have access to the US versions of these apps). I can’t wat…

I had to keep two phones for this purpose[0] and pay two cellphone bills, one in the USA and one in the UK. It helped when traveling in Europe though because then you are only paying UK data rates, not USA-on-vacation rates. It is still an insane situation, though. [0] LloydsTSB had the same restriction on app store

You can purchase data-only sims that last a couple of years in the UK with generous monthly data allowances for a one time upfront fee. May save you overpaying for two separate bills.

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

#780

Post by acdha »

genewitch wrote: post #707
acdha wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like the people who think “admiralty court” is a magic phrase to get out of paying taxes. What actually happens is that your car gets towed if you ever park anywhere affiliated with the same company (hope you never need to go to the same place twice), or you get tired of dodging collectors and having that mounting debt affect your credit and employability. Not liking how a business runs doesn’t give you a rig…

Okay, but if everyone or a plurality of people did that because they disagreed with the business practices? An individual may not be able to do much in all circumstances, but a lot of people might.

Yes, boycotts can be effective but they work by not buying things rather than pretending theft is noble. Most people have a moral objection to that.
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