841–850 of 870 posts
There is -as yet- no laws as strong for 'telephones'. But people communicate a lot more by mobile phone than by snail mail these days!
I think people should be free to do or discuss whatever they want via their phones, just like is permitted for paper mail. Phones should should get very stringent legal protections, including at borders, just like for paper mail.
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I don’t think you understand how the system works. Or perhaps you do, but fantasize that reality were different. First, in a non-urgent situation, you’re going to be asked about payment prior to service, and they may refuse to treat you if you can’t pay. Second, in an emergency situation where you’re unable to provide affirmative assent, you’ll be liable for costs under the doctrine of quantum meruit (quasi-contract)…
I do understand the situation, thank you for the light insult, but I do go to the doctor in the US and in the both your first and second examples I've had my own different experience than you.
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 have an account at a credit union that only offers SMS 2FA, and requires it for every login. I can't connect to that phone number when I'm abroad, so I can't access my account.
As an aside, I think it's insane that banking apps almost always have 2FA via SMS, which is known to be less secure than a TOTP authenticator, whereas my Nintendo account has TOTP 2FA, and passkey support. Heaven forbid I want more security options for my banking than for my videogames.
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Take a look again at rwmj's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43137896 . * I think it's reasonable to requiring an app bad. * Maybe not a "tyranny", we'd probably want to reserve that for the government doing it, but not good news. You replied "Why?" Since you and rwmj agree that calling is tyranny is too much, it comes across like the "Why?" refers to the objection to requiring an app. When you follow…
When I said "Do you complain when the bank requires you to sign something with a pen?" I didn't have a problem with complaining. I had a problem with the hyperbole and the fact that this nonsense is on HN. People always complain about everything which is what we do. I'd expect more from something on the front page here. This was a you at HN audience in general. > So, as long as one bank exists somewhere in the US? No…
As someone without a smartphone, I caution you to be very wary about what specifically you mean by "nonsense". If you only mean "tyranny", that's one thing. If you mean it's not a problem until I live little better than a hermit in the woods is another, unable to have real banking, real health care, real education for any kids, unable to order taxi service, unable to pay for parking, unable to refuel, unable to get packages, and so on ... yeah, no, you need some empathy.
> Even the apps are required to have accessibility and handicap access is protected by law in practically every western country.
Here's my handicap, which I've had therapy about. I'm on the internet too much. When it's accessible, as now when I should be working, I find it almost impossible to avoid the urge to check.
My solution is to not have a smartphone with me, to limit when I can be online. I am about to head to the basement, where the wifi doesn't reach, in order to focus on work.
Would you force a teetotaler to drink? Would you recommend that someone trying to lose weight should carry a bag of peanut butter cups with them all the time?
Here is another handicap: there are people who are electrosenstive, that is, they get headaches or have other problems when they are too close to radio signals, so they do not even carry a cell phone.
Now, I happen to believe that is not based on the physical effects of radio signals, but forcing them to use a smartphone will cause them severe mental distress.
There are still others who suffer from anxiety knowing their every action is being surveilled. When I started with therapy, the doctor asked if I thought the phones were listening to me, to see if I had any signs of schizophrenia. He then realized how that connected to the conversation, so had to rephrase the question, because we both know nearly all apps listen to us, one way or other.
Apps cannot solve these issues because smartphone-based apps and the ecosystem supporting it are the issue.
> What you're asking is for people who are interested in living online to give up potential benefits of the modern age.
No, what you asked for was a bank that only supports people who decide to use a smartphone which can connect to the Apple and Google app stores, so that you could pay lower rates.
The benefit is that you profit by their ability to exclude people who are more expensive to maintain. Completely legal, of course, as the freedom to live offline is not (currently, in nearly all jurisdictions) a protected right.
That excludes people like me who are "living online" but who do not have a smartphone, that excludes people who use a PinePhone or other smartphone which doesn't run Android, that excludes people who use an Android phone but have not agreed to the Google Store terms of service, as zevv did at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43140223 .
And don't forget that one of the reasons we are more expensive to maintain is that you are more profitable for them. Banks can send you ads directly, and know you've read them. McD's can use personalized ads based on your buying habits to induce you to buy more and overeat. And of course many apps have in-app advertising, which cannot be blocked. Uber made $1 billion last year from in-app ads.
Is surveillance capitalism required for the modern age?
> Slowing the elevators for the elderly (of which there are quite a lot) is problematic and probably not what most of us want.
The newer elevators around here, at least the one in government-owned buildings, solve that issue with a flip seat.
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My ugly solution to this problem is to have a free Oracle Cloud VM in the other country that I use to run a VPN (Oracle provides instructions [1]). I then connect to this using OpenVPN on my phone, which allows me have a Google account that thinks I am in the other country and so allows me to install apps that are restricted to that country. I don't have the VPN connected all the time - only when I want to access the…
This is essentially what's known as 'digital migration'[1] in mainland China. Many streaming services aren't available in China; foreign companies that do operate here often have their features reduced. So, apart from buying foreign SIM cards and using multiple Apple accounts, we typically subscribe to something called 'airports,' which provide standardized, open-source VPN protocols with servers (called 'nodes') in…
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AFAIK this is only a problem on iPhone, not Android? Note: I have an iPhone. It sucks. Same issue. I have bank accounts in other countries. The app needs an update. To install the update I have to switch countries on my account which instantly voids any and all subscriptions through Apple. It's insane. It's even more crazy that every single Apple employee I know has this issue but for whatever reason it's not fixed.
The UK National Health Service app is restricted to the UK only: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nhs.online... — that's not too crazy, as it's also only useful for people resident in the UK. The McDonald's UK app is also restricted to the UK: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mcdonalds.... which is daft, why wouldn't they want tourists and visitors? Searching " transport app" with la…
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…
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…
I emailed IT About it and they replied "try restarting your machine"
I then produced a video of the process for them.
I am 99.9% certain its just a poorly written SQL query, but no one responsible knows where that code is.
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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 in…
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I don't think so; I said marketing people frequently do bad stuff, which is not the same as saying they're all bad. I stand by 'frequently', because just look at how much terrible adware, clickbait, spam etc there is on the web. It's a Gresham's law-type situation. Of course marketing people do a valuable job in terms of figuring out how to sell things and minimize the gap between producers and customers. But - just…
Effective marketing (not just comms, but real positioning and messaging) is why people can find the right products and services, why small businesses can compete, and why entire industries grow. It's unequivocally a good. If anything, societies suffer when good marketing is absent—because that’s when bad actors fill the void with misinformation, hype, and scammy tactics.
If that's your metric, I can confirm the GP's statement, at least when it comes to online marketing people. Increasingly, I can not find the right products and services online.
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The parking app I use in Berlin, easy park, works in the sense that I pre-select a timeframe I think im going to park which then gives me an estimate for how much it'll cost and reserve that amount using my CC. When I end the parking before that timer ends, the actual time I've parked will be taken and only that amount is charged. It used to be even better in the sense that you'd only start and then end parking witho…
Of course the apps could easily detect that parking has ended. They could note your location when you park. When the phone returns to that location, and then moves at driving speed, parking has ended. But they don't because they make more money by profiting from people who forget to "clock out" when they are done parking.