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> People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet. Sounds great in theory, but just today I was reminded how

• plst 7mo ago
  What do you mean by impossible in this case? Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards. EDIT: I guess "just" is doing some heavy-lifting, so I won't argue this further, but "impossible" isn't the word I would use either. The city could revert this decision, definitely if enough people wanted them to (that's... I know, the hardest part). I just agree with the OP that we technically could go back to slightly less-digital society.
  • gruez 7mo ago
    >Regina city council made the decision to remove the coin option at downtown meters as part of the budget deliberation process, said Faisal Kalim, the City of Regina's director of community standards.
    • plst 7mo ago
      Yes, I read the linked article. Yes, the city made this decision. The decision could be reverted. I understand that this is a type of thing the OP (top-comment in the thread) is wishing for. I don't see the "impossible" in my understanding of the linked article.
      • TheChaplain 7mo ago
        Budget-wise it becomes impossible. Coin-operated meters means someone have to come around checking the meter, collect coins, check the parking tickets. One person can only cover so many devices per day. Then you have mechanical maintenance, with that comes disputes with "it was broken, it didn't accept the money" and so forth. I've probably forgotten a number of other related things, but compare the above to digital solution. Parking app, where the customer pays only for the parked time, no fiddling with money or keeping track of time. The parking attendant checks much quicker by just scanning the license plate while walking the rounds (could be done via car and a mounted camera even). Analog just costs more, and citizens doesn't want taxes to go to things that are not strictly necessary.
        • plst 7mo ago
          It was possible for many decades already, budget and maintenance-wise. You can at least accept a credit card as an alternative. Yes, it's not perfect, but the fully digital alternatives also have drawbacks, as pointed by OP.
          • Spivak 7mo ago
            I know but you're fighting the cost difference between installing CC terminals and QR code stickers.
          • renewiltord 7mo ago
            Things that were possible become impossible. Once Britain ruled the seas with wooden sailboats. Those boats are not perfect but could they win today’s naval battles? Also no.
      • fhn 7mo ago
        "The decision could be reverted." Do you often buy a new car and revert that purchase to purchase a different new car? I guess you don't often use your own money so no big deal.
        • plst 7mo ago
          Why the snark? Did I misread? I don't often buy a new car, do you? I really don't understand what your last sentence means. I don't even think this a fair comparison, it's more like keeping the old car just in case or for other family members. But I think I specified enough what I'm arguing already, yes this is unlikely, just not impossible.
  • hilliardfarmer 7mo ago
    They are saying that things that have already been dumbed down can't go back. Obviously that's just their opinion, but I would guess that most people agree with them.
  • prmoustache 7mo ago
    There are places in EU too where parking meters have disappeared and payments are only done through apps. And I am talking about public space in the street, not private parkings.
    • plst 7mo ago
      I do believe that. Pointing out that I live in the EU was completely unnecessary, I meant that I live somewhere in the EU, I didn't really mean to compare it to the US.
  • shadowgovt 7mo ago
    No because those cost more to maintain than the digital ones. Nobody is restoring the budget that got cut because the meters got cheaper.
  • fhn 7mo ago
    no way will they go back to coin-operated. That would mean they have to pay employees to walk up and down to collect coins.
    • jfengel 7mo ago
      And maintain them, which I suspect costs even more. Parking meters do fiddly work, out in all weather, where people hate them and do all kinds of vandalism. It doesn't surprise me that they want to make hardware maintenance your problem.
    • compass_copium 7mo ago
      And worst of all, the momey you pay isn't tied to your license plate. If you overpay, someone else can park for free!!
    • itintheory 7mo ago
      The other problem, in the US at least, is that cash is very low value (inflation), and dollar coins never caught on. I'm not trying to carry around $6 in quarters to park for 2 hours. And that's a pretty inexpensive parking spot.
      • y0eswddl 7mo ago
        ...are you implying that digital money is worth more than digital? because I doubt anyone who spends cash regularly is holding much of it long enough to lose value to the digital ones in their checking account.
        • yuriks 7mo ago
          No, they're implying that you need a lot of coins to pay for parking. If you need $6 to pay for parking, and the largest commonly available coin is a quarter, that means you need 24 coins to pay. If the value of currency was such that the parking only costed $3, or if dollar coins were more common, you'd need less coins to pay.
          • 7mo ago
  • skissane 7mo ago
    Place where I park my car for work (Gosford, Australia) just got rid of cash payment, they now take card payment only (apparently there is also going to be an app, but they haven’t launched it yet). I think the number one reason is they are upgrading to a new system, and the parking technology vendor doesn’t provide cash payments as a standard option-probably they could implement a custom integration to enable it if they thought it was essential, but cash payments are so rare, it would be a difficult decision to justify. The carpark is owned and operated by the local government, so they need to justify their decisions, either as commercially viable, or else as producing substantial public benefit, but I think both arguments would be difficult to sustain in this case.
    • Fr0styMatt88 7mo ago
      It’s kinda easy to justify though from a financial standpoint. If the parking meters take cash, you need all the hardware to accept and secure the cash. Then you need somebody to go around at some point and actually physically collect the cash. Then someone has to reconcile the cash, etc. So at least from that angle I see it as an easy “government is actually trying to be more efficient” argument. As a user cash is a pain in the ass. I have to count it out, keep it in my pockets, etc. So much easier to just tap my phone or my card. But yeah that’s a tradeoff in the classic “You’re trading X for convenience”.
      • Gigachad 7mo ago
        And then you have kids and junkies sticking twigs and gum in the coin mechanism. A card only system can be a single solid slate with minimal upkeep. Combined with the fact almost no one uses cash in Australia.
        • keyringlight 7mo ago
          Even then with cards they may still need to consider fraud via skimmers, or that the equipment can be vandalized. Going app-only (or vastly reducing the availability of payment machines) means less upkeep for them, but it also moves the kind of fraud to where people have replaced the information or QR codes to scan. It seems like a parallel to what google and whatever entities are pushing them to make these changes are trying to do, at some point someone has to put in work to keep the system working securely and everyone wants to delegate it to someone else.
  • worldsayshi 7mo ago
    I also live in EU. In Sweden. Most places don't even have parking meters anymore. You're just expected to use your phone. And cashless is the default.
  • rozap 7mo ago
    I parked in a garage in downtown Tacoma, Washington. The only option to pay was via an app. So I downloaded the app (by walking outside to where there was cell service, because I was, you know, underground in a garage) at which point it threw an internal server error when adding my card. There was no attendant on duty, and no way to pay with a credit card. So I left - just drove out of the garage. Then a few months later I got a fine for $75 for not paying. Then I called them to dispute it, and they offered to waive most of it, but it was still more than if I had been able to pay the fee initially. I'm sure it was sold to the garage as a way to "maximize revenue and unlock operational efficiency". And sure enough, look, the revenue number is up and to the right. Working as designed.
    • userbinator 7mo ago
      Just ignore it and never park there again. Change your plate if you really want to pay someone for something.
      • mindslight 7mo ago
        Seriously, I don't understand why these stories have to so often end with someone just giving in and paying. Our society is so disenfranchised. I understand that doing it the right way by sending them written notice that it's an invalid debt takes time and effort, but there are options between that and just giving in and validating their nonsense.
        • rozap 7mo ago
          You're right, I pasted this into Claude and it seems to think that there are many avenues. And Claude even named the parking operator by name because they're facing a class action for this very thing: Claude wrote: > The broader trend is in your favor. App-only parking companies are facing a wave of legal action nationally. A major class action lawsuit against Metropolis Technologies (one of the largest app-based parking operators) alleges they violated consumer protection laws by failing to provide adequate means to pay for parking and then penalizing consumers for not paying. Lanier Law Firm Tennessee's Attorney General secured a nearly $9 million settlement against Metropolis for similar practices, requiring them to implement clear signage, maintain staffed customer support, and automatically issue refunds when their technology malfunctions. It's just so exhausting to deal with this kind of thing, I've been super busy and it's not worth it to me to fight over $30, which is exactly the bet these scummy companies are making. I think LLMs lower the cost of drafting serious sounding letters to the point where that should be my first impulse rather than giving up and paying them, which rewards the behavior.
  • TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    > Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards. Unfortunately, a more accurate way of putting it is: stuff takes cards in lieu of coins. Like, where I live (also EU), ticket machines in buses and trams have gradually been upgraded over the past decade to accept cards, and then to accept only cards. It's a ratchet. Hidden inflation striking again. Cashless is cheaper to maintain than cash-enabled, so it pretends to be a value-add at first, but quickly displaces the more expensive option. Same with apps, which again, are cheaper to maintain than actual payment-safe hardware. It's near impossible to reverse this, because to do that, you have to successfully argue for increasing costs - especially that inflation quickly eats all the savings from the original change, so you'd be essentially arguing to make things more expensive than the baseline.
    • thescriptkiddie 7mo ago
      a few years ago the vending machines in my office building started accepting credit and debit cards for an extra fee of $0.35 per transaction. just recently they stopped accepting bills and coins leaving cards as the only option, but are still charging the extra fee.
    • kro 7mo ago
      Not advocating for cashless only, but cash also has costs: banks charge for deposits and coinrolls, and you need to protect against robbery
      • TeMPOraL 7mo ago
        That, + logistics and logistics security in general. I agree, the costs are real; in general, anything physical with mass = costs. So the cost savings are real too - my point is that those are instantly eaten by inflation, so going from cash to cashless and then back to cash isn't a no-op; rather, the first leg quickly turns into a no-op, then the second leg would be increasing costs.
    • rkomorn 7mo ago
      I feel like this kind of glosses over the fact that a lot of people (I'd say an overwhelming majority) prefer the cashless options anyway. I don't know if I have any friends who miss carrying coins and cash, or who miss carrying individual bus/subway tickets, but if they do, they're awfully quiet about it compared to the friends who happily say they can't remember using cash. I'd say that if anything, cashless things are catching up to the general public. Personally, I'm in favor of keeping things cash-friendly because people shouldn't be forced to be cash-free, but that's only to support a small minority of people.
  • 3836293648 7mo ago
    Where I live, in the EU, we just have signs and the parking meters have been gone for several years
    • cge 7mo ago
      I found one parking lot in the EU where there were only signs, and the signs not only pointed to an Android+iOS only, attestation-protected app, rather than a website, but an app that, at least on Android, was region-locked to only allow installations from people with the local country set correctly in Play Store (something completely different than the country Google sets for your account, for some reason). It was a public lot, and the only lot in the town, as far as we could tell.
  • mschuster91 7mo ago
    > Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards. That costs money. Coin operated machines routinely are targeted by vandals, with each case making easily 100x the damage for loot. And card-acceptance also has its issues, the terminals need a data uplink, someone needs to take care of the machines. That's why so many (especially private parking lots) shift over to purely app based schemes. Orders of magnitude less tech you need to worry about.
  • wartywhoa23 7mo ago
    Of course it's not impossible; but very incompatible with the agenda per which everyone must become a digital slave, guilty by default, surveilled 24/7, deprived of all privacy, freedom and rights, with TOSes replacing the charade that there is for law now, and impenetrable screens instead of human interaction.
• b112 7mo ago
  It's kinda dumb that you can't tap your card. At least they have a phone option, but really, why no CC?
  • barbs 7mo ago
    I'm guessing it's a lot more expensive to install and maintain card readers than to essentially just have signs prompting people to use their phone.
• mx7zysuj4xew 7mo ago
  This cuts both ways. Since smartphones are becoming such an essential necessity, we should never ever remove the possibility to adjust these devices for our own requirements
• hexage1814 7mo ago
  I'm reading this discussion, and allow me to give you my two cents. It's not a matter of being impossible, but rather how much the rest of society is willing to pay to maintain such infrastructure (either through higher taxes when dealing with the government, or through more expensive goods/services when dealing with corporations, since companies need to maintain old infrastructure that most people don't use). For example, I read that Switzerland voted to guarantee the use of physical cash, even enshrining it in the constitution, which clearly points toward preserving older infrastructure. However, if you have cash but no one accepts it, it becomes useless. So it would probably require more—something like requiring businesses and the government to accept that form of payment. As many things in life, not impossible: but is society willing to pay for that?
• 2postsperday 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • FpUser 7mo ago
    [flagged]
• tonyedgecombe 7mo ago
  >how to pay with the app. Or by phone.
• troyvit 7mo ago
  Right, and builders now build homes with Ring cameras pre-installed. Surveillance chills aside it's about building rent-seeking into every corner of the economy, and that's a top-down goal of modern capitalism. Requiring a smart-phone to park is just part of it, and it goes back to the parent comment that there is something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology. To me it proves that Google's steps to lock down phones isn't really about security. To them the scams that happen are acceptable losses. The scammed will still use Android and still click on ads and still let themselves be tracked and marketed to as before. But if Google can use the excuse of security to edge out alternative apps and app stores they will spend plenty of money and time to do it. This isn't security, it's sealing a hole in the sales funnel.