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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

Thirty years ago I would have given anything for a pocket device that could tell me whether any washing machines on campus were empty and ready to use.

Because it sucked to lug my basket of socks and sweaty t-shirts over to laundry block only to find out there was a big queue and my options were either to lug the basket back to my room and try again a random interval later, or leave my backet lying around in the laundry block, at the mercy of who knows what and come back a random interval later.

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Probably they should have reached out to smart people from somewhere available who could come up with some sort of booking systems like all shared loundry services of residential houses do in Sweden since perhaps the 70's and before.

https://www.thenewbieguide.se/laundry-in-sweden/

You do not need pocket device for such. Do you really say that in the university - supposedly filled with loads of smart people - no-one was able to come up with a solution for this trivial problem before Steve Jobs introduced the smartphone? Wow!

Thats interesting about the Swedish system, I've never seen that before.

Do you really say that in the university - supposedly filled with loads of smart people - no-one was able to come up with a solution for this trivial problem before Steve Jobs introduced the smartphone? Wow!

Not sure if you're familiar with UK Universities in the 90s, but no-one was spending much thought making laundry easier for the students. Or making anything easier for the students, for that matter. Least of all the students.

Plus reporting which laundry machines are in use, and paying for their use, are two different things, so an app could show you which machines are available, but the machines still let you pay with coins.

The GPs argument is similar to how full anti-user lockdown of devices is justified for some minor security benefit that could have been achieved without said lockdown.

It is becoming more common that this function is part of an apartment building-wide electronic lock system. Still using the same model but using a RFID key fob which also opens many other locks: front entrance, mail box, basement, etc.

There is often a web interface to the booking system in addition to a wall-mounted terminal in a hallway. But using that terminal is often more convenient, as you'd often pass it twice every day anyway and you'd only need the key fob to "log in".

(I have worked on developing such a system, but before that I had been a regular user of a competitor's system in my apartment block for years)

Would you still have, if you knew the strings that would come attached? Tracking your every move? Enabling governments to surreptitiously snoop on your audio and camera? Constant exposure to experiences designed to addict and immiserate you?

The number of people who carry smartphones around means the answer to this is almost certainly yes.

Also no one snoops on your audio or camera despite the paranoia around it, there's no need to. You can get all the info you need much more efficiently and accurately other ways.

> The number of people who carry smartphones around means the answer to this is almost certainly yes.

Maybe they have no other real choice? This discussion is full of such cases.

So, maybe, the washing machine could have a... web page? No proprietary app store (where the app disappears when not updated to support the new OS version), no installation, usable from any device?

I think it's good that people are aware of the downsides to everyone-has-a-smartphone and I'm glad there are people like Snowden who have made us all very aware of that. And I think it's good people are trying to find ways to avoid the downsides.

But I also think it's easy to take all the incredible benefits for-granted and only see the downsides. I remember what it was like 30 years ago and I much prefer now. Do you remember having to go to a physical location (library or town hall) to look things up? Basically no-one bothered and we all blundered around believing whatever some bloke in the pub had told us about.

We all have the world in our pocket now and it's amazing.

(Yes we have the problem of bubbles and misinformation but I still think information abundance wins out over information drought)

Doesn’t require a pocket device, the Web already existed at that point.

Or someone could have written a small client/server app in Access or FileMaker.

Why not just bring a book in case you need to wait in line?

Thirty-years-ago-me preferred to sit in my room and listen to The Prodigy

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