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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

You do realize that a number of those are true right?

Cash is dead in many places. Stores all around me have "cash not accepted" signs.

For many Americans walking is dead. Sad but true. Cities got designed or redesigned to be car first.

Amazon put numerous types of stores out of business. There are entire categories of products that can now only be bought online.

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All this says is that America has been specifically altered by those prior advancements, and nothing on the rest of the worlds or their handling of LLMs

> Cash is dead in many places. Stores all around me have "cash not accepted" signs.

Side note, but here in Australia smaller stores are starting to preference cash again due to high card fees that legally cannot be (directly) passed into the customer.

U.S. cities were horse-and-buggy centric before they were car centric. The car replaced the horse not walking.

Some places still only accept cash believe it or not.

There are more brick and mortar stores in my home city than ever in my life. I know people buy things on Amazon but Amazon also kind of sucks for product curation and recommendation these days. The search function is basically broken and you just get recommendations for 15 Chinese clones of the same product for anything you try to search for.

None of them are true. They might be almost true in little bubbles of the West. Will those bubbles expand and encompass the world? Personally I doubt it.

China is not a Western bubble. Mobile payment is the norm.

Yeah sure whatever

When those things did happen, how much of that was because people had multiple options and chose one of them over the other?

I think the solution is in education. Do not teach people about the things that are useful right now. Teach people to value the things that make their lives better.

I'm ok with thinking as a hobby. That's doing it because you value it. If there are not enough people doing it, the problem is that they don't value it or don't know how to value it.

yeah but credit cards are since the 70s, that's 50 years ago

what are you gonna do, be an AI bro for 50 years telling me "just one more year bro"?

I'm already 30, I'm not gonna live till 80 reading unbearable ai bro comments.

thanks, I was starting to feel "wat? yes! totally"

Automobiles partially killed walking; e-scooters are here to all but finish the job. Walking is going to be a purely indoor activity done within buildings for most people and a hobby for outdoorsy types.

Only maybe in US, more probably only in some weird micro bubble you live in. Otherwise all you write is false obscure projection. Maybe go outside more? Its pretty healthy also mentally

I live in a very outdoors city in a very walkable neighborhood.

I also travel a lot and have visited many places where walking around is just not possible.

You clearly dont travel enough then :) nothing like that or even slightly in that direction is happening anywhere in Europe, at all.

In contrary - people are way more outdoorsy than say 10 years ago, most folks are counting steps daily (I dont but I walk a lot regardless). Tourism exploded in european alps in non-winter times - i have a small apartment in a nice place and summer is cca on par with winter now, it was before covid much weaker season. Spring/autumn used to be empty times, not so much anymore.

Most folks we know or colleagues are 'outdoorsy' in some form these days, thats not some fringe group but majority.

Yeah I've been to Europe plenty. I didn't say not walking is universal, but huge swaths of the US continue to be built out, to this day, with 0 walkability.

Even countries like China have built lots of new car first infrastructure.

> Walking is going to be a purely indoor activity done within buildings for most people and a hobby for outdoorsy types.

That's ridiculous.

Maybe. This reminds me of the Asimov short story "It's Such a Beautiful Day". Teleportation became so normalised in this fictional society that using a regular door and going outside is seen as deviant.

walking is a nice way to experience your surroundings at a gentle pace that might allow for surprising, inspiring interactions or discoveries

or even the chance to practice smiling while greeting a stranger

Some of us like to be healthy and fit, and choose walking over e-scooter or car for that reason alone. I wouldn't count it as a "hobby", more of a lifestyle thing.

in Germany its the opposite, "cash only" :)

Just came back from Hamburg. Everything was tap to pay. Never used cash once.

Maybe in smaller cities, but I haven't hit a major city on my travels for some time now that wasn't digital payment first.

Cash is dead in many places

The Philippines enters the chat

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