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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

My father, now 70 years old, got stuck in Sicily with a broken car earlier this year. He had forgot his mobile phone home. He wasn't able to find a landline phone that he could use. Exasperated after trying several locations (bars, fast foods, etc asking for a phone call only to be denied) for 45 minutes, he decided to enter a vodafone store. They would not let him use _any_ phone because it was against the _policy_ (???). He asked if he could buy a phone and charge it, but was pretty complex (at least for him - mind you he had money and credit card with him). Maybe the fact that his accent betrays the fact that he's a foreigner had something to do with it...

Long story short, in 1970 you could get a phone call at the bar down the street and ring home if you were in trouble. People in the neighbourhoods were eager to help. In 2022, in Sicily, if you lose your mobile phone you're effectively _done_.

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Another case of an optional thing that enhanced experiences and made you more free becoming something you must have to do anything, so, removing some freedom after all.

See also: the automobile, at least as experienced in the US and similar countries.

[EDIT] and in both cases, the problem is the effect the new thing had on the environment around it. When tech- and progress-focused people can't figure out why some cultures/countries have "anti-progress" laws (France's protection of book stores, for instance), well, this is often part of why they do that.

> When tech- and progress-focused people can't figure out why some cultures/countries have "anti-progress" laws (France's protection of book stores, for instance), well, this is often part of why they do that.

This is an enormously under-appreciated perspective here, thanks for pointing it out. What appears to be a foolish luddite is often someone with a thoughtful, long-term perspective based on hard-won experience.

Chesterton's Fence, yet again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

Kind of, but a bit different. Both are cases of unintended consequences, but one involves something that was deliberately made or set up a certain way, and the other involves a state of affairs that existed essentially by accident. This is how people get away with arguing that changes to the status quo, under shifting technology or the demands of business, are "natural", so efforts to preserve the status quo are "unnatural"—because the prior state wasn't made that way deliberately, and absent coordinated action it may be demolished by changes, even if most people would prefer to retain some or all of the prior state, at some shared cost.

I heard someone make that defence of a river rerouting that let a bunch of sea water in to a lake and killed all the fish and shell fish.

Story seems to be more about people being jerks and not letting someone use a phone to make a quick call. Obviously there were tons of phones around but no one would let him use one.

It's rare but I have had someone ask to use my phone and I let them without any question

i lived without a cell phone due to poverty sometime in the not too distant past and it made me develop certain new perspectives on tech and society

Along the lines of an optional thing removing freedom, I have had tremendous trouble waving down a cab sometimes because all the cabs that were coming to the area have been hailed through apps.

I was literally listening to a podcast about this trade-off today by Andy Crouch, he’s the author of The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World

What was the podcast?

When it comes to automobiles and the US... are there any similar countries?

Most of Europe outside of large metros is the same as well.

There’s a difference between “it’s rural so things are spread out” and what we have in places like LA and Houston where major metro centers that could have been dense with good transit were purposely designed to be spread out and only able to be gotten around in in an automobile

There are plenty of non-US places which used to have transit and now do not. Britain's 1960s "Beeching Axe" comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts

It depends. For example there are many places that are too small to live without a car, but where you can do basic grocery shopping or kids can still go to school on foot or by bike. The spread is rarely comparable to the US.

Europe is not like the west coast of the US. Even urban areas are practically unnavigable by foot; everything is too spread out and only accessible by walking along heavily trafficked roads.

You'll want at least a bicycle in rural Europe, but you don't normally need a whole lot more.

Canada

Definitely the suburbs around the major cities. 40 minute walk to the nearest store does seem unreasonable.

2 hours to bus to work or 15 minutes to drive.

Depends on where.

I'm in Victoria and don't need a car (have one, though).

That may be the point of the comparison, as I understood it, with urban areas that don't require cars more of an exception than a norm. This is certainly the case in the US as well (NYC metro, DC metro, SF metro, university towns, etc.).

Perhaps, but I'd say urban areas are the norm here. 80% of Canada lives along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor.

I'm aware. As for the urbanization, that's about on par with the US (82% for Canada, 83% for the US according to this metric [1]).

More to the point, most of those areas outside of Toronto and Montreal have middling-to-no usable public transport. For example, I was recently passing by Kingston, ON, which has buses in some parts of the city but they reach a fraction of the population in the Kingston metro area. The same goes for much of the Windsor-London corridor. The qualification I stated was "urban areas that don't require cars," not any urban area.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat...

I’ve been to Victoria.

Plenty of places in the US you don’t need a car either by that definition.

I traveled through Europe all through 2018.

The only bit of trouble I had throughout the entire trip was me trying to be a good Samaritan.

Someone approached me, lost, asking me for directions because they didn't have a phone. In my American naivete, I pulled out my phone and help them look for this fictitious restaurant they were supposedly looking for.

During the conversation, the person got close to me and before I knew it had pick pocketed 50 euros out of my pocket.

I'd still do my best to help in the future, but I can definitely understand why people are reluctant to help others in foreign countries.

I used to live in Italy. The first thing other Americans in my group taught me was to automatically assume that anyone and everyone around you is trying to scam or pickpocket you.

Did some 11-year-old kid just get on the bus? Is he wearing a fluffy jacket? That little shit is gonna try to pickpocket you, guaranteed. He likely has a razor blade and will slice open the bottom of your backpack while people are jostling each other around on the bus. Have nothing in your pockets, keep your back to the wall, and hold your backpack in your hands in front of you. Did a well-dressed stranger smile and strike up a conversation? They're a Jehovah's Witness, and they're going to try to manipulate you into letting them come into your house and indoctrinate you. Don't acknowledge their existence. Don't smile back, don't make eye contact. Zero engagement. Is some friendly guy at the Trevi Fountain offer you a fun-looking squishy balloon? It's the cheapest possible thing you can imagine, and he's going to start demanding 50x the value of the thing once you were naive enough to actually grab it when he shoved it at you. Is there a transient woman in the train station with a young child lurching at you while shoving the kid into your arms? She's going to start screaming that you're a kidnapper and then demand 50 euros from you to make your new "problem" go away. Did the ticket checker claim that your bus ticket wasn't stamped correctly? Nothing a 20-euro "fine," paid in cash directly to the ticket-checker, won't fix.

By the way, any and all of the above happened to an American in my group at one point or another -- sometimes several times -- in our years there.

One weird trick: try not to appear American. American tourists are targeted because they tend to have valuables, also many cultures have a low opinion of the USA (anyone from the USA deserves behaviour X in response). I wish it weren’t like that, but it is hard to change stereotypes.

When travelling I might make out I am a hippy traveller type (low value target), or act like I’m from another country (e.g. Spanish tourists are known to be tight/tacaño in Morocco), and I try to avoid carrying or wearing anything that makes me stand out as a target (bumbag, camera, expensive accessories, high value branded clothes).

As a broad rule, you need to be most safety conscious in high density tourist areas. The only places I have been where I really knew I was unsafe were Rio (dangerous to locals too), and Nha Trang. In areas with very few tourists, I have usually been able to be fairly trusting, which leads to better experiences. Travelling as a hypersensitive victim is not fun: people sense your distrust and react poorly to it.

I am a New Zealander, and we tend to have a reputation for friendliness, which I try to project and maintain our reputation.

I have been obnoxiously drunk a few times when I have pretended to be Australian or American, sorry guys.

>> One weird trick: try not to appear American.

That would mean losing a hundred pounds. Easier said than done.

You seem to have a real issue with Americans in general. It'd be just as wrong to say that all New Zealanders are mocked because of their accent, and they should try not to sound so silly. Do some people in other countries have beef with Americans? Sure, and I've run into plenty in Europe. But I've far and away run into more folks that simply don't care and are friendly, or are keen to talk about the U.S. Might be worth taking a hard look at your prejudice.

I had someone try the same grift to me in NYC but they went for my decoy pocket that only had used tissues.

Yes, luckily I only had a small amount in my pocket and the rest in a money belt.

This is an interesting social breakdown for me.

I got lost running in a not-fancy and exclusive but quite nice area in an outer borough of NYC a couple years ago. I didn't have my phone.

Dressed like I was going to run a marathon, I asked people who I saw had phones if they would be so kind as to look up the directions to where I had come from.

Several different people, including one in a city agency truck, refused to open Google Maps for me. One claimed their smart phone didn't have a maps app and the others said things about data or they were in a rush.

I couldn't believe it and I wound up getting help from an old man who gave me audible directions that included so many steps I only found my way back by going in the right direction and slowly getting less lost.

Did you ask them more like "Can you pull up Google maps?" Or "Do you know the way to 5th Street?"

The first one would make me question if you are trying to steal my phone or something, but I might pull out my phone to help you with the second.

Good tip for would-be phone thieves: ask for directions, your mark may not think twice about pulling out their phone.

> I only found my way back by going in the right direction and slowly getting less lost.

This works pretty reliably, at least in cities, by the way.

Last night I dreamed I got lost and didn't have cell phone.

I went to the library, asked to use one of the computers they have for library patrons.

I was able to use Google Maps, but I couldn't get in touch with a friend who lived nearby, because -- I didn't have my phone. Everything set up with two-factor authentication, I couldn't get to email or send text message. Maybe just as well, on a public kiosk like that. But was distressing.

There's 2FA on my dreams.

They are replacing the payphones with LinkNYC kiosks that include a phone that makes free US calls

Interesting. I hadn't seen these before (not a NY resident and very rarely a visitor).

https://www.link.nyc/

Former NYC resident. Those things are everywhere in Manhattan and in surprisingly good condition most of the times.

Those look really cool.

How do they work in practice? Do they get vandalized a lot? Do people actually charge their devices with them?

We have those in London too under the name InLink and are run by BT (the main telephone company here). BT used to offer free calls on them, but they had to stop because it was mostly being used by purchasers of drugs as an anonymous means of putting in an order. In terms of charging, they’re well used by homeless people.

https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/News_events/2019/April_2019/...

That is sad. I don't carry my cell phone with me everywhere, and I have never had a problem finding some one willing to lend me their phone if I needed to make a call. I have never been to Sicily before though :)

Having lived a couple of years in Italy, I can attest that Italians are hard on the outside and chewy on the inside. They have built a hard outer shell to deal with all of the constant bullshit that they're awash in day-in and day-out. But once you're "in," you are *in*. The degree of mutual trust and goodwill among their in-groups would put most North American social groups, including and perhaps especially families, to shame.

How did you get those asterisks? I get in not *in*.

Oh now I get *in*.

I'm in.

I think it is similar in most Mediterranean countries, the US culture is derived from north west European

For anyone else who might get stuck like this: hit up any public service place. Libraries, police/fire station, civic office, tourist info kiosk etc.

It's true and it's almost a vicious cycle: Because the cost of being without a phone is so high, people are unwilling to let strangers use their phones in case they run off with it (or drop it in a puddle).

Unless there's a kind stranger/public service avaliable, you're stuck if your phone fails for whatever reason. You could argue that there's no excuse to not go out with a spare charger and all, but I've had my handset just stop working while on the road. I have friends who have had their phone pickpocketed.

This also adds on an additional concern as places begin to forego say physical credit cards and IDs in favor of electronic ones that again live on your phone. If that phone is dead, you can't even buy a new one or get money from an ATM. Likely in such a future I'll need to have a redundant phone on me at all times just incase this happens.

You didn't mention it but I'm guessing he got back and told you the story so you aren't effectively done, it's just more of a hassle if you're unwilling to ask a passing stranger.

In Australia they just made all payphones free for all calls to anywhere in Australia (inc to cell phones). It's great.

Did he ask a stranger? When I got locked out of my house even the fedex driver who happened to be there let me use his phone to call someone.

I would think that this is neighborhood-dependent.

Unless you look like a crackhead or beggar, anyone would lend his phone for a few seconds/minutes.

I assume it's a global thing but in London there is a category of beggar that doesn't really look like a beggar. They usually have a story about their car running out of petrol or losing their train ticket. I've been approached by the same guy two days running telling me that he just lost his train ticket a few minutes before (what an unlucky guy).

My point is that in cities you evolve an attitude that pretty much anyone who walks up to you with a sob story is likely to be at best a beggar and at worst a thief/scammer. I think you could get someone to make a call on your behalf but actually handing you their phone (even for a moment) - that might be less common than you think.

Also our phones are >= $1000 devices. How are we supposed to trust handing that to just anyone?

I have faced this before - A stranger dialed the number I wanted to call, put it on speaker and let me speak to my friend.

I did this recently for a homeless woman on the street. In my case I was more concerned about COVID risk than the risk of her stealing my phone (as I had a bicycle and she didn't, and she looked tired and emaciated and unlikely to be able to harm me).

As a result, I overheard her entire long desperate attempt to persuade her mother to give her another other other other last chance. :-( :-( :-(

Good idea. Hadn't even thought of that since the question is usually "can I borrow your phone" which implies handing it over.

Not true.

Most people aren't using and can't afford the flagship models. I personnally have never bought a smartphone more than 180€ and I know a lot of people doing the same thing.

Do they have monthly payments for phones in Europe, or is it all just one lump-sum payment?

Most people I know have flagship phones and the ability to make many smaller payments may have something to do with that.

Monthly payments exist and some people use them to pay for a flagship phone but most people understand this is just diguised credit and they'd rather have a cheaper subscription.

Also I've seen people do that drop/lose/get their expensive phone stolen and then pay for almost 2 years for a device they don't use. The replacement is usually a lot cheaper and they realize their life is not that different with a cheaper smartphone and don't repeat the experience unless they are social status show offs.

I definitely wouldn’t, at least not without lots of convincing. Probably I’d call someone for you though.

Access to all of my personal info, my password manager, etc. If someone turned and ran with my phone, it would give me days worth of hassle to replace and recover things like canceling my SIM card, buying a new one, changing 2FA, trying to remotely wipe it, maybe provide info to police.

I hate how dependent I am on this little rectangle but it’s kind of just reality these days to have so much of our lives closely tied to it

My password manager is locked by default but I have a second android profile that I switch to when I hand out my phone to someone else. I imagine iOS has a similar feature. I don't want my kids or a friend ruin my browser history.

Last time I dropped my phone in the sea, I got a new sim card the next day from my operator, reactivating all the 2FA shit isn't too complicated as long as you keep the same number. It was annoying but 99% was taken care of as soon as I had the sim card.

The only thing that took several days was access to a bank account I have open in a remote country as I hadn't given them my latest address and they had to do back to back verifications, shipping me codes then calling me to verify the same person who was on the phone was living in the place he pretended to live, then sending me back 2 different letters one with a new password, one with a code to activate 2FA.

That's a huge problem. Payphones don't have biases. As long as you have enough money, they just work.

People have many, many biases. (For example, against homeless, and those who are often in most need of help.)

The reality of depending on other people is that you're dependent on their flaws. This works out for most people, but certainly does not for many of those who are marginalized.

> As long as you have enough money, they just work.

Even if you didn't you would just call collect.

Tbh I’ve let alcoholics on the street use my phone, they’re usually too wasted to make a run with it.

People think I’m crazy for it though.

I also handed out my phone to a drunk homeless guy who wanted to call a friend so that he can lend him money to go back to his country of origin after an unsuccessful attempt to start a new life here.

My immediate thought was "surely, if you talked to any police officer, if not at the station, they would help out? And if not, any library or other public service?"

I have literally tried exactly this before, and apparently my not having a phone to contact anyone wasn’t actually the officers problem.

In what city ?

If you don't have your phone, how do you know where the nearest public service is, especially in a foreign land.

I’m old enough to remember asking people for directions.

And I'm old enough to remember this clip on TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXlpVz9rnx4

If you're not aware, many people are assholes, and the story that you're reading is about an instance where someone was finding that everyone around them was being an asshole, that means it's less than likely that they would have stopped to give them directions.

If you're not aware, many people are assholes

Oh come on, most people are awesome. People LOVE to help, it empowers them, makes them feel good. When you look at books with advice about building relationships and friendships, you'll almost always find suggestions to ASK people you want to get closer to for help.

I don't feel like having a semantic argument over the different between many and most.

The world is full of many lovely, caring people, but that does little to help a person when they happen to run into a bunch of assholes.

It is very feasible that a person travelling to another country could have a negative experience with everyone they meet due to racism or xenophobia, or whatever and that this would lead to a situation where even people on the street show them nothing but scorn.

Imagine a Ukrainian asking for the nearest police station in Russia right now.

Or someone wearing a thin blue line asking for directions at a stereotypical leftist college campus.

> Imagine a Ukrainian asking for the nearest police station in Russia right now.

> Or someone wearing a thin blue line asking for directions at a stereotypical leftist college campus.

I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if in either case the person who is lost gets the help they need.

The world is full of assholes, but they are the minority compared to the majority of helpful people, especially when it comes to simple things such as direction. Speak the local language helps of course.

> I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if in either case the person who is lost gets the help they need.

Every single time?

Like you're saying that there's absolutely no chance that this could happen in these situations, or in any situations, which makes no sense given that statistically this kind of shit happens every day to someone.

At almost any given moment someone is being told to fuck off because the asked a stranger for directions.

Have you never had this happen to you?

> Imagine a Ukrainian asking for the nearest police station in Russia right now.

Not sure what you expect to happen. There won't be any way to tell the difference, and even if there was nobody would care. In Moscow on a busy street, you'll probably be ignored for some time until someone helps you, not just because they are assholes there, but simply because most people aren't locals; in most sub-1M cities, there will be plenty of people willing to help.

I once heard some rich youtubers say - "giving feels so good it almost feels selfish" which I kind agree with, especially once you have your needs covered (most of HN).

OP is literally a story about someone asking strangers for directions and being given the cold shoulder. You proposal is to… ask those same unhelpful strangers directions to a different destination instead?

This also assumes you feel safe talking to police in the first place.

Not just Sicily, a similar scenario happened to me in Salt Lake City UT. People are strangely asshole about letting someone in need use their cell phone.

It's much more strange to me that people WOULD let strangers use their cell phone. Back when it was just a phone, sure. But now it's my wallet with all of my credit cards and banking loaded on it, it has all of my passwords and all of my OTP apps and codes, it has the ability to unlock doors in my house (and for some people to open and start their car) it contains all of the contact information for everyone I know, it effectively has every email I've ever sent or received and every picture I have ever taken or been sent, it has access to publish content as me on trusted social media profiles. Yes, obviously all of this should be protected by much more than just physical security. But we all know that software locks can almost always be broken if you're in possession of the physical device.

I happily help strangers when I can, but I'm not going to hand over the keys to my entire life, on the most fragile and expensive object I probably have on my person.

The biggest problem is just the value of the phone. There’s just way too much risk handing a stranger a $500-1000 object that they could just run away with!

And you can have an NFC device on you to take money from the phone once it's unlocked!

I would just call for them and let them use speaker phone.

On Android you can add alternate users, I have one that only has the phone app installed specifically in case I ever need to let someone use it.

Its not at all strange that you cannot use my device that has access to some really important personal info on it. It's rude for me to hover over you while you are talking on the phone so I can make sure you aren't snooping through my messages, email, etc, and I'm not about to let you use a device that has access to those unsupervised.

Exactly my thought as well. If the phone only was just that, a phone, I would happily lend it out to strangers all the time (at least if it looked like they didn't have the stamina to outrun me :P).

There's too much risk to hand a stranger your cell phone, unfortunately. They can steal the phone, call some high cost number, venmo themselves money, who knows what else.

I think it depends on how you phrase it, there's a big difference to me between asking somebody to place a call on behalf of you on speakerphone, versus asking them to physically handover an unlocked smart phone.

I'm very reluctant when people ask me for the reasons others have said.

Not saying you didn't do this but I'm much more likely to help when someone comes up with a clear and concise statement of the problem and a minimally intrusive solution ("hey, my phone is dead and my wife has the charger, could you call the Hilton on speaker and ask for Room 123?" or even "could I log in to my Facebook for a second and send a message to my friend saying I don't have my phone but I'll be at Starbucks, you can hold the phone?")

Did he offer to pay strangers on the street or business staff for the phone calls he was intending to make from their mobile phone?

In NZ if you stop at side of the road or open your hood in parking lot someone will offer help within minutes.

My gf took away my phone because I was reading HN too much in the club. I went home alone without a phone. Not a single cab would stop for me on the street, they all just take Uber orders now. Walked 5 miles in the freezing cold.

Did the cell phone replace the towel?

no more hardline exits...

If you both loose your cellphone and lack social skills to ask literally anyone else to lend you theirs, then I guess you're in trouble. But it works out for the rest of us, so the cost to some rare individuals is worth the benefit to the rest of the society. I for one never lost a cell phone in my life.

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